Dr. Siamak Mareh Sedgh
The culture governing on the Iranian Jews community is the product of a process
that has been continuing for centuries and undoubtedly the activity of every one
of us specially in the past decade has played a significant role in forming our
relations together. Though with the pass of time, our culture is developed and
renovated, but it is a heritage that roots in the traditions, rituals and
conventions founded throughout the years and undoubtedly the role of past
generations in forming these relations is inevitable. Today, our cultural and
social conditions reveal a process that on one hand roots in the behavior of our
ancestors and on the other hand looks at the actions taken by the young
generation.
The world and consequently the environment in which we live, are constantly
developing and renewing and every day willingly or unwillingly we face with
modern phenomena and processes. These continuous developments that have begun
from the beginning of man social life and is still continuing, is formed on a
foundation consisting of rituals, traditions and conventions we have inherited
from past generations and the more is the distance between past generations and
today's world, the more prominent is their responsibility in forming our
cultural conditions. We well know that in a fast-changing world we, as
monotheists, stick to a series of principles that are the historical heritage of
monotheism and they can prevent the downfall of our moral and value systems and
in this way prevent our social conditions to get into trouble. There is no need
to mention that if we do not stick to a fixed criterion and scale, or even worse
if we now and then present new interpretations from the principles based on our
personal and group interests, we will get confused and alienated in the process
of developments . If today we welcome those behaviors and actions that satisfy
our personal and social interests and consider them as unquestionable values and
principles , we must bear in mind that after a while these values shall become
part of the common law of our society and soon there will be a time that with
the change of the position of people in management of society, the judgment
criterion will be with us. If we ourselves have established the institutional
supervision and centrality, and defined a key role for it, then we have to stick
to such supervision and key role, unless our principles and criteria have been
defined only based on the interests and situation of a specific group, and this
is the time we have detached from one of the fundamental instructions of our
religion, "love your own kind as you do yourself". Though rendering a different
and sometimes contradictory definition of the principles based on personal and
group interests is a recognized method that has long been employed by selfish
people and egotists, those for whom self and egotism and self-interests are the
base and key for every assessment have to regularly review their most principal
values. Those who never tolerate the smallest objections and softest critics,
tomorrow they will take the gesture of a new-thinker and redefine the
principles, as though they believe the Iranian Jews Community does not have a
short-time historical memory! Unfortunately, there are still some people that
instead of a logical discussion and intellectual thinking and caring about the
interests of the Jewish Iranian Society, they want to impose themselves to the
new world based on their personal relations, follower-nourishment and tribal
conflicts. But today with the renovation of thoughts that has been formed based
on the intellectual growth and intellectual maturity of the Jewish Iranians
Society, there is no need for those who claim they can cure the problems of our
community. As an inseparable part of the Iranian nation, the Jewish Iranians
like before and based on their own and their country's interests and relying on
the Judaism divine values as well as Iranian national values are easily able to
build their future in the best form possible.
