Flabbergasted » August 5th, 2016, 6:06 am wrote:Perhaps there were three Jews and three Crypto-Jews
FYI, Flabbergasted, a common name for Iranian crypto-Jews is…
MULLAH
The term has also been used among Persian Jews, Bukharan Jews, Afghan Jews, and other Central Asian Jews to refer to the community's religious and/or secular leadership. In Kaifeng, China, the historic Chinese Jews who managed the synagogue were called "mullahs".[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullah
The Challenges of Spiritual Leadership
The viziers of Iran would arrest Jews such as Mullah Elijah, then chief rabbi of Shiraz, and require them to pay an exorbitant fee or convert to Islam. At first, Elijah said he would convert and become a Muslim, but he would need time to prepare for the transformation. However, when his time was up he refused to convert, so he was locked in a dungeon and brutally whipped. Unsurprisingly, missionaries who visited Shiraz at the time found that many of Shiraz’s outward converts were both socioeconomically and religiously miserable, held an inward contempt for Islam, and maintained the appearance of being identical to their Muslim neighbors while they continued to practice Judaism within their own homes.
Rab Yusef, also known as Ohr Shraga, was an Iranian mystic and Jewish leader for the community in Yazd during the late 18th century. A direct descendant of King David, he is known for performing many miracles, and his tomb in Yazd is considered a religious holy site for Jews and Muslims alike even today (Lalezar 2006). His counterparts were Mullah Mosheh Halevi of Kashan, a Kabbalist, rabbi, and author of books on Jewish mysticism, and later Mullah Rabbi Isaac of Tehran, one of the first rabbis to contact the Alliance Israelite Universelle in search of protection for the Jews of Iran from persecution by Shiite government officials.
Preserved marriage contracts show that intermarriage was also common among Persian Jews, even in ancient times. Ezra and Nechemiah, two of the later Jewish figures of the Tanach, publicly banned intermarriage and issued punishments to those who married outside the faith (Price 1996). In the century and a half that followed the construction of the Second Temple, the final codification of Jewish law—with its clear rule against intermarriage—was one of the prominent factors ensuring the continuation of the Jewish people in the Middle East, and Iran in particular. While it has not always been adhered to, the law, combined with a nearly constant threat of persecution, has been integral to the continued survival of Iranian Jewry (Bard 2010). The mass emigration of Jews from Iran in the mid to late twentieth century has proven the most trying to its preservation of faith and custom; hence, the more isolated communities that opted not to emigrate, such as the Jews of Mashhad, have seen lower rates of intermarriage than others.
[comment]Historically Inaccurate
I'd like to have you know Mullah Elijah was the chief rabbi of Hamedan. My great-grandfather and his fathers before him were the first Chief Rabbis of Shiraz. It started with Mullah Shlomo, then Mullah Darvish, then Mullah Pinchas, then Mullah Rachamim, then Mullah Yitzchak, then Mullah Yosef, then Mullah Shlomo, and then the last Chief Rabbi of Shiraz, my great-grandfather, Mullah Meir Moshe. I am very insulted that you would dare to denounce the fact that my forefathers were the Chief Rabbis and this Mullah Elijah was. Please email me back about the subject.
Ezra Dayanim
Silver Spring, Mayland
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1442787/jewish/The-Jews-of-Iran.htm
Sad Fate of Iran's Jews
By Parvaneh Vahidmanesh, Washington (source: Institute for War& Peace Reporting)
05/13/10
…
Many tell with horror the story of how the Jews of Mashhad were forced to convert to Islam in March 1839, in what is known as the Allahdad incident.
Over the years, some felt so threatened that they chose to convert to Islam, but continued to practice Judaism in secret - becoming so-called crypto-Jews.
One of the latter, Moshe Hakimi, from Mashhad, spoke to IWPR about this community's dual identity.
"Every newborn was told from his first years of life that we are living in times of crisis and that they must lead a double life. They told us that we must not talk about our personal lives in front of non-Jewish people. This absolute secrecy became second nature after reaching puberty," he said.
"Therefore, all Jewish converts to Islam had two names: for example, my grandfather's Muslim name was Sheikh Aboulghasem and his Hebrew name was Benjamin. My father's Muslim name was Ebrahim and his Hebrew name was Abraham. Outside they call me Mousa and at home, I'm called Moshe. In my father's lifetime, many of the Jews had very Muslim names. They even went to Mecca on pilgrimage and became Hadjis."
Some of these crypto-Jews observed Islamic creeds more zealously than the Muslims.
The Mozafarian and Froughi families are among the Jews who have embraced Islam in the past 100 years and found important social and political status for themselves.
Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, one of the Shia Grand Ayatollahs, who is close to the government, had Jewish ancestors. He is now known as a radical cleric. The Asgaroladi brothers, influential figures in the Islamic Republic, are also of Jewish descent. Habibollah Asgaroladi has for years been the secretary-general of the powerful Islamic Coalition Party. His brother Asaddollah is a powerful merchant, who is also the head of the Iran-Russia and Iran-China chambers of commerce.
…
http://www.payvand.com/news/10/may/1135.html
Crypto-Jew is the correct term, as it also refers to Jews forced to adopt other religions and political philosophies while maintaining Jewish practices. Crypto-Judaism pre-dates the Inquisition, as Jews were forced by the Al-Mohavid invasions of Spain to become Muslims, creating Crypto-Jews who gradually fled to Christian districts for protection from the Muslims (see Roth's History of the Jews). In modern times outwardly Muslim Crypto-Jews are known to be in Meshed [Mashhad], Iran, and in Turkey.
http://shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/13-05.html
The Crypto-Jewish Mashhadis: The Shaping of Religious and Communal Identity in Their Journey from Iran to New York
Hilda Nissimi
This book tells the little-known story of a fascinating crypto-Jewish community through two centuries and three continents. Beginning as a precarious settlement of a few families in mid-eighteenth-century Mashhad, an Islamic holy city in northern Iran, the community grew into a closely-knit group in response to their forced conversion to Islam in 1839. Muslim hostility and a culture of memory sustained by intra-communal marriages reinforced their separate religious identity, vesting it in strong family and communal loyalty. Mashhadi women became the main agents of the cultural transmission of communal identity and achieved social roles and high status uncharacteristic for contemporary Jewish and Muslim communities. … The Mashhadis maintained a double identity – upholding Islam in public while tenaciously holding onto their Jewish identity in secret. The exodus from Mashhad after 1946 relocated the communal centre to Tehran, and later to Israel and after the Khomeini revolution to New York. The relationship between the formation and retention of communal identity and memory practices – with interconnected issues of religion and gender – draws upon existing research on other crypto-faith communities, such as the Judeoconversos, the Moriscos, and the French Protestants, who through the special blend of memory-faith and ethnicity emerged strengthened from their underground period. For the immigration period, the author challenges the old paradigm that “modernity and religion are mutually exclusive”. The book also explores the sometimes uncomfortable yet intimate relationships that exist between seemingly incompatible ways of seeing the past, both secular and religious.
https://www.amazon.com/Crypto-Jewish-Mashhadis-Religious-Communal-Identity/dp/1845191609
