A Re-syncretic Embrace: Reconstruction of Mashadi
Jewish Identity in Israel.
Student: Lisette Flink – 6140823
Address: Harddraverstraat 46a, 3033 XM Rotterdam Email: lisetteflink@hotmail.com
Subject: Master Thesis
Course: Cultural Anthropology and non-Western Sociology Discipline: Religion
Supervisor: Dr. F. E. Guadeloupe Second reader: Dr. C. H. Harris Third reader: Dr. V. A. de Rooij
Word count: 29.375 Date: January 7, 2013
Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam
2
Table of content
Preface p. 3
Case Study: the Deserted Mashadi Singles Party p. 4
1. Mashadi Zionism p. 15
1.1 Israeli nationalism p. 16
1.2 Memoire and histoire p. 23
1.3 Palestinian Territories p. 27
2. Love and fear p. 32
2.1 Persian culture p. 34
2.2 Islam p. 38
2.3 The Iranian state p. 44
3. The Other-Sames p. 46
3.1 Persian Jews p. 48
3.2 Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews p. 52
Conclusion p. 58
Word of thanks p. 60
3
Preface
When I attended my first Mashadi event in Israel – a memorial of a deceased Mashadi woman – I noticed the touchy sense of pride among the Mashadi community in Israel: ‘There has been a person who did his PhD study on our community ….’ (Edmond), and the many references of the community to this PhD student, Raphael Patai, to whose book I will frequently refer: ‘It is a very beautiful book, you can have a look at it, but as you can’t buy it anymore, I don’t want to lend it out to you’ (Dalia). The Mashadi community in Israel is a warm, friendly community that is willing to share their memories on their past of forced conversion. The community seems to be slowly merging into the Israeli society. One of my informants expressed his happiness to notice the declining level of marriages among the Mashadi community, as now he feels the Jews are getting united again: ‘… I am happy to see that [the Mashadis are merging into the Israeli society], because we were away from each other for 2000 years and now … we are getting back together and on the land that is ours and we are united, which is a miracle; one big family ….’ (Edmond).
All my informants are able to identify with the Mashadi Jews in Israel. Whether they are fully or half Mashadis – with a few exceptions – they all have a clear idea about or view upon the Mashadi community. I am aware that the group of informants is too small to represent the community, but the data obtained from my informants is given from a Mashadi perspective and enables me to understand the Mashadi community. Mashadis who do not feel related and/or are not entangled within the Mashadi community can distance themselves from this community rather easily. I noticed that certain Mashadi families are more involved in the community than others. Those families are often families with two parents of Mashadi descent, while families less involved to the community often know only one full Mashadi parent.
I start my thesis with a case study of the Mashadi Singles Party. By this thick description of falling into an observant-participation I aim to interest the reader in this specific community. I have experienced the Mashadi community as a warm and intriguing community of which the members in daily life propagate a Jewish lifestyle. I have attempted to write my thesis according to the values of the community. I apologize for any wrong interpretation of my fieldwork data and/or my failing attempt to write down my experiences. To secure the privacy of my informants, all names are changed, except for Hilda Nissimi, doctor in general history at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, focusing on Mashadi Jews, and David Yeroushalmi, professor in the Middle East and History at the Tel Aviv University Israel, the Persian Jews as his specific research interests, who both have allowed me to refer to their real names in my thesis, which I consider relevant to my argumentation due to their academic backgrounds.
4
Case Study: The deserted Mashadi Singles Party
Hè? Why are we stopping at the synagogue? Aren’t we supposed to go to a party?! Yossi looks at my surprised face and tells that the party is in the synagogue. A party in a synagogue?! I am astonished about this unexpected turn of the evening, and wonder what the party will be like. Yossi sits next to me, trying to find a place to park the car. He has a Persian background and is in his early to mid-forties, running his parents’ curtain shop, living with his mother and hoping to find a wife to start a family with. It seems to be busy around the synagogue; are all those people in the streets Mashadis? Wow! That would be great! After parking the car, Yossi and I walk towards the main entrance of the synagogue. It is a two floor, white plastered building, with a few steps leading up to the entrance. I can hear the sound of loud music playing, it sounds like Oriental music with the stirred up rhythms and heavy beats. I also hear some chatting coming from inside; it must be busy inside. Right before we enter the synagogue, Yossi says to me ‘Ladies first’ and steps to the side. I feel uncomfortable. What to expect inside?! I see a poster of the Mashadi Singles Party on the front door, all written in English. Why is it in English? Isn’t this party meant for and organized by Mashadi Israeli’s?
I enter the entrance hall. Four women are chatting in Hebrew. They are in their late fifties or early sixties, wearing trousers and casual shirts. Those women must have just dropped of their children and/or have helped organizing the party. That must be the reason why they are standing in the entrance hall. Right behind us two other women enter the hall; they are in their late sixties or early seventies, wearing similar clothes as the other women. They greet the group of women exuberantly. It seems like they haven’t seen each other for a long time. But why are they here? Will they go to the party? Where are the young people? What is the purpose of this Singles Party? I have a look at Yossi. Why did he go to the party? I assumed it had to do with his friends in the Mashadi community. But has it? I know he is single… Meanwhile a woman enters the hall from the kitchen, holding a big plate with all kinds of fruits. She walks to the group of women, trying to greet the two women who have just arrived while holding the plate. This woman is quite a bit older; she must be in her mid to late seventies. When she arrives, the women start talking in Farsi to her. Why do they talk in Farsi? Doesn’t this woman speak Hebrew? The woman with the plate of fruit moves on, going through the double doors from where the music comes.
Yossi goes to the toilet and asks to wait for him in the entrance hall. Nobody seems to pay attention to me as they are busy greeting and chatting. This gives me the opportunity to properly observe the room. It is a white painted hall with several doors opening into it. In the right corner there is a small kitchen with a service hatch opening into the hall. Next to the kitchen is the warden’s small office, on the wall black-and-white photographs of people. The warden, Shaul, approaches me.
5 He is in his late seventies, wearing a dark suit and has been the warden of the synagogue since its foundation, over ten years ago. He tells about the photos, which belonged to his late father. He explains that some of the photos were actually taken in Mashad; photos of the Jadid al-Islam – the new Muslims – boys school. The other photos were taken in Jerusalem, right after his father’ arrival in the Holy land as a young adult. All photos are in black-and-white, different shapes and frames. On the left side of the entrance hall a stairs goes up, next to it the bathrooms and the cloakroom. Right in front of the main entrance is a double door. I can hear the music playing.
