Drive north up Middle Neck Road on a Friday afternoon and the rhythm of the street tells you everything. Kosher Persian restaurants empty as the sun drops, boutiques shutter for Shabbat, and the scent of saffron and grilled kebab lingers over a town that once stood for old American money. The Persians in Great Neck did not simply move into this corner of Long Island. They remade it. Today this affluent peninsula on the Nassau County shore holds one of the largest Iranian Jewish communities anywhere in the United States.
The Place
Great Neck sits at the western edge of Long Island’s North Shore, a cluster of villages on a peninsula reaching into Manhasset Bay, barely twenty miles from Midtown Manhattan. The Long Island Rail Road put it within easy commuting distance of the city more than a century ago, turning a quiet farming village into a wealthy suburb.
This is Gold Coast country. In the 1920s the North Shore filled with the palatial estates of Manhattan’s elite, and Great Neck became the gateway to that world. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived here from 1922 to 1924, and the town became the model for West Egg, the home of new money in The Great Gatsby.
For decades Great Neck was a destination for upwardly mobile Jewish families and show business names like Eddie Cantor, Sid Caesar and the Marx Brothers. It has always been a place where outsiders arrived with ambition and reinvented themselves. The Persians who came after 1979 fit that pattern exactly, even if the world they left behind could not have been more different.
How It Became Persian
The Revolution
In 1979 the Iranian Revolution swept away the Shah and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. For Iran’s Jews, a community that traced its roots back more than two and a half millennia, the new Islamic theocracy made life precarious almost overnight.
During the revolution and the years that followed, roughly two thirds of Iran’s Jewish population, then numbering around 80,000, left the country. Many were professionals, merchants and business owners who fled in haste, leaving homes, possessions and family behind. A large share carried their wealth and skills into exile and looked for somewhere to start again.
The Arrival
Many Iranian Jews landed first in Queens, in neighbourhoods like Kew Gardens and Forest Hills. As families found their footing, they began looking for somewhere greener, safer and grand enough to match their aspirations. Great Neck, with its strong public schools and established Jewish presence, was the obvious next step.
Persian synagogues started appearing in Great Neck almost immediately after the revolution. By the 1980s the migration had become a steady stream, and Iranian Jewish families were buying homes across the peninsula, especially in the wealthier villages near the water. The Village of Kings Point alone is said to be home to a remarkable share of the country’s Iranian Americans, almost entirely Jewish.
The Mashadi Community
Not all of Great Neck’s Persians share the same story. The community divides broadly between the Tehranis, from the Iranian capital, and the Mashadis, a smaller and famously tight-knit group from the north eastern holy city of Mashhad.
The Mashadi history is extraordinary. In 1839, a pogrom known as the Allahdad forced the entire Jewish community of Mashhad to convert to Islam. For generations they lived publicly as Muslims while secretly keeping their Jewish faith, much like the hidden Jews of medieval Spain. That experience of survival under pressure bound them together, and that cohesion has travelled with them.
Today the Mashadis remain one of the most close-knit Jewish communities in the world, and Great Neck is their American centre. They have invested heavily in the town, building synagogues and a community centre that keep their distinct traditions alive a world away from Mashhad.
Today
The transformation is now woven into the fabric of the town. A 2011 Jewish community survey found that 38 percent of Great Neck’s Jewish households included someone identifying as Sephardic, overwhelmingly of Iranian descent. The Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York estimates 15,000 to 17,000 Persian Jews in the greater New York area, with Great Neck second in size only to the enclaves of southern California.
Persian residents now serve as village mayors and trustees, run businesses up and down Middle Neck Road, and shape the religious life of the entire peninsula. Great Neck has become, in the words of one observer, Mizrahi normative rather than Ashkenazi dominant.
The Landmarks
Iranian Jewish Center / Beth Hadassah Synagogue, 160 Steamboat Road. One of the anchors of Persian religious life in Great Neck, the Iranian Jewish Center grew directly out of the post revolution arrival. It carries the name Beth Hadassah and remains a hub of worship, adult education and youth and senior programming for Iranian families.
Mashadi Jewish Center, 54 Steamboat Road. The heart of the Mashadi community in America. The centre and its congregation, Shaare Shalom, hold together a community of several thousand Mashadi Jews whose roots run back to a single Iranian city. Few diaspora communities anywhere are as concentrated or as cohesive.
Great Neck Synagogue, 26 Old Mill Road. A long established Orthodox congregation that has grown alongside the Persian influx, reflecting the broader shift of Great Neck towards traditional observance. It sits among a dense cluster of Orthodox and Sephardic congregations that now define the area.
Temple Beth-El, 5 Old Mill Road. Founded in 1928 when Great Neck was largely Protestant, Beth-El was the town’s only synagogue until 1941 and once counted some 1,500 families with a waiting list. As Reform membership declined and the Orthodox Persian community boomed, the pioneering congregation arranged to hand much of its landmark building to an Iranian Orthodox yeshiva, a striking emblem of the town’s changing face.
