Source:
www.hum.huji.ac.il.
by Prof. Moshe Sharon
The Messianic message of the Bahá’í Faith was, no doubt, one of the
factors that attracted the Jews of Iran to the new religion. From
ancient times, messianic expectations had flared up from time to time
among the Jews in Iran. The Biblical figure of Cyrus, the Persian
emperor who had urged the Jewish exiles to leave Babylon, return to the
land of their fathers and re-establish their national independence and
state, and build the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem under his
protection was very much alive in the hearts of the Jews of Iran. They
cherished the hope for the appearance, once again, of a new Cyrus who
like the Cyrus of old, whom the Prophet Isaiah (45:1) called the Lord’s
anointed, or The Messiah of the Lord, would save them from the
degrading, humiliating life of fear and deprivation, of persecution and
poverty imposed on them by the Shī˓ite Muslims of Iran. It is very
possible that even in the 19th century residues of the Messianic hopes
kindled by the false-messiah Shabbatai Zvi (1626-1676), who had
influenced Iranian Jewry in the Safavid period, were still alive under
the surface.
Bahá’u’lláh, however, was different kind of Messiah. He was Persian,
“home made”, who could well be a new Cyrus. There was even more than a
hint of that in his claim to be the direct descendant of the last
Sasanian King of Persia, Yazdgird III, who had lost his Kingdom to the
Arab Muslims. He also asserted to the Zoroastrians that he was the
expected King-Messiah Shāh Bahrām (Buck, loc. cit.).
The Jews in Iran were among the first to convert to the Bahá’í
faith, already in the seventies of the 19th century. In Hamadān the
Jewish converts were particularly numerous, and it is estimated that
that at least one quarter of the Jewish community in the city adopted
the new religion. In Gulpayegān, where there was a particularly educated
Jewish community, about 75% of the Jews became Bahá’ís. Similar
processes of conversion, though not in such proportions, also occurred
in other major cities of Iran such as Kashān, Tehrān, Kirmanshāh, Yazd,
and Shīrāz. The only major town where the Jews did not adopt the Bahá’í
faith was Iṣfahān because of the particular fanaticism of the Shī˓ah
clergy and population, and the relentless persecution of the Bahá’ís in
this city.
Walter Fischel, one of the first scholars to study the conversion of
the Jews to the Bahá’í faith, regarded Messianic expectations as the
main reason for this conversion. In all the studies and reports
describing the Jewish attraction to the Bahá’í faith we find, more or
less, the same reasons for this strange phenomenon in which Jews
willingly exchanged one status of persecution with another. These
reasons can be summed up as follows.
The Jews had been suppressed by the Muslims and labeled by them
as najis – ritually defiling, filthy - for centuries, and in particular
since Iran became a Shī˓ite state. Suddenly they found themselves being
treated by the Bahá’ís (who had been Muslims) as equal human beings, and
even sought for as friends. They could share the once Muslim community
life without being degraded, and no longer had to attach the special
badge to their clothes, publicly displaying their Jewishness.
The revolutionary, liberal ideas of the new religion were
particularly attractive. The equality of all humans, the abolition of
all signs of discrimination, religious, social or racial, the liberation
of women, the rejection of all forms of violence, the striving for
peace and other similar ideas were, for the Jews of Iran, as attractive
as the ideas of the French Revolution were for the Jews of Europe
(Fischel 1934; Netzer 2007:249).
The idea of the oneness of religion was understood by them as
meaning that becoming a Bahá’í did not involve forsaking one’s own
religion. It was believed that the Bahá’í faith was a movement
professing attractive ideas aiming at reforming society and morals, and
that one could be Jewish and Bahá’í at the same time. This is what
actually happened. Unlike the Jews who had converted to Islam and who
were shunned by their family and the Jewish community at large, Jews who
adopted the Bahá’í faith remained an integral part of their families
and community. Most of them, in the first generation at least, continued
observing the Jewish holidays, many went to the synagogue as usual on
Sabbath, they were called to join a minyan (the quorum of ten men needed
to perform public prayer), fasted on Yom Kippur, and some were even
elected heads of the Jewish community.
