Iran's Jews: From ancient roots to the modern day

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the joint sessions of the US Congress in March 2015, just as President Obama was about to sign a nuclear deal with Iran, he misquoted the Biblical story of Esther in an attempt to thwart the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action from being signed, and to set out his case that Iran posed an existential threat to Jews and the state of Israel.

In his speech, Netanyahu said the ancient Jewish people in Iran were almost killed by a Persian viceroy. However, it was an Amalekite official to the Persian court, Haman, who wanted to kill the Jews, but his plan was foiled by Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai.

The Persian King Ahasuerus instead ordered Haman to be killed and saved the Jewish people.

It is said that the remains of Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai lie in a tomb in the western Iranian city of Hamedan, which became an important pilgrimage site for Jews. In 2008, the Iranian government, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, designated it a national heritage site.

Although Iran is perceived in the West as an antisemitic country, Jews have lived there for 2,700 years.

“Compared to many countries in the region and certainly in the West, Iran has not had a history of anti-Jewish sentiment,” says Professor Farhang Jahanpour, a former dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan.

“Most Iranian Jews regard Iran as their home and have a strong feeling of affinity for Iranian culture, literature, music and cooking.”

This is true for Etan Mabourakh, who comes from a Jewish Iranian family that lived in the country for centuries until Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s reign (1941-79). 

“There’s a deep pride for Iranian Jews in our cultural heritage, and distinct traditions that we hold on to,” he says.

“My father’s side hail from Hamedan, and we have a Hamedani cookbook with traditional Jewish recipes that I still cook dishes from to this day - on Passover we still practice the Jewish Iranian tradition of beating each other with scallions when we sing Dyenu.

“These traditions are a real source of pride for us.”

An ancient community

Jews have been in Iran since the Babylonian exile in the sixth and seventh centuries BCE, when they were driven out of the ancient kingdom of Judea, part of modern-day Israel, by King Nebuchadnezzar II. 

They initially settled in what is Isfahan today, but Jewish settlements also spread out across the Iranian plateau.

This exodus to Iran is recounted in the Bible, where there are also numerous references to Jewish prophets whose tombs and landmarks still exist in Iran today.

“The Hebrew Bible speaks very highly of ancient Persians and reveals very close Jewish connections with ancient Iran and its kings,” Jahanpour explains. 

With the advent of Islam, the Jewish population in Iran continued to increase. Trade routes were a major appeal to Jewish migration there.

“We have testimonies of Jews from the period when Islam came to Iran that they were actually very pleased to see the Muslim army coming,” Lior Sternfeld, professor of History and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, tells MEE. 

“The message of Islam and the recognition of the people of the book was quite liberating for Iranian religious minorities. They believed it might bring positive change to their status and protections.”

Between the arrival of Islam in the seventh century and the acceptance of Shia Islam in 1501 as the state religion, there were times of stability and periods of repression for Jews in Iran, but by the 17th century, Jews were a tolerated and protected minority group in the country.

Sanctuary, recognition and protection

In 1906, Iran underwent the Constitutional Revolution under the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925), which resulted in the establishment of a parliament in the country.

Jews were granted a parliamentary seat, which was a significant step because it meant that they were now officially protected and recognised in the country. 

“It ostensibly put them on the same level as the Muslim citizens,” Sternfeld said. 

Previously, they had experienced varying levels of discrimination under the Qajars. In 1839, a pogrom took place in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where Jews were forced to convert to Islam or leave. Jews in other areas also experienced harassment and violence.

Their new status within Iran attracted Jews from other countries to migrate there under the Pahlavi dynasty, from 1925 onwards. 

Influential Jewish professionals from Germany started arriving in Iran in the 1930s. They emigrated because they were removed from their jobs after the Nazi’s race laws came into effect. 

Many Iranian Jews spoke multiple languages, making them valuable assets as Iran began expanding its economy and establishing diplomatic ties around the world.

Jews from Iraq also started arriving in Iran in 1941, following the Farhud pogrom that killed more than 500 people.

“The ethnic composition of the Jewish community in Iran at this time is very interesting - there are Persian, Kurdish, Iraqi and mountain Jews, as well as the Ashkenazis who were German and Polish,” Sternfeld said.

The Ashkenazi Jews established their own synagogue in Tehran, which is still in existence today. 

During World War II and the Holocaust, Iran offered sanctuary to around 300,000 Polish refugees, of which between 5,000 and 20,000 were Jews. They settled in camps on the outskirts of Tehran, Isfahan and Ahvaz. 

Around 780 Polish orphan refugees, known as The Children of Tehran, were transported to Mandatory Palestine.

“The decision to take in Jewish refugees from Europe was not a decision of the Iranian government - it was imposed by the Brits, and it caused some serious hardships for the Iranian people because all of a sudden there were food shortages and famine developed because of the large number of outsiders suddenly coming in,” Sternfeld explained.

“Most accounts talk about the hospitality of the Iranians towards Polish refugees and Jews, however.”

By the 1940s, Iran’s Jewish community became central to the Shah’s ambitions for the country.

“Jews were well-positioned to integrate into the nation-building project of the Shah - the growing state bureaucracy, Iranian trade and sciences - and in a very short time they became visible and central to urban middle and upper classes,” Sternfeld explained.