Yossi returns from the toilet and we walk together towards the double door, we enter the party hall of the synagogue. Moshe walks directly towards me. Moshe is a Mashadi, I have met before. He is in his early seventies, wearing a kippa and married to Roya, who is just a few years younger, and also of Mashadi descent. Together they have three children, none of them married to a Mashadi, and several grandchildren. Moshe greets me and welcomes me to the party. The party? Where is everybody? And where are the young Mashadis I was promised to meet? Why are the few people at the party all seniors? I thought that this would be the right place to finally meet the youth! Do they exist at all? What am I doing here? There are just two small groups of people in the room, one of two men, the other of three women, of which one is Moshe’s wife Roya. I walk towards her; she is sitting on the front row of chairs, chatting with another woman I have met before, Bahar. Bahar is a widow, in her late seventies. She lived with her husband and children in London for forty years, but moved back to Israel after his death. I greet both women and sit down next to Roya. After some courtesies and questions, Roya and Bahar continue their conversation in Farsi. What to do now? Move to the other senior on the right side of Bahar? Does she speak English at all? I only see her smiling at me. I decide to first observe the hall. There are on three sides of the hall three rows of fancy-event-dining chairs with a dark red cover. The rows of chairs on the short sides have each about ten chairs, while the rows on the long side have fifteen chairs per row, leaving a big space in the middle. In total there are at least ninety chairs in the room, and – now as the group of women who were chatting in the entrance hall have come in as well – about fifteen people, including Yossi and me. Is this it? Is this the Singles Party that has been announced for weeks? Yossi and I arrived already an hour late and it still is empty. I ask Roya carefully if she expects more people to come. She proudly tells me that a big group of Mashadi Jews from New York are expected to come, ‘… a busload full [of New York Mashadis] …’, but that they are slightly delayed. American Mashadis? Where do they come from? Will it be a group of young Mashadis?
While wondering about the people attending and not attending the party, I observe the hall. The hall has a thick dark red carpet. In the corner there is a small platform with a music installation. The music is playing loud from the boxes standing in the corners of the party hall, still playing the same kind of music as when we arrived. I do not see a disc jockey; I guess a playlist and/or CD is
6 selected. On the left, on either side of the door there are tables with snacks – fruit, nuts, dates and sultanas – and bottles of water and lemonade, plates, cups and napkins. No alcohol is served. In total, there are about ten bottles of drinks and four plates with snacks spread over the two tables. Not that many snacks and drinks compared to the size of the hall. Will there be more in the kitchen? Or is the hall slightly too big for the number of people expected to come? Where am I?
The hall is quite high, white painted walls, and windows on two sides, covered by laced curtains, and dark coloured draw-curtains. At the walls there are some electronic candlesticks and in the middle of the ceiling one big chandelier. The light in the party hall is cold and bright. Yossi walks towards me and takes a chair on my left side. He asks me if I like the music. I tell him I do, and ask him what kind of music it is they are playing; it is popular, non-religious Persian music. We chat for a while about the Persian music when Shaul, the warden, walks towards us. He asks me if I am interested in a quick visit of the synagogue. Actually there is not a lot happening around me and I have not paid a visit to a Mashadi synagogue before. Maybe I find something typically Mashadi! Yossi joins us and we follow Shaul up the wide spiral stairs in the entrance hall. It is an open and light, but warm synagogue. In the synagogue, there are timber benches, at three sides, all facing a small platform with a desk. In the back of the synagogue is a timber fence, with – opened – curtains; the female section Shaul tells me. On the walls and the ceiling are several candlesticks and chandeliers, most of them with a small note hanging on one of the branches, saying in Hebrew writing the name of the person who has made a financial donation to the synagogue. On the wall there is also a plaque, with a list – written in Hebrew – of the people who donated money to enable the construction of the synagogue. We can hear the beat of the music and the humming of the people downstairs in the party hall. It sounds like there are quite some people downstairs. Did any new people arrive? Did the young Mashadis finally arrive?
In the back of the synagogue is a small niche, about two meters high. In the back of the niche, there is a dark red curtain hanging, with some writing in Hebrew on it. I ask Shaul about the purpose of this niche in the synagogue, he opens the curtains; there is a window with blinded glass. I am surprised and become more curious of what is behind it. Will it be something Mashadi? Shaul gets his bunch of keys and opens the window. Behind the window is a space with three platforms, on each about ten Tohra scrolls. A small light is burning; Shaul explains that this lamp is always burning. The Tohra scrolls differ in size and decorations. Some are smaller, about fifty centimeters; others are bigger, about seventy-five centimeters; and a few are even bigger, about one meter with very fancy decorations. When I ask Shaul if the scrolls are typically Mashadi, or anything in the synagogue, he answers that the synagogue itself is Mashadi as it was founded by the Mashadi community, but neither the scrolls nor anything else in the synagogue is typically Mashadi, except for the people
7 downstairs he jokes. So what makes this synagogue Mashadi? Only its name, its founders and the few people downstairs?!
In the party hall, a few more senior women have arrived, sitting on the chairs behind Roya and Bahar. Yossi and I take a seat close to the two men Yossi has been talking to before. I get introduced to Soleyman. He welcomes me and explains that he is a member of the Mashadi Board like Moshe. He has dark, thick, slightly too long hair, with on top of his head a black kippa, and wears a black suit. He is in his mid-forties and single, which he sets clear pretty soon. Why is he at the Singles Party. Did he come as a representative of the Mashadi Board? Did he come to find a Mashadi wife? Or is it a combination of both? I quickly explain that I am studying the Mashadi community in Israel and that I am looking forward to meet the New York Mashadis. He seems to have misunderstood my questions and answers by pointing out the problem of the Mashadi community of Israel and New York. He argues that the Mashadis of both communities do not want to mix, due to the fact that in general ‘… the [Mashadi] men from New York don’t want to move to Israel as they make good money there, and the [Mashadi] women of Israel do not want to move to New York as they are very attached to their direct family who are normally living in Israel’. This is an interesting argument I haven’t heard before. Do the others at the party have the same view on this? They really seem to be hoping for the New York Mashadis to arrive soon. So why is that if barely any matches succeed? He continues that although he hopes to marry a Mashadi, marrying a non-Mashadi would be totally accepted for him, as long as she is Jewish: ‘We [Mashadis] don’t marry people who are not Jewish’.
The rows of chairs are placed on the sides of the hall, creating a dance floor in the middle. Yossi suggests that if I get bored I can always go for a dance. For a dance? Nobody is dancing! Nobody is even standing! The few people that are attending the party are sitting on a chair, except for the few who every now and then walk to the table with snacks. Besides, this whole setting seems to me quite uncomfortable for people who are hoping to find a partner. The row of female seniors on the short side looks like they are watching over the room and observing who is coming in and going out, as they are the supervisors over the ‘young’ singles, prohibiting them from improper behaviour. And what am I doing here? This is not what I expected or hoped to witness. Where is the interaction between the people? And even more important, where are the people? I realize that there are only those rows of chairs and the tables with the snack and drinks. In the middle there is a huge empty space, reserved for dancing. There is no place to have a private chat; there is no bar or ‘party-table’, no corner or place to draw back from the others in the hall. And as it is still quiet – the party has started about two hours ago – people really seem to keep an eye on the other people in the room. When somebody comes in or leaves the room, everybody notices; when somebody walks towards the drinks and snacks, their movements are followed by the others. The atmosphere feels too forced; the younger
8 single men I am sitting with seem to be slightly nervous, especially when the door opens they straighten up and stare at the door, losing their focus on the conversation for a moment. The temperature in the party hall is fine; not too cold, not too hot, but I do feel a sense of chilliness; the room is too big for the number of people in it. Despite the carpet on the floor, it sounds a bit hollow. Most of the chairs function as a table to put on the empty cups and plates, the loud music keeps on playing, and still nobody is dancing.
