February 3, 2008           Sunday, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm
Pariahs Among Ayatollahs: The Jew As Outcast in Shiite Iran
Speaker: Ken Blady, MA, Jewish Writer, Educator & Translator

Iranian Jewry is the oldest documented community in the world, having resided in Persia/Iran continuously for almost three thousand years. Yet, in no other country in the Diaspora, have the Jews suffered from so many centuries of unrelenting oppression and mortifying legal restrictions. At the instigation of cruel despots and the extremely hostile and fanatical mujahaddin (Shiite clergy), thousands of Jews were slaughtered while those who managed to survive existed in conditions of the most brutal penury and dehumanization. On numerous occasions, Jewish communities escaped annihilation only by embracing Islam. At one time, possibly numbering in the millions, the entire Jewish population of Persia was several times brought almost to the brink of extinction.

In this lecture/Power Point presentation we will survey the story of the Jews of Persia from Queen Esther to the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his zealous acolyte, Mahmud Ahmadinejad. A segment of the lecture will be devoted to the fascinating community of Djedid al-Islam (crypto-Jews) of the holy Shiite city of Mashhad. 

About the Speaker:
Ken Blady is a Jewish educator, public speaker, writer, and Yiddish translator. He was born in Paris, France and grew up in Chassidic Brooklyn, where he attended yeshiva and rabbinical seminary. A San Francisco Bay Area resident since 1972, Ken has a B.A. in History from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in Clinical Counseling from California State University, Hayward.

Blady’s most recent publication is "Jewish Communities in Exotic Places" (Jason Aronson Publications, 2000). He also wrote "The Jewish Boxers' Hall of Fame" (Shapolsky, 1988), and translated "The Journeys of David Toback" (Schocken, 1981).

Ken Blady lectures on a variety of Jewish themes at colleges, synagogues, Elderhostel programs, and adult educational institutions
as well as youth group programs. He has been featured on The History Channel, on local Bay Area cable television, and on a variety of radio talk shows, including "The Voice of Israel." Currently he is a lecturer at the University of Judaism's Department of Continuing Education and at the UJ's Schurgin Elderhostel Program.