The Sad and Steady Decline of the World’s Oldest Jewish Newspaper

In his efforts to destroy Jeremy Corbyn Stephen Pollard has Destroyed the Reputation & Circulation of the Jewish Chronicle

Even by the feral standards of Britain’s tabloid press, the Jewish Chronicle is in a class of its own.  Under former Daily Express editor, Stephen Pollard, the favoured son of Britain’s largest pornography publisher and EDL/UKIP supporter, Richard Desmond, the JC has staggered from the gutter to the sewer. Even the Sun and the Mail make occasional attempts at separating news from commentary. The JC sees no purpose in even pretending to be neutral (or even accurate).

The Jewish Chronicle has, over the summer, behaved like a demented cat on hot tiles. Its one and only abiding theme is that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. It has failed of course to provide even a smidgeon of proof to back up this libel. What it lacks in evidence it more than makes up for in shrieking, screaming headlines.

Pollard's screeching has not done the JC's circulation any good

It is little wonder that its circulation has declined since Pollard took over in 2008 from over 32,000 to 20,000 today. It also appears to be in considerable financial difficulty which might explain why Pollard has become the journalistic version of a rabid dog.

The Jewish Chronicle's absurd Goebbel's like propaganda

Things were not always like this.  Even though the paper has long supported the Zionist cause it has, in the past sought to achieve a modicum of balance.  Historically it was the paper of the Jewish Establishment and dull as ditchwater. Its main problem used to be how to keep its readers awake long enough to read it. (see British Jewry’s Family Newspaper:A Century of the “Jewish Chronicle”)

When the Zionist movement was first founded by Theodor Herzl at the end of the 19^th century, the Jewish Chronicle reflected the position of the Jewish Establishment which was hostile to this attempt to suggest that after having won the battle for Emancipation, British Jews didn’t belong in Britain. It described Zionism ‘as ill-considered, retrogressive, impracticable, even dangerous.”

The JC demonstrates its visceral racism in this headline. The continuous death of Palestinians murdered by the Israeli military is not considered 'violence'.  The death of a settler by contrast 'raises fears of fresh violence' in a Gaza which saw 160 people mown down by sniper fire

It was only the mass influx of Jews, fleeing the Russian pogroms, which caused a section of the Jewish Establishment to have second thoughts about Zionism. Palestine’s attractions lay in keeping the East European Jewish hordes from British shores and what they saw as the accompanying anti-Semitism. Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler summed up their attitude when he refused to condemn the 1905 Aliens Act, introduced by the Zionists' hero Arthur J Balfour. 'We must frankly agree' he wrote to Herbert Bentwich, 'that we do not desire to admit criminals and that there is force in the argument against the admission of those [Jews] mentally or physically afflicted.' [Geoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry]

The key battle in the struggle within the Jewish Establishment over Zionism came when Claude Montefiore and David Alexander of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Conjoint Committee sent a letter to The Times on 24^th May 1917 opposing Zionism and the movement to create a Jewish state. It caused a split in the Board and a vote to disown the letter.

The Jewish Chronicle takes Zionism to its logical antisemitic conclusion - Jewish MPs should separate themselves off

Margaret Hodge and Zionist Anti-semitism

Fast forward a century to Margaret Hodge’s outburst in the House of Commons when she called Jeremy Corbyn ‘a fucking anti-Semite and racist’ on account of his lack of sympathy for Zionism. This caused a rush of blood to Pollard’s head. Pollard called for Jewish MPs to leave the Labour Party. Jewish Labour MPs must quit the party and form a new bloc of independents.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Pollard that calling for Jewish MPs to leave the party they are a member of on the basis of their religious affiliation is itself anti-Semitic! We have to go back nearly a century to Poland where, as a result of the Minority Treaties a block of Jewish MPs sat as Jews in their own right.

Those who advocate the separation of Jews from  mainstream parliamentary parties are usually anti-Semites. The practice of Jews sitting apart on ghetto benches in universities in pre-war Poland was a consequence of the vicious antisemitism amongst Polish students. Yet this is what the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle was advocating when he urged Jewish MPs to separate themselves off from non-Jews. All in the name of fighting anti-Semitism!

