From the Shahs to Los Angeles

Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture

Saba Soomekh

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781438443843, 9781438443836
• eBook ISBN: 9781438443850
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish History

Gold Medalist, 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Religion category Saba Soomekh offers a fascinating portrait of three generations of women in an ethnically distinctive and little-known American Jewish community, Jews of Iranian origin living in Los Angeles. Most of Iran's Jewish community immigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the government-sponsored discrimination that followed. Based on interviews with women raised during the constitutional monarchy of the earlier part of the twentieth century, those raised during the modernizing Pahlavi regime of mid-century, and those who have grown up in Los Angeles, the book presents an ethnographic portrait of what life was and is like for Iranian Jewish women. Featuring the voices of all generations, the book concentrates on religiosity and ritual observance, the relationship between men and women, and women's self-concept as Iranian Jewish women. Mother-daughter relationships, double standards for sons and daughters, marriage customs, the appeal of American forms of Jewish practices, social customs and pressures, and the alternate attraction to and critique of materialism and attention to outward appearance are discussed by the author and through the voices of her informants.

ONE

WOMEN OF CHANGE

Los Angeles is home to the largest concentration of Iranians outside of Iran.¹ With the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the consequent fall of Mohammad Reza Shah and the Pahlavi dynasty, seventy thousand Iranian Jews fled the newly forming Islamic fundamentalist country and flocked to the United States. Iranian Jews knew that with the collapse of the Pahlavi monarchy and the new regime of the Islamic Republic, there would be not only a change of government but also a revolution, during which they would most likely be stripped of their religious rights. Iranian Jews felt that due to their prominent socioeconomic status; their identification with the shah and his policies; and their attachment to Israel, Zionism, and America, they would not be tolerated under Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini's new regime. Khomeini accused Jews of distorting Islam and the Qur'an; he believed they had taken over Iran's economy, and he depicted them as imperialist spies; he even emphasized the Shi'i doctrine of the unbelievers' ritual impurity (nejasat).² As David Menashri wrote: “Iranian Jews' previous assets turned into their liabilities.”³ Iranian Jews knew that they were now viewed as an inferior minority in Iran and must depart the country in order to escape religious persecution, so many moved to America.

The Iranian migration to America arrived in two back-to-back waves—before and after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Before the revolution, most Iranian immigrants were college students majoring in technical fields who had come to the United States in order to meet the needs of the rapidly industrializing oil-based Iranian economy. In the late 1970s, Iran surpassed all other countries in the number of foreign students in the United States.⁴ Originally, many of these students had planned on returning to Iran after their studies but had chosen to remain after the 1979 revolution. After the revolution, Iranian migration consisted of exiles, political refugees, and those seeking asylum. These exiles were mostly religious minorities, such as Armenian Christians and Jews, who had experienced or feared persecution in the Islamic Republic of Iran.⁵ Many fled to America, specifically to Los Angeles, California.

Since 1965, Los Angeles has had the highest concentration of Iranians in the United States and has become the Iranian center after the Iranian Revolution. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2000, some 75,491 Iranians were living in Los Angeles County.⁶ According to The Association of Religion Data Archives, there are currently 202 Jewish congregations and 564,700 Jews living in Los Angeles County.⁷ After the revolution, many Iranian Jews opted to settle in Los Angeles County because they knew about the already well-established large Iranian community thriving there. In 2007, the Iranian Jewish community numbered roughly 30,000 to 40,000 in Los Angeles alone. Most people came to be near their family and friends and, thus, formed the largest community of its kind in the United States.

Although Iranians are heavily concentrated in Los Angeles County, they are dispersed within the county itself. Iranian Jews and Muslims are highly concentrated in Beverly Hills, as well as in affluent parts of the west side and the San Fernando Valley. Armenians from Iran have mostly settled in Glendale,⁸ and a newly emerging Orthodox Iranian Jewish community has settled in traditionally Jewish neighborhoods such as Fairfax and the Pico/Robertson area. Because Iranian Jews have dealt with prejudice and discrimination in Iran, they identify more strongly with their ethnoreligious background than with their nationality. This ethnoreligious background identification was further emphasized when the majority of Iranian Jews immigrated to America around the time of the “Iranian hostage crisis,” where tensions between Iran and the United States ran high. In order to avert prejudice and discrimination from Americans, Iranian Jews stressed their Jewishness over their Persian identity.

