Moshfegh Hamadani
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Raby Moshfegh Hamadani (Persian: ربيع مشفق همدانى; 1912–2009) was an Iranian Jewish political journalist and writer.
Hamadani was born in Hamadan, Iran, in April 1912. His father, Davoud Kohan, son of Yitzak, was a Jewish merchant in this ancient city, which since immemorial times has been a center of commerce on the Silk Road and was once the capital of the Persian Empire (Ecbatana). Raby’s grandfather Yitzak had travelled to Jerusalem three times by horse and carriage to visit the sacred city, receiving the title of "Haji Yitzak" and was highly respected as a member of the Jewish community of Hamadan.
Hamadani attended the Alliance Israelite School in Hamadan, where he became fluent in French. During his childhood and teen-age years, as reported in his published memoirs [1] he experienced the bitter taste of antisemitism at the hand of his neighbors. But the constitutional revolution of 1906 and the overthrow of the Qajar dynasty in 1925 by Reza Shah when Raby was thirteen years old, infused a new wave of education, progress and modernization throughout the country.[2] Growing up in this atmosphere of hope and enthusiasm, the young, idealist Hamadani became convinced that embracing Reza Shah's modernization policy was a necessary step for tha advancement of Iran in general and for achieving equality for the Jewish minority in a Muslim society where they were seldom treated as equals. Reza Shah planned to follow the path of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey to curtail the power of the religious clerics that historically held a strong grip on society and exerted considerable political power in all aspects of Iranian society. A modernization plan appeared to be the only means to achieve equality and prosperity for Iranian Jews and other members of religious minorities. Iran needed the energetic infusion of the talented and well-educated younger generation to reestablish her place among the great nations of the Middle East. In 1931, the young high school graduate decided to travel to Tehran, to become involved in this new wave of modernization. He was determined to participate in the admission exams at the newly founded University of Teheran. He passed the entrance examinations with honors and enrolled in the Department of Literature of the University. He did not have the financial means for paying his tuition, and sold his violin and was fortunate enough to get a job, upon recommendation from one of his high-school teachers, to teach French language at the prestigious Dar ul-Funun (Persia) دارالفنون high school of Tehran. He graduated in 1939 from the university with a degree in Philosophy and Educational Sciences. As partial fulfilment of the graduation requirements, he translated and defended Schopenhauer's selected works, containing difficult and controversial philosophical essays on women and the meaning of love.
