Gilad Atzmon would have to get up very early in the morning to beat THIS!
A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
Oh dear.
A Starbucks coffee to the first person who spots the argument by a far-left blogger that being Jewish in no way hinders your ability to become President of Iran.
Gene adds: Joe Klein notes that if things ultimately don’t work out for A-jad in Iran (and the man is having his problems), he can always make aliyah to the Zionist entity.
David T adds:
Potkin says this is nonsense and beside the point …
Whatever the real story is, people’s genealogy do not interest me. What does it matter if someone’s father was a Christian, Jew, Communist, king, pauper or whatever. I am not interested in what someone’s father and forefathers did or said, what religion their father practised or what political ideology their father held. I am interested in what people say or do themselves.
Also, Lbnaz says:
According to Yossi Melman and Meir Javadanfar’s book “The Nuclear Sphinx of Iran: Mahmoud Achmadinejad and the State of Iran” (2007), the surname Saborjhian was neither a name reserved for Jews from Aradan and nor does it refer to “weaver of the tallit shawl”, but rather…
“Saborjhian originates from the occupation of thread painting, a skill used in weaving carpets…” (page 2)
zkharya
4 October 2009, 12:38 amLbnaz, do Melman and Javadanfar explicitly say the name was not reserved for Jews (I only ask for information)?
Any Persian Jewish experts?Lbnaz
4 October 2009, 1:54 amNo zkharya they don’t. But they do say that Mahmoud’s mother, Seyedde Khanom Saborjhian was named in honour of her father who held the honorific title of Seyed (Seyedde is the female form of Seyyed), which means that Seyedde and her father were claimants of a direct bloodline to the Quranic Mohammed.
They say that both Sayedde and her son Mahmoud’s father, Ahmad Saborjhian were born and raised in the village of Aradan and that Mahmoud’s parents changed their surname from Saborjhian to Achmadinejad soon after the family moved to a poor neighbourhood in Tehran, a four and a half mile drive away from their village on the advice of Sayedde’s brother who was already in Tehran. Further, that rural migration to the big city for economic opportunity was common in 1957 and that Ahmad Saborjhian was struggling financially with his 2nd business, a barbershop when they decided to move to Tehran from their rented home in Aradan.
The authors explain that the requirement to adopt a surnames in rural Iran only began at the start of the 20th century and that many people as elsewhere, chose either names related to their profession or their native region. Saborjian, or thread painting, which is a skill within the carpet weaving industry suggests to the authors that the family was involved in that industry as late as the early 1900’s.
And since in Iran, carpet weaving and its attendant unpaid child labour is associated with what the Tehranis refer to derisively as dehati, a derogatory term for peasant, the authors speculate that Ahmad and Sayedde Saborjhian might have changed their family name either because of apprehension that Tehranis would, or events in which Tehranis actually treated them with disdain.
In any event, Mahmoud’s mother and maternal grandfather were Sayed, (claiming a direct bloodline to Mohammed) so it doesn’t seem likely to me that Mahmoud would be Halakhaicly Jewish.
