When dominant groups craft language to their advantage, centralizing power and privilege in maintenance of the status quo, subordinate groups often work to decentralize and destabilize that same power and its associated privileges. In this context, minorities’ tactic of silence is no longer the absence of voice, but rather, an everyday form of resistance against the dominant group. However, this tactic can often backfire, making the minority group “complicit in [their] own marginalization.”Footnote 1 In Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran, Lior Sternfeld negotiates the complexity of Jewish belonging to the Iranian nation-state by bringing to the fore their integral role and contributions to potentially avoid such a quandary of complicit silencing that characterizes the approach of many minority communities.
Sternfeld's book offers a groundbreaking approach to Iranian and Middle Eastern historiography in which the significance and contributions of ethnic-religious minorities are taken into account as crucial for the understanding of the broader discourses around Iranian nationalism. Zionism came to Iran officially in 1917 following the Balfour Declaration. While Sternfeld focuses on the twentieth century mainly, he also examines earlier time periods briefly. He examines Iran's Jewish community as part of society at a historical juncture where Zionism was just emerging and the state of Israel was established. In this sense, Sternfeld's study contradicts prior studies of nationalism which overlook the integral role of religious or ethnic identities, and how this multiplicity of identities competed against a unified nationalist notion. In his own words, “By writing the story of Iran's Jewry more fully into the Iranian national narrative, this study contributes to a better understanding of Iran's unique social tapestry” (xii). This is exactly what he accomplishes in this book. Instead of focusing on Jewish minorities as a separate community, he examines them as part of the broader Iranian nation.
Between Iran and Zion consists of a preface, an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion, and a postscript. Chapter 1 examines Iran's changing demographics and the social consequences of these changes over the years before and after World War II. The political atmosphere brought fleeing Jews from Germany to Iran in addition to Iraqi and Polish Jewish migrants. Highlighting the visibility of this minoritized population, Sternfeld illustrates how these shifting demographics were one of the factors that forced Iran into a rapid urbanization process in Tehran and Isfahan, specifically, and created a new urban culture and middle class that in turn reshaped the political scene for years to come. Sternfeld argues that, “Due to these massive though largely temporary demographic changes, the Jewish community, while never considered a monolithic, homogenous community, grew more diverse than ever before” (18).
According to Sternfeld, these immigrants contributed to the formation of a new middle class as well as a Jewish identity that was contested by the larger society (18). In chapter 2, Sternfeld attends to the invasion of the Allied armies in 1941, the deposition of Reza Shah, and the entrance of Jews into the political and journalistic spheres in Iran. Reading pieces from periodicals such as Nissan, he investigates the Jewish support for Mosaddeq, the Tudeh Party's role in the early 1950s, the emergence of the state of Israel, and the importance of Jewish journalistic publications in contributing to Iran's sociopolitical environment (60). Sternfeld demonstrates how communism and Iranian nationalism aligned with the Jewish community's sociopolitical experience in Iran while the emergence of Zionism offered Iranian Jews an additional political alternative (63). In chapter 3, Sternfeld addresses the pivotal role of external forces in shaping Jewish identity between 1948 and the 1960s, which often strengthened their connection with their homeland. Chapter 4 examines the multilayered Jewish identity in the years leading to the 1979 Revolution, Jewish integration in Iranian society, their upward social mobility, and public visibility. According to Sternfeld, “In the immediate postrevolutionary period, some believed that the revolution had ceased to be ‘Iranian’ and become ‘Islamic’ instead. The spaces or positions minorities aspired to claim had to be found in the midst of postrevolutionary chaos, due to domestic tensions between competing factions and external concerns, such as the war taking place” (120). He delineates how in postrevolutionary Iran, the dilemma for Jews was their loyalty to Iran and their association with Zionism in the context of the broader Iranian consciousness. In his conclusion, Sternfeld posits, “It is rare in history that the interests of global superpowers, local political elites, and minority groups converge to serve all three communities equally. When one attempts to describe the moment of the Allied armies’ invasion in August 1941, however, this convergence of interests is the explanation that fits best” (122). This statement captures the significance of Sternfeld's study and the urgency of reading 2,700 years of Jewish history alongside oral traditions, autobiographies, and “microhistories”—one of the strongest qualities of this book. As Sternfeld claims, reading these personal accounts and “microhistories” provides us with a new narrative that refuses to package history into a linear and fabricated record. In the postscript, Sternfeld aptly states, “And so, since the mid-twentieth century, the Iranian Jewish diaspora has formed communities in Los Angeles, New York, London, Tel Aviv, and other major cities. And still, … the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel is in Iran. They choose to be there, and they choose to stay there, because Iran is their Homeland and Zion is their direction of prayers” (130). Overall I posit that, as the Jewish community has chosen Iran as their homeland for many centuries, it is about time that ethnic-religious minorities are incorporated as full citizens into the Iranian nation.
Between Iran and Zion is a welcome and much needed addition to the field of Iranian studies, particularly the study of Iranian nationalism and its minorities. It can be easily adopted in Middle East and Iranian studies syllabi, specifically in Jewish studies courses. It will be equally beneficial in history or cultural studies classes that cover various regions and countries in the world. Since the book also examines the networks of exchanges in the context of diaspora studies, immigration, minority studies, and transnationalism, it will be most beneficial in comparative diaspora courses.