The humanistic and liberal ideas of the Bahá’í faith seemed to be
compatible with the words of the prophets of Israel in the Bible, to
whom Baha’u’lláh showed respect and whom he quoted as proof for the
divine source of his own message. He acknowledged the greatness of Moses
and the Torah, which he held valid and equal to the other Holy books of
the world. He and his propagandists made an effort, when approaching
Jews, to indulge in interpretations of Biblical prophetic texts in order
to prove that his advent had been foreseen by the previous prophets. In
many cases the Bahá’í propagandists knew the Biblical texts better than
their Jewish listeners did. One of the most successful Bahá’í
propagandists in this regard was Abū al-Faḍl Gulpayegānī, the erudite
Bahá’í scholar, who, using these methods, was very active and successful
in converting Jews in Hamadān.
As already hinted, the poor condition of Judaism in Iran played a no
less important part in the success of the Bahá’í propaganda among the
Jews. For centuries, the Iranian Jews were virtually isolated from the
rest of world Jewry. They were cut away from all the major centres of
Jewish learning and developed nothing of their own. There was not even
one Yeshiva anywhere, and consequently no proper Jewish religious
leadership. The language, Persian, which the Jews spoke, was also a
great hindrance since it cut them off completely from their nearest
Arabic speaking Jewish neighbours. In this situation, the so-called
Jewish rabbis in Iran that assumed the Muslim title of “mulla” were
ignorant; they could hardly read Hebrew, and barely knew the basics of a
very few Jewish laws. Jewish travelers who visited some of the Jewish
communities tell amazing stories about the extent of the ignorance of
the Jewish mullas and their flock. It is, therefore, not surprising that
the Bahá’í emissaries to the Jews were far more knowledgeable than
those “rabbis” who in many cases were themselves convinced to join the
new religion. The younger generation, which had no spiritual leaders to
look up to, drifted away from traditional Jewish life looking for
something satisfying to fill their free time. There was nothing open to
them outside the Jewish community since the Muslim society was closed to
them if they did not choose to convert. The Bahá’í lecturers and
instructors who came to the major towns such as Hamadān, Tehrān and
Kashān, with their universal message of equality and fraternity,
directed their activity particularly to the Jews, quoting the Bible and
interpreting its messianic messages in an appealing and satisfying
manner. For the first time, the Jews, including some of the “rabbis”,
felt that there was a way to escape the confines of their community and
mingle with a section of the general Iranian society, which seemed safe.
Joining the Bahá’í faith, as indicated above, was not regarded as
forsaking the religion of the ancestors. In time, of course, conversion
to the new religion overcame the attachment to Judaism, and many Jewish
converts became deeply involved in propagating the Bahá’í cause making a
very valuable contribution to the spreading of the Bahá’í teachings
among the Jews.
The attitude of the Bahá’í leaders to Judaism also impressed many Jews. In 1891,
Bahá’u’lláh wrote directly to Baron Rothschild, announcing to him the imminent return of the Jews to the Land of Israel.
This idea remained constant in the messages to the Jews both in Iran
and the United States that were delivered by ˓Abdu’l-Bahá during his
visit there in 1912. In a letter, which ˓Abdu’l-Bahá wrote to the Jews
in Iran in 1897, he did not leave any room for ambiguity about the
messianic aspects which placed the Bahá’í faith in the heart of Judaism.
This intimate relation between the two religions was emphasized even
more by the fact that all the most important Bahá’í holy sites were
located in the Land of Israel. (Faü 2004:267)
Although this is the general picture based on the available, mainly
Jewish, sources, it is also clear from these sources that there were
also negative reactions from Jewish educational institutions that began
intensive activity in Iran in the second half of the 19th century. From
1875, the Alliance Israélite Universelle began its activity in Iran, and
in 1880 opened the first schools in Ṭehrān and Iṣfahān, and the
Sephardic New York organization Otzar ha-Torah, or in Persian
Ganj-i-Dānesh (The Treasure of Knowledge), also opened schools for the
Jews. Although the French orientated Alliance schools were not
particularly interested in traditional Jewish education, nevertheless
they, together with Otzar ha-Torah provided a higher level of education,
and prepared the next generation of Jewish Iranian intellectuals with a
better knowledge of Hebrew, and access to the Jewish sources. In the
long run this led to a lowering of interest in conversion to the Bahá’í
faith, towards the second decade of the 20th century, but not to
abolishing it. There were many cases of Jews who received a superior
education in the Jewish schools but whose education led them straight to
the liberal ideas of the Bahá’í faith as it happened for instance with
Eliah Sābet a son of a rabbi from Iṣfahān. Bahá’í children were also
sent to these Jewish schools, in the same way that Jews went to the
Bahá’í schools, which, as we shall see, were established at about the
same period. This education was naturally very beneficial and it was
available also to the poorer Jews of the ghetto. On the one hand it led
to the second wave of conversion to the new faith between 1880 and 1898,
but on the other it opened up great opportunities for the Bahá’ís and
the Jews after the fall of the Qajārs and the establishment of the
Pahlevī monarchy, and enabled the Jews and the Bahá’ís to enter into the
highest governmental and economic posts in the country (Faü 2004:270).