At this point, there were around 100,000 Jews in Iran, and the community continued to grow over the next three decades. 

The establishment of Israel

When Israel was established in 1948, only a minority of Jews left Iran - numbers range from 17,000 to 20,000 from 1949 to 1953.

In the 1960s, Jewish migration out of Iran effectively stopped. 

Iran was an early supporter of the Jewish state and maintained strong diplomatic ties, as well as supplying it with oil. 

In return, the Israeli army trained the Savak, the notoriously brutal secret police force under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Life for Jews under the shah was not always harmonious.

“The generation that came of age during Mohammed Reza’s time no longer carried the burden of Jewish persecution on their shoulders and they became much more Iranian,” Sternfeld said.

“They went to universities, became involved in political activism and they shared the grievances of their fellow Iranians about the shah’s dictatorship.

“They were also over-represented in opposition movements, and the shah didn’t cut slack for Jews in these groups, so many ended up being in exile or in prison.”

Anyone suspected of harbouring communist or socialist sentiments was arrested, prosecuted or tortured by the Savak.

Mabourakh’s family had to leave Iran when Pahlavi was in power. They fled to Israel and the US.

“They were treated like second-class citizens,” he said.

For Mabourakh, any restoration of the Pahlavi family in Iran would not materially benefit Jewish Iranians.  

“Reza Pahlavi has been reframed as this figure to bring Iran back to greatness, but the more you read about the brutal oppression of the Savak under his father, the more you realise it’s no better than what exists today.”

Post-Islamic revolution

When Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic's first supreme leader, returned to the country after being in exile, hundreds of Iranians with links to the former shah were put on trial and executed, including Habib Elghanian, a prominent Jewish businessman, in 1979.

This sent fear through Iran’s Jewish community, and its leadership travelled to the religious city of Qom the day after Elghanian’s execution to meet with Khomeini and establish what the status of Jews in Iran would be under him.

This resulted in Khomeini issuing a fatwa separating Iranian Jews from Zionists.

“The fatwa states that Iranian Jews are part of the nation and Zionists are not even Jews, they are a political movement that goes against divine messages, and so Iranian Jews are protected and Zionists are the enemy,” Sternfeld explained. 

Nevertheless, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Jewish migration out of Iran recommenced, and almost half of the community left over the next decade.

Only a minority of Jews went to Israel, however - around 70 percent emigrated to Los Angeles in the US.

Jews who chose to remain in Iran after the revolution had mixed experiences under successive Iranian governments, with some administrations allowing them more rights and inclusion than others.

According to Sternfeld, antisemitism and Holocaust denial were particularly noticeable during the rule of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

However, Jahanpour believes Ahmadinejad’s comments on Israel, in particular, have been misinterpreted.

“He did not say Israel should be wiped off the map, he called for the end of the Zionist regime." He said.

"It is important to make this distinction because words matter and a mistranslation can sometimes be used as an excuse for war.”

President Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021) was more open to embracing the Jewish community than his predecessors, and helped to push through legislation around inheritance and Jewish attendance in schools on Saturdays, which Jews recognise as the day of Shabbat.

His government also unveiled a monument commemorating Jewish soldiers who had fought and died in the war against Iraq

Iranian Jews today

The number of Jews in Iran today ranges from 10,000 to 15,000. The country has the third-largest Jewish population in the Middle East - after Israel and Turkey - with most of them living in Tehran, as well as sizeable communities in the southern city of Shiraz and in the central city of Isfahan.

Although this is a fraction of what it used to be, there is still a community that chooses to live there, that identifies as Iranian, and that is very much part of the fabric of Iranian society.

With about 60 synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher butchers, bakeries and restaurants, Jews are allowed a comparatively high degree of religious freedom in Iran.

While they cannot freely express any positive sentiment towards Israel, they have a more nuanced relationship with the Jewish state.

“They make the separation between Israel as a holy place and Iran as their political homeland,” Sternfeld said. 

When an Israeli air strike on Tehran hit the Rafi-Nia synagogue last month, Iran's Jewish community publicly condemned the act, pledging their loyalty to the government and their commitment to defending their homeland.

“The Zionist regime with its brutal ambitions has not only attacked the Muslim community but also the Jewish community,” said Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative to Iran’s parliament.

Rabbi Younes Hamami Lalehzar, a Jewish community leader in Iran, similarly denounced the attack.

“Beyond being an inhumane and terrorist act, this clearly shows that all the claims made by the Israeli regime about defending Jews are nothing more than a shameful lie.”

Mabourakh, who works with the National Iranian American Council, expressed similar sentiments.

“I felt disgusted that the synagogue had been blown up in a war that my tax dollars are funding.

“The fact that so much infrastructure has been targeted - these are war crimes and we should call them out.”

Mabourakh believes the response from the Iranian government after the synagogue bombing shows respect towards Jews in the country.

“The Jewish community asked the rescue mission not to use heavy machinery to clear the rubble, to avoid damaging Torah scrolls and other items, so the teams used their hands to retrieve them,” he said.

“I think there is a genuine respect from Iranian authorities towards people of the book, and this is not communicated in the West.”