Aziz Daneshrad | |
---|---|
Member of the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution | |
In office 18 August 1979 – 15 November 1979 | |
Constituency | Jewish community |
Majority | 8,927 (99.4%) |
Personal details | |
Born | Aziz Daneshrad-Kiyai 1920 Golpayegan, Iran |
Died | 1991 (aged 70–71) |
Political party | Tudeh Party of Iran |
Alma mater | University of Tehran |
Occupation | Engineer |
Aziz Daneshrad ( Persian: عزیز دانشراد; 1920–1991) [1] also known as Gabay ( Persian: گبای) [2] and Kiyai ( Persian: کیائی) [1] was an Iranian Jewish political activist who represented Jews in the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution. His was a proponent of left-wing politics while also advocating ethnoreligious identity. [3]
Aziz Daneshrad-Kiyai was born in 1920 in Golpayegan, Isfahan Province. [1] His father was a rabbi and a merchant in bazaar. [1] He obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran and then became a civil servant. [1]
During the rule of Pahlavi dynasty, Daneshrad was a dissident associated with the Tudeh Party of Iran and he was imprisoned in the 1960s and the 1970s. [3] [4]
He co-founded the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (Jame‘eh-ye rowshanfekran-e kalimi-ye Iran; abbreviated AJII) in 1978, a revolutionary organization that tried to challenge the old guard leadership of the Jewish community which had royalist and Zionist orientations. [3]
After the Iranian Revolution, he took charge as the interim chairman of the Tehran Jewish Association because the previous officeholder Habib Elghanian was executed. [2] Daneshrad was elected to the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution shortly after. [1] There he was one of the four members who represented religious minorities [5] and he is likely to have sided with opposition to inclusion of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists in the constitution. [6]
Daneshrad married his paternal cousin, Aghdas, in 1944. The couple had three sons and two daughters. [2]