Colbeh, 75 North Station Plaza. A kosher Persian restaurant near the train station that has become a fixture for the community, serving the saffron rice, kebabs and stews that anchor Iranian Jewish tables. It is one of the most visible signs that Persian Great Neck eats, gathers and celebrates on its own terms.
Middle Neck Road, also signed as Great Gatsby Way. The peninsula’s commercial spine. Along its length sit Persian boutiques, jewellers and couture shops with names like Janet’s Collection, Steven Dann and Adam Marc Jewels, alongside kosher markets and bakeries. The street that once symbolised Jazz Age America now carries the everyday life of an Iranian Jewish town.
The Steamboat Road synagogue corridor. The short stretch of Steamboat Road has become a Persian religious axis, home to the Iranian Jewish Center, the Mashadi Jewish Center and other congregations within a few hundred metres of one another, a density of Iranian Jewish institutions unmatched on the East Coast.
Where They Came From
The Persians of Great Neck come overwhelmingly from two Iranian cities, and the difference matters to those who live it. The Tehranis are from the capital, a large and cosmopolitan community that included many of Iran’s Jewish professionals, doctors and businesspeople. They tended to arrive first in Queens before moving out to Long Island.
The Mashadis come from Mashhad, far to the north east near the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Theirs is the story of a community that survived forced conversion in 1839 by practising Judaism in secret for more than a century, a history that forged the unusually strong bonds they still maintain.
Both groups are Mizrahi and Sephardic in tradition rather than Ashkenazi, with their own liturgy, cuisine and customs. Persian is still spoken in many Great Neck homes, and the connection to Iran, a country most can no longer visit, remains deeply felt. For an example of how far this wider Iranian Jewish diaspora has spread, the communities of Tehrangeles in Los Angeles and nearby Beverly Hills tell a parallel West Coast story.
Great Neck Today
Great Neck remains one of the wealthiest communities in New York State, and its public schools are a major reason Persian families settled and stayed. Great Neck South High School ranks among the strongest in the country, and the district has long drawn ambitious families willing to pay for access to it.
The Persian presence is felt across the calendar. Jewish holidays fill the synagogues, while Nowruz, the Persian new year marking the spring equinox, is celebrated in homes with the haft sin table, a custom carried from Iran that ties the community to a heritage far older than the revolution that scattered it.
There are quiet tensions and changes too. Some younger Tehranis are moving on, to other North Shore suburbs, to Florida, or further afield, and old customs around courtship and marriage are loosening with each generation. Yet the institutions remain, and the Mashadi community in particular continues to hold tightly to its identity.
What began as a refuge for families fleeing an Islamic revolution has become something permanent. The story of Iranian Jews in America runs alongside other communities that turned New York neighbourhoods into homelands, from the Bukharian Jews of Rego Park to the Hasidic world of Borough Park in Brooklyn. In Great Neck, that homeland looks out over Manhasset Bay, on the same shore that once inspired Gatsby.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Persians live in Great Neck?
Estimates vary, but the Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York puts the broader New York Persian Jewish population at 15,000 to 17,000, with Great Neck holding one of the largest concentrations. A 2011 survey found 38 percent of Great Neck’s Jewish households included someone of Sephardic, overwhelmingly Iranian, descent.
Why did Persian Jews move to Great Neck?
Most came after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when roughly two thirds of Iran’s Jews left the country. Many settled first in Queens, then moved to Great Neck for its strong public schools, established Jewish community and affluent, leafy setting close to Manhattan.
What is the difference between Tehrani and Mashadi Jews?
Tehranis come from Tehran, Iran’s capital, and form the larger group. Mashadis come from the holy city of Mashhad and are a smaller, exceptionally close-knit community whose ancestors survived a forced conversion to Islam in 1839 by practising Judaism in secret for generations.
Are Great Neck’s Persians Jewish?
Yes. The Persian community in Great Neck is overwhelmingly Iranian Jewish, part of an ancient Jewish presence in Iran that stretches back more than 2,500 years. They follow Mizrahi and Sephardic traditions rather than Ashkenazi ones.
Where can you find Persian food in Great Neck?
Kosher Persian dining is a hallmark of the town. Colbeh, near the train station, is among the best known, serving traditional dishes such as saffron rice, kebabs and Persian stews, while kosher markets and bakeries line Middle Neck Road.
Is Great Neck connected to The Great Gatsby?
Yes. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck in the early 1920s, and the town inspired West Egg, the home of new money in The Great Gatsby. Part of Middle Neck Road is even signed as Great Gatsby Way.
If your family’s story passed through Great Neck, or any of the places Iranians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From Tehran or Mashhad to a synagogue on Steamboat Road, to wherever you are now.
Further reading: the history of the Mashhadi Jews and the wider story of Iranian Jews.