THIS JUST IN! A news flash: An expert says Iran’s anti-Semitic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t have Jewish roots after all.
The news comes on the heels of this raging story that Iran’s President, who believes the holocaust is some silly story cooked up to justify what he seems to feel is Israel’s unjustifiable existence, could have had Jewish roots. Given Ahmadinejad’s statements, it’s likely that a lot of people could have come forward to volunteer to happily circumsize him if it had been true.
But, alas, it now turns out that they’ll be minus this extra employment in the sagging world economy, and he won’t be (re) bar mitzvahed after all. Here’s the latest, stunning news via Meir Javedanfar, writing in the Guardian:
Ahmadinejad has no Jewish roots…Rumours that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s family converted to Islam from Judaism are false. In fact, they are proud Shias..
…..In June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s meteoric rise from mayor of Tehran to president of one of the most influential countries in the Middle East took everyone by surprise. One of the main reasons for the astonishment was that so little was known about him.
One recently published claim about his background comes from an article in the Daily Telegraph. Entitled “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past”, it claims that his family converted to Islam after his birth. The claim is based on a number of arguments, a key one being that his previous surname was Sabourjian which “derives from weaver of the sabour, the name for the Jewish tallit shawl in Persia”.
Professor David Yeroshalmi, author of The Jews of Iran in the 19th century and an expert on Iranian Jewish communities, disputes the validity of this argument. “There is no such meaning for the word ‘sabour’ in any of the Persian Jewish dialects, nor does it mean Jewish prayer shawl in Persian. Also, the name Sabourjian is not a well-known Jewish name,” he stated in a recent interview. In fact, Iranian Jews use the Hebrew word “tzitzit” to describe the Jewish prayer shawl. Yeroshalmi, a scholar at Tel Aviv University’s Center for Iranian Studies, also went on to dispute the article’s findings that the “-jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews. “This ending is in no way sufficient to judge whether someone has a Jewish background. Many Muslim surnames have the same ending,” he stated.
Upon closer inspection, a completely different interpretation of “Sabourjian” emerges. According to Robert Tait, a Guardian correspondent who travelled to Ahmadinejad’s native village in 2005, the name “derives from thread painter – sabor in Farsi – a once common and humble occupation in the carpet industry in Semnan province, where Aradan is situated”. This is confirmed by Kasra Naji, who also wrote a biography of Ahmadinejad and met his family in his native village. Carpet weaving or colouring carpet threads are not professions associated with Jews in Iran.
There’s more so read it in its entirety.
So cancel the impending Chanuka gifts to him of matzos, Barbra Streisand CDs and Adam Sandler DVDs.
P.S. Perhaps those “I Love Adolf” bumper stickers on his limo were a tip off.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.