On Purim, we celebrate the salvation of Jews from the attempt to destroy them in Persia. However, there are many modern Persian Jews who also have remarkable stories of survival and perseverance. Rabbi Aron White sat down with Nissim Bassalian to hear about the remarkable story of the Mashadi community.
Thank you for speaking with us. Could you start by telling us about your own background?
My name is Nissim Bassalian, and I was born in Mashad in Northeast Iran in 1940. I lived in Mashad and then Tehran after Mashad became dangerous, and moved to the United States in 1977, a few years before the revolution in Iran.
How did the Jews end up in Mashad?
We came from Bavel, at the time of Koresh. Part of the Jewish people came to Iran, to the northern cities. There was a king called Nader Shah, a very strong king who attacked India. He asked to bring Jews from Gazvin and the north because he trusted the Jews. They came to Mashad in the beginning of the 1700s. When the king was killed, they stayed in Mashad. They stayed together like in a ghetto – eidgah, like eid, a place to meet. They felt safer being there together. The Muslims in Mashad were not very friendly – they were very religious and wanted everyone to convert to Islam.
In 1839, they were looking for an excuse to attack the ghetto, the Jewish quarter. They accused us of a blood libel, saying we killed a boy, and attacked our houses three days before Pesach. Some people say they killed 28 or 36 people. They gave the community two choices – either they would kill all of us, or we would convert to Islam and they would leave us alive. We asked for 24 hours to decide, and the community discussed it. The community decided that they would tell the Muslims they would convert to Islam, but it would be a show and they would keep Judaism in private. The women said they would make it work. This was a new group of Anusim, like in Spain, and when you think about it, it’s really difficult to do. How do you teach the children in private, how do you make sure we don’t work on Shabbat, Yom Kippur, and that we won’t eat bread on Pesach?
They were the new Muslims, the new jadidol-eslam. The Muslims were so happy that the 300–400 families had converted. It was very difficult for the Mashadi Jews to keep their Judaism. They had to show they didn’t keep Shabbat and moadim, but kept them in private. Because they were living in a ghetto, all the houses were connected – they had small doors connecting the houses. They did shechita in one house and brought the meat to another; on Pesach they prepared matzah in one house. On Shabbat, they would put a boy in the shop, and when a customer came, the boy would say his father went out and was coming back.
Marriage was important – they said they were naming their children’s spouses from when they were 2 years old, deciding who they would marry as a way of ensuring marriages stayed within the community. It was very difficult – Imam Jomeih was the chief Imam, and they took two of the Jewish girls for him. After many years, they came back to the community. They didn’t have any children with him; they did everything they could to keep true to their faith even in such difficult circumstances.
They were very careful about what to tell the children because the authorities would ask them questions like, “What did you eat yesterday?” They would buy the non-kosher meat and throw it away, while getting their own meat inside. They would buy bread and throw it away, but they managed to survive.
There were also some Jews who left Mashad then and went to Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, forming Mashadi communities there.
When you were born, was it still like this?
I was born 101 years after the events of 1839, what we refer to as allah dayied – “G-d decided it.” When I was born, Iran was already ruled by the Pahlavi dynasty, so things were a little more relaxed – we still had to be very private about our Jewish life in Mashad, but by this point many Muslims realized that we had remained Jewish. The Shah was very good to minorities, so they couldn’t do as much to us.
However, in 1946 there was another attack on our houses during Pesach. They attacked us from outside, once again with a concocted blood libel. A relative of ours sent a carriage to bring us out, but we had to pass through the crowds, and I remember as a boy getting hit by rocks that they were throwing at us.
This was during the time of the Pahlavi Shah; they were kind to minorities, and the Shah sent troops to Mashad to stop it. During the Pahlavi era, our Judaism became a little more visible, not as hidden. The local Muslims in Mashad were angry that the Jews had fooled them for decades by secretly remaining Jewish.
After 1946, my family moved to Tehran as Mashad became too dangerous. In Tehran, the situation was different – there were Jewish schools like the French “Alliance” system, and for high school, I went to a Jewish Iraqi school set up by wealthy Jews who had fled Iraq. Meir Abdollah, a very wealthy Jew who fled from Iraq to Iran, built a big school and synagogue. I was planning to go to London to study at university, but my father passed away, and I had to remain to work to support the family. I got married in Tehran and had four children there. We had many synagogues. The Shah was very kind to minorities; we loved him. There was equality.
