"I have a lot of Muslim friends and they all knew I'd moved to Israel," he said. "They asked me, 'Why did you come back?'" His Jewish friends in Iran already knew the answer.
Despite the declaration last week by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel must be wiped off the map, the Shihab missiles displayed in Teheran with "Israel" painted on them, the broadcasting of anti-Semitic films on national television and the much-publicized trials of 13 Jewish Iranians on spy charges, Ishak insists that life in Iran is far better for Jews than life in Israel.
"If you have problems there, people help you - and they know you are Jewish," said Ishak, who has now briefly returned to Israel to sell his shop and leave for good. "But here, everyone is looking out for himself. You can't trust anybody."
Is it nostalgia? True? Or the interactions of a minority? I don’t know. I do know that when you are part of a minority, you get accustomed to a certain type of group behavior that is decidedly un-majority. I often wonder what happens to Iran’s Christians when they find themselves in majority Christian countries like America. Are they excited to be part of a big majority or do they retain the characteristics of a minority group. Any Armenians from Iran out there who want to respond?
1 comment:
Most Iranian Christians are Armenian, as you may know. They belong to a certain branch of the Orthodox Church. Their traditions are a lot different from the American version of Christianity. Most of them are gathered in certain places in California, and have formed minority communities. I am sure they are more comfortable with the new society than other Iranians (at least their Islamic names do not attract attention wherever they go), but still they form a minority group. After all, it is culture, traditions, and the language that define a minority, not the religion per se. The same applies to Asyrians, more or less.
Post a Comment