Iranian Jewry Beyond Meta-Narratives: A Conversation with Lior Sternfeld

Illustration by Sophie Levy

Lior B. Sternfeld is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Penn State. His book Between Iran and Zion, published in 2018, is a revisionist account of the social, political, and ideological landscape of Iran's Jewish community during the twentieth century. Sternfeld's rich and earnest approach to research, as well as his willingness to interrogate mainstream historiographical depictions of the topic, have made his work an invaluable resource in understanding the complex past that shaped the present realities of Iranian Jewish life.

Editors Evan Mateen and Sophie Levy met with Dr. Sternfeld over Zoom to discuss the ripple effects of his book's publication, the implications of studying Iranian Jewry as an Israeli scholar in the US, and the future of Middle-Eastern Jewish history as a discipline.

Sophie Levy: Tell us a bit about your career and your work before Between Iran and Zion.

Lior Sternfeld: I’m a social historian of modern Iran. When I studied Iran for undergrad and my Master’s and even my coursework in my PhD, I thought the one thing I would not study would be Iranian Jews. 

In every course I took, we had maybe one session on Iranian Jews, and there was nothing in there that you wouldn’t expect to learn going into the class. Because almost everything I studied was written after 1979, the lachrymose view of Iranian Jewish history, seen through the lens of the Revolution, was already in full force. I think that the two most discussed episodes in Iranian Jewish history were the anusim of Mashhad and the fleeing of Iranian Jews after 1979. You wouldn’t even know there were still Jews living in Iran from the way it was being taught in Israel. 

So initially, I studied the period of Mossadeq and the Iranian nationalist movement, and I looked at the social and intellectual movements of the 1940s and the emergence of the [communist] Tudeh party. And I assumed that was going to be my topic, my research for life. 

Then, in my last semester as a PhD student, I took a class with my advisor on revolutionary ideologies in Iran. And just to get it out of my system, I decided to write about Iranian Jews during the Revolution, because there was next to nothing written about that topic. I thought: I may find out that they were all on the side of the Shah, I may find out that they were all hiding in their homes for a period of two years and didn't stick their noses out— but at least I will know that there is nothing to study there. 

That led to my first trip to Los Angeles in late 2010 or 2011. I had a few leads for people to talk to, and then I came across a story that later became my first published article the story of the [Jewish] Sapir hospital in Tehran and its role in treating the injured during the Revolution. It took me six trips to LA just to get people to agree to speak with me in depth, and that’s when I ended up hearing stories about Jewish involvement in Tudeh in the ‘40s, or what happened in Tehran’s mahaleh (Jewish neighborhood) during the riots against Mossadeq, and I realized that my entire life course was going to change. 

Evan Mateen: Was it not daunting to tell yourself, “This is what my career is going to be,” diving head-first into a world of history where there was so little information available and knowing that you would have to go out and find it yourself?

LS: I always refrain from making grandiose statements, but I did feel like there was a mission there. Still, I remember that my advisor was horrified when I told him that I was changing my topic. He told me, “It’s such a niche topic that I don’t know if anyone will notice you.” He’s since then taken this back, but he told me that I was basically removing myself from the field of Iranian Studies, and I wasn’t even planting myself in the field of Jewish Studies, because the topic would be too specific for both areas!

SL: It’s funny that years after he said that to you, we get such similar responses from people about Zaman or other things we’ve tried to pursue individually. The intersection between Iranian and Jewish topics suddenly makes things “too niche,” when on their own, they’re not. 

LS: Right. My advisor was always very supportive of me, but he was afraid that I would never get a job, that I would go completely unnoticed, and I said, “you know what, at this point, if our intellectual hunger is not what is driving us, then what are we doing here?”

SL: In the introduction of Between Iran and Zion, you talk about how the book emerged from not only a dearth of information in a concrete sense, but also the need to challenge the dominant historiographical narrative which you call the “lachrymose” view, which extends beyond your topic and affects Jewish history in general a lot of the time— painting it as a long string of violence and persecution without consideration of the more complex or positive facets of diasporic life. 