Hodge’s behaviour had been triggered by the refusal of Corbyn and Labour’s NEC to adopt wholesale the IHRA‘Definition’ of Anti-Semitism. Pollard complained that ‘instead of adopting the definition... has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’  When we criticise the Zionists' false anti-Semitism campaign as really being about Israel we are condemned as ‘anti-Semitic’!

Pollard, in his enthusiasm for the dramatic, spoke of how ‘one extraordinary, unplanned event has indeed changed the dynamics. Dame Margaret Hodge’s confrontation of Jeremy Corbyn in a corridor of the House of Commons, calling him an “antisemite and a racist”, seems to have burst a dam.’

A week later the Jewish Chronicle, together with two other Jewish newspapers, in a collective act of madness, published a joint front page which spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’

The Jewish Chronicle all but accused Jeremy Corbyn of seeking to build concentration camps and why?  Because he refused to endorse a 'definition' of anti-semitism which has been universally panned  by legal and academic critics. 

The Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism Professor David Feldman, who was also Vice-Chair of the Chakrabarti Inquiry, described the IHRA as‘bewilderingly imprecise.’

Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Judge in the Court of Appeal who is also Jewish wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

Hugh Tomlinson QC in an Opinion declared that the IHRA had a potential chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity, may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third parties as antisemitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a renowned human rights lawyer described the IHRA as 'not fit for purpose'.

Are all of these people vicious anti-semites whose pronouncements pose an 'existential threat' to the Jewish community today? The hysteria of Britain's Zionist press defies rational explanation.  Racism does strange things to people.  Yet these are the forces driving the Labour Party into declaring that opposition to Zionism is anti-Semitism.

The Jewish Forward

In one fell swoop the Zionist press in this country demonstrated not only how little difference there is between them but how they are little more than  propaganda sheets.  Contrast this with America's main Jewish paper The Forward which has a broad range of articles and themes on political issues, including from Jews who are not Zionists and even, God forbid, Palestinians!

It's a question that the JC avoids - why are so many anti-Semites such ardent fans of Israel?

Whereas the Jewish Chronicle has refrained from criticising the anti-Semites and racists that make up the Trump Administration, the Forward  has had a series of eviscerating headlines such as Naomi Zeveloff’s How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time. The Forward’s liberal editors and writers have been forced to confront the fact that the Trump regime is both anti-Semitic and ardently pro-Zionist at one and the same time.  The Forward has articles questioning the relationship between American Jews and Israel, a topic that the JC wouldn't even go near for fear of attracting a lightning bolt.

The JC simply does not mention the phenomenon of real antisemitism in the Trump Administration despite the presence of people like Sebastian Gorka, a fully-fledged fascist and member of the neo-Nazi Vitézi Rend who was Deputy Assistant to Trump.

Whereas The Forward is not afraid of taking up debates about matters of concern to the American Jewish community regardless of Zionist sensitivities, the Jewish Chronicle ploughs the ever more shrill and hysterical furrow of a bogus and fabricated ‘anti-Semitism’.

You are unlikely to read an article such as American Jewry Is Israel’s New Opposition Party in the JC. Editor Jane Eisner writes about how 'the two largest, most important Jewish population centers on the planet are drifting dangerously apart.'  Eisner is a liberal Zionist.

Kaminski 

Michal Kaminski of Poland's Law & Justice Party, who openly wore the Chrobry Sword, the symbol of the anti-Semitic National Radical Camp (ONR) is defended as a 'friend' of the Jews by Pollard!

Pollard has never hesitated to defend anti-Semites who support Israel. His concern is the ‘Jewish State’ not the Jews. Pollard went out on a limb to defend the Tories' membership of the European Conservative and Reform group alongside anti-Semitic parties and members. Pollard defended one fascist in particular, the Chair of the ECR, Michal Kaminski, who had defended villagers in Jedwabne who had herded up to 1,600 Jews into a barn which was then set alight in 1941.

This did not stop Pollard in the Guardian of 9.10.09. writing that Kaminski was ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ Kaminski, even if he didn’t like Jews very much loved the State of Israel. Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews

A good example of the dishonest and distorted coverage of anything related to Corbyn is the story in this week’s Jewish Chronicle ‘Corbynites in plot to unseat pro-Jewish MPs.’ Most readers would assume that this meant a campaign to target Jewish MPs because they are Jewish. The first paragraph of this article talks about ‘A co-ordinated and targeted hard-left plot to threaten and destabilise Jewish MPs and their supporters in the Labour Party.’