Nadira, a middle-aged woman, wearing a blue glittering dress sits next to me on the other side and asks me if I am Mashadi as well. I deny and tell her I am a Dutch student, studying the Mashadi community. I ask her about the meaning of the Mashadi community in her life. She seems to cheer up and tells me how fascinating she thinks the community is because of its history, finishing her argument by claiming the uniqueness of the Mashadi Singles Party. Well, the party is unique for sure. But where are the people?! Where are all the Mashadis I have been promised to meet? She pokes the woman who is sitting next to her, wearing a black shirt with glitters and black trousers, to confirm her statement of the uniqueness of the community. Meanwhile she explains the woman is her mother, a widow in her mid-seventies. Nadira has been married, but got divorced from her Persian – non-Mashadi – husband. She hopes to find a new husband, but explains the difficulty to accomplish this because of her status as a divorced woman, even though she did not divorce a Mashadi. Is her mother interested in finding a new Mashadi husband as well? Or did she come to assist her daughter in finding a man? Moses, a man of around fifty-five years old, wearing a dark blue kippa, takes up in our conversations about the closed Mashadi community, and tells us about his burden in life due to his parents’ trauma from their childhood in Mashad. He is Nadira’s third cousin and has been struggling in life due to the paranoid environment he has been raised in by his parents and grandparents. What? They are related to each other? So there are three single men at the party of which one is her cousin?! Now he has his life back on track, he hopes to find a Mashadi wife. He feels that sharing his feelings and emotions with somebody of a Mashadi background will be easier, as the other will know the history and understand its influences on his life. When I ask Nadira why she is looking for a Mashadi partner, she answers me that mutual understanding, similar values and upbringing are the main factors they are looking for and hoping to find in a Mashadi partner, due to their common background. We hear some noise coming from the entrance hall; both Nadira and Moses sit up straight and stare at the door. Now the Mashadis from New York must have arrived! It is already ten thirty. The party will finally start!
The door opens and a group of three women arrive. They are around thirty-five years old, maybe in their early forties. They look dressed up to me; wearing fancy dresses and high heels which sink in the carpet. They sit down in an empty corner of the hall, giggling and whispering with each other. Is this the first part of the group from New York? A few minutes later the door opens again and
9 another group of three comes in; a group of girls of my own age. Finally! The young Mashadis are coming! They are dressed up in nice, colourful dresses, wearing open shoes and their hair pretty styled. They stand next to the entrance door of the party hall, talking with each other. The rate of men and women has even more shifted towards a female majority. I ask Nadira if they are the group from New York, unfortunately, they are not, ‘… just other Israeli Mashadi women ….’. She sounds slightly disappointed.
Moshe stands up, turns off the music and walks towards the middle of the hall. He requests the attention of the people as he would like to welcome everybody. He starts with a small thanks to the people attending the party, continuing that the Mashadis from New York have just cancelled the party; they are still in Jerusalem and will not make it to Holon anymore this evening. Moshe seems slightly disappointed, as am I. So this is all? He doesn’t expect any more Mashadis to come? What about the youth? Except for the girls who just entered, people are in their forties, fifties, even older! Was the party meant this way? I expected to meet many more young Mashadis as I was told beforehand! Moshe emphasizes the cancellation of the New York Mashadis several times. It feels that he wants to blame the low number of people turning up at the party on their cancellation. He continues talking; telling about the many happy matches made between Mashadis at the Singles Party in the previous years and proudly tells about the love boat. He tells about a cruise organized for the Mashadi Singles by the Mashadi Board about ten years ago. A trip from Europe to New York on the Mashadi love boat. People start laughing and he seems to become more enthusiastic. He tells about the marriages arisen during this boat trip between Mashadi singles. He talks in Hebrew, roughly translated by Yossi to me. He mentions his own contribution to the party; he has paid half of the expenses himself, the other half is paid by the Mashadi Board. People applaud for him. Then he continuous about me; he introduces me to the people while I am still sitting on my chair and explains the purpose of my visit to Israel. He switches to English to mention my specific interests in the Mashadi community, goes back to Hebrew and tells about the secret past of the Mashadi community and emphasizes the importance of remembering the past; preserving the memories and hand them over to the next generations. He mentions his happy marriage with his Mashadi wife Roya and his wish for everybody in the room to get happily married, preferably to a Mashadi. Then he asks me to say something to the group. What am I supposed to say? The Singles Party is totally different than I expected it to be. What does he want me to say at all? Actually I am disappointed by the number of people turning up and the number of young people who did turn up is much lower than I expected and hoped for. I raise my voice and tell the people I feel honoured to be here at their Mashadi Singles Party and impressed by their community. I thank Moshe and the others who have participated in the organization of the party.
10 After the speech, quite some people come up to me. I have the feeling that it is for them easier to approach me after I got introduced by Moshe, and that they have slightly given up on more singles to arrive. They are curious about my research and my view on their community. One of the girls who only arrived right before Moshe started his speech comes up to me. She must be I her early twenties, wears a skirt, fancy shoes and has braided hair. She introduces herself to me as Zah’ra, the sister of a friend of a friend of mine, who has told her about me and my research. I am surprised. Hè? Didn’t this friend of a friend say something that neither he, nor his mother – who is Mashadi – nor his sister cared about their Mashadi descent? This is a coincidence, as now I meet his sister at the Mashadi Singles Party! Why is she here? Apparently she does care?! Zah’ra tells me that her mother told her about the Singles Party and that she and her friends, who are – half – Mashadi as well, were quite interested in meeting some men. She tells me that she is slightly disappointed by the number of people attending the party, especially the number of men and the average age of the people: ‘I [Zah’ra] thought that this party was meant for young Mashadi Singles, not for seniors’! I look at her, and together we start laughing. Zah’ra tells me that in daily life she does not feel Mashadi at all, but here, at the Mashadi Singles Party with her Mashadi friends, she is more aware of her Mashadi roots. Her Mashadi friends are somehow related to her, ‘… those blood ties among the Mashadi community are too complicated but somehow we are cousins ….’ Zah’ra tells me. Her friends come and stand with us, they are shy to talk in English and Zah’ra tells me that in daily life they do not feel related to the Mashadi community. Zah’ra continuous that she and her friends were hoping for a party full of young single men, and while she says this she turns around and looks at the row of female seniors, still sitting there watching the people in the hall. I smile at her and then she and her friends leave the party slightly disappointed.
Adena comes up to me. She is in her mid to late fifties, wearing a lot of golden jewellery on her neck, wrists, ears and fingers. Adena has been single all her life, and has attended the Mashadi Singles Party for years. She is short, like most people in the room, and very interested in my research. We exchange phone numbers. I ask her about her opinion of this Singles Party compared to previous years. She tells the parties are always more or less the same, just normally a few more people turn up. So what is the point of this party? And what are the people hoping to find? Hoping for the one right person to step into the hall? Or do they like the atmosphere and/or setting? The woman who was holding the plate with fruit when I arrived at the synagogue, walks towards us and asks Adena something in Hebrew. So she does speak Hebrew. Why did she speak in Farsi with the other women in the entrance hall as all of them manage Hebrew? Yossi tells me the party is about to finish and that we should leave. I thank Moshe and Roya for the interesting evening. ‘Did you like it’? Moshe asks me. I confirm his answer, adding that it is totally different than I had expected it to be. I wish them a
11 good night, ‘Leila-tov’, and leave the Mashadi Singles Party with totally different information than I had expected to obtain.
