An ancient community
Early Jewish settlement on the Persian plateau is connected to the Assyrian exile (722 BCE) and the conquest of Babylon by King Cyrus II the Great (d. 530 BCE). After Cyrus granted freedom of religious worship to the exiled peoples, many Jews remained in Babylon and moved further to what is now Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan. The book of Esther states that Mordechai, who became the principal minister to King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), was the grandson of one of the freed captives.
With the arrival of Islam in Persia in 636 CE, Jews became a recognized minority (Ahl al-dhimma) under Muslim dominion. During the first three centuries of Islam, Persian Jews, together with those of Babylonia, formed the largest body in the entire Jewish diaspora. Religious autonomy continued with the prestigious sages of the academies of Sura, Pumbedita, and—after the tenth century—Baghdad, dominating the spiritual lives of Persian-speaking Jews. Despite aspects of legal and social inequality, the Jews of Persia lived in relative symbiosis with their Muslim compatriots, with some becoming important court physicians, advisors, and financiers.
Modern Iran: Between reform and restriction
From the nineteenth century onward, British and Russian imperial politics put increasing pressure on Qajar Iran, alongside state-led reforms that affected religious minorities, including early educational initiatives and limited legal and administrative reforms. The Constitutional Revolution of 1905 to 1911 formally proclaimed the equality of all subjects before the law. While some reforms improved the status of Jewish communities, those shaped by imperial powers contributed to new conflicts, particularly when Jews were perceived as beneficiaries of foreign protection and as intermediaries for British interests in the region.
Despite the Qajar period often being perceived as a time when the status of minorities was deteriorating, the Jewish community was growing: in 1860, there were approximately 16,000 Jews living in Iran, while by 1872, there were 40,000 (about 0.4 percent of the total population at the time). Shiʿite purity norms played a role in Iran, as non-Muslims were considered ritually impure (najes). In daily life, this mainly affected forms of physical contact, especially in relation to moisture (sweat, rain, washing water) and food preparation. Jurists disagreed about details, and many ordinary people followed the rules only loosely. Depending on time and place, everyday practice ranged from careful observance to minimal concern. These rules were partly responsible for the high proportion of Jews working in peddling and small trades. However, economic life required daily interaction, so pragmatic compromises were common. Like other non-Muslims, Jews also worked as goldsmiths and in related professions, and also in the production of wine. Following the Constitutional Revolution, Jews were granted parliamentary representation in the parliament (majles) and began establishing various societies aimed at centralizing and linking Jewish communities across the country. This period also saw the publication of the first newspapers in Judeo-Persian (Persian written in Hebrew script).
The Judeo-Persian language and its literary heritage
Persian-language documents in Hebrew script date back to the eighth century, meaning that the earliest known documents in New Persian are written in Hebrew script. In the fourteenth century, the famous poet Shahin Shirazi composed versified epics paraphrasing and elaborating on the Hebrew Bible in Judeo-Persian. This work, called Shahin Torah, was copied by scribes until the late nineteenth century, and in 1903 it was revised and printed in Jerusalem by the Bukharian rabbi Shimon Hakham.
Notable religious literature in Judeo-Persian also includes the philosophical-mystical prose and verse Hayat al-Ruh by Siman-Tov Melamed (died c. 1780), based in part on Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed and Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart. Classical Judeo-Persian texts often blended Persian literary styles with Sufi motifs drawn from Islamic sources, alongside Jewish religious themes. This tradition came to an end in the early twentieth century thanks to national and modernization movements in Iran and the influence of Zionism and Jewish modernist movements.
Judeo-Persian printing in Iran ceased in the 1930s, when Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878–1944) standardized and enforced Persian as the national language. After that, Jewish texts in Iran were printed in Persian, and later also in Persian alongside Hebrew. To this day, the spoken language among the Jews in Iran remains Persian.
The Alliance Israélite Universelle and Christian missions
The first Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Iran was established in Tehran in 1898, marking the beginning of a European educational network for Iranian Jews aimed at modernization and integration, with other cities like Hamadan, Isfahan, Yazd, and Shiraz following shortly afterward. The schools taught in French, only adopting Iranian educational regulations requiring teaching in Persian in the 1920s. Modern Hebrew and religious subjects were not integral to the curriculum.
