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The Limits Of Tolerance

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  • The Limits Of Tolerance

    THE LIMITS OF TOLERANCE
    By Seth Wikas

    Jerusalem POst
    Oct 2 2006

    "Do you want a bracha?" I've been asked this question before, at the
    various synagogues I have attended in the United States and Europe.

    The shamash comes around and asks if someone would like an honor
    during the Torah service.

    But this time was different; I was in a synagogue in northern Teheran.

    It was a bright Shabbat morning, and about 50 people had gathered in
    the small synagogue to pray. I had been invited by the vice president
    of Teheran's Jewish Association.

    As I looked around the auditorium, sparsely decorated aside from a
    large Magen David at the front and the bima in the middle, my host
    Fayzlallah Saketkhoo asked again if I wanted to say a blessing over
    the Torah reading. After numerous pleas I went up to the bima, where
    the Sephardi-style Torah scroll stood upright, and said the prayer
    before and after the Torah reading with my American Ashkenazi Hebrew.

    Men and women were seated on opposite sites of the room. There was
    no mehitza (partition separating men and women), but all the women
    had their hair covered.

    As an honor to his American guest, Saketkhoo next asked if I wanted
    to read the haftara, and I assented. Following the service, he asked
    me to recite kiddush for the congregation.

    When I grew up in the 1980s, Teheran was synonymous with violence and
    terror. Having been born just before the Islamic Revolution in 1979,
    I knew Iran only as America and Israel's great foe. It was not until
    I was in college that I learned it had not always been this way.

    As a kid, it seemed that not a day went by without some news about
    the evil regime that kidnapped American civilians and preached hatred
    against the United States, the Great Satan. Things certainly haven't
    improved since, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad preaching hatred
    against Israel and the Jews via a relentless campaign of Holocaust
    denial.

    So it was a great surprise when, on my first Friday evening in Teheran,
    my friends took me to the large synagogue in Yosefabad, in central
    Teheran, a neighborhood that is home to a large Jewish population,
    and 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. While there are no accurate numbers, 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 Saketkhoo, 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.

    "Don't you want to leave?" I asked.

    "Of course, but I have a problem," he said.

    His particular problem is that he did not serve in the military.

    Before Ahmadinejad's election in 2005, Iranians could pay money
    rather than perform military service, and Peyman paid for such an
    exemption. But now this practice has been canceled, and only those
    who have completed military service can travel abroad.

    "So why don't you just serve in the army?" I asked.

    Peyman demurred, saying that two years - the service requirement -
    is a long time, and he makes a decent living working for his father;
    leaving his normal life for two years is out of the question.

    "But is there any social life here? Don't you want to marry someone
    Jewish?" I asked.

    Social life in Iran is limited, as bars, dance clubs and other
    non-Islamic establishments are illegal. Peyman talked about meeting
    people - including women - through friends, and noted that there
    are social activities arranged through the Jewish Association and
    the synagogue.

    WHAT WAS most interesting about our conversation was that Peyman's
    friend Arash, a Muslim and a member of Teheran's police force, was in
    the room as we spoke. When I asked Arash about friendships between
    Jews and non-Jews in Iran, he considered it a non-issue, preferring
    instead to lambaste the regime.

    "With Ahmadinejad," he said, "the police force has become political
    and corrupt. Many people who have joined are more concerned with
    politics and religion than with protecting the people."

    As Arash saw it, there were no problems between Iranians on a religious
    basis. On the issue of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, other 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 (ca.

    600 BCE) 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.

    Following the advent of Islam in the seventh century, the Persian
    language adopted Arabic characters but remained distinct from Arabic.

    National holidays that existed before Islam are celebrated by the
    Jewish community as well. This past spring, Iranians celebrated Norouz
    (New Day), the Persian New Year, which begins on March 21, and the
    rabbi in Yosefabad spoke about Norouz in his sermon.

    The Jewish Association's calendar begins not on January 1, but on
    March 21. 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. My friend's uncle, a mullah and
    professor of theology, said "We like Jews, but we hate Zionists."

    My tour guide in Shiraz, in southern Iran, compared the Israelis
    to the Arabs, recalling the Arab conquests of the seventh century,
    saying the two peoples were invaders and occupiers.

    Hajar, a university graduate with perfect English, asked, "Do you
    think Israel is a real country?"

    Most of the Iranians with whom I spoke, when asked about Israel,
    saw it as an occupying entity that had displaced the Palestinians
    and did whatever it wanted with American consent.

    Iranians, especially in the capital, are constantly reminded of this
    narrative. Pictures on the sides of buildings encourage martyrdom, and
    downtown, near the old Israeli Embassy (now the Palestinian Embassy),
    is Palestine Square. At the center is a large sculpture of Israel,
    flanked by masked men throwing rocks while crushing a Star of David
    under their feet, and a mother holding her fallen, martyred son.

