Thread by @HistoricalJW

Jewish ethnic divisions - Iranian Jews, also known as Persian Jews (Thread)

Iranian Jewry mostly calls itself "Persian Jewry" after the Persian kingdom in which they lived and after the Persian language the speak. The Jewish community in Iran is one of the oldest community and the only community to remind in a Muslim country.

The presence of Jews in the area occurred about 2500 years ago, with the exile of the Israelites by the king of Assyria. They lived with the Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian religion influenced the Jewish religion and some of Jewish beliefs are originated in this religion.

According to Judaism, the story of the Book of Esther took place between the years 338-539BC, when Ahasuerus fell in love with Esther and revoked the decree to exterminate the Jews.

In 586 BC, more Jews were expelled from Judea by Babylon, and the First temple was destroyed.
With the conquest and growth of the Persian kingdom, the Persians allowed the Jews to return to their land and build the Second Temple.

This event is known as the Declaration of Cyrus and the Return of Zion, although most of the Jews returned, some Jews stayed in the Persian kingdom and built a Jewish community there.

Until the 5th century, the Jews observed their traditions and rituals without any problem, they also maintained economic and social ties with other Jewish communities in the area and with the Jewish community left in Judea after the Roman and Hellenistic conquests.

During the reign of Piraeus I, many riots and persecutions took place against the Jews.
In the 7th century the Muslim conquest of the kingdom began, most of the Zoroastrians converted to Islam while the Jews were forced to pay a high tax as they refused to convert.

In the 14th century the situation of the Jews continued to deteriorate, many decided to kill themselves and die as Jews rather than live under persecution or to convert.

At that time, they also feared that the Hebrew language would be forgotten and extinct among the community. During the Shiite dynasty, Muslims destroyed and closed synagogues and forced Jews to pray in mosques and convert.

Many Jews were robbed, raped or murdered. The Muslims invented blood libels that led to the destruction of an entire Jewish community. Jews were forbidden to be among Muslims, synagogues were burned and many Jews converted but kept their Jewishness in secret.

Some of the Jews decided to escape and fled to Afghanistan and its nearby lands.
In the year 1747, in the city Mashhad, the entire Jewish community converted to Islam and for 100 years, they continued to observe Judaism in secret.

In the 19th century, the Jewish community sent a letter to the British Kingdom that their situation is harsh and sought to alleviate their suffering and discrimination. At that time King Nasser al-Din Shah facilitated the decrees on the Jews.

A period of goodness started. The Jews attended schools, worked in respectable and superior positions, felt protected and didn’t fear for their Jewishness.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Persian Jews began migrating to the United States and Land of Israel. With the establishment of Israel, Iran was the first Muslim state to recognize Israel’s existence and established an Israeli embassy in Iran.

In the 1970s and 1980s, with the Islamic Revolution in Iran, ties between Israel and Iran were severed. The situation of the Jews in Iran deteriorated and about 55,000 Jews living in Iran decided to leave the country.

The Jews who left mostly belonged to the upper-middle class, many of the Jews were doctors or students who attended universities.
Today, Iran has a Jewish community of about 8-10 thousand people.

Iranian Jews attest to their absolute loyalty to their country and to their Muslim leaders. They don’t define themselves as Zionists. The community claim they have a religious anatomy but are still subject to certain restrictions.

The largest communities of Iranian Jewry are in Israel with more than 250,000 Persian Jews and the United States with 80,000 Persian Jews. The community is known for its own Jewish-Persian costumes and rich culture.