After Iran’s new Islamist revolutionary regime murdered Habib Elghanian, a prominent Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist, an ad hoc delegation representing the staggered Jewish community made a clandestine visit to Ayatolelah Ruhollah Khomeini. The group of two rabbis and four intellectuals were well-received by the “Supreme Leader,” who left them with what “has yet to be recognized as one of the most life-sparing [quotations] in modern history.” The phrase—“We recognize our Jews as separate from those godless Zionists!”—has assured Jewish survival while proving to be the death knell of the once-proud, 100,000 member strong community. Less than 9,000 Jews remain in Iran today, according to a 2012 census.
Persian Jews who fled Iran after the 1979 Islamist revolution wanted to embrace American life but also to “speak, breathe, act, and eat Persian.” Orly Minazad remembers how, for 1st generation Persian Jewish women in America, this meant achieving a paradoxical ideal of being independent - and a good traditional cook: “You can strive to have it all. Doesn’t mean you will, or that you’ll be good at it, but you can and should try because you have the freedom to do so. And that’s the luxury of being an American: not settling for one identity, especially if you’re a woman.”
Fishel Benkhald, the son of a Muslim father and Iranian Jewish mother, is campaigning to save the rundown Jewish cemetery from complete ruin. In a country where Jews are “often demonized,” his efforts have so far failed to garner support, apart from “Arif Hasan, a celebrated Karachi architect who sits on the provincial government’s cultural heritage committee, [and who] has proposed the graveyard be declared a protected site. ‘Naturally there is an anti-Israel feeling which is very strong,’ he said. ‘But this is our heritage, irrespective of whether we are Jewish, Muslim or Christian, and we have to protect it.’”
Growing-up a Muslim in Kuwait, Mark Halawa was confused by the horrible things he heard about Jews “because my grandmother, who is a very nice lady, came from a Jewish background.” After his family’s flight to Canada in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s invasion, Halawa’s curiosity in his Jewish roots matured, eventually leading to study in Israel, where he now lives an Orthodox life with his wife and children in Jerusalem.
Mark Halawa went from wearing a dishdasha (traditional white robe) in Kuwait to a kippah in Jerusalem (Photo courtesy of Chabad.org).
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