Between Equal Citizenship and the Promise of Redemption

Speaker 1 0:00

Sorry to interrupt conversation, but we're all here for a very special lecture, so I do want us to be able to get started. I'm going to leave that door a crack open. One reason we're starting a little late is that we had a number of RSVPs that we're still waiting for, but because most of our faculty RSVPs and members of the community are here, we're going to begin and then just allow people to come in. And please feel free to take seats as you find them. My name is astalbali. I am the director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, and I am delighted to welcome you to our fifth averois lecture, a lecture series which has been made possible by a generous private donation to the Center for Near Eastern Studies. Our center is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary. It's an interdisciplinary research center and a hub for scholarly collaboration and support for undergraduate and graduate language study of the critical languages of the Middle East. We also serve as a resource to the UCLA campus and the broader public in bringing a central program about the Middle East to our campus through public lectures, workshops, symposia and conferences. We are delighted to be able to host this particular lecture series, which is designed to excavate histories of intra communal life and highlight the pluralism of Middle Eastern societies. We think this is a very valuable investment, because the lectures enrich our intellectual life on campus and fulfill important aspects of our core mission as both a public and a global university. The series is named after averois, the Latin name of Ibn Rushd, the 12th century Andalusian Muslim polymath whose philosophical works integrated Islamic traditions with ancient Greek thought. And the lectures have generated the kinds of intellectual assignment excitement, excuse me, that is worthy of the name of the series on our campus. It has fostered new ties between faculty working on Ottoman history, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, and the broader history of the Middle East and North Africa in several disciplines across the campus. It's been a particular honor for me to preside over this series because I teach here at the law school and I'm trained in political science, and this has enabled me to expand my own horizons, and I hope that all of the audiences that have been able to join us have had the same experience. We are grateful to the series co sponsors, who have joined with the Center for Near Eastern Studies, the Alan levy Center for Jewish Studies and the Maurice Amato chair and Sephardic studies. I want to recognize Sarah Stein. Professor Stein is here who holds that chair and has supported this series throughout each lecture has featured a distinguished scholar of Middle East Studies who addresses a facet of Jewish life in the Muslim world from the Middle Ages through the early 20th century. These presentations are also published in an occasional paper series devoted to the Averroes lectures. In fact, I really encourage you to look at our website, the Center for Near Eastern Studies, website, where, if you add the words Averroes, the word averois or the words Averroes lectures. You can watch the videos of all the previous four lectures. You can also read the publications that have come out of each of those lectures today, and soon, we will have another lecture to add, which will be the lecture we're going to hear today. I am delighted tonight to welcome Omar boom, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Anthropology here at UCLA, who will be introducing our fifth averois lecturer who we've all come here to hear tonight, pure I'm sorry, Professor Lior Sternfeld, so please join me in welcoming, Professor bloom.

Speaker 2 3:17

Thank you, UCLA, for your strong leadership. As far as this initiative is concerned, it is very rare to find a historian of the Middle East who proudly claims that he is, and I quote, madly in love with soccer, basketball, college football and music, publicly states that he can watch games over one after the other for days during major tournaments, and that he cannot work without background music, and finally, that he has to check the news every few minutes you're sitting in front of one right now. Mind you, this is without ignoring the fact that he is also raising a beautiful family, and that I'm sure he enjoys waking up in the middle of the night to check on his little one without ignoring to look at his Facebook walls to see the latest basketball scores or news of the day. The last time I checked how many hours in the day, I found that Mother Nature has unfairly given Leo more time than it allowed us to travel all over the world in the way. He does keep producing amazing scholarship, including an upcoming book with Stanford University Press, and enjoys his past time in posting on Facebook by the minute, setting Joking aside, it gives me a great pleasure to introduce Leo Sternfeld, with whom I share many intellectual interests on Middle Eastern minorities in colonial and post colonial and European Jewish refugees in the Islamic world during World War Two. My personal assessment of liors work I would. Say without hesitation that he is one of the few social historians of the of the modern Middle East whose research connects subjects and themes from Iran to Egypt, Poland and Palestine Israel, even as the core of his work remains Iran. Lior is a amazing scholar of Iran, Iranian nationalism and the Jewish communities of Iran Leo Sternfeld received his PhD in history from University of Texas at Austin in 2014 He also holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish history from Bangor University of the Negev before joining Ben Gurion University of the Negev recently as an Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Lior served as a lecturer of Middle East Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. In 2015 he joined the Department of History and program of Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University as assistant professor, there are few scholars at the stage, at the stage of academic development of Lior who have demonstrated adeptness at what they do, while he published some excellent peer reviewed academic papers in the British Journal of militia studies in Asia, means international journal militia studies, as well as Iranian Studies, Leo has shown tremendous aptitude as he engaged thorny questions of our errors related to Iran Israeli relations, Iranian nationalism and Iranian Jews in the more in the world, among other things, he has used his historical training and linguistic proficiency in Arabic, Hebrew and Persian to communicate with different audiences, with the purpose to educate Leo's forthcoming book titled between Iran and Zion Jewish histories of 20th century Iran, will be published by Stanford University Press in fall 2018 There are few scholars who work on the Jewish communities of Iran, which happen to be the largest in the 21st Century Islamic world today, numbering about close to 25,000 at times, where the Jews of other Middle Eastern and North African countries are in the few hundreds. Leo relies on newspapers, family archives and personal interviews and autobiographies to chart the dynamics and development of this community from early decades of the 20th century to the present. Leor's analytical focus is about the impact and place of the Jewish community, of this Jewish community in relation to Iran's nation state, starting from 1906 that's from the Pahlavi period to the post Iranian revolution. In the middle of this muddy terrain, he finds a way to discuss the push and pull factors between religious Zionism and political Zionism. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming our spring quarter Everest lecture series on Jewish communities in the Islamic world. Leo Sternfeld, who will be speaking today about between equal citizenship in the promise of redemption Iranian Jewish identity at the turn of the 20th century.

