Mideast's largest Jewish population outside Israel finds new acceptance by officials

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• published: 03 Aug 2015
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Iran is home to the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel. For 3,000 years Jews have been living in Iran but tensions between Iran and Israel have in the past inflamed tensions. However, Iranian Jews celebrating pilgrimage say there is a greater acceptance from the new government of the moderate President Hassan Rouhani. This old synagogue in central Iran - built more than 100 years ago - is packed once a year with Iranian Jews, the biggest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel. Jewish families from various Iranian cities embark on a long pilgrimage to Yazd, 700 kilometres from Tehran, taking the bus or train to perform early morning prayers at Molla Aqa Baba Synagogue and pay tribute to the tomb of Harav Oursharga, a sacred rabbi. An old Torah is removed from a cupboard and a prayer leader recites lines to be repeated by the pilgrims. Pieces of cloth are draped over the book as a form of blessing and Jewish men carry it around the synagogue. The tallit and tefllin are all parts of annual rituals. After the prayer ceremony, Jewish families have breakfast together at the synagogue to celebrate their identity and to enjoy the greater freedoms granted to them under Iran's new moderate president Hassan Rouhani. Sanaz Toubian, is Jewish woman who has come the synagogue from Tehran with her mother. She makes this one-day trip to Yazd by train every year along with hundreds of other Jewish followers. "Here is one of the holy sites that receives one of the biggest numbers of pilgrims. Every year and on the anniversary of his death (Harav Oursharga, a sacred rabbi buried in Yazd), many Jews oblige themselves to come here, despite the difficulties of the trip, or lack of availability of enough buses or train tickets and lack of room for everyone. We perform our rituals here and offer our charities to help these sites too," Sanaz says. The group tour also provides an opportunity for Iran's nearly 20,000 Jews - the largest community in the Middle East outside Israel - to get to know each other and socialise. For decades in Iran, Jews have demanded their schools be closed on Saturdays, the Sabbath, to practice their religious duties but authorities had opposed the request. However, just weeks after Rouhani took office, the government agreed to allow Jewish schools to close on Saturdays. Rama Yousefzadeh, is a 12-year-old Jewish boy from the city of Shiraz that has historically housed a large Jewish population. He goes to the same school as Muslim students but the school, under a mandate by the Iranian Ministry of Education, has permitted him to take Saturdays off and is obliged to hold extra classes for him and other Jewish students to compensate for their absence. "At the school that I go to there are both Muslim and Jewish students but the (Iranian) Ministry of Education have allowed us to be off on Saturdays because based on the Jewish religious instructions, we must not work on Saturdays and should only rest," he says. Homayoun Samiah, is the leader of Tehran Jewish Association that caters to the needs of the community. After his election in 2013, Rouhani appointed Ali Yunesi, a cleric and a former intelligence minister as his Special Aide for Ethnic Groups and Religious Minorities. Samiah recalls a meeting he and representatives of other religious minorities had with Yunesi a short time after Rouhani took office to bring up their demands and seek action by the new administration. One of his main demands was allowing the Jewish students take Saturdays off. For the first time in decades, an Iranian president congratulated Rosh Hashana, the new Jewish year. This was seen by Jews as recognition of their standing by the government. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/9374b2b9f8429fb4c12788cfcb9af9dd Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork