Jews of Iran

Presented by the Leo M. Franklin Archives

The Jews of Iran: From the 20th Century to Modern Times

Mary Einstein Shapero Memorial Lecture

Sunday, June 14

4:00 PM

Take a 100-year journey with the Jews of Iran. Professor Lior B. Sternfeld will take us through their history, from the margins of society to the core of the nation building project in the 1970s. He will explore the ways in which Iranian Jews fared through the revolution and their struggles during the Islamic Republic. Then, Sternfeld will help us understand better the role the Jewish community played in the relationship between Iran and Israel and their experience in the post-1979 diaspora.

Lior Sternfeld is an associate professor of history and Jewish Studies. He is a social historian of the modern Middle East with particular interests in the histories of the Jewish people and other minorities of the region. Sternfeld’s first book, titled Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2018), examines, against the backdrop of Iranian nationalism, Zionism, and constitutionalism, the development and integration of Jewish communities in Iran into the nation-building projects of the last century.

In 2022, Sternfeld co-authored with Hassan Sarbakhshian and Parvaneh Vahidmanesh Jews of Iran: A Photographic Chronicle (Penn State University Press, 2022), and together with Honaida Ghanim and Tamir Sorek, they established the journal Palestine/Israel Review, where he serves as the Associate Editor.

Sternfeld is currently working on two book projects: “The Origins of Third Worldism in the Middle East” and a new study of the Iranian-Jewish Diaspora in the U.S. and Israel. He regularly teaches courses on the modern Middle East, Iran, the region’s Jewish histories, and Israel-Palestine-related topics.

Due to the generosity of The Honorable Judge Walter Shapero and Kathleen Straus, this program is free and open to the community.

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