Where God Was Born

by Bruce Feiler

  “Safety is a big problem in Iran no matter who you are,” he said. “I am sure that if a major earthquake came, 50 percent of the buildings in this country would collapse. But I live here, I deal with it.”

  “Wait. You’re saying that being Jewish in Iran is like living on a geological fault—you just have to live with the fear?”

  “I have been to many countries across Europe, and the fear there is greater than here. In Sweden they told men not to wear kippahs. Here we wear black kippahs on the streets. Every country has its advantages.”

  Iranian Jews are so eager to prove that their plight is no worse than that of other Jews in the world, he explained, that when expat Iranians in Los Angeles began sending back videos of their lavish weddings, their relatives in the homeland started aping them. The custom of fathers walking their daughters down the aisle, unknown among Iranian Jews, is now widely used, as is the fashion of brides wearing their hair swept up in buns. Bat Mitzvahs, in which thirteen-year-old girls read the Torah as boys have done for generations, are also now popular. “We are not Third World Jews,” Yesha‘ya told me.

  The time had come for me to address the congregation. Yesha‘ya introduced me and served as translator. For the first time all night, the room was silent. I began by saying that my family had lived for 150 years as Jews in America, and that recently I had been married in my childhood synagogue. I introduced Linda. I mentioned my years of visiting biblical sites and said that I had come here because Iran had been the savior of the Jews since the time of Cyrus. “For that reason, American Jews are very grateful to Iranian Jews,” I said. “We will never forget you. And even though I have been here for only a brief time, I already feel at home.” There was some murmuring, followed by applause.

  As I sat down, my heart was throbbing. For most of my life, I had gone out of my way to avoid talking about being Jewish. In Iraq, I had actively concealed my identity. Here, having come to the country convinced that the religious police would trail us, I stood in front of a roomful of Jews and openly proclaimed my Jewishness. This tiny gesture felt like an affirmation, a stroke of confidence against the cowering so common for Jews in this part of the world. And doing so in front of people for whom anxiety is a daily reality made me appreciate the gift of religious tolerance first proffered by this land. It also made me grateful for the sacrifices these particular Jews made to maintain a presence large enough to protect such proclamations—mine, and especially theirs.

  And finally I learned that small gestures do have unexpected consequences. As we were leaving the synagogue, Linda told me that the murmuring that followed my remarks had nothing to do with my attempted eloquence and everything to do with the fact that I had introduced her. “All the women were talking about it,” she said. “They were very impressed. They said, ‘We wish our husbands would do the same!’ ”

  Located three hundred miles south of Tehran, Esfahan is Iran’s third-largest city and certainly its most beautiful. Shah Abbas the Great made this trading outpost his capital in 1598 and transformed it into one of the most exquisite cities in the Muslim world, the rival of Kyoto or Florence, with gardens, bridges, tree-lined boulevards, and a resplendent skyline of cobalt blue tiles. By 1660 Esfahan had 162 mosques, 1,802 caravansaries, 48 colleges, and 273 baths to serve a population of 600,000, the size of London at the time.

  Like many places in Iran, Esfahan has a checkered history of interreligious relations, with periods of openness followed by long stretches of bloody rivalries. In the early seventeenth century, Shah Abbas imported large numbers of Armenian Christians and gave them virtual autonomy on the south bank of the Zayandeh River, where they thrived for over a century. A spectacular cathedral still stands there today.

  The Jewish presence in Esfahan dates back earlier, perhaps even before the Exile. Some reports claim that after Assyria overran the kingdom of Israel in the eighth century B.C.E., a number of Israelites were deported to as far away as here. Jews almost definitely settled in Esfahan following Nebuchadnezzar II’s conquest of Babylon. Later, during the Sassanian dynasty in the fifth century C.E., a Jewish ghetto was established to the north of town. And recently, Esfahan and nearby Shiraz became the epicenter of an international uproar about the fate of Jews in the Muslim world.