Religion is an important distinguishing identity factor within religiously diverse nationality groups.⁹ Studies of minorities within nationality groups such as Chinese, Vietnamese, and Iranian minorities, such as Armenian, Baha'i, and Jewish Iranians, found that these minorities typically have a highly developed sense of ethnic identity even before migration to America.¹⁰ Mehdi Bozorgmehr wrote that unlike the dominant religious group, minorities in the country of origin form solidarity groups as a result of hostility from the majority and years or centuries of minority status. This has prompted ethnoreligious minorities to develop ethnic self-identity, religiosity, family unity, endogamy, social ties with co-ethnics, organizational activity, and occupational clustering, often in self-employment.¹¹ As a result of the discrimination Jews suffered in Iran, they formed the type of solidarity groups discussed by Bozorgmehr. They were adamant about observing Jewish holidays; they mainly socialized and worked with fellow coreligionists; family unity was stressed in Iranian Jewish homes; and Jewish organizations developed in order to serve the community. This insularity and religious cohesion of the Iranian Jewish community is also evident in America.

The Iranian Jewish identity can be characterized by its symbolic ethnicity. Symbolic ethnicity can be expressed in numerous ways, especially by a nostalgic allegiance to the culture of the immigrant generation or that of the old country. Symbolic ethnicity is a love for and a pride in a tradition that can be felt without being incorporated into everyday behavior.¹² However, for Iranian Jews, pride in their Iranian Jewish identity is expressed in many aspects of their daily life. The daily traditions they practice are characterized both by their Iranian culture and by their Jewish beliefs. Symbolic ethnicity can be directed toward the desire for a cohesive extended immigrant family, the obedience of children to their parents, or the unambiguous orthodoxy of immigrant religion.¹³ Iranian Jews have a cohesive extended family: Everyone from great-aunts and uncles to second cousins are included in the most intimate family affairs. There is a strict sense of familial hierarchy and devotion to Judaism, where even the most religiously lax family respects Jewish beliefs.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, Iranian Jews have become major players in the economic, social, and political life of Angelenos and have become one of the most well-established immigrant communities in Los Angeles. Their mark is felt not only in the secular sphere, but it is also strongly felt in the religiously dominant Ashkenazi community of Los Angeles. Iranian Jews attend and are involved in Ashkenazi synagogues and day schools; they have formed their own Jewish Federation, synagogues, and Jewish charity and social organizations. Slowly, with the integration of the Iranian Jewish community, Iranian Jewish scholars, and religious leaders, the Jewish communities in Los Angeles and around the world are becoming more aware of the influence that Persia¹⁴ has had on Jewish history.

This is best exemplified with the Persian Achaemenid king, Cyrus the Great, who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity and granted them religious pluralism. Cyrus is referred to as “God's anointed” in Isaiah 45; his “spirit” is discussed in Ezra 1; and the ecstatic joy he caused by freeing the Jews from the Babylonians is the topic of Psalm 126. His successor and great-grandson, Darius I, was responsible for the building of the Second Temple, while Iranian Jewish characters such as Zerubabel, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah all played important roles in Jewish history.

GOALS AND FOCUS OF THIS BOOK

The first objective of this book is to present an ethnographic portrait of life for three generations of Iranian Jewish women who lived in Iran and now live in America, exploring the political and social changes that have affected these women in regards to their rituals and religious observances, and their self-concept as Iranian Jewish women in Iran and now in America. The three focal incidents in terms of their effect on Iran and, consequently, the Jewish community, are the Constitutionalist Revolution in 1906 and the granting of the throne to Reza Shah Pahlavi (1925–1941); Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi taking the throne (1941–1979); and, finally, the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the immigration to Los Angeles.

Throughout, this book examines historical events and how they have affected the religious and social lives of these Iranian Jewish women and the manifestation of the sacred within the lives of these women. Sacrality can be found in different ways for each generation of women: for the first generation of women, it is found through sacralizing the domestic sphere and having a numinous relationship with God;¹⁵ for the later generations, sacrality can be found in the numerous social events the community has to attend, within a woman maintaining and redefining her najeebness (virginity and innocence), and through the way some of the hozrei bi'tshuvah (those who return to repentance) women observe Jewish halakhah (Hebrew term for Jewish law).

The comparative works demonstrate the similarities and uniqueness of Iranian Jewish women, both in their home country and in America. The lives of Iranian Jewish women are not monolithic; they vary depending on the cities in which the women were raised, their socioeconomic class, and their level of assimilation into the dominant society.

Comparisons are made among three generations of Iranian Jewish women—grandmothers, mothers, and daughters—exploring these different generations to understand how history, political change, social change, assimilation, financial mobility, and immigration have affected their religiosity, their concepts of womanhood, their intergenerational relationships, and their identity.