In fact Joan Ryan, the MP who was no-confidenced by her own Labour Party Enfield North last week is not Jewish or for that matter pro-Jewish (whatever that means).  Ryan is the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel and is well known for her greed and dishonesty having claimed the most expenses of any MP in 2006-7 and having been runner up in 2005-6, to say nothing of having tried to frame Labour delegate Jean Fitzpatrick as an antisemite at the 2016 Labour Party Conference. [See The Lobby - Episode 3 'An Antisemitic Trope]

The letter from 29 Jewish Rabbis supporting Jeremy Corbyn

The affair of the letter which was signed by 29 Orthodox Jewish Rabbis last week, dissociating themselves and their communities from the Chief Rabbi’s letter attacking Corbyn, is another example of the Jewish Chronicle’s dishonesty. When the letter first surfaced the Jewish Chronicle of 10th September claimed that the letter had been ‘condemned as fake’. Two days later it owned up to the fact that it was in fact genuine although it still tried to discredit it. Organisations distance themselves from ‘letter from Charedi rabbis’ defending Corbyn ran the headline. Because of course a letter from Jewish rabbis opposing its own campaign of vilification doesn’t quite square with the image of Corbyn that the Jewish Chronicle has portrayed.

In other words the JC now accepted that the letter was genuine.  However at no point did the JC follow normal journalistic practice which notes at the bottom of any article just what if any changes have taken place since the article first appeared.

 Skwawkbox, which has covered this issue in depth, noted that ‘The JC appears to use software to prevent any archiving of its pages.’ Not only had the headline changed but the content of the article had also changed.  Now it was being alleged, not that the letter was a fake but that the rabbis who signed it had been ‘misled’ as to its contents.

A spokesman for the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Communities in response to these allegations by the Jewish Chronicle commented that ‘This is a sad state of affairs and a commentary on the lengths to which some people will go. Of course the letter is genuine.’ And of course the Zionist organisations behind the anti-Semitism campaign have a vested interest in pretending that they represent the whole Jewish community. To them being Jewish is synonymous with being a Zionist.

Shraga Stern, the Haredi Jewish activist who helped organise the letter from twenty-nine Orthodox rabbis sent a letter to the JC in response to their attempts to portray the letter as either a fake or unrepresentative. Not surprisingly the Jewish Chronicle has not published it.  It is reprinted below.

It now appears that Haredi Jews, who are sick of the attacks in their name on Jeremy Corbyn by the Board of Deputies are now planning their own protests outside the Board's annual fundraising dinner in November.

Clearly the Board of Deputies have been stung by this demonstration by Haredi Jews that the Board does not speak for them.  The JC has acted as their faithful mouthpiece. In the Jewish Chronicle this week the Board condemned what they called the “divide and rule” tactics of a “small group of malcontents”. The Board’s anger boiled over adding that “The Charedi community has had no better ally than the Board of Deputies” and that they “should be protesting against antisemitism, not against attempts to fight it.”

This is doubly ironic as the Board has never organized against genuine anti-Semitism.  From the campaign against Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascism in the 1930’s to the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970’ the Board’s position has always been to appeal to Jews not to confront the fascists and anti-Semites.  Only when it comes to critics of Israel does the BOD gird its loins!

The Haredi community, because it is visibly different in how it dresses stands out as distinctly Jewish. Uniquely among Jews it experiences racist and anti-Semitic attacks. This was the one section of the Jewish community that was comprehensively ignored by the Report of Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee on Anti-Semitism which was issued in October 2016.

As the letter below from Shraga Stern makes clear, the Board of Deputies represents a minority of Jews in Britain.  The Board's claims have been supported by the BBC and the British media precisely because it is in their interests to support Israel.

Unpublished Letter from Shraga Stern to the Jewish Chronicle

We believe that the anti-Semitism smear and witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn is a Zionist agenda and has all the footprints leading to that direction. It is being promoted by the Board of Deputies and by the self-made unelected JLC, who are a well-known pro-Israel bodies-  and it’s completely cruel and unjustified.