  In early 1999, thirteen Jews in Shiraz and Esfahan were arrested by Iranian authorities. The jailed included a rabbi, a kosher butcher, several Hebrew teachers, merchants, and a sixteen-year-old boy. While the Shiraz Thirteen, as they came to be called, were not charged for more than a year, the government accused them of spying for “the Zionist regime” and “world arrogance”—code words for supporting the State of Israel. The defendants went on trial on May 1, 2000. They were forbidden from hiring their own lawyers, and the court was closed to observers, including families and human rights groups. The prosecution said nine of the thirteen confessed to espionage. A tenth defendant was also convicted, while three, including the boy, were acquitted. Sentences ranged from four to thirteen years in prison.

  The case of the Shiraz Thirteen inflamed emotions. Across Iran, Jewish homes were vandalized and schoolchildren were harassed. “The trial has created problems for the whole Jewish community,” Yesha‘ya said, noting that several shops were attacked and one was set on fire. Iranian expatriates in the United States and elsewhere brought enormous pressure on the Iranian government, which many believed contributed to a lessening of the sentences. In February 2003, the last five prisoners were released.

  Before coming to Esfahan, I asked about meeting some of the convicted spies but was told by their advocates in Los Angeles and Tehran that they would not speak. Yesha‘ya did introduce me to the head of Esfahan’s Jewish community, Mah Gerefteh, a soft-spoken businessman who gave us a tour of the largest of the city’s thirteen synagogues. The room was compact, and we were asked to remove our shoes, as in a mosque. The architecture was similar to that of the synagogue in Tehran, with a central platform and plain seating. The Torah scrolls in the Ark were kept inside rigid cylindrical containers, called tiqs, a common practice in the Middle East. Also as in Tehran, the road outside the synagogue had been named Palestine, and I asked Mr. Gerefteh if the name was trying to send a signal. “Since the revolution, this has been the trend,” he said.

  Mr. Gerefteh was clearly circumspect in our conversation and refused to acknowledge that life was harsh for Jews in central Iran. Kosher food was a little difficult to come by, he noted; otherwise life was pretty much as it was before the revolution. “But many Iranian Jews who have left the country say conditions here are very difficult,” I said. He countered: “It’s best for them to have a little trip to Iran and see for themselves.”

  “But what about the Jews from Esfahan and Shiraz who were sent to prison?”

  “Now they are all out,” he said. “In fact, one of them is upstairs. Would you like to meet him?”

  My heart leapt. “Here?” I said. He nodded and without hesitation led us up a dark set of stairs to a small classroom on the second floor. My hands were trembling. A handful of men in their twenties were sitting at miniature desks studying pages of the Talmud. The instructor was seated at the front of the room. Mr. Gerefteh indicated he was one of the Shiraz Thirteen. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, short, healthily plump, with a trim beard and kippah. The man shook my hand but was clearly reluctant to talk and kept his back toward me. He was a textile merchant during the day and a Hebrew instructor at night, he said, and on this night they were studying rituals before prayers. He was curious if I was Jewish.

  “Do you know why you were arrested?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to answer that,” he said.

  “Will you tell me how long you were in prison?”

  He thought for a second. “Four years. But I don’t really want to talk about those things. It’s something that happened. It’s over and done with.”

  “But there are many people in America and around the world who prayed for you,” I said. “What would you like to say t
o all those people who worked hard for your release?”

  For the first time he turned his body toward me, and his face flushed with emotion. “I would like to thank them for all their efforts,” he said.

  “Some people in your position would have turned their back on their religion,” I said. “Did you ever want to leave Judaism?”

  “Just the opposite. It actually made me more anxious to be Jewish. I became more into my faith than before.”

  “More?”

  “Look, I made a mistake,” he said, “and got what I deserved. And I learned the meaning of what I heard from God. I know now that if I do something wrong, I will pay the consequences.”

  His language startled me. None of the accounts of the trial I had read gave me the impression that there might be some truth behind the charges. Now this man, who introduced himself only with the Hebrew name Binyomin, seemed to drop that hint. His words could easily have been a sort of semiconfession he had honed in prison to get himself out of danger and preserve his life. They could have been a deft expression of piousness designed to appease the religious police. But something about his tone told me that this allegory of Iran was far more complicated than I could easily untangle.

