Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews (Fowler Museum at UCLA)

High School (Grades 9-12)

A curriculum from the Fowler Museum at UCLA that explores more than 2,500 years of Jewish life in Iran through objects, art, and history, from ancient Persia to Los Angeles today.

Overview

Jews have lived in Iran for more than 2,500 years, since the time of the Babylonian exile and the Persian king Cyrus, making the community one of the oldest in the Jewish world. The Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Shushan. Over many centuries, Iranian Jews created a rich culture of language, poetry, music, illuminated manuscripts, and ritual objects, while living as a religious minority under changing rulers. After the 1979 revolution, most of the community left Iran, and many rebuilt their lives in Israel and the United States, especially in Los Angeles. This curriculum resource from the Fowler Museum at UCLA, created for its exhibition Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews, helps students explore that history through objects, images, and primary sources.

Questions Students Explore

  1. How did Jewish life in Iran develop over 2,500 years of changing empires and rulers?
  2. What do objects such as manuscripts, amulets, and ritual items reveal about Iranian Jewish culture?
  3. Why did most Iranian Jews leave after 1979, and how have they preserved their heritage in new homes?

What Students Do

  • Examine images of objects and artworks from the exhibition and analyze what they reveal about daily and religious life.
  • Trace major periods in Iranian Jewish history, from ancient Persia to the twentieth century.
  • Connect the history of Iranian Jews to the Iranian Jewish communities of Los Angeles and Israel today.

At a Glance

Grade level: Grades 9 to 12
Format: Curriculum resource unit (PDF) with a teacher slide presentation
Source: Fowler Museum at UCLA

About this resource

This curriculum was produced by the Education Department of the Fowler Museum at UCLA, with funding from the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation. It is not a JIMENA lesson. JIMENA recommends it as a companion to our lessons on the Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa. The materials are free on the Fowler Museum’s website.

Downloads

View the curriculum on the Fowler Museum website  Opens on fowler.ucla.edu

Procedures

Before You Teach

  • Preview the materials. Read the curriculum resource unit and the teacher slides and choose the activities that fit your schedule.
  • Build background. JIMENA’s Cultural Heritage: Iran page offers a short history and timeline of the Jews of Iran.
  • Plan for sensitivity. The unit touches on periods of persecution and the 1979 revolution. Some students may have family connections to Iran; invite, but never require, them to share.
Body of Lesson

Suggested Sequence

  1. Opening (10 min). Ask: What do you already know about Iran? Read aloud the opening of the Book of Esther and locate Shushan and other historic Jewish communities on a map.
  2. Objects as evidence (25 min). Using the Fowler Museum slides, small groups analyze one object or image each: What is it? Who made or used it? What does it reveal about Jewish life in Iran?
  3. Timeline (15 min). Groups place their objects on a class timeline of Iranian Jewish history and identify periods of flourishing and periods of hardship.
Conclusion

Reflection

Students write a short response: How can objects and family stories help a community keep its identity after leaving its homeland? Use one object from the unit and one example from Iranian Jewish life in Los Angeles or Israel.

Assessment Ideas

  • Formative: object analysis notes and contributions to the class timeline.
  • Summative: the written reflection, or a museum label that students write for an object of their choice.
Extension Activities
  • Listen to a testimony. Watch an Iranian Jewish testimony in JIMENA’s Oral History collection and compare it with what students learned from the objects.
  • Build a museum. Use JIMENA’s All-Inclusive Heritage Museum lesson to have students curate objects from their own families.
  • Write a community history. In JIMENA’s Authors of Jewish History lesson, students research a Jewish community of the Middle East or North Africa and write a book about it.
Resources and External Links