Speaker 3 8:18

Wow, I feel like I heard my own obituary. Thank you all for coming this evening. I want to thank Johanna Romero, Sarah Stein, Asli, Bali and Omar and all the wonderful people that I spent time with today. Thank you for organizing it and very, very kind invitation, before we delve into the 20th century and consider the questions presented in the title of this talk, let's briefly examine what was going on in Iran during the late 19th century and the years leading to the Constitutional Revolution in the 19th century, Jews in Iran had mixed experiences. That is to say that we cannot speak of a Jewish experience, a Jewish Iranian experience, European Jewish and non Jewish travelers tell us that Jews in Tehran relatively, enjoyed good relations with the neighbors. They were small business holders and shopkeepers, and Tehran's being the capital and the window of Iran benefited Jews, as the Shah wanted to highlight, the good condition the Jews and other minorities had under his rule in Shiraz and Isfahan, for example, the situation at the same time was got much worse, and Jews had been targeted for harassment by she clerics and others. At times, the religious justification for persecution stemmed from social and economic strife between Jews and their neighbors. In 1877 following. An intervention from Sir Moses Montefiore and British Jewish organizations such as the British Board of deputies, Nasser Advent Shah delegated the issues of minorities to his Foreign Affairs Minister so he could address the needs of these minorities more efficiently for the Jews. This move constituted a significant reform, since it made the government accountable for everything that happened. According to the alliance, Alliance bulletin, Alliance Israelite universal is a educational network that operated all over the Middle East. It was French oriented, and the bulletin. In the bulletin, it was written that the Minister for Foreign Affairs in constant contact with the European ministries, would not be able to evade investigating and explaining these cases, which exclusively which are exclusively under his authority. The immediate consequences, however, were different than initially expected. Shortly after the implementation of this reform, Jews were increasingly identified with foreign peoples by Iranian public and government apparatus, rather than linking them with their own compatriots, thereby facilitating their segregation. Thus this well intentioned step providing yet another reason for majority to see Jews as non Iranian again, because their issues and grievances were handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So it was in many ways counterproductive. While Jews were outcasted by middle classes, they simultaneously came to find more common cause with the similarly educated Iranian classes. The opening of Allianz schools in Iran, the creation of an educated literary Jewish classes converged with the emergent centralized bureaucracy and political tendencies of the late 19th and early 20th century. Overall, there were indeed a kind of social outcasting of Jews, but at the same time, the relatively high quality of education in Jewish schools and Allianz especially, brought Jews and non Jewish Iranian upper classes together as there were more and more non Jewish students enrolled in Allianz schools in sometimes up to 15% so in this table, we see one school in Kermanshah, one Allianz schools in Kermanshah. So in it was opened in 1904 and they had total of 180 students. The following year, 1905 we see that there were 28 non Jewish boys in this class, in the in the school. And the next year, we see 30 non Jewish boys and five non Jewish girls enrolled in the school. So and this was kind of a trend, it was. It happened in Kermanshah in this case, but we see this in other places as well. Along with the creation of a new political discourse among Iranians, Jews realized that the great opportunity awaits them with constitutional revolution. And so at the turn of the 20th century, the 1906 1911 Constitutional Revolution erupted. The Revolution turned Iranians for the first time from subject to citizens, and for Iranian Jews and other minorities, the promise was great to make them an equal part of the Iranian society. Jews and Christians had become adamant supporters of the constitutional movement, they participated in discussions and collaborated with many other activists, many of whom were attuned to the role religious minorities wanted to have in the emerging movement. A few of the leading intellectuals of the movement, such as Ali Abd Al hoddan and Mirza. Jan GUR Khan articulated objective for the movement that were far more substantial than the Constitution itself, objectives without which true reform would not take place. A new Iranian society must be built around placing the human being at the center of the universe, as Janet affair tells us, one of the most prominent publication of the period was sure islafil. This publication communicated a vision that included limited place for religion, nuanced understanding of the power of the monarchy, and for the purpose of this talk today, it encouraged national dialog that included Jews and Christians as part of the great Iranian society, the process towards social acceptance or integration was not painless. In the first Majlis, Jews and other minorities, with the exception only of the Zoroastrians that were represented by ABAB Jamshid Jews and other minorities were not allowed to represent themselves, and were pretty much forced to elect Muslims to represent them. Said Abdullah behbani would represent the Jews, and said Muhammad abdubaye would represent the Armenians. The support of minorities in the constitutional movement at times was used again. Them. The governor of Isfahan, a royalist, anti constitutionalist, openly started a campaign against the Jews, which included confiscation of their shops and property in Tehran, Sheik fazlo la Nuri, one of the leaders of the anti constitutionalist movement, wanted to forcefully recruit minorities to his side, so he encouraged his followers to arrest and do whatever it would take to get the Jews to march with them against the Constitution. There were raids in the Jewish Mahale and Jews were told that if they would not publicly support the royalists, they would be targeted, beaten, and would experience vandalism like never before. The leadership of the Tehran community consulted with their with their allies in the Social Democratic Party, with whom their sympathies genuinely lied. And the letter introduced instructed them, somewhat paradoxically, to protect the community by pretending to support the anti constitutionalist movement. The compromise was the Jews joined enchanted slogan that was more than ambiguous. Their slogan was, quote, speaking for the Muslims, we want no constitutionalism. Al Qaeda, Muslim Anand mama should as a result of this wave of persecution, about 1500 Jewish families emigrated from Iran, many of them to Jerusalem. The alliance between the minorities and democratic camp in the marginalized was not coincidental. With every constitutional article written, the implication for Iranian religious minorities were tremendous. Every proposal, be it compulsory public education or equal status meant for the opposing ulama, severe damage to their status and power and diminishing the status of Sharia as a source of legal inspiration. Public education meant less power to the ulamaran educational system. Equal rights meant that, for example, the murder of a Jew by Muslim could no longer be resolved by paying blood money. Indeed, at the end of the debate, Article eight of the constitution granted, quote, equal treatment of all male citizen regardless of their religious identity. In 1909 the second majest was elected, and this time, the representation of minorities was finally properly implemented, and the Democrat Dr Lokman na Horae became the first Jewish representative. Political circumstances brought unprecedented collaboration between the Jewish and Armenian communities, two communities with very little contact before

