Hamsa. Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies 2 (2015): 1-13
3
space. In Wedding Song once Farideh’s family moves out of the mahaleh to a more affluent
Muslim neighbourhood, they are compelled to negotiate relations with the Muslims and
hence, cross a border into an unfamiliar, Muslim space. The protagonists negotiate the new
border space in terms of past trauma, of alienation and of their aim to gain acceptance as
Iranians.
Yet, Jews are represented as possessing agency manifested in their more explicit attitude
towards Muslims. Farideh’s family possesses an uncompromising, mistrustful attitude towards
Farideh’s new Muslim friends, her uncle ordering her to desist from mixing with them as they
will rob the family (WS: 120). In Caspian Rain, Jewish Chamedooni who is politically active with
Muslim students against the Shah, resists his elders’ warnings that the Muslims will eventually
stab him because he is a Jew (CR: 184). In the memoir Land of No by Roya Hakakian, when
Uncle Ardi intends to marry Muslim Neela, Roya’s family creates and recites spells: ‘He’ll ruin
us. We’ll be shamed…A goy!’ (NO: 65). Similarly, some Muslims are determined to resist the
ostensible Jewish threat to their subjectivity. Overt anti-Semitism is represented by the
neighbour’s son raising a colossal, bright red, glass swastika in his bedroom facing Farideh’s
house (WS: 122). Rubbish is dumped by the family’s house and someone sets fire to their
trees. These anti-Semitic acts constitute traumatic, unexpected emotional shock acting as a
signifier for Farideh's immediate conclusion of incessant anti-Semitism. She suspects the
Muslims of perpetuating negative perceptions about the Jews convinced that Jews are hated
for being meek and poor and are despised when wealthy and strong (ibid). The protagonists
thereby attempt to withstand the power of abjection which threatens them in the shock of the
sudden Jewish transposition to a Muslim space. The abject exists in the space between Jewish
and Muslim identities and the subject feels endangered. Therefore, the abject must be
radically cast out from the place of the subject in an attempt to prevent the object’s
transgression of the border space
6
.
Farideh is fearful when meeting Muslim girls who themselves are wary having never met a
Jewish person. The Muslim girls maintain their distance from Farideh who assumes they are
concerned that her touch might defile them. When she uses a drinking fountain at school, a
few girls assault her protesting that she makes the drinking fountain najes. The literal sign of
the abject is the food the Muslim girls might offer Farideh which she suspects will be poisoned
and will certainly be non-kosher (WS: 119). Similarly, the Muslim girls’ embedded belief that
Passover matzos is made from the blood of Muslim children
7
means that the Jewish food is a
literal sign of the abject for them. Kristeva suggests that food loathing is the most archaic form
of abjection
8
and both cases here would confirm this reading insofar as the food is constructed
as life-threatening. Both groups might be read as metonyms for abjection which is a rite of
defilement and pollution representing exclusion or taboo. The Jewish minority is insistent on
maintaining their boundaries and the Muslims perpetrate anti-Semitism to maintain their
borders.
Having traditionally been denoted by Shi’a Muslims as impure, unclean and inferior, the
Jews aim to gain acceptance as Iranians. My examination of attempted assimilation by the
protagonists revolves around notions of Jewish self-hatred which are mainly set in Western
contexts. Gilman defines it as a term that is interchangeable with Jewish anti-Judaism or
Jewish anti-Semitism and that expresses the mode of self-denigration by Jews
9
. They accept
6
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L.S. Roudiez, New York, Columbia
University Press, 1982, p. 2.
7
Azar Nafisi writes about Iranian popular beliefs about Jews: ‘It was also natural for some families to
shun the minorities because they were “unclean”…the Jews were not just dirty, they drank innocent
children’s blood’ - Azar Nafisi, Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories, London, Heinemann, 2009, p. 29.
8
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror..., p. 2.
9
Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews, Baltimore, John
Hopkins University Press, 1986, p. 1.
Hamsa. Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies 2 (2015): 1-13
4
and internalise the negative image that others possess of them but attempt to deny this
negative image by behaving in accordance with the rules of the dominant group in order to
gain its acceptance
10
. As such, the Jews must deny part of their identity and the intimation by
the reference group is that if the Jews abandon their difference, they will become part of the
dominant group. This need to minimise or negate Jewishness implies a failure of national
identity and further suggests that Jewish identity remains controlled by the hegemony.
Some Jewish protagonists aim to avert the trauma of impurity and anti-Semitism by
integrating in order to be considered Iranian and attempt to negotiate belonging through
exteriority, mimicry and dissimulation. Gilman’s analysis of exteriority conforms to Sartre’s
who postulates that the Jewish community suffers from exteriority meaning that they perceive
themselves with the eyes of the mainstream group and are petrified that they will conform to
the hegemonic stereotype possessed by this group
11
. He elaborates explaining that while ‘the
Jew’ observes himself from the perspective of the non-Jew, he feels detached from himself,
becoming a witness of himself. Yet, Gilman develops Sartre’s concept of the inauthentic Jew,
suggesting that Jewish self-hatred is manifested by the outsiders’ acceptance of the stereotype
of themselves
12
. Some protagonists’ behaviour and inhibitions reflect the unconscious strategy
of exteriority which is indicative of trauma because it suggests an incoherent, fragmented self-
caused by memory of oppression and by the unequal power dynamics of Muslims and Jews.
Farideh’s father has difficulties adjusting to a Muslim area: “He was obviously missing the
security of its tall wall and insulated community, where all faces were familiar, where he didn’t
have to keep on a mask of politeness, humility, and even servitude at all times to present
neighbours with the opposite of what he thought they expected of a Jew” (WS: 122).
While Gilman’s assumption is that behaving in accordance with majority precepts, which
entails a minimisation of manifestations of Jewish identity, indicates Jewish self-hatred, in
Land of No Roya’s initial reaction when first socialising with the Muslim Maroofs does not
suggest Jewish self-hatred. The struggle for a shared Iranian identity with Muslims involves
risk-taking. Roya describes a subtle but pronounced shift in mood and physical comfort from
being among Jews: “Being amongst Muslims, friends or neighbours, was like being in my party
dress…I had to adjust myself into fitting into something less familiar” (NO: 56). She interprets
the new dynamic as a positive, phenomenological experience given her increased awareness:
“But it also gave me the chance to see myself anew…I liked how all of us reshuffled to put on
our dress as a family, to make room for the Maroofs” (ibid). The episode seemingly provides
the Hakakians with the opportunity to interact with the majority group and does not suggest
an acceptance of a negative Jewish stereotype. However, Roya subsequently re-interprets the
episode more cynically questioning whether it was a charade or the attempt at shedding
Jewish differences in order to merge with the Muslim Maroofs as Iranians. She becomes aware
of her family’s concern with exteriority exemplified in the need to scrub themselves clean to
prove they are even cleaner than the Maroofs in their attempt to resist the stereotype of
Jewish impurity. The ramification of the encounter is that Roya represents the negotiation of
subjectivity as a crisis and trauma as she fears the engulfment of her Jewish identity to become
Iranian and is therefore fearful about being situated in a space of ambiguity about her identity.
The encounter subverts the borders of the self through minimising manifestations of Jewish
identity for the sake of claiming an Iranian identity.
13
Therefore, Roya’s response to the
episode does not suggest Jewish self-hatred but, on the contrary, the fear of Jewish
effacement, a dynamic which results in a tension between Jewish and Iranian identities.
10
Ibid., p. 2.
11
Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, New York, Schocken, 1965, p. 95.
12
Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred..., p. 2.
13
In some respects, there are parallels with the Kristevan concept of abjection.