The Board of Deputies and JLC do not represent Charedi Jews, who do not have voting rights at BoD elections and number today over fifty thousand in the UK, of which 30,000 live in Stamford Hill. According to a 2007 study by Dr Markov Wise at the University of Manchester, almost three out of every four Jewish births in the UK – home to the largest strictly Orthodox community in Europe – are in the Charedi community.

The strange thing here is that they are 263,000 Jews living in UK according to the 2011 census. Half of them do not belong to a synagogue according to BoD population statistics, so this half would not have voting rights in the BoD elections.

Add this up with 50,000 Charedi Jews it equals 181,000 out of 263,000 who will not fall under the BoD and the BoD do not represent them. So how on earth can the BoD have the chutzpah to say they represent the Jews in UK? BoD is a pro-Israel body and only represent a very particular part of Jews who are pro-Israel.

Charedi Jews and most mainstream Jews in the UK are only interested in Anglo Jewry matters and do not get involved in Israel politics. However saying this we do recognise that real anti-Semitism is an issue all over the country and in all political parties. We are convinced that Jeremy Corbyn is doing his best to tackle real anti-Semitism in his party while still giving his people of his party freedom of speech to criticize Israel.

However, we are nowhere near to fleeing this country because of this. As a Charedi Jew I can say that Charedi Jews are the most vulnerable to anti-Semitic attacks as they dress differently and one can see that they are Jewish, therefore this support letter from leading Charedi rabbis from Stamford Hill including Chief Rabbi Padwa from the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) says it all.

Jeremy is a long friend and neighbour of the Charedi community here and everyone who knows him personally says that he loves Jews and is against real anti-Semitism, and this is what he has done all his life.

Times have changed and we will not stop here. We will not be hijacked by the BoD and JLC. We will go further then this to make it clear to all the government bodies and to the press, not to fall into the trap of the BoD and JLC who are extremist Zionist bodies and do not represent mainstream Jews.

Discussions are now taking place that I’m personally aware of and talks are in place on considering setting up a new body of Board of Deputies of mainstream British Jews that will focus only on anglo-jewish matters and will represent the entire Jewish population no matter if they are associated to a BoD synagogue or not and act for the many Jews not the few.

Iran's Jewish Community

An interesting article on the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel.  It’s strange that a country that is pilloried as run by the ‘new Nazis’ happens to have a Jewish community that, unlike Nazi Germany, has a representative in their Parliament and is remarkably free.  Unfortunately, in the hands of Zionism, ‘anti-Semitism’ is a malleable instrument.

Of course Iranian Jews do not have full equality with Moslem Iranians although it would seem to be much greater than that which Arabs experience in Israel.  However within the context of a repressive society for Muslims too, with one of the world's highest execution rates, Iran's Jewish community is living proof of the lies of Zionism.

Tony Greenstein

 How Iran’s Jews Survive in Mullahs’ World

The first thing I noticed about Shahab Shahamifar as we strolled to synagogue on a Saturday morning in July was his yarmulke. It was a medium-size, black knitted one, and he was wearing it as we walked the busy streets of Tehran.

Then I noticed that no one looked up.

Later, when the rabbi went on a bit too long with a sermon on the week’s haftara portion, I left services early, and Shahamifar rushed out to accompany me the first block or so before returning to pray. This time, in addition to his yarmulke he wore a long tallit, a prayer shawl, also with no sense of self-consciousness.

Dr. Siamak Moreh Sedgh, the Jewish community’s elected representative in Iran’s parliament Image: Larry Cohler-Esses

Saturday is a workday in Iran’s capital, and women in chadors and men in business suits hurried by us without so much as a glance. Moreover, the night before, when several hundred worshippers gathered for Friday night services at the Yousef Abad Synagogue in North Tehran, I noticed, too, that the sanctuary’s large entrance remained open to the street as people spilled out for breaks to shmooze in crowds on the sidewalk outside. No security of any kind was in sight.

“Compared to Europe,” boasted Dr. Siamak Moreh Sedgh, the Jewish community’s elected representative in Iran’s parliament, “synagogues here are one of the safest places.” He also said proudly, “We have a high rate of people following Halacha,” or traditional Jewish law, “and a low rate of assimilation. The rate of intermarriage among Iranian Jews is less than 1%.”

Of course, there are a lot fewer Jews now than before Iran’s 1979 Revolution.