Speaker 3 17:41

there are reports of Jews in Isfahan attending meeting in political events, in churches, in Armenian churches and Armenian participating in Jewish events. So we see more of more of contact because of the political circumstance between the minority communities in the last year of the Qajar dynasty, Jews were trying to maximize the rights and the promise of the constitutional period. In those years, we see more and more aliyan schools open their doors trying to train Iranian Jews and help them develop skills that would help them achieve upward mobility in the social ladder. Aliyan schools taught languages and writing, which gave the members of the community some advantages in trade bureaucracy and access to higher education and training in Iran and abroad. In the years between the beginning of the Constitution period and the First World War, Jews came to realize that the legal barriers were not the only thing standing between them and social assimilation, but with World War One brewing and the emergence of political Zionism, things started to change for Iranian Jews in unexpected ways, as often happens with major political developments, lofty expectations turned quickly for Jews and others into spectacular disappointments, the war, the never ending meddling of Russian British government. This is whole old habit of Russia, the weakness or incompetence of the centralized government in Tehran all marked an end of an era for the Jews of Iran between 1915 1916 two intellectual Jewish brothers started publishing the first major Jewish newspaper, mode China, Ben Avraham Morad Shalom produced shalom, a newspaper published predominantly in Judeo Persian and that dealt with Iranian Jewish progress updates from the Jewish world and some political discussions from the Iranian political sphere. Apropos Bendix Anderson and emergent communities, it connected for the first time in a systematic way, the Jews of the major urban centers like Tehran, Shiraz Isfahan and Hamadan to rural communities that had very little awareness, if at all, to what was going on with other Jewish communities, the introduction and diffusion of political concepts of. Over the pages of shalom would soon become of great importance. The message of political Zionism first struck a chord with Jewish Iranians in 1917 following the Balfour Declaration, disillusioned with the outcome of the Constitutional Revolution, all of a sudden, promise of relocating to a place of their own sounded rather tempting. Iranian Jews, thus established Zionist associations to teach Hebrew to end up preparation for a mass exodus. Habib Levi, one of the prominent figures in the Iranian Jewish community, described the bafu declaration in his memoir and his magnum opus, comprehensive history of the Jews of Iran the outset of diaspora as quote, sweet water spring, which quenched the thirst of people wandering in the arid desert. End, quote, reading the responses as described among the Jewish leadership, even if somewhat exaggerated and perhaps not fully representing the wide range of opinions, clarifies two things. One, the disappointment from the lack of major transformation following the Constitutional Revolution was real. Two, the understanding of the Jewish community of what could be delivered to them politically by the Balfour Declaration came from being part of the constitutional discourse in the past decade, that is, they acquired the nationalist jargon from their immediate environment. By that, I mean giving Zion the meaning of political homeland, talking about rights and national redemption. These were not concepts associated with anything other than their own Iran before 1917 In other words, in Iranian Jewish imagery in history, the place of Jerusalem and Zion and the Holy Land was very different than its context in Europe, the birthplace of political Zionism, as mentioned, there was great excitement about the new possibilities presented by the British government. Iranian Jewish communities quickly established organizations and associations to handle the logistics of mass exodus, among other things. Leaders established an umbrella organization to coordinate activities country wide. In December 1917, Jewish dignitaries led by Suleiman Cohen Sadek, established the Association for the strengthening of the Hebrew language, Hebrew hezuk safat Eber, between 1918 1921, they established hebat Israel to handle property of the families who had left Iran, purchasing land in Mandatory Palestine and maintaining