Urmia is the second-largest city after Tabriz, the capital of the Azerbaijan region, with about 150 kilometers between them. High mountains, passable only on foot, separate the Tabriz plain from the beautiful Lake Urmia. As one approaches the lake, a pleasant road appears, with gardens, orchards, and vineyards on both sides, famous far and wide.
When I arrived in this fertile valley, the head of the community, Mirza Abdullah Khan, and about twenty community leaders came out to meet me. The title “Khan” had been given to the community leader because he was the physician of the Persian Crown Prince. As soon as they recognized the carriage in which I was traveling, they called out from a distance, “Welcome and peace be upon you.” I understood that they were my Jewish brethren. They hurried toward me, respectfully helped me down from the carriage, prepared breakfast for me in one of the gardens, and praised and blessed the Alliance Israélite Universelle, which extended a helping hand to them whenever they were in distress.
This took place on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. I invited the head of the community to sit with me in the carriage, while the young and old rode on horseback around us. We entered the city with ceremony and cheering, in order to increase our honor in the eyes of the inhabitants.
It is impossible to know the exact number of inhabitants of the city, which may be estimated at about thirty thousand: approximately two thousand Jews, two thousand Chaldeans, some Armenians, and the remainder Muslims. Throughout the broad valley around Lake Urmia there were about one hundred thousand people scattered among villages, including some thirty thousand Chaldeans who spoke Aramaic. The Chaldeans had formerly all belonged to the Nestorian church, but recently many had converted to the Greek religion through the activity of Russian missionaries.
Missionaries of various kinds had established schools and public institutions here, and the Russians had by then established thirty-six schools. From all this it appeared that religion occupied a major place in the lives of the inhabitants of this land. In honor of our brethren, I must say that they remained deeply and faithfully attached to the heritage of their ancestors and to the Jewish faith. Among all the Jewish children, not a single one was found attending the missionaries’ schools despite the many temptations and promises offered from every side. This is especially noteworthy when we recall that in other cities of Persia our teachers had to work very hard to save Jewish souls from the influence of missionary teachers.
Our brethren in Urmia did not live in a single Jewish quarter. There were more than two hundred Jewish homes, housing up to 350 families, scattered among four neighborhoods, each with its own synagogue. Although the Jewish neighborhoods were neglected and lacked beauty and cleanliness, they were nevertheless better than Jewish neighborhoods in other Persian cities, and it was evident that the Jews of Urmia cared about health and cleanliness. Jewish clothing varied: some wore long prayer garments, others a long robe folded at the back, and some dressed like Kurds. Women liked to adorn themselves with jewelry, gold ornaments, and precious stones, and some wore nose rings. Family life was generally not better than that of Jews in other cities of the kingdom. Girls married at twelve or thirteen, and there were even cases of girls marrying at eight. Very few men had more than one wife.
Yet it was remarkable that moral standards were preserved in great purity, and Jewish modesty was highly regarded in this place. Not long before, a poor Jewish woman worker had sinned by becoming involved with a Christian man, and the entire community rose as one to expel the wayward woman, who was forced to convert her religion.
The prevailing language throughout the region was Turkish, but the Jews spoke Aramaic among themselves, and many prayers were translated into Aramaic by the cantor-translator. The community had no chief rabbi; the two ritual slaughterers instructed the community in matters of religion and law, while the head of the community and several leading citizens handled public affairs.
There were few craftsmen in the community. A list of occupations included 15 goldsmiths; 80 merchants dealing in raw wool and woven goods in the markets; 3 butchers; 1 pharmacist; 20 manual workers; 50 merchants and laborers living in Tiflis or Erivan who supported their families remaining in Urmia; and 150 porters and peddlers traveling through the villages.
In addition, about twenty families earned their livelihood through daily labor, including widows who worked preparing raisins sent to Russia or folding raw tobacco leaves also shipped abroad. Thus it appears that there were no truly destitute people dependent on the community, apart from various travelers. In truth, however, the peddlers who traveled among the villages earned their bread at great cost and were exploited by those to whom they owed money. Sometimes they remained on the road for months until they sold all their merchandise, so that they could repay their debts and the cost of their goods.
It is regrettable that there was not a single Talmud Torah in the city. Parents who could afford tuition sent their sons to private teachers, while the poor children and orphans spent the day in the streets in large numbers. In all the traditional schools I found 112 boys, although 200 could have been gathered, not including those living in villages one or two days’ journey from Urmia. These villages included Salmas, with 60 families; Soldoz, with 130 families; Ishnu, with 50 families; and Savlak, with 100 families—all of them speaking Aramaic.
According to reports, the Alliance Israélite Universelle intended to establish schools for Jewish children in Urmia, as it had in Sanandaj. Urmia had great prospects as a center of trade and industry, and the spread of education and the arts could improve the condition of our brethren there.
But when reading these reports about our brethren in Urmia and its surrounding region, we are reminded of what we have already said concerning the condition of our brethren in Kurdistan. For many years we have spoken in the name of the revival of the Hebrew language and culture; for years we have criticized what is being done and yet have not paid attention to what lies within our power to accomplish and what we have failed to do.
Clearly, tens of thousands of Jews in Persian and Turkish Kurdistan remained faithful to the traditions of their ancestors and spoke the language of the Talmud. Clearly, these brethren needed education and Torah. If we do not do something substantial, others will.
Had we acted with the resources available to us, and had there been among us people of heart and practical action, would we not have found in this remote corner a broad field for reviving Hebrew and making it a spoken language through the school? The existence of a community of educated Jewish residents speaking Hebrew rather than only Aramaic—the language, incidentally, also spoken by non-Jews there—would have been an immediate and practical answer to the question of reviving Hebrew.
Based on information from the teacher Mr. Nissim Levy of Tehran, published in the newspaper Ha-Melitz, March 1903, St. Petersburg.