Homayon Najafabadi, the Executive Director of Tehran Jewish Committee Image: Larry Cohler-Esses

Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi, the current chair of the Tehran Jewish Committee, Iranian Jewry’s central body, told me there were just 9,000 Jews, citing Iranian government census data on which people must list their religion. Other Jewish leaders insisted there were something like 18,000 to 20,000. They based their estimates on their knowledge of communal affiliations in Iran’s various cities. Either way, that’s a big drop from the 80,000 to 100,000 Jews that lived in Iran prior to 1979.

Many of these Jews left in the months immediately after the fall of the shah. A largely business-oriented community, its members often maintained ties to Israel under the shah. Many were shocked into flight when Habib Elghanian , one of the country’s leading businessmen and philanthropists — and the titular head of their community — was executed by a firing squad on charges that included “contacts with Israel and Zionism.”

In 1998, another Jew, Ruhollah Kadkhodah-Zadeh, was executed, reportedly for helping Jews to emigrate illegally.

Shortly after this, restrictions on emigration were lifted. So those who live in Iran today are choosing to do so. Even cash bonus offers from Israel ranging from $10,000 for individuals to $61,000 for families have failed to move those now living there to leave.

According to Moreh Sedgh, those who have stayed are primarily members of the middle class — shop owners, small businessmen and professionals. “The rich had the money to move to America and re-establish themselves there,” he said. “The poor, who had nothing to lose, moved to Israel.” But Najafabadi assured me that a strong contingent of the poor remained among Iran’s Jews.

“We have people who receive charity from the community, including meat, rice and fruit,” he said.

Those making the choice to stay, even as their leaders bristle with hostility toward Zionism and the State of Israel, live under an umbrella of government protection.

Image: Larry Cohler-Esses Jewish hospital

And Jewish life in Iran can be rich. In Tehran alone there are 13 active synagogues, five Jewish schools, two kindergartens and a 100-bed Jewish hospital, where Moreh Sedgh serves as director. There are active communities in several other cities, including Shiraz, Isfahan and Kermanshah, with institutions of their own.

But living as protected second-class citizens under a Shiite Islamist regime is complicated.

As Najafabadi put it: “There is no oppression. But there are limitations.”

Working in the Jews’ favor is the deeply embedded nature of their presence in Iranian society, where they have never been ghettoized, and in which they are seen — and see themselves — as pre-eminently Iranian, woven into 2,700 years of Iranian history. This facilitates the rigid compartmentalization the government maintains between Zionists, who are seen as a malign outside force, and the unquestioned indigenous character of their own Jewish citizens.

But implicitly, this also means Iranian Jews must take care not to be seen as interested or involved in Israel, though it is an open secret that many have family there, and that many have even visited Israel themselves via third countries.

The Jews’ security is aided by a fatwa that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder, issued shortly after he came to power. Even as he shifted Iran into an anti-Israel mode, his fatwa declared Iran’s Jews to be a fully protected minority community and forbade any attacks on them.

But Jews’ place in Iranian society is perhaps vouchsafed most by the Jewish community’s own willingness to fight for its right to that place. Its leaders do so while avoiding any challenge to the fundamental legitimacy of Iran’s regime. But it is not a quiet or quiescent Jewish leadership.

Image: Larry Cohler-Esses - Shiraz Jewish compound

When then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the historical reality of the Holocaust during his tenure, Jews and others worldwide denounced his statements. But so did Haroun Yashayaei, who was then head of the Tehran Jewish Committee.

“How is it possible to ignore all the undeniable evidence existing for the killing and exile of the Jews in Europe during World War II?” he asked Ahmadinejad in an official letter he wrote the president as head of the committee. Yashayaei condemned Ahmadinejad’s reference to the Holocaust as “a myth,” describing it as “an infected wound for Western civilization.”

Maurice Motamed, who at the time represented the Jewish community in Iran’s parliament, told a reporter for the Persian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Denial of such a great historical tragedy that is connected to the Jewish community can only be considered an insult to all the world’s Jewish communities.”

In 2012, when Ahmadinejad’s first vice president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, claimed at a United Nations drug conference that the Talmud teaches “how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother” and charged that Zionists controlled the world’s illicit drug trade, the community also condemned his remarks.

During Ahmadinejad’s tenure, “there were huge insults toward our religion,” Najafabadi recalled. “He insulted Talmud. And we answered him.”

