Nadene Goldfoot
Way back in time in the 5th century BCE, Persia was one of the largest and most dominant Empires in the land. Jews were living throughout their 127 provinces of the Empire. Haman was the chief Minister or Vizier of Ahasuerus, the king of Persia as told about in the book of Esther 3-9, which is in the Bible. Haman was the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, a descendant of Agag, the Amalekite king conquered by King Saul, as told in 1 Samuel: 15:9). Haman was in a very high position in the court, next to the king, and everyone bowed down to him.
The Amalek people were always hostile to Israel. They were a nomadic folk wandering between southern Palestine and Canaan, and had attacked the Israelites in the desert near Rephidim shortly after the Exodus, annihilating the weak and weary. They were eventually defeated by the Israelite army under Joshua. Israel consequently regarded the Amaleks as their forever foe. In David's time, Amalek invaded southern Judea, burning the town of Ziklag. David fought and defeated them heavily, with only 400 escaping. During the reign of Judah's Hezekiah (720-690 BCE) the tribe of Simeon overwhelmed the Amalekites and settled in their territory.
All this is very important to Jewish history because the book of Esther and that Darius really was so special. He allowed the Jews, even suggested, that they return to Jerusalem. Many did, but not all of them. There were many who remained. After all, living there from 597 or 586 BCE to his suggestion in 538 BCE amounted to about 60 years, and they had acclimated themselves. Over 2 generations had been living there. It was like the Palestinians today, though the Jews were living there quietly and happily in Persia, and just thought of themselves as one of the people there.
One man would not bow down, and that was the Jew, Mordechai, uncle to Esther, who had become the wife of the king. Normally, Mordechai would have bowed in accordance with the king's instructions, for bowing to a king or his official is not forbidden by Torah law. Mordechai refused to bow either because Haman had declared himself divine, which is what RASHI thinks happened, or because Haman's robes were decorated with idols , which is what Ibn Ezra thought had happened. In either of these cases, bowing to him would be an act of idolatry. Not bowing to him angered Haman very much. Haman found out that Mordechai was a Jew, so sought to destroy all the Jews. His scheme was frustrated by Esther, and Haman and his sons were hanged. In memory of their deliverance, the Jews observe the festival of Purim. The name, Haman, has become synonymous with an enemy of the Jews. Actually, many Jews were living in Susa (Shushan), the capital. Many were influential.
Mordechai was a Benjamite serving as a palace official in Shushan during the reign of Ahasuerus. His niece had married the king and through her intervention, Ahasuerus learnt from Mordechai of the assassination plot against him. Mordechai's refusal to bow to the vizier, Haman, instigated the latter to plan vengeance on all the Jews in the Persian Empire. In the end, Haman and his sons were punished by death for this. They were hung. His position as chief minister was filled by Mordechai.
Personally, I think that Mordechai just couldn't tolerate Haman's "I'm better than all of you" attitude and out of rebelliousness wouldn't bow. He had no idea that Haman would want to kill him for his stubbornness, or all the Jews of their known world. Death was probably not the punishment for this, or he wouldn't have stood instead of bowing.
Mordechai's name is of Babylonian origin, being found in inscriptions, so was one of the Jews, or his family, that were taken to Babylon either in 597 or 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar. By 538 BCE, King Cyrus allowed the Babylonian Jews to return to Jerusalem.
Mordechai seemed to have a lot of chutzpah not to do it. " In order to discover the root of Mordechai’s strength to singly defy a world power. Benjamin was the only one of the 12 sons of Yaakov (Jacob) who did not bow down to Esav /Esau, the father of Western culture. This little fact rippled through one thousand years of history until it would show up in Mordechai, whose confidence in being a Jew would light up the waning faith of Jews in 127 countries, and overturn a government and genocide. Esau is the elder son of Isaac in the Hebrew Bible. He is mentioned in the Book of Genesis and by the prophets Obadiah and Malachi. Twin-brother of Yaakov, and an archenemy of the People of Israel – an ancestor of Edom/Idumea, descendants of Esau, hunters (Rome ), of Amalek, and of Haman – the first-born of Yitzchak and Rivkah.
For the next 2 centuries, both the mass of Jews in Exile in Mesopotamia and in the homeland in Palestine were under Persian rule. It was under the Persian auspices that there took place the return from exile to Palestine which, continued to be a Persian province with some degree of local autonomy. The political unity of the Middle East under Persian rule made inevitable considerable movements of population from one part of this area to another.
Persia was later controlled by Parthia, from 250 BCE onward. Persia resumed its existence as a state in 225 CE under the Sassanid Dynasty,The Sasanian or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (Middle Persian: , and also called the Neo-Persian; its authority again extending over the ancient centers of intensive Jewish settlement in Mesopotamia.
The Babylonian Talmud, which was redacted here under Persian rule, evidences a vigorous Jewish life in Persia proper, and the Persian queen, Shushandukht, was of Jewish birth. Shushandukht was the wife of Yazdegerd I and mother of Bahram V. She was the daughter of a Jewish exilarch, Huna bar Nathan. She created the Jewish neighborhood in the city of Isfahan. She also established Jewish colonies in the cities of Shush and Shooshtar.
Though conditions were at first favorable, there were later fierce religious persecutions under Zoroastrian influence, culminating in the attempt to suppress Jewish observances under Yezdegerd II (438-57). There was an even more sweeping persecution in 468 under Firuz (459-86) after the alleged murder of 2 magi by the Jews in the capital Efahan (a city reputedly of Jewish foundation). When Kavadh I (485-531) adopted and endeavored to impose the communistic practices of Zendicism, the Persian Jews joined in the revolt led by the exilarch, Mar Zutra II in 513-20.
