Jews and Education in Modern Iran: The "Threat of Assimilation" and Changing Educational Landscapes

Abstract: In the 1960s and 70s, several transnational Jewish organizations—the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Ozar Hatorah, and the Jewish Agency—expressed dire concern over the purported assimilation of Jews into Iranian society, claiming that it stemmed from their upward mobility and increasing enrollment in non-Jewish schools. Drawing on previously untapped archival documents, printed materials, and oral histories in Persian, French, Hebrew, and English, I argue that it was mainly foreign Jews, and not Iranian Jews themselves, who feared the specter of assimilation. In fact, Iranian Jewish parents viewed their children's attendance in non-Jewish schools as integral to their economic and social prosperity in a Muslim-majority country. Ultimately, because Iranian Jews were not as preoccupied with assimilation as their non-Iranian coreligionists, I suggest that an examination of assimilation in the Iranian context can help us complicate the importance of this concept in modern Jewish historical scholarship.