For UHJ Member Dr. David Ruhe was a Baha'i of Jewish Background

Dr. David S. Ruhe

 

Dr. David S. Ruhe was a medical educator and movie director, Bahai leader, servant of humanity, human rights activist and a watercolor painter. He was a visionary who made award-winning medical films and proposed a range of innovations in medical education, including Lifetime Learning for the Doctor calling for career-long education for doctors in the 1950s with his colleague, Dr. Bernard Dryer. Dr. Ruhe, a medical educator, was named the first professor of Medical Communications at the University of Kansas Medical School in 1954. Also in the 1950s, Dr. Ruhe pioneered the use of optical fibers for endoscopic cinematography, projected high-definition images in surgical theatres and videotaped psychiatric sessions for peer review. He made more than a hundred medical films and won the Golden Reel and the Venice Film Festival awards for Dynamics of the Tubercle and The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain award for Emergency Airway. Dr. Ruhe also served as the producer of All My Babies, a midwife training documentary directed by George Stoney. After graduating from Temple Medical School, he began his career in medicine during World War II as a malaria researcher in the Public Health Service and was eventually appointed Director of the Medical Film Institute for the Association of American Medical Colleges. Dr. Ruhe was a member of the Bahai Faith. Bahai communities have no clergy but are governed by elected spiritual assemblies. In 1963, he was elected Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of the United States, the highest administrative position. In 1968, he was elected by representatives of the global Bahai community to serve as one of the nine members of the Universal House of Justice of the Bahai Faith seated in Haifa, Israel, where he served five terms for a total of 25 years. Dr. Ruhe said that his best accomplishment was the effort he made over many years to assist, encourage and support Bahai individuals and communities around the world who are engaged in direct service to humanity through educational, medical and other direct service activities. He wrote and published two historical books about Bahaullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, Door of Hope and Robe of Light. Since his 1993 retirement from the Universal House of Justice, he produced a series of documentary TV programs about the Bahai faith. He was an activist in the human rights movement in the 1940s in Atlanta, Ga., where he was a member of a small group that successfully pressed for the hiring of African-American police officers, and in the 1960s in Kansas City where, consistent with his beliefs as a Bahai he peacefully protested against the segregation of African-Americans. He also was an accomplished watercolor painter of scenes in nature, who was trained by Walter Baum in the Lehigh Valley school of Impressionism. He was productive over his whole life and in his final years painted local scenes near his home in upstate New York. He was a creative and enthusiastic family patriarch who loved organizing songfests, hikes and outdoor adventures. Dr. Ruhe, who died on Tuesday, September 6, 2005, was born in Allentown on Jan. 3, 1914, to Percy Bott Ruhe, editor of The Morning Call newspaper, and Amy (Sieger) Ruhe. Survivors: Wife, Margaret Kunz Ruhe, to whom he was married for 65 years; sons, Christopher Ruhe and Douglas Ruhe; seven grandchildren, two great-grandchildren; sister, Judith Diehl; brother, Benjamin Ruhe. Services: A memorial service for family and friends will be celebrated in Meadowbrook Lodge, Route 94, New Windsor, N.Y., on Friday, September 9, beginning at 2 p.m. Interment will follow in Cedar Hill Cemetary, Route 9W, Newburgh, N.Y. Funeral arrangements are being directed by Engel Funeral Home Inc., Route 9W, Newburgh. To send a note of condolence, visit us at www.engelfuneralhome.com. 

 

Read more here : https://bahaikipedia.org/David_Ruhe

Mansour Derakhshani was a translator for the American army and a Baha'i from Jewish Background

Mansour Derakhshani (1923 - 2011)

Mansour was born in Hamedan, Iran during the month of Ala in 1923 (his father had made a note of his birth in the hand written Kitabi-Aqdas). His Bahá’í family were of early Jewish background.