  Either way, one thing I knew for sure: The lesson he wanted me to take from his experience was that religious freedom is fragile and I should renew my devotion to my own faith.

  “I think you should stop being a Reform Jew,” he said, “and start being an Orthodox Jew, the way you were supposed to be.”

  “Why?” I said. “I think I’m a very good Jew. I write books about faith. I talk about Judaism. I married a Jew.”

  “Being a good writer is fine,” he said, “but being a good Jew would be better.”

  The last stop of our trip was Hamadan, the summer capital of the Achaemenid empire two hundred miles northwest of Esfahan. Located in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, in the plateau that divides Iraq and Iran, Hamadan became a Persian stronghold under Cyrus the Great. But because of its prime location on the Indo-European highway, Hamadan later became one of the first Persian cities battered by foreign leaders, from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan. It’s also long been home to one of the larger Jewish communities in Persia, in part because of its identification with one of the most beloved—and reviled—stories in the Hebrew Bible.

  The Book of Esther appears near the close of the Hebrew Bible and is part of the third major section of biblical texts, the Writings, which includes Psalms and Proverbs. Jews refer to the book as the megillah, or scroll, of Esther, and celebrate its story as part of the springtime festival of Purim. Esther tells the story of the salvation of Persia’s Jewish community and may be the greatest endorsement of the idea of Jews living in diaspora to appear in the Bible.

  The story opens at a lavish party thrown by King Ahasuerus of Persia in Susa, the winter capital of the Achaemenids, not far from Hamadan. Ahasuerus asks his wife, Vashti, to dress up so he can show her off, but she refuses and Ahasuerus banishes her from his presence and strips her of her title. Among the “beautiful young virgins” brought to the palace as possible replacements is Esther, or Hadassah in Hebrew, the cousin and adopted daughter of Mordecai the Jew. At Mordecai’s advice, Esther does not reveal her Jewishness to the king. After a yearlong tryout, with all the prospective queens living in one house in the manner of a modern reality television show, Esther is chosen.

  Mordecai, who seems to be a member of the king’s court, soon uncovers a plot to kill the king, and Esther informs her husband. Mordecai’s service is recorded, but the king is not told who saved his life. For unspecified reasons, Mordecai then refuses to bow down to the new prime minister, Haman, who retaliates by saying he will have all the Jews in Persia killed. Haman tells Ahasuerus that a certain people in the kingdom, who refuse to obey the king’s laws, threaten his reign and should be destroyed. Ahasuerus agrees (though he doesn’t know the order refers to Jews) and sends out postal couriers to spread word of the genocide to be held eleven months later, on the thirteenth of Adar.

  Mordecai pleads with Esther to intervene. After initially refusing, she invites the king and Haman to a private party. Haman is flattered by the attention and, feeling cocky, decides to build a special stake to impale Mordecai. That night the king cannot sleep and decides to look through his records, where he discovers that Mordecai saved his life. “How should a devoted subject be honored?” the king asks Haman. Thinking the king must be referring to himself, Haman says, “Ride him through town on special steeds.” Haman is then asked to lead Mordecai on such a journey.

  The next night Esther again invites the king and Haman to a private party, where she reveals her identity to the king and begs for the life of her people. Horrified by the realization that he ordered the killing of the Jews, Ahasuerus sentences Haman to be impaled on the stake he built for Mordecai. Mordecai is elevated to prime minister and is invited to issue a new edict in the king’s name, delivered again by postal couriers. Unable to overturn the irrevocable command, Mordecai orders the Jews to defend themselves from attack and massacre any people who assault them, including women and children.

  When the thirteenth of Adar arrives, the Jews fight back, slaying more than 500 people in Susa. The king asks Esther what else she would like. If it please Your Majesty, Esther replies, please allow the Jews to kill for a second day. By the time the fighting ends, the Jews have slain more than 75,000 people. Mordecai orders Jews to celebrate a festival of Purim, from the word pur, the lot that Haman cast to determine the date for the genocide. The festival, on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar, is regarded as a period of deliverance, a second Exodus, and is observed around the world with feasting, joy, and elaborate costumes children wear while acting out the story.

