It’s important to bear in mind that the Jews who fled Iran after the revoltion did not emigrate as a result of religious persecution. The lion’s share of those who fled did so for political reasons – they were largely royalists who had supported the Shah’s rule; it was untenable of them to remain for obvious reasons.

I also think it’s a simplification to characterize the Jewish American Iranian community as uniform in its feelings about their former home. American Iranians still have important ties to their former home and these connections play out in many different ways. Like everything else, the reality is always much more complicated than we are led to believe.

I don’t know what Brant’s response will be, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this question.

On reflection, I don’t think that it’s peculiar. Rather, it speaks to the sorts of divisions that you might expect between an expatriated community and those who stayed behind.

Some of those divisions were probably there before the Iranian revolution: differences in social class and observance and national identification. Others are the sort of differences that would evolve over time, as each half of the community affirms to itself that it was right to either stay or go.

I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I have heard others raise this question in order to suggest that the Iranian Jews who remain are essentially hostages, forced to say positive things in order to avoid punishment. But why would they be more fearful and secretive than the Soviet Jews who go the word out about their status to American visitors in the ’70s?

Maybe the Persian Jewish community here is like the German or French or Polish community who got out in time before the Holocaust. We’ll find out. But it strikes me that they might also be like a community of Tories in Canada 30 years after our own Revolution, driven out or fleeing in fear, their property expropriated, etc., and sure that this represents a truer version of life in the USA circa 1806 than the version a visitor to Boston or Philadelphia brings home.

Thanks for getting me thinking this morning!

You live in the midst of a vibrant Persian Jewish community. Do you not find it peculiar that your impression of their former home is so different from the opinion expressed by the vast majority of the community?

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1131043721479&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

“So 10 months ago gray-haired Ishak gave up on the Zionist dream and began to move his family and belongings back to Iran. He filled some of his numerous suitcases and trunks with the Persian carpets, silverware, and home decorations he came here with, and flew to Turkey with his two sons. There they sent their new Israeli passports by express mail back to his daughter in Israel. Then they took out their Islamic Republic of Iran passports and boarded a flight to Teheran. “