EXCLUSIVE: TALKING TO TEHERAN’S JEWS
By Seth Wikas

Jerusalem Post
Sept 28 2006

On my first Friday evening here, my friends took me to the large
synagogue in Yosefabad, in the center of the city, a neighborhood
that is home to a large Jewish population. I found the sanctuary
packed. Inside the main gate there were ads for Hebrew lessons and
family activities sponsored by the Jewish Association.

There was an Iranian policeman on guard outside, but with the exception
of the signs in Farsi, the Hebrew-Farsi prayer books and the style of
the women’s hair coverings, this could have been an Orthodox synagogue
in America.

Excepting Israel, Iran boasts the Middle East’s largest Jewish
community. The capital contains around 10,000 Jews as well as Jewish
schools that serve 2,000 students. Teheran also has a Jewish retirement
home with 50 residents, and its Jewish Association owns a number of
buildings, including a large library used by Jews and non-Jews alike.

Why are the Jews still here? Answers differed across the generations.

For many older people like my host Fayzlallah Saketkhoo, the vice
president of Teheran’s Jewish Association, Iran is simply their home.

As the owner of a successful carpet and souvenir shop, Saketkhoo has
provided well for his three children, and devotes a good deal of time
to Jewish Association activities. At his home on Friday night after
services, where he showed me his collection of Kabbala books and a
large tapestry of Moses splitting the sea, he told me about how he
had traveled around the world only to learn that nothing was better
than home.

Asked about the future of the Iranian Jewish community, he replied:
"Did you see how many children were there tonight?"

He was right. It was hard to concentrate on praying in the synagogue,
where at least 300 people had come, because of all the children
running up and down the aisles and chattering outside.

But there is a difference between children and young adults. Peyman,
Saketkhoo’s 27-year-old son, was fond of saying, "Everyone in Iran
has a problem," meaning that everyone – Jewish and non-Jewish –
wants to leave.

It’s not just the political situation, he said, but the fact that
with the rise of Ahmadinejad, the economic situation has worsened
and poverty has deepened. For college graduates, it is hard to find
jobs in their field; Peyman is an architect by training but works in
his father’s shop. As he and other young Iranians attest, both the
political and the economic situation are getting harder to bear.

On the issue of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, Iranians of different
ages, Jewish and Muslim, pointed to a unifying national idea.

Iranian culture dates back nearly 2,500 years, to the days of Cyrus the
Great and Darius, founders of the Persian Achaemenid dynasty mentioned
in the Bible. Throughout Iran, citizens of all religions are proud
of their national history, and of the various pre-Islamic leaders
and dynasties. Many parents even name their children Darius or Cyrus.

This pre-Islamic culture, even in the Islamic Republic of Iran,
is still respected and unifies Iranians of different backgrounds.

Most indicative of this tacit acceptance of religious diversity is a
huge picture on the side of a building in north Teheran. Like many
pictures in the capital, it commemorates Iranian soldiers who fell
during the 1980-8 Iran-Iraq war. But this one is different. It is
dedicated to the minorities who served their country, and depicts
five Iranians of various religions and ethnicities. Four represent
Assyrian and Armenian ethnicities and members of the Christian and
Zoroastrian communities. Right in the center is an Iranian Jew,
with his name spelled in Farsi and Hebrew.

I found great tolerance when I told people I was Jewish. Israel,
however, was a different matter…

(Seth Wikas’s full report from Iran will appear in the Yom Kippur
supplement published with Sunday’s Jerusalem Post.)