The Arab-conquest of 641/2 introduced a new, generally tolerant spirit, with certain reservations. The Jews of Persia flourished under the Eastern Caliphate of Baghdad; they were controlled by the exilarchs and paid intellectual allegiance to the Gaonim (Jewish Babylonian leaders) whose influence was strong. Persia was, at this period, a nursery of sectarian movements: that of ABU ISSA AL-ISFAHANI, in 700, who thought he was the messiah. Consequently, Karaism obtained a vigorous hold in Persia from the 8th century on, and some of its most influential teachers, such as Benjamin Nahasvendi, came from there. Benjamin of Tudela, toward the end of the 12th century, found throughout this area numerous and flourishing Jewish communities, which had recently been disturbed through the messianic movement of DAVID ALROY.
After an interlude Mongol rule, the lot of the Jews was checkered, from the 13th to 15th centuries. Persian independence was reasserted in 1499 under the Safavid dynasty, the Shiite form of Islam, Safavid dynasty, (1501–1736), ruling dynasty of Iran whose establishment of Twelver Shiʿism as the state religion of Iran was a major factor in the emergence of a unified national consciousness among the various ethnic and linguistic elements of the country.henceforth generally dominant, was highly intolerant in theory and practice. The Jews were treated worse than in other parts of the Moslem world, all manner of restrictions being enforced, and in the 17th century, there were widespread persecutions and forced conversions, particularly in Isfahan.
Conditions improved temporarily under the broadminded Nadir Shah (1736-47) who aimed at creating a new religious synthesis. He was responsible for settling a Jewish community at his new capital, Meshed, from which they had been excluded. On his death, a reaction followed, and Shiite intolerance again became supreme.
Medieval conditions of intolerance continued in Persia, and in 1839, the entire Meshed community was forcibly converted to Islam, though retaining secret fidelity to Judaism as JEDID AL-ISLAM. In the 19th century, Persian Jewry was among the most depressed of the world's Jewish communities, notwithstanding the diplomatic interventions occasionally secured by Western Jewry, and intermittent promises of ameliorations by successive shahs were overlooked.
From 1898, schools of the Alliance Israelite Universelle did something to introduce a more modern spirit, but progress was slight and the Jedid al-Islam did not dare to return openly to Judaism. Although equality of political rights was nominally introduced into Persia under the Shah, the social and economic status of the Jews changed little.
Jews began to emigrate in numbers after 1948. In the 1960's and 1970's many Jews moved from the provinces to Teheran. Although the Jews were not persecuted after the Khomeini revolution in 1978, many felt uncomfortable under the strict Islamic regime and left for Israel and the west.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; 26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980), also known as Mohammad Reza Shah, was the last Shah (King) of the Imperial State of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply the Shah. He was on good relations with Israel. In the Western world, Persia (or one of its cognates) was historically the common name for Iran. On the Nowruz of 1935, Reza Shah asked foreign delegates to use the Persian term Iran (meaning the land of Aryans in Persian), the endonym of the country, in formal correspondence.
update: The dynasty that the revolution overthrew – the Pahlavi dynasty – was known for its autocracy, its focus on modernization and Westernization as well as its disregard for religious and democratic measures in Iran's constitution.
The founder of the dynasty, army general Reza Shah Pahlavi, replaced Islamic laws with western ones, and forbade traditional Islamic clothing, separation of the sexes and veiling of women (hijab). Women who resisted his ban on public hijab had their chadors forcibly removed and torn. In 1935 a rebellion by pious Shi'a at the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad was crushed on his orders with dozens killed and hundreds injured, rupturing relations between the Shah and pious Shia in Iran.
Then the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini's return to Iran happened. He was a Shia Muslim. Khomeini became the country's Supreme Leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death. The Ayatollah runs the country, not the president. He tells the president what to do. Khomeini had been a prominent opponent of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had fled the country during the events of the Iranian Revolution. Upon his return, he was greeted by crowds of millions, and within 10 days the revolution would be successful. Khomeini's return and the 10 days following are now celebrated in Iran as the Fajr decade. It looks like the Ayatollah looked like a good thing to the people at the beginning. He died and another took his place.
The Ayatollah that took over when Ruhollah died is Ali Khamenei. Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia Marja' and the second and current supreme leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Shortly after the ’79 revolution, several Iranian Jews were accused of spying for Israel and executed. In an effort to stabilize relations with the Jewish community, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, proclaimed: “We recognize our Jews as separate from those godless Zionists.” Nevertheless, 30,000 Jews left within months of the revolution. Their numbers fell from 80,000 in 1978 to 20,000 in 1989.
My cousin's husband was a 16 year old kid in Iran who with other boys his age, managed to escape from Iran on camels, no less, in 1987 and get to the USA, sponsored by an American Jewish organization. He's now a doctor in New Jersey. There must have been a good reason that his parents urged him to do this. I believe the parents also followed him later.
What bothers me is that: Contrary to a commonly held belief, Jews living in Iran find it easier to practice their religion today than they did prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, according to a longtime leader of the Jewish community in Tehran. With the Ayatollas holding everyone's life in their hands, I'm sure the Jews don't dare tell the truth about their living conditions and ability to be Jews in Iran.
Resource:
Tanakh, The Stone Edition--The Book of Esther
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/10/irans-love-hate-relationship-with-israel.html
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, 1992, 7th edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_and_causes_of_the_Iranian_Revolution
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/jewish-population-by-country
https://www.ou.org/judaism-101/glossary/esav/
https://www.aish.com/h/purim/t/ts/84883432.html
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/jews-in-iran-freely-observe-their-religion-communal-leader-says-661104
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/MAGAZINE-how-israel-and-iran-went-from-allies-to-enemies-1.6049884
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushandukht
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian_Empire
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Safavid-dynasty
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