Chassidus and Iran: How Memory Rebuilds the Future

On Tuesday evening, I attended an intimate gathering in Jerusalem hosted by the Cyrus Fund. Fewer than fifty people filled a simple, classically Jerusalem room for a conversation of remarkable depth and urgency.

The evening featured approximately five speakers from the Iranian diaspora, now living in the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. None were Jewish, yet they had come together with Israeli activists and entrepreneurs to consider an urgent question: How can we support the Iranian people as they struggle under the oppression of the IRGC.

Their work is both visionary and practical. They are looking beyond the present regime and considering what Iranians will need to build a free and stable society, including a functioning currency, uncensored internet access, resilient institutions, and other essential infrastructure. Each speaker brought a compelling perspective, and the entire evening was captivating.

One talk, delivered by Babak Jalilvand, struck me especially deeply.

A central question was how this group of Iranian activists came to work with Israeli social activists and start-ups. Babak’s answer brought me back to an encounter I had in 2018 with Dr. Lobsang Sangay, then president of the Tibetan government in exile.

Dr. Sangay had come to meet Jews from around the world because he wanted to understand how a people exiled for more than two thousand years had preserved their identity and ultimately rebuilt a successful nation. How had the Jewish people maintained a shared memory, a responsibility for one another, and the belief that return and renewal remained possible?

Babak described a remarkably similar search. As a member of a persecuted people dispersed throughout the world, he wanted to study the Jewish experience of resilience, rebuilding, and maintaining a sense of peoplehood across borders and generations.

No two histories are identical, but the underlying question is universal: What enables a people to survive exile without surrendering its identity or hope? When the opportunity to rebuild arrives, what allows memory and longing to become institutions and a renewed national life?

It was deeply moving to hear Iranian activists look toward the Jewish experience with curiosity and hope. They saw in Israel and the Jewish people a living example of what resilience can make possible. At a time when so much attention is given to division, this room was filled with people quietly building relationships around shared experiences of persecution, exile, memory, and renewal.

Before the program began, I met another rabbi who used to live in Maryland and now resides in Jerusalem. Much of his life’s work is devoted to strengthening Muslim-Jewish relations. Although he did not come from a Chassidic background, he began studying Chassidic philosophy each morning about two years ago. He told me that it had transformed his prayers and, through them, profoundly affected his daily life.

This led us into a beautiful conversation about the teachings of the Alter Rebbe. Part of the genius of Chabad Chassidus is that it is entirely revolutionary while remaining deeply rooted. The Alter Rebbe developed a transformative approach to the soul, prayer, divine service, and the purpose of creation, while grounding it completely in Torah and Kabbalah.

In retrospect, that conversation reflected the larger theme of the evening. True renewal does not require abandoning one’s roots. Often, the deepest renewal comes from understanding those roots more clearly.

In that small Jerusalem room, Iranian activists were planning for a freer future, Israelis were offering knowledge and partnership, and a rabbi devoted to Muslim-Jewish relations was deepening his own spiritual life through Chassidus.

The evening reminded me that history is not preserved simply so we can look backward. Memory can become a source of courage, identity can create a foundation for partnership, and the lessons of one people’s survival can help another people imagine its own renewal.

This was quite welcome to Jerusalem.