Wow, where have I just been? What kind of party have I attended? Those questions are running through my mind when I get back to my room. I have just been to the Mashadi Singles Party but there was no real party. There might have been twenty-five people right before the end, including myself. The music has been playing all evening, but nobody danced. Actually, I have rarely seen any interaction between men and women at all. Has there been any? Did I miss it? The New York Mashadi group has never turned up. Were they delayed for over three hours? Why did they cancel that late? And why were there so many seniors and so few young people? Actually I wonder if any youth is involved in the community at all. I am very surprised by the evening: the setting, the people and the purpose. Were more people expected? Yes, Roya told me about the New York Mashadis who were supposed to come, a bus full of them, but there weren’t that many drinks and snacks. Besides, Adena told me that the party is normally more or less like this. How come I expected a full party with Mashadi youth? The hall was far too big; at least another seventy people would have fit in. I expected a crowded party, but it turned out to be a party with very few people, loud music and eyes staring at the door, hoping for more people to arrive. What does this mean to the Mashadi community? And what does it mean to my research? Does the Mashadi community exist at all? Well obviously there is a Mashadi community; otherwise there wouldn’t have been a Mashadi Singles Party. At the other hand, except for the name and the advertisements there was no proper Mashadi Singles Party as there were barely any Mashadis or people at all. So what does the Mashadi community mean? What does it involve?
Thinking over the evening, I realize that all the Mashadis I have talked to in the past four weeks I have been in Israel knew about the Singles Party, but only a few of them turned up, all elderly people. Not even the full board was there. Can this party represent the Mashadi community in Israel? Does that mean that the community is fading away? Could that be because there are barely any younger Mashadis interested in the community and/or its roots? Only right before the end of the party a small group of young Mashadis showed up. The seniors watching over the people, the thick carpet, the bright light and the rows of chairs, no side tables, stools, corners or anything to have some privacy; the people attending did not look like the average Mashadis to me; there were widows and divorced seniors, middle-aged singles and the few single girls who seemed to be deeply disappointed by the lack of – young – men attending the party. And what was Mashadi about the party? Obviously the people, the name of the party and the synagogue, but the food didn’t seem typically Mashadi to me and the music was Persian. Was the party supposed to be successful? What were the expectations of the people attending the party?
12 Having been able to attend the Mashadi Singles Party gives me a new view on the community and my fieldwork, which I started with the main question: ‘How do the Mashadi Jews in Israel imagine and enact their Mashadi identity within the state condoned and endorsed constructions of Jewish communities in Israel’? After this evening of observant-participation at the Mashadi Singles Party the focus of my research has changed. In my previous main question I assume that the Mashadis form a vivid group, something I seriously doubt since this party. My interests have changed towards the actual construction of the Mashadi identity since their migration to Israel. They do have a form, the community, but I wonder about the content of this form. How do they give meaning to their community? After this change of interests, I have formulated a new main question: ‘How is Mashadi Jewish identity being reconstructed in Israel’? As the social field of the Mashadi community has changed by their migration to Israel, their identity has to be reconstructed. The thick description of my case study will be my foothold during the argumentation of my main question throughout my thesis. Although I am aware of the limiting view of the party on the community, I argue that the party gives an illustration of the Mashadi identity in Israel. To support my argument, I use Marcel Mauss’ theory on the ‘Total Social Fact’ that argues that ‘… social life should not be understood through functional associations in the realms of economy, law, politics, religion and so on: it manifests itself at its most condensed in specific situation where various economic, legal, political and religious relationships overlap’ (Mauss in Kasuga 2009: 1). Mauss’ theory is applicable to the case study of the Mashadi Singles Party: economic relationship is present by the New York Mashadi community that is known for its money-making business as Soleyman mentioned; the legal relationship with the Mashadis was present in another comment of Soleyman, when he argued that the Mashadi Jews do not marry non-Jews; politics is present in Moshe situating himself in his speech as a strong supporter of the marriages among the Mashadi community; the religious relationship with the Singles Party is the location of the party, the Mashadi synagogue. By applying this theory to the Mashadi Singles Party, I will use the party as an illustration to explain the Mashadi community. By the thick description of the party the Mashadi Jewish identity can be explained although I realize the Mashadi community is in ‘… a perpetual state of becoming ….’ (Ibid: 7). I will use the case study as a way to understand the Mashadi community, as I am aware the Singles Party does not represent the community. By unravelling the Mashadi Singles Party, I will be able to reveal the Mashadi identity reconstruction in Israel. I will study the community in the following chapters: Mashadi Zionism, Love and Fear, and the Other-Sames, which are divided in two to three sub-chapters. The chapter on Zionism will focus on the Mashadi feeling of belonging in Israel, the history and memory of the forced conversion in Mashad, and the Palestinian issue as a new influence on their identity construction. The second chapter on Love and Fear will discuss the Persian culture, the Islam, and the Mashadi view on Iran. My final chapter on the Other-Sames will discuss the relation between the Mashadis
13 and their internal ‘Others’: Persian, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews. By the use of a theoretical background intertwined in the data I have obtained during my fieldwork I will clarify my findings and statements to answer my main question.
My fieldwork on the Mashadi Jews in Israel took thirteen weeks. The first four weeks of my fieldwork, before I visited the Mashadi Singles Party and changed the focus of my research, I have been mainly locating the group in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I have tried to visit several Mashadi synagogues, but unfortunately those visits did not bring much. I did meet Moshe and his wife Roya, and Yossi in the first four weeks, who have become important informants in my fieldwork and who have helped me by the ‘snowball’ method to elaborate my Mashadi network. Due to the change of focus in my research, I had to rethink my methodology. Before I started my actual fieldwork, I expected and hoped to be able to integrate in the Mashadi community and apply a diverse spectrum of methods to gather data. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Mashadi identity in daily life is barely present among the members of the Mashadi community, which has limited my operationalization and methodology. I continued with interviews and observant-participation as I had done during the first four weeks of my research, focussing on the reconstruction of the Mashadi identity. I have obtained most data by interviews: informal conversations, semi-structured in-depth interviews with or without a voice recorder, group interviews and just chats, in all kinds of situations: bars, cafes, cars, houses, offices, benches in the park, and by telephone, in Herzliya, Holon, Jerusalem, Netanya, Ramat HaSharon and Tel Aviv. The use of a voice recorder depended on both the setting and the informant: whether we were in a private room and if the informant seemed comfortable with a voice recorder. Only during Mashadi gatherings and events – like the Singles Party – I have obtained actual useful data by observant-participation. In total I have interviewed 22 people, of which two group-interviews with two and three people at the same time, and I have gathered data from about 17 more Mashadis I have met at Mashadi events. Besides I have interviewed two academics as mentioned in my preface and the head of a research institute about secret Jewish communities, including the Mashadi Jews. The interviews were all in English, due to my inability to communicate in either Hebrew or Farsi. Only for one interview an interpreter was necessary. Six informants have lived in the Mashadi community in New York or London and were fluent in English. Overall, my informants managed English conversations very well, but I am aware of the language barrier between my informants and I as a deficiency in my research, as English is neither my first language nor my informants’ first language.