From 1865, the emissaries of the Alliance Israélite Universelle had
begun sending their reports about the Jews in Iran, particularly
Hamadān, to the headquarters of the organization in Paris. These reports
supplied detailed information about the abysmal conditions of the Jews
there, and helped, from time to time, in mobilizing influential Jewish
leaders in the West, such as Sir Moses Montefiore, to use their
influence with the French and British governments to intervene with the
Iranian government and ease the pogroms or get some Persian Governmental
protection for the Jewish quarters in some of the main towns.
From these reports it is clear that the situation of the Jews in
Hamadān was particularly bad. Persecutions, pogroms, and forced
conversion to Islam occurred repeatedly during the 19th century.
Individual Jews were murdered and Jewish shops and homes were looted by
the mob, incited on a regular basis by the Shī˓ite religious leaders,
many of whom were personally involved in murdering Jews. This state of
affairs continued until almost the second decade of the 20th century
(Netzer 2007:234-240). Even as late as 1911, long after the
constitutional revolution of 1906, severe persecution of Jews in Hamadān
continued. Bahá’ís in Hamadān lived in or near the Jewish
neighbourhoods, and sometimes one suffered because of the persecution of
the other. However, much sympathy was shown by the Jews to their Bahá’í
neighbours, and common danger brought them together.
Whatever the reason, the Jews of Hamadān, as mentioned above, were
the first to accept the Bahá’í faith. There is a report that the first
conversion of some Jewish individuals in Hamadān occurred already in
1852 (the year of the severe persecutions of Bábīs). The poetess Qurrat
al-˓Ayn is said to have been the initiator of the conversion process in
Hamadān following her visit to the city around 1847 . When still in Iraq
she met a Jewish physician called Ḥakīm Masīḥ who later became a court
physician to Muḥammad Shāh (died 1848). At this meeting, Masīḥ was very
impressed by the eloquence of Qurrat al-˓Ayn and also by the liberal
teachings of the Báb as presented by her. Apparently he converted to the
Bábī faith in about 1860 after meeting an imprisoned Bábí named Mullā
Ṣādiq-i-Muqaddas (Ismu’llah al-Asdaq), a survivor of the great battle of
Shaykh Ṭabarsī. Thus he gained the place of the first Jew in the world
to adopt the new faith. When the news reached Bahá’u’lláh he sent him a
special epistle (in the Bahá’í language: “a Tablet was revealed by the
Exalted Pen in honour of Ḥakīm Masīḥ.” The Bahá’í World, 15, 1976:430).
In spite of the fact that Ḥakīm Masīḥ was an important personality,
being the Shāh’s Physician, his influence on the Jewish community was
negligible. Ḥakīm Masīḥ was the grand father of Dr. Luṭfu’llāh Ḥakīm
(1888-1968) a member of the first Universal House of Justice. ( Ibid,
430-434; H. Balyuzi, Báb , Oxford 1975:165n.; idem, ˓Abdu’l-Bahá,
Oxford, 1974:78n.) In spite of the conversions made so early, we still
have to wait for the years 1877-1880 to witness the first wave of Jewish
conversion en mass to the Bahá’í faith in Hamadān and elsewhere. As to
the activity of Qurrat al-˓Ayn in Hamadān, it is reported that she
conducted talks with two Jewish rabbis Mullā Iliyāhū (Eliyāhū) and Mullā
Lāhizār (El˓azār) “which led to attracting members of the Jewish Faith
to the Bábī fold. (Balyuzi, Báb, 165) If this piece of information is
true, then the Jews in this case were extremely brave to join a movement
that was deemed to be in open rebellion against the Shāh.
. . .
Source:
www.hum.huji.ac.il