contact with distant communities in Iran, and took them into leaving the country and immigrating to Palestine. Yet, all in all, despite the continuous effort and a couple of peaks, the vast majority of Jews remained in their place, which is a recurrent theme in the Iranian Jewish history. We can get back to it later. It can be interesting to note that Dalian schools in Iran enjoyed phenomenal reputation among Jews, and non Jews were considered a failure by the Jewish leadership. This is another struggle that continued well into the 1970s the Jewish becoming Zionist leadership did not appreciate the fact that Dalian schools overwhelmingly refused to include Hebrew classes as part of the regular co curriculum for the Jewish leadership. It meant that one of the community's major assets was not sympathetic enough to their cause. In 1920 Aziz ulanaim wrote to the Zionist organization in London, a letter in which he asked to he asked them to establish Zionist schools in Iran to replace Dalian schools as teaching Hebrew was necessary to revitalize the national sentiment of Jews in Iran. From 1920 to 1921 we see the rise of Zionist activists in Iran had slowed down significantly in 1921 we see another turning point in this history on the national level, we see the fast ascendance of Reza Khan in 1921, he was appointed Minister of War and immediately appeared as a strong man in Iran. His eventual ascent to Shah hardly came a surprise. At the same time, a 30 year old journalist and activist from Kerman Shah came to Tehran and instantaneously drew much attention the young man, Shmuel hezkel Chaim was born in 1891 and had studied in the Protestant missionary school. And once the Dalian school was opened in Kermanshah, he moved to Dalian school. He was fluent in number of languages, beside Persian, French was a second language of choice, and the impressive young man became known as muschaem After finishing high school, he engaged in writing and political activism in 1914 well ahead of the of the trend, he wrote a letter to the Zionist organization in Paris in. In the letter, he told them that is in his intention is to establish a Zionist Association in Kermanshah. When he moved to Tehran in 1920 in 1921 he wrote for the nationalist constitutionalist newspaper at Tehran under the leadership of Kazim sarkia Sheik Zadeh who later served as a member of the Majlis and befriended many of the leaders of the constitutional movement, including sake Sheik Zadeh and famed leader said Hassan mudaris. Both mudares and sake Sheik Zadeh were identified with the radical faction of the of the Democratic of the Social Democratic Party. A side note worth mentioning that in 1920 1921 there were a couple of Soviet Communist adventures in Azerbaijan and guilan that were eventually suppressed by Reza Khan. However, Shmuel Chaim name was mentioned in this context by his rivals. It is not entirely clear how involved he was with the movements and the membership, but having his name connect with it, came back to hunt him shortly after arriving Tehran and perhaps before even coming, Shmuel Chaim decided to run as the Jewish representative in the Majlis and to unseat lakmanah Horai, who served since 1909 since the second Majlis, Chaim started publishing his own newspaper called The Chaim. In 1922 in his newspaper, he covered every political issue, Jewish or non Jewish, that could and should be of interest to his audience. Over the pages of a Chaim, he confronted the establishment of the Jewish community on the one hand and the Iranian government on the other he blamed Jewish leaders for neglecting crucial parts of Jewish life. He blamed the government for not following through with their constitutional obligations towards minorities. He dealt with a plethora of topics, including a fascinating campaign against the concession of the Anglo Persian Oil Company, a topic that was not typically part of the Jewish Iranian conversation. He wrote a letter to the League of Nations complained about the oppression of minorities in Iran and the inaction of the Iranian government. Needless to say, he had no friends in the high places in Iran. In the elections to the fifth Majlis in 1923 Chaim ran against Nahor i and won in a landslide, thus becoming the Jewish deputy with his friend sake Zade, who also elected for the first time in the fifth Majlis. In many ways, His Spirit reinvigorated the Jewish political arena. Chaim was a self defined Zionist. He was, as was naurai, but Chaim approach was radically different.