I think your book counters that narrative very effectively, but I also think it pushes back on narratives about Iranian Jews that exist on a public, non-academic level. It provides a picture of this history that differs from both internal and external perceptions of the community and its past. Did you think about that going into this project, or was that just an unintended consequence?

LS: I think that from the very first moment I started to speak with people from this community, it was obvious that what I was unearthing were not just narratives— they were very strong directives that served to explain to the members of the community what and who they are. And I get it— I’m Israeli. This is something we’ve been subject to from Pre-K to the end of high school; you’re constantly being reminded who you are, what you’re supposed to be doing, why you’re here. So I understand the social and cultural role of this indoctrination, but as an academic, my role is not to…

SL: … To appease that?

LS: Exactly, my role is not to appease that. My role is to allow room for many voices and narratives, sometimes contradictory and sometimes complementary ones, which often put greater narratives in context. So it was important for me to acknowledge that in the book and in the way that I tell these stories. By calling them histories (plural) and not history (singular), I’m saying that my narrative is not the only one that should be accepted, and definitely not one that should be imposed universally. There is no one narrative that fits all or explains the lives of 100,000 Iranian Jews.

SL: We appreciate you driving home the importance of that complexity, but it’s interesting that it’s still so necessary to emphasize that need for nuance in analyzing Iranian Jews— because within our community, there’s a very firm resistance against the idea of imposed sameness or stereotyping. People like to say “I’m not a typical X” or “ I’m not a typical Y.” You often come across these knee-jerk efforts to emphasize individual uniqueness, but at the same time, even in recently-created spaces where you’re supposedly “free to break taboos,” if you deviate from the norm in certain ways— especially politically—  it can be a major scandal.

EM: To pivot back to the book, I’m also very interested in what it means to write about all these complicated communal dynamics from an external position. Obviously, you're a Jew writing about a Jewish topic, but on an individual level as a non-Persian, what did it feel like to be throwing yourself into studying a culture and people that are “different” from your own? What are the things that you needed to first acquaint yourself with before you felt, “Okay, I understand what I’m working with here” ?

LS: I think my prep work really began before I worked on this book, because I had already asked myself what I needed to have in my toolbox in order to study Iran as an Ashkenazi Israeli: I needed to know about the language, to get a firm understanding of modern Iranian history, of society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of Iranian politics to some extent, of Iranian culture to understand the role of poetry and literature, and intellectual threads in society.

Then, when I started to study Iranian Jews— and this is another point that I hope I make in the book— I came to see that there is a difference between the genre of Jewish Studies written by scholars of Jewish Studies, and Jewish Studies written by scholars of the Middle East. Historians who come from a Jewish Studies background tend to look at a Jewish community and find its connection with other Jews before they look for connections between that community and its immediate surroundings. They will find what connects Jews in Iran with Jews in Iraq and Egypt, but they will find it very difficult to connect Tehran’s mahaleh with the rest of the poor community in the southern part of the city, or life at the University of Tehran, or the bazaar. And for me, those things are too important to miss; Iranian Jews spent much more time thinking about the bazaar than they did about Jews in Egypt. 

Their immediate notions of belonging and identity, their immediate memories go back to spending time in their synagogue in Tehran, or their Muslim neighbor who brought them flour after the end of Passover. It goes back to the fear they felt in walking through the bazaar on certain days. The hopes, the fears, the attachments— everything goes back to the neighborhood, not to this idea of a cosmic Jewish connection. 

SL: I don’t think I’ve heard it said before that fear itself is a part of belonging and memory. We think of fear as a repellent, but it’s part of what connects you to a place, too. That feeling is a memory you return to, something that roots you in the neighborhood you grew up in, even if you’re glad you left.

This conversation has also made me wonder about who your readership is. As someone who studies Middle-Eastern Jewry, I’ve noticed that there tends to be a gulf between texts about Mizrahi communities and Mizrahi audiences themselves as readers. I want to ask if you’ve noticed that gulf after publishing your book, but also, in instances when it has reached audiences of Iranian Jews, how was it received?

