Iranian Jews in the context of "Esther"

Mizrahi Jews (Hebrew: יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as Mizrahim (מִזְרָחִים) in plural and Mizrahi (מִזְרָחִי) in singular, and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or Edot HaMizrach (עֲדוֹת־הַמִּזְרָח, lit. 'Communities of the East'), are terms used in Israeli discourse to refer to a grouping of Jewish communities that lived in the Muslim world.Mizrahi is a political sociological term that was coined with the creation of the State of Israel. It translates as "Easterner" in Hebrew.

The term Mizrahi is almost exclusively applied to descendants of Jewish communities from North Africa, Central Asia, West Asia, and parts of the North Caucasus. This includes Iraqi Jews, Iranian Jews, Bukharian Jews, Kurdish Jews, Afghan Jews, Mountain Jews, Georgian Jews, and the small community of Bahraini Jews. The aforementioned groups are believed to derive their ancestry in large part from the Babylonian captivity. Yemenite Jews are also Mizrahi Jews, though they differ from other Mizrahim, who have undergone a process of total or partial assimilation to Sephardic law and customs.

Judeo-Persian refers to both a group of Jewish dialects spoken by Jews and Judeo-Persian texts (written in the Hebrew alphabet). As a collective term, Judeo-Persian refers to a number of Judeo-Iranian languages spoken by Jewish communities throughout the formerly extensive Persian Empire, including Iranian Jews, Mountain Jews, Afghan Jews, and Bukharan Jews.

The speakers refer to their language as Fārsi. Some non-Jews refer to it as "dzhidi" (also written as "zidi", "judi" or "jidi"), which means "Jewish" in a derogatory sense.

The history of the Jews in Afghanistan goes back at least 2,500 years. Ancient Iranian tradition suggests that Jews settled in Balkh, a Zoroastrian and Buddhist stronghold at the time. The Kingdom of Judah collapsed in 587 BCE leading to this migration. In more recent times, the community has been reduced to complete extinction.

At the time of the large-scale 2021 Taliban offensive, only two Jews were still residing in the country: Zablon Simintov and his distant cousin Tova Moradi. When the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan was re-established by the Taliban in August 2021, both Simintov and Moradi made aliyah on 7 September 2021 and 29 October 2021, respectively, leaving Afghanistan completely empty of Jews. A branch of Persian-Jewry, the overwhelming majority of the Afghan Jewish community today resides in Israel, with a small group of a few hundred living in the United States and the United Kingdom.