Networks of Love: Families in the Iran-Based Alliance Israélite Universelle, 1908-1978

• In Event: Storied Journeys: Recovering Agency in Narratives of MENA Jewish Migration

Abstract

In 1908, Adolphe and Séphora Brasseur moved to Isfahan, Iran, to serve as school directors in the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), an international philanthropy with schools throughout the Middle East. Over the next seventy years, three generations of the family, including the Brasseurs’ three daughters, went on to serve as directors in the Iran-based AIU, and one son-in-law became the General Director of all AIU schools for the country. Blurring the lines between French and Iranian, the Brasseurs never relinquished their French identity, yet they also developed strong affinities with Iranian culture and became very comfortable working as go-betweens the AIU and the Iranian government and marrying into Iranian Jewish families. They also displayed a deep understanding of the massive transformations in Iranian society, from revolution, war and pandemic to the rise of the nationalist, autocratic Pahlavi regime, to the social and economic advancement of Jews, other minorities, and women. Had it not been for the 1979 Iranian Revolution, some members of the family claim them they might have stayed.
Drawing from work correspondence, memoirs and oral history interviews, “Networks of Love” makes two new arguments about the AIU. First, the AIU was more than a network of schools. It was also a network of families and constituted a dense web of affective relationships that connected its workforce across multiple dimensions: levels of authority, gender, generations, religion, and culture. Within the AIU, family connections and friendships provided powerful conduits for sharing professional expertise, valuable social connections, and ideology. Indeed, the AIU’s success and durability in Iran—where it had the second-longest presence outside of Morocco—depended in large part on the Brasseur family members’ deep understanding of the country, their savviness at negotiating with the Pahlavi regime, and their skill in navigating rapidly shifting Iranian realities. Second, for some families, the AIU served as an agent of migration, and those families in turn bend our understanding of what it means to live in “diaspora.”

Author

• Isabelle Headrick, The University of Texas at Austin