    I asked the leaders of the Jewish community what they thought of
    Ahmadinejad's relentless proclamations that the Holocaust was a myth
    and that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map."

    The president of the Jewish Association, a successful businessman, told
    me he had written a letter to Ahmadinejad denouncing the president's
    statements and retorting that if the Holocaust was a myth, then the
    Israeli killing of Palestinians must also be a myth.

    Nourani, a Jewish shop owner in Shiraz, says this of Ahmadinejad's
    statements: "It's all just talk. It's just propaganda to make people
    forget about their problems."

    Nourani sells kitchen appliances in the town, which is home to Iran's
    second-largest community of Jews, numbering between 6,000 and 8,000.

    Shiraz was Persia's capital 250 years ago, and is famous for its
    wide avenues and beautiful gardens. Many Jews own shops in Shiraz's
    commercial district, and conduct business undisturbed. Some even have
    Hebrew prayers or pictures of rabbis tacked up behind their registers.

    Nourani and I talked about Jewish observance, but when I asked him
    if he celebrated the festivals, he looked at me as if insulted.

    "The Jews of Shiraz are very religious - much more religious than
    the Jews of Teheran," he said.

    "On Pessah, what do you do for matza?" I asked.

    "Would you like to see?" he answered. We left his shop and went for a
    15-minute walk across town. On the way, Nourani said he had actually
    lived in Israel in the 1970s, but came back because he didn't like
    it there. "The Israelis don't appreciate what they have. Iran is a
    better place to be an observant Jew," he asserted.

    We walked down a number of alleys and finally reached what looked
    to be an abandoned ranch house on a barren plot of land. As we got
    closer, I saw a sight one might have expected in Monsey, New York, or
    Deal, New Jersey, but definitely not in Shiraz. I saw men and boys in
    kippot, boxes printed with Farsi and Hebrew, and heard the machinery,
    but couldn't believe it. Shiraz has a matza bakery.

    I couldn't actually comprehend what I was seeing, but it was there:
    One room contained the mixers needed to combine the flour and water,
    and the other contained the oven and conveyor belt. The prayer said
    when ritually removing a piece of dough from the mix was written on
    the wall in Hebrew and Farsi. One of the older men there, Qudrat,
    spoke fluent Hebrew. He had learned it in Iran, in religious school,
    and since I didn't speak Farsi and he didn't speak English, we spoke
    in Hebrew.

    LATER IN the day Qudrat invited my friend and me for a picnic with
    his family. The 10 of us all went to a public park and ate a feast
    of Iranian stew, vegetables, Iranian sweets and tea. Perhaps most
    amazing was that Qudrat wore his kippa in a public park, where dozens
    of religious Muslim families - including women covered head-to-toe
    in black - were also picnicking.

    Everyone at our picnic asked if I was Orthodox, if I kept kosher and
    if I observed Shabbat. Qudrat's children and grandchildren had been
    to Israel. His 12-year-old granddaughter, Sepideh, said she liked
    Eilat best but added, surprisingly, that Jerusalem was "too religious."

    Qudrat's son-in-law Farshid, who was looking to leave Iran for the
    United States to find work, was also very interested in my level
    of Jewish observance. He, like many other potential migr s, hopes
    to move to Los Angeles which, with its large Iranian population,
    is well-known as Teherangeles.

    Following our picnic, Qudrat took me to one of Shiraz's 13 synagogues
    to pray. We came to a large courtyard in the neighborhood of
    Rabiazadeh, and there were about 40 men assembled, ready for the
    afternoon service. I wonder how many cities there are in the world
    where a community of fewer than 10,000 Jews have a synagogue and can
    assemble 10 men for daily afternoon prayers.

    Even more incredible was the fact that after we left, another group
    of worshipers came in. I was told that there are at least three shifts
    that come every morning and four or five every afternoon.

    "Do you like it here?" someone asked me as I walked out.

    "It's a very nice country, and it's nice to see so many Jews," I said.

    "Well, you know, I was one of the 13 Jews put in jail," he said.

    N. (to protect his privacy), along with 12 other Jews from Shiraz,
    had been arrested in 1988 on charges of being Israeli spies. Despite
    international pressure, 10 of the 13 were sentenced to prison terms
    of up to 13 years.

    N. still doesn't know why he was put in jail.

    "We'll never know," he said. "I was a government employee and
    was honest. I never took a bribe. I spent 17 months in solitary
    confinement, yet at one point all 13 of us shared a cell."

    N. was finally released in 2002, but still can't leave the
    country and was reticent about the circumstances of his arrest and
    imprisonment. The government, he said, has limited what he can say
    to foreigners.

    All he would say was: "You never know what will happen. In Iran,
    you never know what will happen."

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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