Reclaiming their past : writing Jewish history in Iran during the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and early revolutionary periods

In the mid-twentieth century Jewish society in Iran emerged from political disenfranchisement and social and economic marginalization to become a well assimilated community with thriving institutions and an active participation in nation building. The turning point came in the wake of the Allied Armies’ 1941 invasion of Iran and Reza Shah’s abdication, which opened unprecedented opportunities for the Jewish community to become an actor in the rebuilding project of a new Iran. Between 1941 and 1979, the Jewish community was institutionally transformed. It was also a period of assimilation and Iranianization. Thus, when faced by the strident patriotism of the 1970s, communal loyalty and identity was poised to be replaced by a new Jewish claim to the right to participate in the struggle for Iranian democracy, and to define the boundaries of a new nationalism This research argues that the re-socialization process that led to this change was nurtured under Mohammad Reza Shah’s nation building project that aimed to create a modern-secular Iranian society that emphasized Iranian civilizational foundations rooted both in ancient Persian culture and Western European civilization. Although this new cultural focus de-emphasized religious affiliations, its driving idea, the Aryan Hypothesis, paradoxically created both opportunities and difficulties for Jews, as many Iranians viewed them as an ethnic minority outside of Aryan-Persian-Shi’i ideals. This dissertation charts the challenges and achievements of the Jewish communities in Iran from 1941 to the early post-revolutionary period. By mapping structural transformations in the Jewish community, and by positioning its changing institutions and ideologies in the larger social and political climate of Iran, it reassesses both Iranian and Jewish-Iranian historiographies, which have posited Jewish Iranian history as an insular narrative, detached from general trends in Iranian society or other communities in the country. In doing so, it also provides a model by which to reassess the position of other minority communities. Through the use of archives that scholars of Jewish Iranian history have overlooked as well as new interviews, this dissertation brings these histories back into the broader context of national history and writes Jewish Iranian history back into Iranian national historiography.