64 min listen
Lior Sternfeld, "Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran" (Stanford UP, 2019)
Lior Sternfeld, "Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran" (Stanford UP, 2019)
ratings:
Length:
49 minutes
Released:
Dec 3, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative.
Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself.
Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself.
Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Dec 3, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew” (Yale UP, 2009): I’ve got a name for you: Robert Zimmerman (aka Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham). You’ve heard of him. He was a Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota. But he didn’t (as the stereotype would suggest) become a doctor, lawyer, professor or businessman. Nope, by New Books in Jewish Studies