Beit Midrash
- Sections
- The Life of Tzaddikim
- Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu
The rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power caused a huge wave of anti-Semitism against Israel and against Jews in general. Many Jews in Iran, mostly wealthy ones, were tried in in the kangaroo courts of the revolution, where they were sentenced to death by hanging and their property confiscated and given to Khomeini’s people.
In such an atmosphere of anarchy the lives of the Jews there were turned upside down. In particular, the Jewish women suffered. When they had to go to the mikveh, the non-Jews would harass and bother them, turning their lives into a nightmare.
The situation came to the ears of Rabbi Eliyahu, who turned directly to Ayatollah Khomeini by way of a formal letter from the State of Israel. The Rav wrote to the Ayatollah that he was sure he wouldn’t do anything against a person’s faith or against the word of God. He was sure that Khomeini would agree that it wasn’t right or fair that a woman should be harassed on her way to immerse in a mikveh, and he was sure that such things had been done without his authority, as he was an honest, decent man, etc….
Khomeini’s people were rather suspicious of the letter, but the Ayatollah wanted to see what Rav Eliyahu had written.
He read about the problems that the Muslims were causing the Jewish women and immediately ordered a new mikveh to be built for them, and in addition, he even placed guards on site so as to prevent the Muslim men bothering them.
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