LS: When I wrote the book, I intentionally avoided using jargon so it could reach a non-academic audience. And I think it did. The responses that I get are always very emotional, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative. Sometimes, when I give talks, the number of people who contact me after they attend is just incredible. I think it comes through to people that I’m really, genuinely interested in listening to their personal stories, because I talk about the dismantling of meta-narratives. Because I insist that there is no one narrative that fits everyone.

Of course, some people hate me to the bone, but it’s because this topic is emotional for them, and I understand that too. I’ve gotten furious emails saying things like, “Jews did not participate in the revolution whatsoever.” And to those people I say, “You didn’t go to demonstrations? That’s okay. I’m not saying every single Jew went. Everyone had different reasons to be in the streets— some wanted to be with their friends, some wanted to overthrow the Shah, some were afraid of what could happen the next day if they were not seen showing their support for the Revolution, and some went because they were curious— and many, many people did not. I am just trying to give a wider range of voices and narratives a space when I analyze this history.”

But I understand that every response to my book comes from a very deep place— one that I really respect— of personal attachment to this history, a deep sentiment of engagement with Iranian Jewish life. I don’t know if I could have anticipated this level of interaction with my book, and it’s gratifying. Even when I speak with those who don’t agree with what I’ve written, I am grateful to them for having taken the time to reach out to me. 

SL: To put your book in a larger context, there is an emergent canon or movement of revisionist Middle-Eastern Jewish history that is currently taking place between the US and Israel, which has often entailed a predominance of Arab narratives / history, in part because most Mizrahim in Israel are of Arab origin. Discussions tend to concern the issue of Arabness and how Arabic-speaking communities see themselves after experiencing negative cultural stigmas, as well as material oppression, in Israel. 

It’s always really interesting for me to read the work of scholars like Ella Shohat as an Iranian Jew, because I am not Arab, but her work on the subject of Mizrahi self-perception and Arabness still resonates with a lot of the thoughts and feelings I have about my community and its politics. Where do you think Iranian Jews fit into conversations about Arabness?

LS: I think this brings us to the category of “Mizrahi.” A lot of Israeli Mizrahim had a hard time coming to terms with their Arabness. Still today, the overwhelming majority of them find it hard to define themselves as Arabs, but Iranian Jews were generally much more at peace with their Iranian or Persian identities. In its formative years, Israel was never at war with Iran; Iran wasn't regarded as an arch-nemesis that aspired to erase Israel the way its other neighbors did. 

The existence of a relationship between Israel and Iran allowed for a kind of normalized movement back and forth that Jews from Arab countries couldn’t experience. They couldn't go to visit their homes or their family members (if any were left behind), but Iranian Jews could until 1979, and many of them did. For Iranian Jews— and this is something you see both in America and Israel— the language, Persian, is very much alive in almost every generation. Two or three generations have been born outside of Iran by now, but Persian is not as foreign to younger people. There are very few Mizrahi Jews of Arab origin that feel as comfortable with Arabic.

Contrary to media portrayals, Iran for Persian Jews in Israel wasn’t something that was “beyond the mountains of darkness;” it existed in their everyday lives. So, in that sense, for a long time they were able to coexist with their Iranian identities in ways that Jews from other countries could not. Only now are the third or fourth-generation Mizrahim from Arab countries in Israel discovering their Arab roots. But for them, there’s almost no way to bridge over four generations of denial and distance, in terms of heritage and cultural orientation that has been lost. 

SL: It’s actually pretty perspective-shifting to hear you talk about Iranian Jews being “at peace with their Iranian identity.” When Evan and I talk about where our community is headed and the way that any attachment to Iran— geographically, culturally, linguistically— is ebbing away over time, we tend to feel pretty pessimistic about it… [laughs] but you’re making me realize it’s important to contextualize where our generation of Persian Jews is relative to other young Mizrahim, especially those in Israel. I don’t really think about it in comparative terms that often, but you’re right; relatively, we are a lot more attached to our families’ language and more proximate to their memories.

Maybe it’s like a slingshot— the further away you were pulled from that past, the more swiftly you shoot back toward it. Iranian Jews weren’t pulled away as long ago or as forcefully, and maybe that’s why our effort to reconnect hasn’t been as strong or as radical as that of Arab Mizrahim in Israel.

