₦airaland Forum

I didn't know until yesterday that Iran has one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world.

There's also a 100+ years old synagogue in Iran.

Enlightening

Iranian Jewish history traces back to the Babylonian exile...

brain54:
➜Iranian Jewish history traces back to the Babylonian exile...

There is a problem with a lot of the historical claims made regarding the Jews in Iran. Consider the excerpt taken from the following Wikipedia entry, for example.

Persian Jews have lived in the territories of today's Iran for over 2,700 years, since the first Jewish diaspora when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V conquered the (Northern) Kingdom of Israel (722 BCE) and took some of the Israelites into captivity at Khuzestan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iran

The inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which the Assyrian King eventually sacked, were not Jews. Yes, they were Israelites, but not all Israelites are Jews. The division that took place among the Israelites happened during the time after Solomon's death, when his son, Rehoboam, and another Israelite named Jeroboam, reigned over the divided Kingdoms. The Jewish sects of Israel are blood descendants of Judah and Benjamin, to whom the Southern Kingdom of Judah belonged — the Levites eventually joined this cast, given that they ultimately moved back to Jerusalem after the Northern Kingdom of Israel was sacked. The first sacking of the population of Judah came by way of the Babylonians around 585 BC.

If these people have lived in the land for a period going on 2700 years, as claimed, then they could not have been Jews but rather Israelites(maybe some from the Jewish clan). However, since they are referred to as Persian Jews, that leads me to wonder about the authenticity of the claims made as well as the real identity of those who claim to be Persian Jews.