Thus, traditional segments of Jewish society feared the destruction of the social fabric and opposed the imposition of European values, including secularism, over their own traditions. In the process of negotiating these differences, the Alliance accommodated local requirements to a certain degree, educating a significant cohort of young people who pursued professional opportunities both in Iran and abroad. Between 1930 and 1940, Soleyman Haim (1886–1970), among the first graduates from the Alliance, compiled bilingual Persian-French and Persian-English dictionaries, which remain the most popular dictionaries to this day.
Christian missionary schools began operating in Iran in the 1830s. They were initially aimed at Assyrian Christians in the Urmia region, but soon came to include Jewish communities. By 1900, the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews had translated the Old and New Testaments into Judeo-Persian and Persian, editions that found their way into many Jewish households. Thanks to their provision of access to clothing, education, and healthcare, many Jewish families converted to Christianity. However, at that time, conversion usually involved fluidity between religious identities, and it was not uncommon for individuals to participate in, or identify with, both Christian and Jewish communities, or later, with both Bahaʾi and Jewish ones.
Jews and nationalism in twentieth-century Iran
Iran’s first Zionist organization was founded in 1918 and primarily focused on the study of modern Hebrew. Under Reza Shah’s rule (1925–1941), all laws discriminating against religious minorities were eventually abolished, while communist and national movements such as Zionism were also prohibited. During the reign of his successor and son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941–1979), these prohibitions were initially lifted. Zionist associations, Hebrew education, and fundraising openly resumed, and emigration to Palestine/Israel became possible, especially in the late 1940s and 1950s. Between 1948 and 1953, almost 30,000 people left Iran. These émigrés were mostly of a lower socio-economic background and from the provinces. In 1943, the Jewish Agency opened a branch in Tehran, and Iran became home to Jewish refugees from Poland. The HeHalutz youth organization fostered new forms of belonging and national pride, limiting shithe appeal of conversion to other religions and involvement in communist groups. Iran became an ally of Israel, including cooperation in trade, intelligence, and military ties.
In 1948, the Iranian Jewish community numbered about 90,000 to 100,000 persons, with some thirty percent living in Tehran. At the same time, the fruits of the French Alliance Israélite Universelle schools led many young Jews to join Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s Westernization and industrialization campaigns, resulting in rapid upward mobility. Many Iranian Jews became leading figures in banking, insurance, textiles, pharmaceuticals, imports, industrial machinery, and manufacturing. This also explains why between 1953 and 1975, several thousand Jews returned to Iran from Israel. On a per capita basis, by 1968, the Iranian Jewish community had become the wealthiest Jewish community in Asia and Africa. About ten percent were extremely wealthy, while a similar percentage lived in poverty. The remaining eighty percent enjoyed a high standard of living. Among the most famous businesspeople were the Elqanian brothers, who brought the plastics industry to Iran and built the Plasco building, one of the first Iranian skyscrapers.
While in the 1960s, Iranian leftist intellectuals had praised Israel as a socialist state—especially agricultural projects such as kibbutzim—a shift took place following the Six-Day War in 1967. Parts of the Iranian intelligentsia had viewed Israel less through the lens of Middle Eastern geopolitics and instead as a small nation achieving sovereignty through mobilization and collective effort. After 1967, Israel’s swift military victory and its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights led many Iranian intellectuals—especially those influenced by anti-imperialist and Third Worldist currents—to reinterpret the conflict in terms of colonialism and national liberation. By the early 1970s, for much of the Iranian opposition intelligentsia, Israel had come to be seen less as a socialist model and more as a regional extension of Western power, aligned with the United States and with the Shah’s government, which further intensified the perception of Israel as part of a broader imperial system.
Diaspora and local life
In 1979, an estimated 85,000 Jews lived in Iran; today, the number is around 15,000. Of the large waves of emigration in 1978 to 1979 and throughout the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), the majority settled in Southern California, with another sizable group relocating to New York and Long Island. The next largest segment moved to Israel, while smaller groups scattered elsewhere in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Since the revolution, Jews—mirroring broader societal trends—have adopted greater religious observance, with the state viewing expressions of Jewish identity primarily through a religious lens. Today, the Jewish community runs several synagogues, a school, a cemetery, and kosher restaurants. Its official representation is the Jewish Council (Anjoman-e kalimian) in Tehran.
Bibliography
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Netzer, Amnon, ed. Pādyāvand. 3 vols. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1996.
Sarshar, Houman, ed. Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews. Beverly Hills, CA: Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002.
Sarshar, Houman, ed. “Judeo‑Persian Communities.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica Online. New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation, 2009; last updated 2018. https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/judeo-persian-communities.
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