The family had to endure much hardship for the Faith, as both the Jews, who didn’t like their change of religion, and the Muslims persecuted them. His mother, who was not a Bahá’í, but considered herself one whilst his father was alive, went back to being a staunch Jew after his death, when Mansour was about thirteen or fourteen years old. Nevertheless, although illiterate, she knew Bahá’í prayers by heart and would chant them while working in the kitchen, and suffered hardship along with the rest of the family. After his father passed away, Mansour had to start working immediately.

Because of Mansour’s great talent for languages, and his adaptability, he took a job as a translator for the American army when he was about eighteen, and later he went on to fight in the army when Iran was attacked. He then became a teacher.

He recounted a story that he had been given a job to home-teach a clergyman’s children in the south of Iran. While traveling there from Tehran, he met someone on the bus, who turned out to be a Bahá’í, and who invited him to stay with his family on arrival in the city. He was very successful in teaching the clergyman’s children, but the clergyman was astonished to find out that he was a Bahá’í, and such an honest and trustworthy man. He was also surprised that Mansour had already been invited to stay with someone else, when he didn’t know anyone in that town.

Later on he left this job and became a primary school teacher with the government, working a few years, but always longing to pioneer.

In 1950 he got married to another Bahá’í, Mahboobeh Khoshbin, whose parents were among the first teachers of the Jews in Iran, and whose longing was also to pioneer.

When the messages from the Guardian called for the Bahá’ís to pioneer, they were able to fulfil their desire, and in 1954, went to Saudi Arabia with their two young boys. They stayed there for two years, but suddenly the members of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Riadh were imprisoned. Since all the Local Spiritual Assembly members were in prison, they held their meetings and Feasts there, for a period of nineteen days!

His most cherished memory of those days was about one of the Persian believers in prison, who used to chant the ‘Tablet of Ahmad’ with such a melodious voice, that invariably at the end of his chanting they would note how the other prisoners were gathered around them, listening with reverence. Mansour asked that the ‘Tablet of Ahmad’, and the prayer ‘Create in me a pure heart, Oh my God’, be chanted at his funeral. While he was in prison, his pregnant wife and two boys were taken out of Saudi Arabia by another one of the Bahá’ís, at the behest of the beloved Guardian, and went to Bahrain, and were guests of the Hand of the Cause Mr Faizi, until Mansour was released and joined them there.

On their return to Iran, once again they went pioneering to Sanandaj, Kermanshah, and then Songhor, a small town near Kermanshah. Unfortunately Mansour wasn’t able to continue to work in Songhor and had to leave for Tehran, and his wife and four children - Farshid, Fariborz, May and Jena - followed him there sometime after.

His wife passed to the Abhá Kingdom in 1970. He remarried to Pourandokht Nafe in 1975. They left Iran in 1985 to become refugees in the United Kingdom.

His joyous smile and infectious laughter were well-loved by all. The spirit of his faith; his kind and unpresumptuous demeanor; his forgiving nature and the love he showed to everyone, drew all close to him. His hospitality and generosity knew no bounds and seeing the good in all was a norm for him. He was a confidante to young and old alike and he was well-respected by everybody. His positive outlook on life was exemplary, and a smile never left his lips. One of his famous sayings was “I am always well”, even when he was seriously ill.

Mansour passed to the Abhá Kingdom on 3rd April 2011 in York Hospital surrounded by family members. He is survived by his wife, four children, eight grandchildren and three great- grandchildren.

Professor Ehsán YARSHATER can be considered one of the greatest Iranian scholars of recent decades.

Rochan Mavaddat is a Jewish Baha'i

Dear Friends,

Dr. Ehsán YÁRSHÁTER, Founder of "Encyclopædia Iranica", Professor at Columbia University, born in 1920 in Iran in a Baha'i family (he was the first cousin of my mother), died on 2 September 2018 in United States, where he settled after leaving Iran.

The surname "YARSHATER" was given by 'Abdu'l-Bahá to his father.

