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By Jean-Michel Cadiot
TEHRAN, April 12 (AFP)-The Jews of Iran, 13 of whom face trial this week on charges of acts against state security, form a tightly-knit community of about 35,000 people, whose roots go back some 2,700 years. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution their number has fallen by more than half, for both political and economic reasons, with some 40,000 leaving mainly for the United States, western Europe and Israel. At the same time, their leaders say there has been an upsurge in religious fervor and interest in ancient culture and traditions. There are 56 working synagogues in the country, 24 of them in Tehran, which has the biggest concentration of Jews. The other two major centers are Shiraz in the south and Kermanshah in the west. Jews are represented across the professions here, but they tend to specialize in trade, business and crafts. The Jews are recognized as one of Iran's minorities, along with the Armenians, the Assyrian-Chaldeans and the Zoroastrians, and have their own member of parliament. The Rabi-Zadeh synagogue in Shiraz, which has room for more than 1,500 worshippers, has a saying of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Islamic Iran, written on its wall in large characters: "We respect the religious minorities who are part of our people, and Islam permits no one to oppress them." Nevertheless, although they enjoy freedom of worship, specialists say they sometimes run into problems when it comes to traveling abroad or entering the higher levels of the state administration. The signals are contradictory. Earlier this year the Jewish community in Shiraz was granted compensation of about $200,000 for the closure of a Jewish school there in 1960, under the shah. However, the last kosher restaurant in the town closed down in June when its owner died, although there is still a large abattoir to provide the community with specially slaughtered meat. Manushehr Eliasi, who represented the Jews in the last parliament but lost his seat in the February elections, said that members of his community were Iranians before being Jews. "We want to be integrated into Iranian society, we do not want to break away," he said. Iran houses two major Jewish tombs, that of Esther, wife of the king of Persia, who persuaded her husband not to exterminate the Jews, and that of the prophet Daniel, who survived the lions' den. Eliasi said the Jewish community and Ministry of Culture worked together to maintain the monuments. The Talmud (the primary text of the Jewish religion) was compiled in Iran.
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