I would like to make a note on the justification of naming the Mashadis a community as I have done above and will do in the following chapters. Although I doubt the way the Mashadis give meaning to their community, I do claim they form a community as a community indicates that the group actually exists (Baumann 1996: 15). Although I doubt the visual presence of the Mashadi
14 identity in daily life, I plead for the actual existence of the Mashadi community in Israel as they know a Mashadi Board, several Mashadi synagogues, and yearly events like the Singles Party. Besides, from an emic perspective, the members of the community share a feeling of connection among the Mashadis based on their history of forced conversion, which I use, from their perspective, as a justification to appoint them as a community. In my fieldwork I have focussed on the emic perspective and did not include the view of other groups on the Mashadi community, like the Persian, Mizrahi or Ashkenazi Jews in Israel. I am aware of its limiting effect on my thesis as it is written from the Mashadi perspective, but I have given priority to the data collection of the Mashadi perspective due to a limiting time period. I have chosen to focus on a thick description of the Mashadi community instead of an extensive theoretical study as I personally prefer to explain the community by focussing on the data I have obtained instead on the theories applicable to the community. The religiosity of the community is described as part of the community’s identity, consisting of the ‘… feelings, passions, aspirations and beliefs which characterise particular forms of social life’ in the Mashadi community, according to Durkheim’s view on religion (Mellor & Shilling 1997: 2), as Durkheim emphasizes the importance of religion on the development and maintenance of human societies (Ibid: 2), which I consider relevant to the Mashadi community which is also based on religion: their past of forced conversion to Islam.
A last note, on religiosity. I do not consider myself religious nor do I practise any religion in my personal life. I assume that my non-religious lifestyle has influenced the data I have obtained, like in chapter 1, where the Mashadi love for the Jewish state is discussed, a feeling I cannot identify myself with as I cannot imagine to be religious and live in a religious state. Due to my inability to identify with religiosity I must have missed certain religious interpretations of the Mashadis and/or influenced the data obtained as most of my informants informed before the start of the interview about my religious devotion, which I answered as non-religious. I am also aware of the presuppositions of my informants as I am a certain person which recalls certain feelings among people, presuppositions that might have influenced the data I have obtained during my fieldwork.
15
1. Mashadi Zionism
I moved to Israel because of my love for Israel. Zionism has made me come … I love this country, I love this nation, I love Israel! Zionism isn’t something bad; it just expresses my love for Israel… It [Zionism] is something we know from history and the Bible [Tohra], but now it has become so politically engaged, while it only means ‘love for Israel’. But in my terms it isn’t politically engaged; Zionism refers to mount Zion, another name for Israel ... I wouldn’t call myself a Zionist, as it is now often interpreted as something negative. But Zionism is just a word, why is it bad? It is just my love for Israel. I will defend Israel, I love Israel. I am striving for what we are (Rita)!
Rita is in her early sixties. She was born in Israel, raised in Milan, lived in New York with her husband for forty years and returned to Israel three years ago. Now she is living in Jerusalem, enjoying open Jewish life in the country. She expresses her love for Israel, refers to this by Zionism and defends the term by questioning why the term is interpreted as something negative. Within her defensive attitude she seems to presuppose a notion of me as a West-European non-Jewish woman, and seems to link me to a negative view on Zionism. Rita seems to be aware of a critical attitude towards Zionism in Europe, but does not agree with this critical attitude. She argues that Zionism has lost its real meaning and is now used as a political term. According to Ein-Gil & Machover (2009), the term Zionism comes from the Ashkenazi – European – Jewry. They state that Zionism is an obviously Ashkenazi concept derived from the racist treatment of the Jews in Europe, which the Ashkenazis have turned into a hostile attitude towards the Mizrahis – Oriental Jewry – in Israel (Ibid: 63). The term, deriving from Europe, could have influenced Rita’s notion of me. Meanwhile, Ein-Gil & Machover also acknowledge that ‘a small minority [of Mizrahi Jews] responded positively to Zionism; … [they] who actually migrated to Palestine [or Israel] quite voluntarily’ (Ibid: 65). It could be suggested that the Mashadi Jews moved ‘quite voluntarily’ to Palestine/Israel1 due to their forced conversion in Mashad, and the perception of ‘… the land of Israel … as a safe haven for persecuted Jews’ (Seidler 2012: 181). Patai (1997) claims that the Jews of Mashad had more difficulties to establish contact with the outside Jewish world than Jews in other Iranian cities due to their status as new Muslims, Jadid al-Islam (Ibid: 87). Despite the community living in Jewish isolation, they did ‘… recite three times daily the ‘amidah prayer, part of which is voicing the hope that God will return to
1
The Israeli state was only found in 1948 (Rebhun 2004: 8). I will refer to Palestine when I write about the period before the foundation of the Jewish state, when I write about the period after the foundation of the Jewish state I will refer to Israel. When I use the term Holy Land I aim to refer to the Biblical notion of the Jewish territory, what is now called Israel but before 1948 known as Palestine.
16 the Zion [the Holy Land] and the request that he rebuild[s] Jerusalem’. Patai claims that the reciting of the prayer proves the religious Zionism of the Jadid al-Islam (Ibid: 86).
Rita uses Zionism as a concept to express her love for Israel, which is a strong feeling she embraces. I realize the Mashadis’ use of Zionism is an expression of their love for Israel, although I do doubt whether all Mashadis would express their love for Israel by the term ‘Zionism’. My use of the term implies the Mashadi meaning of Zionism; their love for the Jewish state, not directing at any political connotation. At the Singles Party Soleyman mentioned the difficulties in marriages between Mashadis from New York and Israel, as the Israeli Mashadis do not want to leave their country. This strong feeling of belonging in the Holy Land of Israel among the Mashadis in Israel has been present during my research, a feeling which seems to derive from their underground period, when they strongly longed for the Holy Land of Zion, as they recited the prayer of return to the Holy Land (Patai 1997: 86). It could be argued that the Mashadis used the concept of Zionism – unconsciously – as a substitute for nationalism.
1.1 Israeli nationalism
Nationalism is related to the national identity, which characterizes the nation-state, like a substitute religion. Nationalism enables people to imagine themselves within a certain community, a community consisting of people they do not know in daily life (Baumann 1999: 38). Through this imagined community, people were able to construct themselves as members of a particular community, the community of ‘… the nation and its state’ (Ibid: 38). This bond among people creates a feeling of solidarity (Ibid: 38-39). Nationalism is the ideology of an ethnic group, fully saturated with values and identifications. Consciousness of the values and standards of this ethnicity is just like a religion (Ibid: 39). In the Israeli case, it could be suggested that Zionism is equivalent to nationalism, as Zionism represents a love for the nation that is represented in the identity of the Israeli people as their ideology. But a nation-state is not religious, as Anderson (2006) argues, ‘No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind … [like no] Christians ... dream of a wholly Christian planet’ (Ibid: 7) and so does van der Veer (1994) claim that the nation-state is a ‘secular entity’ (Ibid: 11). Baumann even describes religion as ‘… the oldest problem of the nation-state’, and states that by nationalism a substitute religion is created (Ibid: 42). The secular ideology of the nation-state was ‘… supposed to be the successors of religious community feeling ... At the other hand … nationalism can take on the mantle of religion even in the most consciously modern of nation-states’ (Ibid. 43). A nation-state ‘… tends to be secular-ist, but it is by no means secul-ar’. For example, many national holidays relate to a religious commemoration (Ibid: 44), the nation-state is not religiously nor ethnically neutral (Ibid: 45). So in case of Israel, the religious community that a nation-state normally aims to replace is placed as the fundamental principles of the state: the Israeli state is based on Judaism, a religious
17 identity the Mashadi Jews identify themselves with. At their arrival in the Holy Land, the Mashadis had to prove their Jewishness as they were suspected to be Muslims due to the forced conversion they had suffered in Mashad:
In the 1930’s, a chief Rabbi [in then still Palestine], questioned our Jewish roots of the Mashadis who had already arrived [in Palestine]. As we had been living outwardly an Islamic life in Mashad, the Rabbi doubted whether we had actually kept our Jewish faith. The story tells that one of the members of the Mashadi board back then invited this Rabbi to his house and pointed out all family-ties of the community, showing that there were no marriages between Mashadi Jews and Muslims, and explained how the community had practiced their Jewish faith in secret. After this visit of the Rabbi he was convinced of the Jewish roots and practice of the community, and the community was welcomed in the Holy Land (Moshe).
