Its country at war with Israel, Iran’s Jewish community walks a delicate tightrope
The millennia-old community of some 15,000, the Mideast’s largest outside Israel, condemns Israel’s preemptive strikes on the Islamic regime. Experts say it’s not only for show
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
While there is no evidence that there have been any antisemitic attacks against Iran’s 2,700-year-old Jewish community since Israel began its preemptive assault on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and military sites early on June 13, there are fears that this could change as the fighting continues, sources familiar with the community tell The Times of Israel.
“The Jewish community is probably going to face greater scrutiny than it usually does, but I don’t think they are in significantly more danger than before the war,” said Lior Sternfeld, author of “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran” and a teacher of modern Iranian history in the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program at Penn State University.
“But there is a fear among the Jewish community that things are going to get worse,” Sternfeld said.
Since fighting began early last Friday, hundreds of strikes by Israel’s Air Force have hit Iranian assets, the IDF has said. At least 639 people have been killed and 1,329 others wounded, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists on Thursday morning. It says that of those dead, it identified 263 civilians and 154 security force personnel.
Iran has not given regular death toll figures during the conflict and has minimized casualty numbers in the past. Its last update, issued Monday, put the death toll at 224 people killed and 1,277 wounded.
Reports in the Hebrew press indicate that Iran’s Jews are less concerned about a crackdown by the regime than about fears of violence by vigilante mobs seeking revenge for the Israeli attacks. However, it is not clear how likely that scenario is.
“There are many Iranian Jews in Israel who say things like that,” said Avi Davidi, an expert on Iranian affairs and editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel’s Persian-language site.
“They hear about their aunt being afraid to go outside, and they take it as a generalization reflecting the entire community. There is a war, and there is a general threat, but there is no evidence of a specific threat to the Jews right now,” he said.
Jews in Iran say they enjoy a large degree of religious freedom and security, with religious ceremonies and rituals protected by the state.
Scrambled messages
Contact between Iran’s Jewish community and the outside world is generally sparse, easily leading to misunderstanding, experts say. Communication lines are often tapped, and direct contact with Israel is strictly prohibited by the Iranian regime, so much of what is known is filtered through “official” Iranian channels. That makes it difficult to gauge the community’s real sentiments.
In recent days, several of the country’s Jewish communities have published sharp statements condemning Israel. On Sunday, the Jewish community in Isfahan, with an estimated 1,500 Jews, said “the Zionists’ brutality is far from any human morality” in a statement published in reports on the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.
“We are confident that the Islamic Republic of Iran, proud and honorable, will give a crushing and regretful response to the Zionist regime and will make it regret its shameful actions,” the statement said.
A similar statement by the Tehran Jewish Association “strongly condemns the Zionist regime’s brutal aggression on the sacred soil of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the martyrdom of a group of military commanders, nuclear scientists, and our beloved compatriots.”
While some believe that such statements are merely parroting the regime’s agenda and belie the community’s true sentiments, Sternfeld said this is not necessarily the case.
“While it is true that the regime expects such statements, they are at least partially based on real perceptions of the community and their Iranian identity within the conflict,” Sternfeld said. “If they were simply saying what they felt would save them from the regime, we would have seen many more Jews leaving Iran. To fully understand the broader context is a much longer conversation.”
The Iranian regime clearly distinguishes between Zionism and the Jewish religion, and local Jews say they enjoy full religious freedom and security.
The country’s chief Rabbi Yehuda Gerami has stated that Israel’s government “doesn’t care about Judaism at all,” and hailed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in a US drone strike, as a national hero.
In March, a video emerged of Gerami reading from the Book of Esther and dancing with students at the Tomb of Mordechai and Esther in the city of Hamadan for the holiday of Purim.
The tradition that the heroes of the Purim story are buried in Hamadan, said to be the ancient city of Shushan, is not generally believed outside the Iranian community.
The size of Iran’s Jewish community is subject to debate. Many scholars put the number of Jews between 8,000 and 10,000, primarily in Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz — all of which have been hit by Israeli strikes. Sternfeld said he prefers the Iranian chief rabbi’s estimate of 15,000.
Prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, there were some 100,000 Jews in the country. Iran still has the second-largest Jewish population of any country in the Middle East, after Israel.
About 25 synagogues are believed to remain in the country, as well as several kosher restaurants, an old-age home, a cemetery, and a Jewish library.
Jews are subject to several legal limitations, including being barred from holding significant government positions. There is a single seat in Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, reserved for a Jewish representative.
Last November, a Jewish Iranian man, Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani, was executed in the western city of Kermanshah, convicted of murder after he killed a Muslim while defending himself against a knife attack in a 2022 brawl. The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said at the time that the legal case against him had “significant flaws.”
But against the odds, Iran’s Jewish community continues to persist.
“The country can never be empty of Jews,” said Yasmin Shalom Mottahedeh, an activist who left Iran in the 1980s. “It’s a community that has survived since the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the First Temple. Jews have had the opportunity to leave, but those who are there have chosen to stay for a reason.”
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