Encyclopædia Iranica is a major project – started in Iran, in 1974, before the Islamic Revolution – of the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University to create an encyclopedia in English about History, Civilization and Culture. of Iran (Persia), from prehistory to modern times.

This encyclopedia will have some 30 volumes, fifteen of which have already been published. It is the largest research work on Iranology, bringing together the academic knowledge of the Persian language and the civilization of the Plateau of the Iran and surrounding areas.

This encyclopedia contains many articles on the historical personalities of the Bahá'í Faith.

Professor Ehsán YARSHATER can be considered one of the greatest Iranian scholars of recent decades.

God bless his soul !

With Loving Greetings,

 

Rochan MAVADDAT

Professor Ehsan Yarshater was a Baha'i of Jewish Background

Professor Ehsan Yarshater, 1920-2018

Born on April 3, 1920, to a prominent Baha’i family in the city of Hamadan, Professor Ehsan Yarshater served the field of Iranian Studies for many decades as an exemplary scholar and a pioneer. With a 1947 Ph.D. in Persian Literature from the University of Tehran, and a second Ph.D. in 1960 in Old and Middle Iranian Languages from the University of London, he had an enormous scholarly range. He crafted the critical tools for the professionalization of Iranian Studies and for the dissemination and accessibility of scholarly research to both Persian and English language readerships. He peacefully passed away on Saturday, September 1, at the age of 98 in Fresno, California.

An early outline of what Professor Yarshater’s unique lifetime scholarly contribution was to be was visible in his detailed report on a 1951 UNESCO conference on the topic “The Teaching of History as a Means of Developing International Understanding.” His deeply inclusionary vision of cultural-historical knowledge had been promoted by the Iranian delegates to the 1945 San Francisco conference, which concluded in the signing of the Charter of the United Nations. The commitment to an objective and well-documented cultural and literary history that promoted human understanding provided the foundation for his highly diverse scholarly achievements. They include: his Iran-based efforts as the founding director of the Royal Institute of Translation and Publication, 1953-1961; his work on the UNESCO Council for Iranian Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, 1954-1958; his founding editorship of Rahnemay-e Ketab, a journal of Persian language and literature, 1957-1979; his presidency of the Book Society of Iran, 1957-1979, and the editorship of the UNESCO Collection of Persian Representative Works, 1962-80. After two years as a visiting professor at Columbia University, he became a permanent and prominent member of the faculty in 1961as the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies. As the Kevorkian Professor he founded and directed Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies since 1966. Like the multi-armed Indian deity Durga, while in New York Professor Yarshater initiated the Persian Texts Series in 1956, the Persian Heritage Series in 1962, the Persian Studies Series in 1966, the Modern Persian Literature Series in 1976, the al-Tabari Translation Project in 1977, the Columbia Lectures in Iranian Studies Series in 1981 and A History of Persian Literature in 2005. The famed Encyclopaedia Iranica, on which Professor Yarshater embarked in 1974, is only one of the many arms of this knowledge-producing and -disseminating master of Iranian Studies.

With seemingly unending amounts of energy, in addition to teaching at the University of Tehran and Columbia University, Professor Yarshater served the field in many capacities: as the Chairman of the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Columbia, 1968-1973; as Chairman of the Columbia University Publications in Near and Middle East Studies, 1968-1976 and as the Secretary of the American Research Institute in Iran, 1968-1970 (among others). He was the source of inspiration for the founding of the International Society for Iranian Studies as well as its first president. Regularly attending the annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), and the biennial conferences of the International Society for Iranian Studies, he was generous in reaching out to younger scholars and providing them with encouragement and critical support. Simply put, Professor Yarshater was an exceptional scholar, a visionary academic administrator, and the pioneering founder of a number of significant scholarly associations and publication series. In all of these efforts, he was a tireless advocate and a generous source of inspiration and support for students and scholars in Iranian Studies over many decades.

- Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi
University of Toronto