Memory, Community, and the Mashhadi Jews During the Underground Period.

Nissimi, Hilda

This article considers the question of when the Jewish families in Mashhad, Iran, one of Shi'a Islam's holiest cities, became a community using the concept of collective memory in the context originally formulated by Maurice Halbwachs, the well-known, pioneering explorer of the social framework of memory in the 1920s. Halbwachs stated that only social groups determine what is worth remembering and how it will be remembered. It is today acceptable to see collective memory as a social construct. Conversely, what social groups choose to remember not only determines them as a group by creating a common memory for its members but also defines them. It is the purpose of the article to explain how this happened in the Mashhadi community by outlining the modes of transmission, the uses of these memories, and what was consigned to oblivion.

MASHHAD (Iran); IRAN; COLLECTIVE memory; JEWISH diaspora; HALBWACHS, Maurice, 1877-1945; SOCIAL constructionism

Jewish Social Studies, 2003, Vol 9, Issue 3, p76

0021-6704

Academic Journal

10.1353/jss.2003.0021