Speaker 3 27:45

He sought to strengthen the relationship with Jewish communities and organizations abroad, but his main concern was improving the lives of Jews in Iran and making sure that no opportunities with is withheld from them because of their religion, while Nahor I espoused the interpretation and perhaps the practice the Jews should join full force in Zionist international organizations. Chaim believed that Zionism was overall a positive development, but Iranian Jews should fight for the rights and status in Iran and not to forfeit to forfeit it for any messianic dream. In his newspaper that he continued to publish as a member of the Majlis, he preached for integration efforts, for the Jews, participation in political life, joining the army, the ranks of bureaucracy and the development of national consciousness. He worked with the representatives of other minorities to grant all rights to them, as well as with his progressive comrades in the parliament on various issues that were not explicitly limited to Jewish or minority issues. Chaim's position became a corner store for many political ventures of Jews in Iran. Since then, his position viewed the obsessive dealing of Jewish leaders with Hebrew teaching Zionist organizations, club, opening schools or sending representative to Zionist Congress as very convenient to them personally, but not to the Iran but also to the Iranian government that, as a result, experienced less pressure to attend to the needs of Jewish communities. In a way, Zionism by encouraging the hanging on to messianic dreams that may or may not be realized made the Jews less involved in mundane problems. Chaim, on the other hand, contended that nothing, not even the Messiah, can compensate for the loss of time and rights on the road towards implementation of reforms. Chaim message resonated with the Jewish community. With the gradual decline of the Qajar monarchy and the post World War One world order, it looked like Iran was on the verge of the breakout of modern better, more democratic and free society, the new middle classes. Were willing to put up with a lot of what, of the undemocratic policies of Reza Khan just so they would be able to proceed with reforms and modernization. The same kind of excitement caught on among Jewish communities as well the volume of nationalist Iranian conversation out the Zionist one. That means that political Zionism was placed on hold for the most part in 1925 when Reza Pahlavi became the new Shah of Iran, Chaim was planning the campaign for re election. His popularity was at an all time high. He was respected and dedicated, and unlike his predecessor, he found time to meet with his constituents and listen to their grievances and needs. But for Reza Shah, Chaim was an undesired outcome of the democratic process. Chaim criticism made him some enemies. Reza Shah among them now in the clash of Titans, sort of Titans between Reza Shah and Shmuel Chaim, the Jewish community was divided in 1925 with the ascendance of Reza Pahlavi, is the new Shah who overthrew the Qajar dynasty, establishing a new national project and envisioning a new Iranian society where religion and religious identities were secondary. Jews shelved their plans for relocation. They, just like Reza himself, looked at Republican turkey for a model and had many reasons for optimism. Reza Shah repealed all laws that barred Jews and other minorities from living in certain areas, from engaging some occupations, from joining the army. For example, in many ways, he was implementing Chaim vision for the minorities Jews had now become an equal part of the Iranian society, at least nominally. A few days before the elections of the six Majlis elections that Chaim was projected to win, he was arrested and could not compete. He was released 17 days later, as the votes were being counted. Under these circumstances, lucmana Horai was elected again and served for many more sessions. A few months later, Chaim was arrested again. Eventually, in December 1931 he was executed by Reza Shah on the account of the mostly false accusation of being complicit in attempt to assassinate him. In any case, following this incident, any non Iranian organizing movement were banned from operating in Iran, and Zionism fell under this category. From this point forward, Zionism remained a more clandestine underground operation. Zionist organizations could operate openly in some fields and were bending others altogether throughout his trial and leading up to his eventual execution, Chaim believed, and probably with a good reason, that Nahor i and his friends in the Jewish community were behind the accusation and the nightmare he endured in this political ecosystem, Iranian Jews developed their understanding of nationalism and perception of