Abstract
Keywords
Iranian Immigration to Israel written by Ali Ezzatyar is a comprehensive and complete description of the vast migration of Iranians to Israel during the twentieth century. This migration was apparently done for religious purposes, but using field studies and comprehensive interviews, Ezzatyar proves that the political and social reasons of this migration were more important than its religious purposes in some periods. This book is a complete and amazing study on immigration, which consists of nine chapters that begin with the methodology and end with the conclusions. The beginning of the book with the description of the methodology makes the reader familiar with all aspects of the research.
The migration of Iranian Jews has very wide dimensions; the author examines most of these dimensions such as the role of Aliyah, economic, political, religious, and ideological dimensions. The first chapter is a conceptual and historical overview that sets a foundation for the presentation of Iranian Aliyah in the twentieth century.
In the second chapter of the book, a brief history of the Jews of Iran in the twentieth century is presented, which, in addition to expressing the historical issues, also presents the author’s social analysis, which adds to the quality of the material. The chapter begins with the coverage of Aliyah in Iran from its first major period, 1948 (after the independence of Israel). The widespread influx of international Jewish organizations into Iran is described and analyzed.
Also in this chapter, we see the first interview in the book.
Chapter 3 examines the various factors that led to the largest period of Iranian Jews immigration to Israel during the 1950s. One of the notable issues raised in the book is about the Jews of Mashhad (Chapter 4). Mashhad is both the name of a place in Israel and a city in northeastern Iran, which is considered as one of the most important Iranian pilgrimage cities where the eighth Shiite Imam is buried. In this chapter, the author examines the history of the Jewish presence in Mashhad as the only Non-Muslims of this city and examines what happened to that successful society. This chapter also contains excerpts from interviews with Mashhad immigrants to Israel.
Chapter 5 examines some of the dynamics of Iranian Jews life leading up to the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, as well as the methods used by Zionist representatives in Tehran to encourage continued immigration to Israel.
The situation of the Iranian Jews, which had improved a little during the Pahlavi era, is shaken by the outbreak of the Iranian revolution, and gradually worsens over time after the revolution.
At first, the speeches of the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution signaled an impending a catastrophe for the Jewish community. The Iranian Jews could not establish any connection with Israel, otherwise, they would be considered traitors to the Islamic Republic of Iran. These pressures triggered another wave of Jewish migration to other parts of the world, especially Israel but most Iranian Jews remained in Iran for many years after the revolution and the Shah’s departure and even some of those who lived outside of Iran returned to Iran. The next chapters provide data from Iranian-Israeli sources to determine the prevalence of Iranian immigration to Israel and after that analyze the Iranian integration in the Israeli melting pot through a Jewish-Israeli postcolonial construct. The book ends with the author analyze of the Iranian-Jewish community that immigrated to Israel known as Parsim. In other words, he seeks to present the essence of today’s evolving Parsim identity (Chapter 9).
The three main points make this book very readable. The first point is the research on a topic that has not been researched much, which is the migration of Iranian Jews to Israel, and in fact, this book fills a research gap in this regard. The second point is the interviews that are very intelligently included in each chapter of the book according to the topic under consideration. In these interviews, Ezzatyar opens up very interesting dimensions for the reader with the questions he raises. The third point is that this book in spite of a lot of academic information, is very suitable for non-academic readers too, and even at the beginning of the book, all the words that may be unfamiliar to the reader are explained in the glossary section, and the interviews that given an attractive dimension to the book, making it attractive for non-academic readers too and even regarding the pictures and graphs of the book, it should be said that the few pictures and diagrams given in the book are very appropriate and help a lot to the reader’s visual understanding and provide statistical information about migration. The number of graphs is not so large as to confuse the reader by providing too much statistical information but is only used in parts that convey the necessary statistical information more easily.
Since a large population of Jews in Israel is made up of Iranian Jews, and however, due to the wide-ranging political problems that the two governments of Iran and Israel have with each other, the identity crisis among this immigrant group can be studied and discussed, which the writer shortly mentions in some parts of the book, but it creates questions for further studies in the minds of the readers. In fact, this book can be a stepping stone to extensive sociological, political, ideological, and religious research on the Iranian diaspora in Israel. It can be said that this book for all those who are interested in studying migrations, diasporas, the Middle East, and social and political subjects, can be recognized as a valuable resource.