The Mashadis felt seriously offended by being questioned about their Jewishness, as they remembered their resistance against the forced conversion by practising their Jewish faith in secret. Since the foundation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948, Jews migrating to Israel are not considered to be immigrants but ‘returnees’ by the Jewish state, as they were ‘… ”temporarily” and forcibly absent from their homeland and returning to it with devotion and full rights’ (Smooha 2004: 50). According to the Jewish state, the Jews belong to the ground of the Israeli state (Geschiere 2009: 5). The Law of Return (1950) and the Nationality Law (1952) stimulate the return of Jews, as they grant the right to all Jews to ‘return’ to the Jewish homeland and grant them full citizenship (Kalir 2006: 8), the former based on the historical right of Jews to return and the latter includes Jews in the Israeli society as full citizens of the state (Kalir 2010: 32). Israel is a sovereign ethno-religiously orientated state and has a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society (Kalir 2006: 7). The Israeli state shows its ethno-religious character within the society by the use of Jewish symbols, which represent the Israeli nation, like the Jewish flag with the Star of David and the national anthem about the return of the Jews to Israel. Those symbols support the feeling of belonging of the Jews in the Jewish state (Kalir 2006: 8). Jewish kinship relation is transmitted through matrilineal descent (Krieger 2010: 156) and the Jewish state considers a person to be Jewish according to the matrilineal system, nevertheless the state grants also citizenship to ‘… non-Jewish children and spouses of Jewish men’ (Kalir 2006: 8). Despite the regulations concerning the right to return as a Jew since the foundation of the Israeli state, the Ethiopian Jews still suffer difficulties with proving their Jewish descent. Lev compares the current struggle of the Ethiopians with the own Mashadi struggle of proving their Jewishness. Lev is a Mashadi in his late-thirties, married to a non-Mashadi Mizrahi wife having two
18 little children, and the head of the Mashadi board in Israel. The Ethiopian Jews, who arrived mainly in the mid-eighties early nineties of the last century (Ben-Eliezer 2004: 246), suffer rejection in acknowledgement by the Ashkenazi ultra-orthodox section, which is the most prominent section of the Jewish religion, consisting of the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi ultra-orthodox section, and national-religious section. Except for the Ashkenazi section, the other two sections do acknowledge the Ethiopian Jewry (Ibid: 252). Likewise as the Mashadi Jews, the Ethiopian Jews have suffered centuries of isolation and persecution in Ethiopia and only after their arrival in Israel their identity and beliefs have been doubted (Ibid: 252). The Ethiopian Jews had to prove their Jewish roots, like the Mashadi Jews a few decades before them, an act they have perceived as deeply humiliating as the Ethiopians still suffer exclusion from the Israeli society due to their skin colour (Ibid: 253). Although the Mashadis perceived the questioning about their Jewishness as humiliating, they continued their migration due to their inferior position in Iran. The Pahlavi Shah rose to power in 1925 and liberalized the position of the secret Jews, but the Jews of Mashad still felt limited in their religious freedom of expression (Dana). It could be stated that the Jadid al-Islam in Mashad were longing for the Holy Land as that would give them the opportunity to express their religious faith openly. Meanwhile, this feeling has probably been stimulated by the forced conversion and humiliations they have suffered in Mashad. Gila mentions the suffering, sacrifices and the difficult circumstances her ancestors had to endure in order to keep their Jewish faith. Gila is a Mashadi woman in her late fifties, who lived for over twenty years in New York until her Mashadi husband past away after which she returned to her country of birth, Israel, and married a Mashadi again. Her parents were both born and raised in Mashad. She recalls her fathers’ memories and the Islamic duty to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, which was also expected to be fulfilled by the Jadid al-Islam. On the way back to Mashad, the Jadid al-Islam often travelled through the Holy Land back to Iran, making a stopover in Jerusalem (Saleh), the third holiest city of Islam (Patai 1997: 87) and the holiest city in Judaism. This signifies an act of syncretism during the forced conversion: from the Islamic holy site Mecca to the Jewish holy site of Jerusalem.
The first groups of Jews of Mashad ‘… made their way to Zion [the Holy Land]’ in 1903, 1906, and 1908 (Patai 1997: 87). In the mid-thirties of the 20th century, Patai estimates, based on a record by Dīlmānī in the 1930s, a Mashadi born and raised in Mashad, the Jewish population in Mashad to be 3,000 people over 550 families; out of Mashad, in Iran, almost 350 people – 105 families – of Mashadi Jewish descent living in Iran; and about 800 people over 150 families living in the Holy Land (Ibid: 89). The majority of the Mashadi Jews have arrived in 1946, right before the foundation of the Israeli state. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 led towards a final migration of Mashadis to Israel (Nissimi 2006: 141). In the early to mid-forties of the 20th century there were around 1,500 Mashadis in Palestine, Nissimi (2009) estimates, ‘... mainly engaged in large-scale trading in rugs and antiques’ (Ibid: 46). Nissimi is an Israeli professor in General History at the Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan,
19 Israel. She is married to a Mashadi Jew, and has focussed her studies on the Mashadi community. As an outsider in the group, she describes the community from a historical perception. During my fieldwork, I had the opportunity to interview Hilda Nissimi. She estimates that there are about 10,000 Mashadis living in Israel today (Ibid: 141), claiming the community to be ‘… by far the smallest crypto-faith community ….’ (Nissimi 2005: paragraph 5), a community that in secret acted as Jews, but behaved like Muslims by name and customs in public life (Ibid: paragraph 10). Moshe estimates the number of Mashadis in Israel to be 15,000, and Lev even 16,000 people. The latter two estimates by Moshe and Lev, who are both members of the Mashadi Board in Israel, are much higher than the estimate made by Hilda Nissimi. This discrepancy in numbers might be explained by the strong involvement of Moshe and Lev in the community given their membership of the Mashadi Board in Israel. Nissimi proposes another explanation for the different estimates and beliefs that the Mashadi way of counting might be of influence: she claims that the Mashadi community in Israel includes people who are originally non-Mashadi, but married to a Mashadi and children from half-Mashadi marriages. A way of counting that is justified by Bahar, who argues that a non-Mashadi Jew marrying a Mashadi Jew can become part of the community when the non-Mashadi is willing to participate in the community. During my interview with Saleh, who was born in Israel, I noticed that his non-Mashadi wife answered many questions and seemed to be more involved in the community than her husband. But even 10,000 Mashadis sounds like a lot to me. I personally have experienced the community as a small close-knitted group of Mashadis who give meaning to the community, of which I saw a very small group at the Singles Party. I got the impression that only a small percentage of the Mashadi community gives meaning to the community, including some non-Mashadis, like Hilda Nissimi and Saleh’s Scandinavian Jewish wife, who both seem to be able to tell a lot about the community, while both of them are non-Mashadis married to a Mashadi. They seem to take the function of an integrated outsider describing the community, like Lila Abu-Lughod, author of the book ‘Veiled Sentiments’ (1999). For example her conclusion on the necessity of her father – she is a daughter of an Arab father and an American mother, raised in the United States – introducing her in the community. Although she felt to be able to internalize the Arab society enough to find her way within the Bedouin society, she realized that she had not considered ‘… that respectability was reckoned not just in terms of behaviour in interpersonal interactions but also in the relationship to the larger social world’ (Ibid: 11 – 12). Abu-Lughod, like Hilda Nissimi and Saleh’s Scandinavian wife, are the storytellers of the ‘ins and outs’ of the community. Also Yossi, a non-Mashadi Persian Jew, attending the Mashadi Singles Party is an example of the capacity of the community to include non-Mashadis in their community. This resembles the Islamic religion where conversion only requires
20 commitment to the religion2. This Islamic feature I have noticed in the Mashadi ability to include non-Mashadi Jews in their community points at syncretism. Also during the forced conversion, the Mashadis practised their Jewish faith underground while living in the outer world an Islamic life. This ambiguity also directs towards syncretism:
‘Syncretism’ is a contentious term, often taken to imply ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘contamination’, the infiltration of a supposedly ‘pure’ tradition by symbols and meanings seen as belonging to other, incompatible traditions (Shaw & Stewart 1994: 1).
