Judeo-Persian and the Modernization of Religious Knowledge: The Writings of Ḥaim Moreh (1921–-27)

Abstract Iranian Jewish thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remains largely absent from international scholarship, owing in part to the perception that religious intellectual traditions among Iranian Jews in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods were weak or even non-existent. Yet, alongside broader social reforms in Iran and educational reforms within the Jewish communities from the early 1900s onward, communal leaders engaged in transforming existing traditions into new forms of knowledge and collective awareness. While the promotion of modern Hebrew formed a central component of this agenda, these efforts achieved only limited success. One alternative strategy for fostering religious literacy was the publication of books in Judeo-Persian, aimed at a broader readership. This article examines the Judeo-Persian works of the blind rabbi Ḥaim Moreh, demonstrating how religious knowledge was produced, disseminated, and contested through interactions with international Jewish organizations active in Iran. Moreh and his contemporaries sought to reconcile religious traditions with modern forms of knowledge and emerging educational ideals, challenging conventional binaries between tradition and reform, religion and secularism, and transforming locally grounded forms of knowledge to accommodate new understandings of religion, education, and community.