Outbursts of anti-Semitism did not just stop with Ahmadinejad’s departure in 2013.

Just last April, Alef, a prominent Iranian website run by Ahmad Tavakkoli, a conservative

Member of Parliament, cited Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and argued: “Blood shedding by Jews is not a new theme…. By examining Jewish history in past centuries, it becomes evident that they insist on blood shedding and even bloodthirstiness based on their altered religion and teachings.” 

Nevertheless, the community is vocal about the multiple forms of discrimination under which its members live — but without questioning the legitimacy of the regime or the system of Sharia, or Islamic law, by which it governs.

Image: Larry Cohler-Esses

Their approach could be seen in what community leaders consider one of their biggest recent victories: gaining equality in “blood money” compensation. That’s the amount a person must pay to a family when he is responsible for an accident that caused a family member’s death.

“We succeeded in getting blood money compensation equalized for minorities,”

Motamed said. “Before, there was a big difference between the money for minorities and the main population…. It was a very big achievement.”

But the community’s approach did not involve any criticism of Sharia, which rules on such matters. Instead, Motamed, recalled, “We consulted a lot of ayatollahs and took testimony from high-ranking clerics to show there must be equality” under Sharia.

Pleased as he was, Motamed noted that blood money compensation for non-Muslims remains unequal in cases of murder — and that they are continuing to push on this.

“Under Sharia… if a Muslim kills a Jew, there will be blood money payment. But if a Jew kills a Muslim, the penalty is execution,” he said. Here, too, “we’ve consulted with a lot of ayatollahs and gotten letters. But it’s still not solved.”

Other unresolved issues the leaders cited involved access to high-ranking posts in government ministries and the requirement that a Muslim serve as principal at Jewish schools.

“We have five schools,” Najafabadi said, “and the principals in all of them are Muslim. There’s no enmity. They’re very cooperative. But it’s kind of insulting.”

Then there is inheritance law: Under Sharia in Iran, if one sibling in a non-Muslim family converts to Islam, he inherits the entirety of his parents’ assets. This, too, community leaders are pushing to change.

Shiraz Jewish compound - Image: Larry Cohler-Esses

On Israel, the community’s leadership must be more circumspect. But it is no secret that many in the community have family there, or that a significant number of Jews in Iran have visited Israel themselves. One teenager in Shiraz told me how excited he had been to visit three years ago.

“There are people traveling to Israel,” Najafabadi volunteered. But since the Gaza War of last summer, the government had clamped down, he said. Some who go are imprisoned, fined and interrogated. Two community members had been sentenced to 91 days, though this was later reduced to 20 days. Travel to Israel “is declining now because of these problems,” he said.

Moreh Sedgh even voiced concern for Israel, in his way — his way being to criticize Israel’s policies as harmful for Israel’s own interests.

Speaking about Israel’s policy of opposing Syria’s regime under Bashar al-Assad, which Iran supports, Moreh Sedgh said, “The main enemy of Israel today is Daesh” — a reference to the extremist Islamic State fighting to oust Assad. “Of course, the Assad family are not the ideal leaders for Syria,” he said. But he noted that if Assad is ousted, they “must be ready for ISIS. What benefit for Israel would that be?”

Despite all these issues, those Iranian Jews who choose to stay can live a very active Jewish religious and communal life. My second-to-last night in Iran, I was invited to meet with the local leaders of the Shiraz community in the large open-air compound that serves as their community center. About the size of a football field, the compound is surrounded by high walls that ensure the privacy of those who come. Tables were spread out with ample food, and by 11 p.m., Jewish families totaling some 50 or 60 individuals, including children, were dining and moving around from table to table to catch up on the local gossip.

Shiraz Jewish compound pizzeria - Image: Larry Cohler-Esses

Told I was a vegetarian, the community elders treated me to cheese pizza from the kosher pizzeria on the premises. For meat eaters there was a kosher butcher. And just about everyone used matzo from the matzo factory on the grounds during Passover, I was told. The compound also contained a home for the elderly with nine or 10 residents.

“We are a country of paradox,” Moreh Sedgh said. Noting other recent communal victories, such as permission to close Jewish schools on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, rather than Friday, the Muslim day of rest, he said: “Sometimes we do something and have some success…. We think all these problems can be solved as domestic problems. If it comes from the outside. that will make it harder.”