  So is the Book of Esther an allegory, too, or is it based on historical events in ancient Persia?

  We arrived in Hamadan, a city that today holds more than a million people. At an altitude higher than a mile, Hamadan was dramatically colder than Esfahan. As a medieval Arab poet wrote, “Even the heat of the fire becomes frozen in Hamadan / And the cold there is a chronic evil.” The modern city is built around a giant circular plaza named after Ayatollah Khomeini, with six streets radiating out from it like sun rays. Just off one of those streets, in an alley dedicated to electronic products, is a mausoleum said to house the tombs of Esther and Mordecai.

  The squat, square shrine is medieval in origin, lined with brick, and topped with a small domed tower that looks like a wasps’ nest. The shrine is surrounded by an overgrown garden. The locked metal gate was opened by a Dickensian figure, a gaunt, bug-eyed man in a brown suit and white, prickly stubble. He didn’t request an entrance fee but asked in simple English if I would give him a pen. I brightened. “I have the perfect one!” I said, and pulled out a pen I had been given that was emblazoned with the logo of the Jewish Federation of Kansas City. He took it, snapped it open and closed a few times, then unscrewed it to see how much ink was in the cartridge. Then he handed it back to me. “Mister, do you have a Parker?” he said.

  “A Parker?” I exclaimed. “I haven’t had one of those since receiving ten for my Bar Mitzvah.”

  He seemed dejected and reclaimed the inferior model from my hand.

  Moving toward the shrine, we took off our shoes and passed through a stone doorway so low I had to duck my head. Inside were two rooms lined with Persian carpets. The first was a chapel, large enough for about twenty people, decorated with the names of local Jews, a sign that said “Love your neighbor” in Persian, and a verse from Psalm 42, “Like a hind crying for water, / my soul cries for you, O God.” Down several stairs, in an arched room directly under the dome, were two dark wooden cenotaphs. The left is labeled Mordecai, the right Esther. The graves themselves are said to be under the earth. Are they real?

  In part because the Book of Esther contains no sea-splitting miracles or supernatural foliage, the story seems believable enough. Many Bible commentaries observe that Ahasuerus is
likely the Hebraicized version of King Xerxes, the Achaemenid leader who ruled from 486 to 465 B.C.E. But fundamental problems in the story call into question its status as a historical annal. Mordecai is identified as having been sent into exile by Nebuchadnezzar, an event that took place over a century before Xerxes assumed power. Esther is even less likely to have been Xerxes’ wife, because his only known wife, Amestris, continued in her role well beyond his third year as king (the date the text suggests Vashti was deposed).

  Whatever its origin, the story shows deep familiarity with the Persian court, which suggests it emerged out of the eastern Jewish diaspora in the late first millennium B.C.E. The opening sentence of Esther says Ahasuerus reigned over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia, which is more than the twenty-three countries represented on the staircase at Persepolis but still reflects the range of the Pax Persica. The real Persian king may not have had parties that lasted 180 days, as the text suggests, but the eating, drinking, and court activities reflect reality. Even the names—Esther, which is likely derived from that of the Babylonian god Ishtar; and Mordecai, derived from that of the Babylonian God Marduk—seem to reflect Jewish life outside the land of Israel. The Book of Esther represents the high point of Persian influence on the Hebrew Bible and is additional testimony to the diverse range of cultures—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Philistine, Babylonian—that echo in the foundation text for Western faith.

  While the connection between Esther and Persia is profound, the connection between Esther and Hamadan is not. An inscription in the shrine, believed to date from its construction in the Middle Ages, suggests it was built in honor of Elias and Samuel, sons of Ismail Karlan. That suggests the building was later converted to its present function. However it came to be associated with Esther and Mordecai, the mausoleum eventually became an icon for Iranian Jews and the site of an annual three-day fast in honor of Purim. In 1950 Hamadan had a Jewish population of sixty thousand. Today, the gatekeeper said, the number was twenty-eight. I asked him the reasons for the decline.