national redemption. Zion, for them, was much less mystified phenomenon than perhaps it was for European Jews or even for other Middle Eastern communities. Zion was part of the religious and spiritual world for ages, when they thought that it could be a vehicle for national redemption, they transformed the concept to project or to contain the revised values. When Zionism became a state sponsored movement after 1948 we see that between 17 and 25,000 Jews chose to immigrate. However they did so because they were at the bottom of the social economic status among Jews, and the alternative of staying in Iran did not seem all that promising at the time, and the reaction of Iranian Jews to Israel after their immigration is a topic for another talk, which I will be happily return here to deliver let us ponder a moment on the memoir of Elias Hakan, a teacher and a principal of aliyan schools in Iran for over 25 years. Quote, Iran has been my homeland, Vatan and Jerusalem has been the source of my belief in God and the direction of my prayer table here, as hakian suggests, yet again, that many Iranian Jews deferred differed from the Zionist agencies in their interpretation for Zionism, for sakian National Iranian identity did not interfere with his religious identity as a Jew. He proudly projected this combined identity throughout his career, which may have inspired and encouraged his students. So to conclude with the outbreak of the Constitutional Revolution, Jews felt that they must seize the opportunity to leave behind their existence in the shadows of Iranian society and. Become committed equal citizens, along with their compatriots, they were politicized to understand and use the whole language of civil rights, democracy, constitution, representation and more. They learned the hard way that political victories don't come easily. Having been denied opportunity for self representation in the first majesty they started all too early to reconsider the entire project of the 1906 1911 revolution, between 1909 and 1917 Iran experienced a period of instability and a certain extent of chaos World War One, which had a great impact on Iran, along with the endless process of interpretation of the Constitution and creating ad hoc alliances for changing causes challenged the Jewish communities in ways that perhaps were too much for them to swallow. Hence the great excitement with which they received the news of the Balfour Declaration, the same policies politicization process that they had undergone short time earlier, helped them articulate the relevance of the Balfour Declaration and Zionism broadly to them, they worked hard to make adjustments necessary for for a full acceptance of Zionism. However, when it had, when it appeared that yet another political revolution was coming and that that one would possibly diminish the otherness of Jews as part of the new nation building project, they opted to invest their energies in the Iranian project over the Zionist for Iranian Jews, Zionism allowed more than one meaning and interpretation, definitely not as intended by the leadership of the movement Iranian Jews, for centuries, visited Jerusalem, went on pilgrimages and maintained relationship with Iranian Jews who had immigrated so from the outset, the concept of Zionist redemption had different connotations, paraphrasing the words of Roya haggakian, Iranian Jews dreamed of the land of milk and honey at night, but wanted to Wake up in Tehran in the morning, and this shaped the Jewish Iranian attitude to Zionism for years to come, not antagonism, as much as multi layered and nuanced approached. Reza Shah remained in power until 1941 and during his tenure, and maybe as an outcome of his policies, Jews who already had very strong attachment to Iran, embraced the role designated for them in the grand vision of the Shah, among other things, they assumed, together with the Zoroastrians, the role of the indigenous minority in 1930s in the 1930s with a series of decrees for unification, Alyan schools had to operate differently and had to change their teaching language from French to Persian,

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something that caused damage. But overall, in the period of 1925 to 1941 Zionism became insignificant, not just because it was banned, but because Iranian Jews were invested in becoming integrated Iranian community. In 1941 Iran came under the occupation of the Allied armies and Muhammad Reza Shah came to power, Zionism was once again allowed to operate freely. However, the tension between the different version versions of Zionism and national redemption remained very present. I would like to take questions now on everything I mentioned and did not mention. Thank you. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai