By Emily Kohanbash
The history of the Jews in Iran dates back to late biblical times and Jewish life in Persia, particularly in the book of Ezra, which credited the Persian kings with allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. However, not all kings were kind to the Jews. For example, Nebuchadnezzar exiled the Jews to Babylon on three separate occasions which are mentioned in Jeremiah 52:28-30. The oppression did not end there, as between the years of 634-1255 CE, which was the time of the Islamic conquest of Persia, the Jews were under a lot of pressure by the Sassanid rulers, and therefore some Jews welcomed the Arab armies with open arms. As time progressed, and the Mongols came to power, things got even better for the Jews, as they believed all religions should be equal, allowing Jews to hold administrative office. Unfortunately this period of excellence did not last when Ghazan Khan converted to Islam, and then tried to force many Jews to convert to Islam. From then on the animosity towards Jews started to decrease until the Iranian revolution in 1979, which saw many Iranian Jews being tried and executed in court for various reasons. This eventually led to the Jews having to migrate to places like North America and Israel.
With that being said, there are certain diseases that occur more often in a certain cultural or ethnic group than within the general population they live within.Specifically, with regards to Jewish people, due to their previous isolation from other populations, there are some diseases which are found more frequently within Persian/Iranian Jews such as inclusion body myopathy.
As previously stated, the Persian Jews have remained isolated and highly inbred for over 2400 years, that is until 1979 when the Islamic Revolution occurred and caused mass migration to North America and Israel. Therefore it is not surprising that certain recessive transmitted disorders were identified more frequently within this subgroup than any other subgroup within the Jewish population. To estimate the percentages at which these specific diseases are found in Persian Jews, a study with 1,000 individuals was conducted to test for four specific conditions: BCHE deficiency, CMOII deficiency, Multiple Hormone Deficiency, and Hereditary Muscle Disorder. The reason these four diseases were selected was because they were reported as the highest frequency within the Persian Jewish community migrating to Israel. The findings were shocking. Overall, 288 of the individuals were found to be heterozygous for at least one of four of the diseases, 10 were found to be homozygotes, and another 10 were potentially at risk to develop a disease. Since Jews have migrated from all around the globe, investigators have attempted to categorize the origin and relatedness of Jews throughout the diaspora and in Israel. However, because very few polymorphic markers were available at first, the early studies focused on specific distances. Thankfully, in recent years, population genetics has been enhanced by the identification of millions of polymorphic markers that reside in close proximity to one another. We can use these polymorphic markers to expand our knowledge of Jewish history. For example, there were two earlier studies that discovered how genetically, Jewish populations were more similar to each other than to non-Jewish populations. However, these studies had different conclusions about the extent of mixing with local populations. Therefore, to gain a better understanding of the relatedness of contemporary Jewish groups, subsequent studies analyzed the Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA haplotypes, which provided evidence for shared genetic ancestries among major Jewish diaspora groups, along with variations in mixing with local populations.
Although Jews have come from everywhere around the world, and therefore possess many differences, we should not look at each other as unconnected. In the end, we are all Jews tied through the same creed. As it says in Pirkei Avot, “feel your friend’s pain,” which teaches us to care about another Jew and that we should be more inclusive instead of exclusive. If all of us come together to do that, we may merit the holy Mashiach (redemption) to come.