Amnon Netzer Archive

Amnon Netzer (1934-2008) was a historian of the Jews of Iran, one of the founders of Iranian Studies in Israel and one of the most eminent scholars in the field. Netzer researched the history of early Jewish cultural creativity in Iran, and discovered ancient manuscripts both in Iran and other parts of the world. He carried out his research in Iran from the 1960s onwards, but it came to a halt with the Islamic revolution in 1979. Netzer did not only collect manuscripts and study them, but also recorded and documented the local Iranian Jews and their traditions as they told them. After the Islamic revolution he continued documenting the same traditions among the Jews who immigrated to Israel and the United States. Netzer made Aliyah to Israel from Iran in 1950, received his BA in Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his MA and PhD from Columbia University in New York. He was appointed Professor in the Hebrew University’s Department of Iranian, Indian and Armenian studies, and was a visiting professor at the University of California and Yeshiva University. In addition to his academic activity, Netzer was a leading and admired figure among the Iranian emigres in Israel and the United States and was the main documenter of written and oral Judeo-Persian tradition. He published several books in his field, both academic and popular. Amnon Netzer’s archive contains many drafts of his publications and research studies, wide correspondence with Iranian-Jewish organisations in Israel and the United States, and also from the time before the Islamic revolution, and oral testimony gathered by Netzer from the elders of the Persian community in Iran and from later years, outside Iran. Read more