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framing of Jews by non-Jews, the protagonists attempt to integrate through the Jewish
community hierarchy of “authentic” and “inauthentic” Jews which the wealthier Jews apply to
poorer Jews.
Exteriority results in Jewish female mimicry of wealthy women, which is inscribed by means
of the Jewish female body. In Moonlight, Golnaz, a former “mahaleh Jew”, aims to eradicate
the memory of Jewish impurity by creating a new, fictitious, identity through her changed
physical appearance and behaviour, which is of a wealthy, elegant, German woman called
Fräulein Claude (MO:102). Her other motivation for her new role is her desire to marry
Teymur. Rather than adopting an Iranian identity, she places herself outside Iranian Jewish
identities at risk of continuing to be categorised as impure, yet she has still interiorised the
trauma and shame of being an impure, mahaleh Jew. She thereby ostensibly eradicates her
Jewish identity in an act of Jewish self-hatred. Fräulein Claude is therefore devastated when
her son decides to marry Roxanna, a poor, mahaleh Jew, to the extent that she tries to poison
her to prevent the marriage. She is scathing about Roxanna’s relatives: “twenty-seven ghetto-
dwelling Jews…with under-nourished faces and patched-up clothes” (MO: 115).
Because they are desirous of belonging, the assimilated Jewish women attempt to repress
the construct of the mythical Jew mediated through the persistence of memory of having been
“mahaleh” Jews. They project this construct on to those women who remain “mahaleh” Jews,
thus emphasising the potency of the reflection back in a mirroring process of the “mahaleh”
Jewish women to the integrated Jew. Hence, the seemingly integrated Jewish women perceive
the traditional Jewish women as marring the former’s acceptance by the wealthy dominant
women. In Caspian Rain Mrs Arbab’s antipathy towards Bahar and her mother, who are
“mahaleh” Jews, represents a manifestation of Jewish self-hatred as Mrs Arbab deems the
traditional Jewish woman’s appearance as a betrayal of her aim to be an assimilated Iranian.
An insight is provided into Mrs Arbab’s thoughts about Bahar’s mother which reveal
considerable concern for exteriority: “her skin is cracked like the desert floor and she obviously
hasn’t heard of hair dye…it’s people like her who give Jews a bad name" (CR: 20).
The Jewish female body acts as a site of control to enforce the hegemonic values of the
wealthy Jewish assimilated women aiming to avoid anti-Semitism. Bahar is deemed not to
dress, look and behave in accordance with Mrs Arbab’s values. Thus, she is affected by the
latter’s membership of the Iranian upper class as Bahar’s inability to meet Mrs Arbab’s
standards reminds Mrs Arbab of the “mahaleh” Jew she once was. Bahar is mirrored by the
wealthy, female Jews, who in turn are mirrored by the wealthy, secular Muslim women so that
a process of exteriority occurs. The wealthy, Jewish women thereby construct an illusionary
self and hence the mirror is an instrument of deception so that a two-way mirror is created
and thus stereotypes can be seen both from the inside and from the outside. Hence the
mirroring is doubled, as the identity of Jew and woman is reflected, both containing a mirror
within.
Although Memmi deploys the metaphor of the false mirror to illustrate the notion that the
Jew admits to his/her own guilt believing he/she has negative attributes which are in fact the
mythical portrait of the Jew
31
, the exteriority not only applies to Jews but to Jewish women.
The metonymy of the mirror is a symbol of being reflected by the other and of the mirror
within the self. This discourse is exemplified when Bahar is sent to Mrs Arbab’s Armenian
dressmaker who is resentful about having to work for a poor Jew. The wealthy women in the
waiting room observe Bahar in her underwear as the dressmaker leaves the door ajar to
demean Bahar. The mirror is a metaphor for the reflecting back of the wealthy women: “She
stands there as Alice takes her measurements and tries not to look in the mirror where she
knows she will see the other women looking back at her” (CR: 34). The dressmaker’s dummies
are a symbol of the threat of Bahar becoming a manipulated embodiment of mimicry: “In the
31
Albert Memmi, Portrait of a Jew, New York, Orion Press, 1962, p. 179.
