Reza Aslan: belief

Transcript context

…How did Iranian Judaism turn out special and different? People might be surprised to learn that even today, right now, the second-largest Jewish community in the Middle East is in Iran. It’s not gigantic. It’s probably about 25,000 Jews, but they have been there for centuries. I think there are some historians that say you can go all the way back to the Babylonian exile. And now we have to go back into ancient history, but for people who remember, at a certain point, the Babylonians destroyed Israel and scattered the Jews across the Near East. Then, in the sixth century, Cyrus the Great, the first king of the Persian Empire, destroyed Babylon and sent the Jews back to their homeland with treasure in order to rebuild their temple. And so Judaism has always seen Cyrus — in fact, Cyrus is the only non-Jew in the Bible who was called Messiah — has always seen Cyrus in this elevated light, and many, many Jews stayed in the Persian Empire. The Jews in Iran will tell you, whether this is factually correct or not, that their presence in the land predates Islam, that they were there before there was any such thing as Islam. They’re deeply rooted in the culture and tradition there, though, as I say, it is a small community now, and definitely a diminishing community. Are you optimistic about modern-day Iran?…

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