The Secret Jews of Iran
A little-known story of recent times
The story of the crypto Jews, or anusim, in Spain is well-known. Forced to convert to Christianity in the 15th century, they carried on practising Judaism in secret. Far less known than their story is that of the Jews of Mashhad, in Iran, who had a very similar, but much more recent experience.
Jews have lived in Persia, or Iran for 3,000 years. They first arrived in the 8th century BCE, though some suggest it was a couple of hundred years later. Either way, towards the end of the 6th century BCE, the Persian king Cyrus allowed the Jewish exiles, who the Babylonians had previously taken into captivity, to return home and rebuild the Temple. However, many stayed; there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in Persia ever since Cyrus’s time. Outside of Israel, the Persian Jewish community is the oldest in the world. The biblical book of Esther, though historically dubious, is set in the Persian city of Susa.
Jews lived in relatively large, semi-autonomous communities in Iran until the Islamic invasion of 642 CE. As elsewhere in the Islamic world they were then reduced to the status of dhimmis, a tolerated and theoretically protected community, but denied the civil rights that Muslims enjoyed. Generally Jews in the Muslim world lived more tolerable lives than those in Christian Europe but during the long Persian sojourn there were nevertheless periods of severe persecutions and greatly restricted freedoms. The 19th century, and particularly events in Mashhad in 1839, marked just one of those periods.
Mashhad is one of the sacred cities of Persia, a site of pilgrimage, the burial place of the 8th Shia Imam. As a holy Islamic city, Jews had always been prohibited from entering its gates. But in 1736, the powerful Persian ruler Nader Shah, anxious to improve the economic prospects of the country, did away with the prohibition. Mashhad sits on the Silk Road, it was an important commercial hub and Nader Shah saw a way to further improve its prosperity. He invited 40 Jewish merchants and their families to live in the city; reasoning that their networks and business knowhow would bring additional trade to the city.
Gradually more Jews arrived in Mashhad until they were quite a sizeable community. Then, in 1747, Nader Shah was assassinated and the mood in the city changed. Notwithstanding the prosperity the Jews had brought, the local Shiite population turned against them. Violence against Jews increased, areas of the city were closed off to them and, taking a lesson from Christian Europe, the local rulers made Jews wear identifying symbols on their clothes. Finally, three days before Passover in 1839, in one of the very few blood libels ever to take place in the Muslim world, Mashhad’s Jews were accused of killing a Muslim boy. A riot broke out. Dozens of Jews were killed, the synagogue was ransacked, Jewish homes attacked. The Jewish community was told they had two choices. Either they could convert to Islam or leave the city.
In saner times they may have chosen to leave the city. But Mashhad was not the only part of Persia where Jews were being persecuted. There were few places they could flee to. Within twenty years or so European Jewry, particularly in France and Britain, would wake up to the conditions under which Persian Jews were living and diplomatic efforts were put in place to ameliorate their situation. But 1839 was too early for this to happen. The Jews of Mashhad were trapped. All they could do was convert to Islam.
But like the conversos of Spain many centuries earlier, their conversion was not whole hearted. On the face of it they lived as Muslims, attending the mosque, fasting during Ramadan, wearing Islamic clothes. They took Muslim names for themselves and did everything they were supposed to do. But in private they lived as Jews.
It was not easy. They kept all the rituals secretly, lighting Shabbat candles in shuttered rooms, refraining from work on the sabbath by sending their children to mind their shops, sabbath, slaughtering their own meat clandestinely while giving the bread and halal meat they had bought in the Muslim ships to the poor, or feeding it to the dogs. They made wine in their basements- a particularly dangerous thing to do in an environment where alcohol was forbidden - and ground their own flour to make bread during the year and matzah at Passover. Had the authorities found out, they may have been killed.
Among their most challenging tasks was stopping their children from giving the game away at school and, as they grew older, preventing them from forming romantic relationships with Muslims. One of the ways they avoided this was to betroth their children, when they were still infants, to others within the community, making sure their marriages stayed within the secret circle.
Some Mashhadi Jews did manage to leave, forming communities in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Russia. Eventually, many found their way to the United States. Yet by the time they left Mashhad, the sense that they were a clandestine community was so deeply ingrained within them that even in their new homes they still lived closely bound to each other; marrying within their own fellowships and not socialising with anyone, not even other Jews.
This situation carried on for a long time. Circumstances improved somewhat after 1921 when Reza Khan seized power in Iran, eventually establishing the Western-orientated Pahlavi dynasty. Even then, Mashhad’s Jews had to be cautious; their legal situation had improved but some of their Muslim neighbours were as hostile as ever. By this time some Muslims had cottoned on to how the crypto-Jews lived, and were relaxed about it, but there were others who, had they found out, could easily have incited a pogrom. And indeed, that is exactly what happened.
In 1946, just before Passover, another blood libel erupted in Mashhad. Once again mobs rioted and Jews were attacked. This time however, the authorities stepped in, troops were sent to the city and the unrest was quelled. But the Mashhad community had put up with enough. They had lived impossible lives for the best part of a century and there was no reason for them to do so any more. They left, some for Teheran, others for Jerusalem. Yet their sense of being a Mashhadi community never left them. Even in New York today there are Mashhadi communities, with their own rabbis and synagogues. A recent article on the Mizrachi website suggests there are around 20,000 Mashhadi Jews worldwide; most in Israel and America but with a few hundred in London and Milan. There are, or were, 10 still in Teheran.
It is not easy to know what life is like for Jews in Iran today. Living mainly in Teheran, Isfahan and Shiraz, estimates put the size of the Jewish population at between 8,000 and 10,000, the largest number in the Middle East outside of Israel. The annual report of Teheran’s Jewish community, the largest in the country and published just a few days ago says that “Our community continues to perform religious duties with full freedom and dignity, as in the past, under conditions of public safety and security. The Jews of Iran live peacefully in this land.”
The government line is that they distinguish between Jews and Zionism, and there is a Jewish member of the Iranian Parliament. But few believe that Iran is benevolent to its Jews. It may take many years for the regime to fall, but one day it will. Then, hopefully there will be a better future for the ancient Jewish community of Persian Jews.
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