This concept of syncretism implies influences by another. In case of the Jadid al-Islam it is possible to state that their position as Jadid al-Islam, new Muslims, is equivalent to a form of syncretism in which their purity refers to Judaism, but due to the forced conversion has become contaminated by their outwardly exposure of Islam. Before the Jews of Mashad suffered the forced conversion they were ‘supposedly “pure”’ since they were still living among an Islamic majority but practised their Jewish faith. The forced conversion could be defined as the Mashadi holocaust. Although their persecution has not been as lethal or as constant as the holocaust of the Jews during World War Two, it has influenced their lives to such a degree that their lives have changed drastically. The forced conversion and the Jadid al-Islam who have decided to go back to their Jewish faith in secret entered a world of syncretism where they had to combine their Islamic outdoor lifestyle with their secret Jewish lives indoor. The opposite of syncretism is anti-syncretism, which refers to a new form of authenticity and purity (Ibid: 7). But the Mashadi Jews in Israel, who want to go back to their Mashadi roots in Israel do not become anti-syncretic. As Glissant (1999) states it is ‘… not a return to the longing for origins, to some immutable state of Being, but a return to the point of entanglement, from which we were forcefully turned away ….’ (Ibid: 26). This means that attempts to return to purity and authenticity will always bring you on another side track; a detour. In case of the Mashadi Jews this detour has been syncretism by which they have reconstructed their identity in Israel. Mashadi Jewish re-syncretism in Israel involves dismantling of the re-syncretism they have practised in Mashad, but meanwhile maintain their Jadid al-Islam identity. If they aim to go back to total purity, they will lose their Mashadi Jewish identity, by which they will lose their specific identity marker: the hidden past in Mashad. Their identity would be purely based on their Jewish roots. The forced conversion to Islam of the Jews of Mashad has given them the opportunity to name themselves Mashadi Jews. By naming
2
21 themselves Mashadi Jews they distinguish themselves from the other Persian – and Mizrahi – Jewry, see chapter 3.1.
My informants set clear their ancestors’ longing for the Holy Land and their own feeling of belonging in Israel. Edmond is one of my informants who actually lived in Mashad until the age of eight. He left Iran with his parents when he was a young teenager and now, about fifty years later, he lives partly in Jerusalem and partly in New York with his Mashadi wife, being involved in the Mashadi community in both countries. He feels the Mashadi Jews have been ‘… submitted to others ….’:
We have been living in Persia for over 2000 years, but we have never felt that any property belonged to us. We haven’t owned a country, a strip of land, nothing. So to me, the creation of the Jewish state of Israel is a miracle in my time (Edmond)!
Edmond describes the foundation of the Jewish state as a miracle: he has been able to witness and experience the emergence of the Israeli state, something his ancestors could only dream of after centuries of mainly persecutions and oppression. A similar feeling the Ethiopian Jews felt as an Ethiopian woman in Briggs’ article (2008) is cited: ‘We went to Israel because it’s our Jewish homeland. We dreamed for 2,500 years that one day we would be at home in Jerusalem’ (Ibid: 33). Both Edmond and the Ethiopian woman cited in Briggs’ article seem traumatized by their lives in a non-Jewish country, which has strengthened their longing for migration to the Holy Land, like Moses at the Singles Party who suffers a trauma due to his parents’ suspicion deriving from their hidden Jewish childhood in Mashad. Like the Mashadi Jews, also the Ethiopian Jews can be thought of as syncretic: Jewish people with an Ethiopian culture, a culture not associated with Judaism. An association that is likely to derive from colonialism, which often involves exclusion based on racial features, like skin colour. But the Ethiopian Jews construct their identity firstly as Jewish, secondly as Ethiopian and finally as Israeli, as argued by a young student cited by Ben-Eliezer (2004): ‘I am first of all a Jew, then an Ethiopian, and finally an Israeli ....’ (Ibid: 259), while the Mashadis construct their identity firstly as Jewish, then Israeli and lastly as Mashadi. This difference in identification is likely to result from a chronological time-frame: the Mashadi community has been in Israel long before the Ethiopian community which only arrived two to three decades ago (Ibid: 246).
The Mashadi Jews have partially migrated to Israel, where they keep a close-knitted community of the Mashadi Jews who feel involved in and related to the community (Nissimi 2005: paragraph 10) and they share a strong notion of belonging in Israel. Edmond is aware of his luck to be able to actually be in Israel:
22 Wow. [Silence] … Let me tell you, when we were in Mashad, and we were praying in a small underground synagogue, every time in the prayers when Jerusalem came, we were brought to tears. And now that we have our own state, every time I leave this building [his house], I have tears in my eyes; because I feel I am living the dreams of my ancestors.
Edmond sets very clear his feeling of love for the Israeli state. A feeling many Mashadis seem to identify with. The Ashkenazi husband of a half-Mashadi cousin of Moshe told me about the feeling of belonging in Israel: ‘You can get a Jew out of Israel, but you cannot get Israel out of a Jew’. This statement seems to be strongly influenced by Zionism, a statement that could derive from holocaust experiences. The Ashkenazi Jews have suffered the holocaust of the Second World War in Europe; the Mashadi Jews have suffered their ‘own holocaust’ with their forced conversion in Mashad. Dalia confirms the statement about Israel. She left Israel for New York as a newlywed about forty years ago and moved back after twenty years. When I asked her why they moved back, she mentioned: ‘I wanted to go back to my country [Israel]’. This answer matches with Soleyman’s argument who stated at the Singles Party that Israeli Mashadis prefer not to move out of the country. Although the Mashadis seem to be severely attached to Israel, they do embrace their Mashadi identity: ‘I am Israeli, and have Mashadi roots’ (Dalia).