EM: This also plays into a conversation Sophie and I often have about self-orientalization. Because there wasn’t as strong of a “pull” for Iranian Jews, you could say, the amount of effort that goes into looking back is often weaker, more superficial. And I think some self-orientalizing tendencies exist with young Mizrahim in Israel too, but that feels to me less as a result of little care and more as a result of legitimate four-generation gaps and repression. 

LS: It’s interesting you say “little care,” because I’m not sure if that’s it…

SL: I agree with Lior. I don’t think self-orientalization has to do with “care,” per se. I think people actually (and sometimes understandably) don’t know what the mechanics of deeper critical engagement and reconnection entail. When you grow up in the US, your exposure to the idea of “cultural reclamation” is often very orientalizing and superficial across the board; the TV show Tehran is the first example you're seeing of people talking about your culture publicly.

LS: And I get why that excites people. I personally have my own reservations… but I understand why it’s exciting to see that when you feel distanced from your community’s history.

SL: Speaking of distance, I feel like recent events haven’t helped much. The Trump era has technically come to a close now, but I have to say— even being very familiar with my community’s conservative politics, it was sometimes surprising to see how fervently invested Iranian Jews became in the whole paradigm of Trumpian conservatism. People have only rooted themselves more defensively in a constructed sense of patriotic American identity. Being a scholar of the multifaceted political history of Iranian Jews, what do you make of their response to the recent ideological climate in the US?

LS: That all has a lot to do with the trauma of leaving Iran in the midst of a revolution that turned out to end in a way that people didn’t expect. Think about how much the Iranian Jewish community had to process when they came to LA. They had to process the loss of everything they knew, not just materially but culturally, spiritually, linguistically— and then they came to the US when the 24-hour news cycle was obsessed with the hostage crisis. The only thing Americans knew about Iranians was that they were the bad guys from the embassy in Tehran. 

People adopted American patriotism and Zionism as safe cards. They'd rather be known as Zionists— even if they had never set foot in Israel or never planned on living there— than be associated with Iran. And they separated their secular Persian identity, their Persian nationalism. from post-revolutionary Iran as an Islamic state.

Trump’s era intensified what was already there; it combined the addictive elements of Zionism and American nationalism together. And that’s why some of the people waving pre-revolutionary Iranian flags at the Capitol on Jan 6 were Jewish. 

SL: That’s awful, but sadly, it doesn’t surprise me. I recently heard some older members of the community casually celebrating right-wing Evangelical Zionism. They saw it as a bit strange, but laughed it off and welcomed it as endearing; their attitude kind of amounted to— “Great, if Southern Baptists support Israel, we’ll take it!” There’s this feeling of: “Why dig beneath the surface if the status quo is good for us?”

I think many of the questions that you ask in your book— and that we’re working to address at Zaman— spark confusion and frustration because people think, “Well, things have been working for us so far. What is there to challenge?”

LS: —and therefore, we must challenge it! [Laughs]

EM: To wrap things up, tell us about what you’re working on now that the book has been published. What critical questions do you think are important to ask about Iranian Jews going forward? 

LS: I’m working on a project on the Iranian Jewish diaspora in Israel and the US, but this project is in its very early stages; I’m waiting for COVID to end so I can begin field work. In the meantime, Facebook has been a great resource for learning about the community’s political opinions!

I don’t really have a list of questions to count off; I think it’s important to just keep asking questions in general, small and big. About ways of life, modes of thinking, about intellectual streams in the community. Every time I write about Iranian Jews, I try to imagine Friday night in the synagogue. What were people talking about? Not just in prayer, but when they gathered after it. What was the topic of their conversation? When they read the newspapers, what did they think? We know what they read, but we have to go beyond that and concern ourselves with what’s between the lines. What came to their minds as they read this book or heard that story? What did all that material mean to them on a deeper level?

These are the questions I encourage people to ask in the Iranian context, but beyond that, too. To think about rabbinic leadership and political leadership, but also about daily life. To form as multilayered an image of every community as we can. 

Lior Sternfeld is an assistant professor of history and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is a social historian of the modern Middle East with particular interests in the histories of the Jewish people and other minorities of the region.