In particular, this volume looks at the concept of sacrality throughout these three generations and how it has changed over time. Although different generations of women have different interpretations of sacrality, one overarching theme is the emphasis placed on women's religious and social rituals and maintaining their najeebness—all of which uphold the community's Jewish beliefs and distinguish them from other Iranians, Americans, and Jews. The emphasis on religious tradition and najeebness among Iranian Jewish women allows them to create meaning in their lives, establish authoritative figures within the community, and most importantly, reinforce the collective morals and social norms held within the community.

Research shows that Judaism not only provides social control and cohesion and reaffirms social norms for the community, but more importantly, it provides a way for the women to maintain their identity in times when they are confronted with anti-Semitism, gender segregation, assimilation, and immigration.¹⁶ Throughout generations and across borders, it has been their identification as Iranian Jewish women, whether through following the community's moral, social, and religious norms or transforming and reinterpreting them, that has enabled these women to connect with their history in Iran while embracing their present life in America.

Researchers have placed importance on rituals by asserting that women should be perceived as ritual experts; this book approaches Iranian Jewish women in the same manner, primarily focusing on the use of ritual innovation by Persian Jewish women in order to define their piety and establish their identity. With three generations of women issues are explored for each generation relating directly to the social and political climate of their time. The first generation of women (chapter 2) includes those who were raised under the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi. The second generation of women (chapter 3) includes those who were raised under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and his secular and Western regime. Finally, chapters 4 and 5 examine the lives of the American-raised daughters of these immigrant mothers and how they establish their multiple identities in their native country.

In the traditional Iranian Jewish context, women were excluded from public religious life. When Iranian Jewish women came to America, specifically to Los Angeles, they found themselves in a situation of public observance. The women who were born and raised in Iran and immigrated to Los Angeles later in their life, meaning women who were raised under the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi and Mohammad Reza Shah, felt this change most severely. This book focuses on the issue of change in the patterns of religious observances and religious rituals among the first two generations of Iranian Jewish women and on their self-concept as Iranian Jewish women in Iran and now in America.

This book examines the ritual practices and beliefs of Iranian Jewish women, their attitude toward Judaism and ritual observances, the importance of religious activities for them and their community, the changes in the patterns of religious observances and religious rituals that have taken place due to modernization and immigration, and finally, how modernization and demographic change affected religious change and ritual observance.

Within these issues, we explore the status of women in the family and in public life, asking how much influence rabbinical law, Muslim society, and the location of their home had on placing women in the domestic sphere; examine how influential Jewish halakhah was in dictating the relationship between husband and wife (i.e., attending the mikveh,¹⁷ sleeping in separate beds, and other menstruating laws); and look at the rituals of sociability within the first two generations, exploring the rituals of Persian Jewish social activities, a woman's role in these events, and the connection between Persian Jewish social activities and religion. Finally, we examine how women perceive themselves and their role as Jewish women in the Persian community, exploring how their self-perception has changed throughout the years while living first in Iran and now in America.

RECENT HISTORY OF IRAN

Iran has gone through major political and religious changes in the twentieth century, changes that have greatly affected the status and condition of Iranian Jews. It would be gravely erroneous to imagine Iran as a stagnant political and social climate or to describe Iranian women's piety, rituals, and identity as unchanging within that climate. Numerous Judeo-Persian scholars have written about the changes that have occurred in the Iranian community during the twentieth century.¹⁸ The Constitutionalist Revolution of 1906 has been described as the beginning of the Iranian people's struggle for freedom,¹⁹ with many important measures adopted at this time, such as the Assembly, which allowed each religious minority, except the Baha'is, to elect a delegate to the government body. Other changes in the country included less influence from the clergy in governmental affairs, an opposition in Iran against the acceptance of new foreign loans, a national bank established to provide relief from foreign financial restrictions, and a new constitution. It was during this time that Jews finally felt some form of freedom, what Levi calls the “Jewish Emancipation.” Jews gained the freedom to work and be educated; the Jewish mahaleh (ghetto) was sanitized; Jews were no longer considered to be “unclean” by Muslims; a Jewish-Iranian newspaper, Shalom, was published; and finally, Jews were no longer restricted to living in the mahalehs and could ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Chapter One: Women of Change
• Chapter Two: The Generation of the Constitutional Monarchy
• Chapter Three: All the Shah's Women
• Chapter Four: Life in Los Angeles
• Chapter Five: Jewish American and Persian
• Chapter Six: Conclusion
• Notes
• Glossary
• References