Hilda Nissimi states that the Mashadis do not show off their Mashadi identity, the same finding I have obtained from my observant-participation. In daily life the Mashadi Jews present themselves as Israeli Jews – an identity emphasized by them wearing a star of David-pendant around their neck, a sign referring to the Jewish roots – with Persian roots. Only when they realize you are interested in and familiar with the Persian Jews, the Mashadis tell about their Mashadi background. This feeling of belonging in Israel is stated clearly by Lev:
This [Israel] is our [the Mashadis’] place. Mashad is not our place. We don’t want to be in Mashad. The people were in general good, but the government wasn’t. … In general, we don’t have good memories of Iran; because of our history of forced conversion … Here [in Israel] we feel we are part of the Israeli society. We [the Mashadi Jews] are Israelis!
Lev shows the new syncretism of the Mashadi Jews in Israel: a feeling of belonging in Israel is present among the community, but they continue to remember the forced conversion of their community which they have to because when they lose the memories of the forced conversion they lose their identity as Mashadi Jews. The combination of the feeling of belonging in and the memories on the
23 forced conversion, create a new form of syncretism where two – religious – trends are coming together and fuse into a new form of syncretism: re-syncretism. The forced conversion in Iran has provided the members of the community the opportunity to redefine themselves as a Mashadi community, by which they distinguish themselves from the other Persian Jews (Nissimi 2003: 82). The memory of the history of their secret past is what has constructed their identity throughout the decades (Ibid: 83), combined with the new social field – Israel – they are living in.
1.2 Memoire and histoire
The exact act that has led to the forced conversion of the Jewish community of Mashad has been widely discussed among different authors, but as Patai (1997) stated ‘… its memory [of the act] was preserved in several versions that show certain discrepancies among them in minor detail but agree in the essentials of what happened’ (Ibid: 51). A comment that is relevant to the current Mashadi community in Israel and the memories of their ancestors’ secret past. A short overview of the Mashadi forced conversion in Mashad.
Under the reign of Nader Shah (1736 – 1747), the situation of the Jews in Iran improved drastically after centuries of religious persecution. After the transfer of the capital from Esfahan to Mashad (Nissimi 2003: 78) Shah transferred thousands of families to Mashad, of which about 40 Jewish families, to protect the city against invaders from Afghanistan and Turkmenistan (Ibid: 78; Pirnazar 2002: 118) and his treasuries from India (Patai 1997: 26). According to Patai, Nader Shah requested the Jews to be sent to Mashad as he as a Sunni faced problems with the Shi’a population of Mashad, and Nader Shah ‘… considered the Jews more loyal and reliable than the Shi’a Persians’ (Ibid: 26)3. Although Edmond argues that those Jewish families moved to Mashad were among the most religious Jews of Iran, I have not found any hard evidence for this group of Jews moved to Mashad being more faithful. Mashad, Shia’ Islam most holy city of Iran, housed around 1800 ca. 300 Jewish families (Nissimi 2003: 77). Despite the improvement of the situation of the Jews, the Jews were banned to a poor neighbourhood of Mashhad and forced to wear special clothing to identify their Jewish faith (Ibid: 78).
On March 27, 1839, the Jews were forced to convert to Islam. It is unclear what exactly has happened, but some action has led to ‘… an act of mockery and of contempt ….’ of the Islamic religion which ended in the forced conversion of the Mashadi Jews (Ibid: 79; Pirnazar 2002: 117). The Mashadi Muslim population referred to this date by the term of Allahdad, ‘God’s Justice’: when the Jewish community of Mashhad was punished for its religious sins (Ibid: 117). Under the Islamic rule in
3
Sunni Islam considers the Caliphs (the successors) the ‘… true religious heads ….’ of the Islam (Patai 1997: 11), while the Shi’a Islam – in Iran 90% of the Shi’a belong to the Twelver Shi’a Islam, where they believe in succession of twelve imams – beliefs in the ‘supreme leadership’ of the Muslims after Mohammad’s death (Ibid: 11).
24 Mashad, the converted Jews were called Jadid al-Islam and referred to this by the Mashadi Muslim population. The neighbours of the Mashadi Jews kept a close eye on them, and ‘… threatened with death if their secret Judaism was disclosed’ (Nissimi 2003: 80). Outside, the Mashadi Jews acted as proper Muslims, but indoors, they were devoted to Judaism to the best of their ability. Jewish holidays were celebrated and Jewish customs were kept as much as possible, ‘circumcision and burial customs were maintained …’, children received besides the obliged Muslim name a secret Jewish name and marriages among the Mashadi Jews were common (Ibid: 86; Pirnazar 2002: 122). The Mashadi Jews tried to keep a ‘… deeply orthodox Jewish faith alive ….’ hidden from the view of the Muslim community (Ibid: 131). Edmond argues that the use of the term ‘orthodox’ derives from the European Jews who got influenced by the Enlightenment, as the term ‘orthodox’ was founded by the Christians. He claims that the Jews of Mashad were ‘… just Jews; we were observant and for today’s standard you would call it orthodox. But back then, in Mashad, there was no rule “we are not going to observe this, or we are not going to observe that, or this is passé”; there was no such concept’. After considering Edmond’s comment and noticing the literature I use also refers to the orthodox practices of the Mashadis, I have chosen to use the term ‘orthodox’ in relation to the Mashadi Jews as well.
Due to the strong religious leadership in Mashad (Nissimi 2003: 79), the Mashadi Jews could not openly practise Judaism (Ibid: 82) until they were able to leave Mashhad between 1942 and 1946 under the secular reign of the Pahlavi dynasty which brought serious improvements to the Jews of Iran (Ibid: 81). The Mashadi community moved partly to the Holy Land, longing for a ‘... reintegration with the Jewish people’. Nowadays in Israel, the Mashadi community attempt to keep closely connected by marriages among the community which should keep the common memories, experiences and blood in the community (Nissimi 2006: 141). Only after their departure from Mashad, the Mashadi Jews were able to practise the strict orthodox Jewish observances (Ibid: 143; Nissimi 2005: paragraph 25). Mainly in the 1960’s and 1970’s Mashadi communities were established in Milan, London, Hamburg and New York (Edmond), the New York community still form a vivid and close-knitted community, consisting of an estimated 3,700 Mashadi members (Nissimi 2006: 141).
Differences in the memories of my Mashadi informants have been present, something I have also noticed in literature written about the Mashadi past. The Mashadis in Israel know about their past of forced conversion, but ‘… know precious little about it [the community’s history] afterwards … [except for] that they know that there was a forced conversion [and] that they were loyal to their original religion [Judaism]’ (Hilda Nissimi). Besides, it seems that a few stories about the period after the forced conversion, during the Mashadi underground period were perceived as ‘popular’ and/or well known by the Mashadis in Israel. One of my personal favourite stories was how the secret Jews made sure their shops were open on Sabbath –Saturday – but they would prevent to sell anything, as