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mirror, Bahar sees a young woman,…naked mannequins lie on the backs of wooden chairs, …
she stands in surrender, arms stiff at her sides, face inundated by tears of humiliation and
rage” (ibid: 35). Because of the desire to belong, the affluent, Jewish women deem the poor,
Jewish woman subverts their perceived acceptance by the Muslim women encapsulated in
female embodiment.
Bahar’s resistance against mimicry is represented in a conversation with Mrs Arbab with
each denigrating the other. Whereas Mrs Arbab minimises her Jewishness to privilege her
Iranian identity, Bahar’s family are practising Jews: “Let’s not forget we’re all Jews”, Bahar tells
Mrs Arbab once…and then Mrs Arbab answers, “Yes, but some of us are not ghetto Jews” (CR:
138). Mrs Arbab’s situation is one of ostensibly being accepted by the wealthy Tehran elite but
yet is one of fear of exclusion if the secular Muslims perceive her as an impure “mahaleh” Jew.
Unlike the Arbabs, Bahar’s family’s primary identification as Jews is not imposed from the
outside which challenges Sartre’s position
32
that the “authentic” Jew follows Judaism to assert
his claim because he is subject to disdain by the wider society. Bahar’s family live in an area
where poor, religious Jews and Muslims practise their religion regardless of the difficulties it
might cause (CR: 138). When Bahar visits her family there is a sense that they accuse her of
betrayal and as she is accused of betraying Mrs Arbab by her “mahaleh” behaviour, she is
situated in a border space between the binary of “assimilated” and “traditional” Jew
represented by her weekly journey from affluent North Tehran to poor South Tehran. While
Bahar’s family implicitly impose guilt on her for not adhering to a traditional Jewish identity
and Jewish self-hatred reveals guilt, Sheyda’s female relatives inculcate her from childhood
with the strict taboo of Jewish girls forbidding non-Jewish males to approach them. Sheyda
therefore endures intense guilt, feeling utterly dirty and distraught because she has sinned by
kissing a non-Jew (CR: 235). Jewish female autonomy is demonstrated in the need to prevent
“impure” non-Jewish males from tainting Jewish females in the gendered imperative of
memory to retain the “purity” of their distinctive Jewish identity.
The double-double bind of being Jewish and female is demonstrated and is intertwined
with the tension of negotiating Jewish and Iranian identities. Some Jewish females distance
themselves from Jewish identity which is a manifestation of shame and Jewish self-hatred.
Hence, the self is an illusionary self and the categories of subject and object are unstable and
this is a continuum from the subject-object relationship in the mahaleh where differing
behaviours were represented in the inner and outer spaces.
The anti-Semitism represented in the literary texts is overwhelmingly rooted in the Iranian
historical, Shi’a Islamic context, particularly focused on Jewish impurity yet it is far more covert
out of the mahaleh. Moreover, whereas minimal Jewish agency asserted itself within the
mahaleh, Jewish subjectivity and agency manifest themselves out of the
mahaleh. The
protagonists’ feelings of Jewish and Jewish female guilt are intrinsic to the anti-Semitism and
attempts at integration but irrespective of the projection of impurity, the Shi’a Muslims are the
protagonists’ object of desire concerning belonging and hence a tension exists between the
protagonists’ simultaneous trauma and desire.
Exilic Shift in Jewish Memory on Impurity
Exile provides a new perspective for the Iranian Jews but they nevertheless struggle to be
freed from past constraints and dependency on being shaped by the Iranian Muslims in terms
of their collective memory. Both Iranian Jews and Muslims reside in exile in Los Angeles but a
significant factor that problematises the exilic Iranian Jewish-Muslim relationship is the exiled,
Iranian Jews’ collective and transgenerationally transmitted memory of prejudice against them
and of not having been fully accepted in Iran. Both guilt and shame are potent factors.
Katchadourian defines moral shame as a loss of honour leading to disgrace with the
32
Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew..., p. 91.