Urmia.
To the honorable editor of Ha-Maggid HaHadash! With all my heart I shall fulfill your request to inform you of several matters concerning the condition of my people in Persia. If you find my words worthy of your approval, I shall continue to write to you about matters concerning the Jews of this country—their ways and character, their education, and their spiritual and moral development.
Throughout this entire country there is not a single school in which languages are taught. This is evidence that the light of education has not yet begun to shine in this dark land. All the inhabitants are miserable, including the Muslims, who have been given the freedom to call themselves citizens; they are ignorant and God has not granted them understanding. To them, the Jew is impure and defiled, and any Jew who touches them becomes unclean. When a Jew comes to buy something, he must point at it with his finger without touching it, and if, God forbid, he touches it, they beat him severely until he pays for everything.
The Jews living here are descendants of those exiled from the First Temple who did not return with Ezra the Scribe, and our language testifies to this, for we speak Chaldean and Aramaic. To this day we have no civil rights or legal standing; we remain trampled under the authority of the governor, forced either to live a life of slavery or die a miserable death. He treats us as he pleases and knows no mercy. The Jew and the Christian walk as brothers here, for both live in suffering. The land on which we wander and in which we bury our dead is foreign to us, and we have no legal right to purchase estates, fields, or vineyards. There are no craftsmen among us, and we depend only on trade to earn enough for a meager livelihood.
How terrible is the fate of my brothers living here among wolves of prey! Things that one would never believe if merely told of them in Urfa are seen by our own eyes here: according to the laws of the country, a man’s hand, head, ear, or tongue may be cut off, and his nose pierced, and yet this savage people do not learn manners or civilized conduct…
Our spiritual condition is still worse than our material condition, for all education is strange to us. The Talmud is indeed sacred in our eyes, just like all the books of the Bible, without distinction. We keep away from everything prohibited by the Sages, and with all our hearts we cling to our faith. Our love for all our people is also strong. Yet, as a whole, we walk in darkness, without movement or vitality, and a cruel despair settles in our hearts, adding sorrow to our grief and anger and deepening the wounds of our bleeding hearts, until at times some of our brethren drown their sorrows in drink…
The condition of the women among us is many times worse than that of the men. How fortunate are my sisters in Urfa, whom I saw when I was there: they walk like ladies, upright, dressed in finery, without fear or apprehension, and they are also educated in various studies. But if you cast even one glance at the unfortunate women of Persia, your hair will stand on end and dread will seize you. They are regarded as servants in their husbands’ homes and are taken from their fathers’ homes when they are only nine or ten years old, before they know how to approach or withdraw and before they have properly developed, to become their husbands’ wives. Every woman wears a gold nose ring, as in ancient days. One Jewish man may have two or three wives, and one woman guards another… The girls do not know how to read or write; they learn only passages such as “Shema Yisrael,” “Zot HaTorah,” and the blessings over challah and ritual immersion, and no more. Instead of Birkat HaMazon, the women kiss the tablecloth once or twice… They eat and drink with their hands, without knife, fork, or table, only from a cloth spread on the ground, and they sleep on the ground without beds or benches… If a poor girl or an unattractive girl remains in her father’s home until she is fifteen, she has no hope of marrying, because the young men say that her time for love has already passed…
Men and women alike believe in the superstitions of other peoples—in demons, amulets, and the like. Every man and woman has more than twenty amulets on the chest, garments, head, and arm… We, the Jews of the city of Urmia, have established a school to educate the boys according to learning and enlightenment, through the efforts of two distinguished men: the wealthy Rahamim ben Gedalyahu and the precious young scholar Rabbi Neriyahu ben Nissim, known as Yehia Ismahel. At our school they will study French, Persian, and Hebrew. When the hypocrites and pious pretenders saw this, they began to oppose us, because they do not want the study of other languages, claiming that because of this children will die and the government will impose decrees, and so on. Yet our hope gives us strength that God Almighty will help us spread the spirit of life among the people of our city, and that only love, brotherhood, and peace will prevail among us, fulfilling the prophet’s words: “And I will appoint shepherds over you, and they shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.”
