Persian Chief Rabbi
1908 CE–2005 CE · Modern · Kashan
R. Yedidya Shofet (1908-2005) was the Chief Rabbi of Iran from 1944 until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, guiding the Persian Jewish community through some of the most turbulent decades of its long history. Born in Kashan and educated in Jerusalem, he became chief rabbi of Tehran in 1944 and the senior figure of Iranian Jewry. His leadership preserved Iranian Jewish institutions through Reza Shah's modernization, the Mossadegh era, and Mohammad Reza Shah's Pahlavi monarchy. After the 1979 revolution he left Iran and moved to Los Angeles where he served the large Iranian-American Jewish community in exile. His memoir is a primary source for modern Persian Jewish history.
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Kashan
What they did here
Born in Kashan, central Iran; raised in the Kashani Jewish community.
About Kashan
Kashan is an ancient city in Isfahan province, central Iran, on the edge of the Dasht-e Kavir desert, with the prehistoric mound of Tepe Sialk nearby. It was famed for medieval lustre ceramics and later for carpets and silk, and it was a retreat for Safavid shahs. The city was also a centre of Shi'i learning: the philosopher and traditionist Mohsen Fayz Kashani (1598-1680), a student of Mulla Sadra, was born and died there. The astronomer Jamshid al-Kashi was born there in 1380. Kashan's long-established Jewish community suffered forced conversion under Shah Abbas II, and in the twentieth century it largely moved to Tehran, Israel and elsewhere.
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Persian Chief Rabbi’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Ba'al HaLeshem, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Alter of Slabodka, Minhat Yehuda, Rav Kook, Moshe Mordechai Epstein, Imrei Emes, Yehuda Leib Chasman, Isser Zalman Meltzer, Yaakov Chaim Sofer (Kaf HaChaim), Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky, Yechiel Michel Tukatchinsky, Yisrael Zev Mintzberg, Tzvi Pesach Frank, Jacob Nachum Epstein, Mishpetei Uziel, Yaakov Moshe Charlap, Kodzhaglover Rav
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.