About this time the State of Israel was founded. What was the community’s relationship with Israel like?
Many of my aunts and cousins moved to Israel – from Mashad, there were Jews who had said they were going on Haj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, but actually went to live in Yerushalayim. We also would go visit every year. El Al had a daily flight from Tel Aviv to Tehran! It would leave Tel Aviv at 6:30am and fly back at 12pm. The only reason the flight took two-and-a-half hours is because they couldn’t fly over Saudi Arabia, so they had to fly over Turkey.
You moved to America in 1977, and two years later the revolution happened in Iran. What was that like for the community?
We were very worried. We are like one family – the marriages are mostly between cousins, with 95
% marrying within the community and 70% marrying cousins. So it wasn’t just knowing Jews were in danger; these were my aunts, my cousins – we are all family. Most came to America because they were sending their kids to study here – there were 150 to 200 students in America, and the students told their parents to come. And then more people came.
We are one big Mashadi family. We know everyone. In America, most communities are built around the synagogue, but we’re not just going to synagogue together. The synagogue doesn’t make us a community; we were one family before that. If anything happens to a Mashadi, we get the news within minutes. We know who got married to whom, and who passed away.
After the revolution, about 1,800 of the 2,000 Mashadis left Iran – some went to Israel, some to Europe (Hamburg, London, Milan), and some to America. Now we are mostly in New York, in Queens, and in 4 or 5 synagogues in Great Neck. We have about 10 young rabbis, and the community is very strong. There are probably more than 20,000 Mashadis, but in Israel they are not a defined community. In New York, we remained as a community that is together. In Tehran today there are maybe 10 Mashadi Jews, none in Mashad. In London there are 300–400, in Italy less than 1,000.
What is life like for Jews who remained in Iran?
The Jews who still live in Iran try to never get involved in politics. They live comfortably now – they have freedom for their religious practice, and kashrut is well-maintained there. The regime’s enmity with the State of Israel is politics, and the Jews try not to get involved in that. There is even a Jewish representative in the parliament of Iran, Sameach.
How does the Mashadi community maintain its connection to Israel?
We have a lot of relatives all over Israel; we take the community to Israel, we bring the children to Israel, trips to Israel. The children go to study in yeshiva and seminary; all my grandchildren came to Israel. My granddaughter got married in Israel in the middle of the war – we all came from America for a beautiful simcha. We can never forget that. We know that Israel is our country, a part of our religion. The highest reward for keeping the Torah is Eretz Yisrael. The worst punishment is getting kicked out of Israel; we have to go there. The miraculous things that happen in Israel are amazing. Our rabbis and teachers teach us, and they get involved to be attached to Israel; our relationship to Israel is the best.
What keeps the community going to the next generation?
We thought about that when we got to America. The Chassidim came from Europe, and many of them changed because America changes everything – the freedom here, the intermarriages. We wondered what would be in the next decade or two. We put in a special takana, that anybody who marries outside the Jewish community is out of the community and cannot come back. At the beginning, there was a lot of discussion and arguments about that, but they accepted it and we made the takana. Every year we read it in the synagogue, and it has helped a lot. There have been intermarriages, but only 3–4 in the five decades we’ve been here.
Our rabbi, Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Haim, said that the only way to survive is talmud Torah – if you don’t have proper Jewish study, it will not survive. Build Jewish schools, otherwise you cannot control everybody’s life. We have been successful in that. We have many synagogues, ten prayer services in the morning. Ninety percent of the attendees are young people; in Iran, it used to be only the old people coming.
We gave everything to the young generation – they handle the community, the chesed, the teaching. You give them the path, they have the talent, and they do it. It’s a great honor to have such a wonderful young generation with that energy, with tremendous respect for their elders and leaders. We have tens of speakers in the synagogues, and many teachers – ten young rabbis whom Rabbi Ben Haim taught and gave them semicha. We are building another school and another synagogue.
In this way, we hope that with G-d’s help we will be successful. If you have the kavana, the intention to do something good, then G-d helps. We are trying to tell the young generation before Pesach about what happened in 1839, what happened in 1946; otherwise, they won’t know their own story.
Looking back at those difficult times, like when they attacked us in 1946, everything that happened has led to good. What we have now is the reward for the sacrifice of our forefathers – they left everything, they accepted danger and death to have what we have today. This is their reward. This is their zechut.