It's an interesting dichotomy, the combination of warm religious sensibility and cool medical know-how, but one not at all unusual in Jewish history, particularly among Jews of Sephardic and Eastern backgrounds.

Equally at home in the examining room and the -ndy hall, Dr. Ghatan is as comfortable discussing the technology of laser hair removal or the benefits of collagen implants as he is reviewing a page of Gemara or reciting a passage in Rambam.

If he's not seeing patients or attending a professional conference, he's likely to be found at a Daf Yomi shiu - a neighborhood minyan - or at the desk in his study, where textbooks and research papers vie for space with -forim and Jewish periodicals.

His is an unusual success story, though it's difficult to appreciate just how unusual unless you know this: little more than two decades ago, before there was any thought of a thriving practice or spacious, ultra-modern office facilities, there was a somewhat shy, altogether nervous, new arrival to the U.S.; a teenager, alone, with minimal amounts of English on his tongue and money in his pocket.

Coming Of Age Before The Revolution
Yedidiah Ghatan was born in Teheran in 1958. The name Eliot would come later, an accommodation to his new American surroundings, but to family and friends he remains Yedidiah - or its Persian equivalent, (the melodious Habibollah). The eldest of four children and the only boy in the family, he grew up in modest circumstances, the son of a bank worker and a nurse.

"We were six people living in a two-bedroom apartment," says Dr. Ghatan. "So it was a tight fit, but generally speaking we were happy. We had a large extended family, with many uncles, aunts and cousins. Jewish holidays were always joyous occasions."

Both his maternal and paternal roots go back to the earliest Persian Jewish communities, with his mother able to trace her lineage back to the ancient capital of -hushan. The family had its fair share of community leaders and chachamim, and was particularly well-represented in the medical profession.

"Doctors were always treated with great reverence by Persian Jews," says Dr. Ghatan, "and I remember how impressed I was with my relatives who were physicians, especially an uncle who was an orthopedic surgeon. In fact, my first interest in medicine was in orthopedic surgery, thanks to his influence."

Dr. Ghatan attended the Alliance Israelite Universelle primary school in Teheran and a Jewish community-run high school (before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there were more than 20 Jewish educational institutions throughout Iran). He was a studious type who, he says with a smile, kept his socializing to a minimum.

"I was always serious, even as a child," he recalls. It was probably the combination of family influence - the respect for scholarship shown by my parents and relatives, the fact that I was the only boy - and my own nature."

The Jewish community in Iran, one of the oldest in the Diaspora, goes all the way back to 6th century Persia - that's 6th century B.C.E. Despite being subject to sporadic outbreaks of persecution, particularly after Islam became the country's state religion in 642 C.E., Persian Jewry managed to maintain a strong internal structure with a wealthy merchant class.

By the time of Yedidiah Ghatan's childhood, the Iranian Jewish community was three decades into a golden age courtesy of the ruling Pahlavi dynasty, which had come to power in 1925. Benign treatment of Jews was commonplace under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi and even more so under his son, Mohammed Reza.

But the situation began to change for the worse as Dr, Ghatan reached his teen years. The Shah's Western orientation, coupled with his authoritarian reaction to any political dissent, had made him many enemies, most ominously among Iran's increasingly influential fundamentalist Moslem clerics.

Public discontent with the Shah spread rapidly in the late 70's with strikes and demonstrations, many of them bloody, becoming everyday occurrences. In January 1979, more than half a century after his father had established the Pahlavi dynasty, Shah Mohammed Reza, by then terminally ill with cancer, was forced to flee the country.

Shortly after the Shah's departure, an Islamic republic in Iran was declared by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a popular spiritual leader who had just returned to the country after a long exile in France. Almost immediately, Jews started emigrating in large numbers.

Iranian Jewry, 80,000 - strong on the eve of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution, would see its numbers diminish steadily through the 1980's. (Even so, some 20 years later, there are still more than 20,000 Jews in Iran - the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel.)

As for Yedidiah Ghatan, he'd left Iran in 1977, two years before the overthrow of the Shah, determined to pursue a medical education in the United States. Upon his arrival here, realizing it was too late in the academic year to enroll at Yeshiva University, he signed up for a handful of courses (including English as a second language) at Georgia State University.

Following nine months of culture shock as a young Middle-Eastern Orthodox Jew trying to navigate his way in the American Southland, Yedidiah finally came to New York for the start of Yeshiva University's fall semester.

At Home in America
In contrast to Atlanta, where he had boarded with a Jewish family from the very beginning - in fact, he'd found a minyan on his first day there, started talking to people, and within minutes had a place to stay - Ghatan's residence in Manhattan was the Y.U. dormitory, a circumstance that would, in time, play a pivotal role in the shidduch that led to his marriage.

After graduating Cum Laude in 1980 with a BA in Biology, Ghatan spent the next four years at the Y.U.-affiliated Albert Einstein College of Medicine. By the time he received his M.D. in 1985, he'd decided against pursuing his first choice, orthopedic surgery, opting instead for dermatology.

"Many of the secular schools' best training programs, particularly in competitive fields like orthopedic surgery," he says, "presented a problem for young Shomer Shabbos doctors. Residents were usually required to work on Saturdays, and since the administrators of those programs had the luxury of picking and choosing from a wide pool of talent, there was no reason for them to make exceptions on any appreciable scale."

Because he saw that dermatology was becoming much more of a surgical specialty, Dr. Ghatan concentrated on general surgery during his internship at Montefiore and Einstein hospitals. He served as medical and primary care resident at Brookdale Medical Center in Brooklyn and St. Vincent in Manhattan, and in 1989 began his dermatology residency and training at Montreal's McGill University.

But this time, in contrast to his earlier travels, Dr. Ghatan was not alone when he packed his suitcase. By now he'd been a husband for three years and a father for two, and the rigors of relocating to yet another completely new environment was eased considerably by the presence of his family.

He had formally met his wife, the former Aviva Sontag of Oceanside, Long Island, via a shidduch arranged by Dr. David Luchins, a senior aide to New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and a dean at Touro College.
"I was Dr. Luchin's head dorm counselor at Touro," says Aviva, "and Yedidiah was a frequent guest at the Luchins Shabbos table. We both knew immediately that this was it. And that's how the match was made; although it might not have been if I hadn't continued living at the Touro dorm after I'd gone on to Columbia for my Masters."

At McGill, Dr Ghatan was the only Shomer Shabbos resident - a status, says his wife, of which he was acutely aware.

"Because of that, he was always careful on how he conducted himself. He knew he represented frum- Jews to the people there, and so the danger of chilu- Hashem was constantly in his mind. It's a characteristic that has stayed with him, whether he's dealing with non-religious Jewish neighbors or non-Jewish patients.

Dr. Ghatan returned with his family to New York in 1992 and set up his first office, a basement on East 10th Street in Brooklyn. He didn't buy a patient list, and his advertising was limited to a couple of Jewish publications, but just the same he managed to build up a busy practice, mainly through word of mouth.

Less than five years later, he moved into his present Ocean Parkway quarters (he maintains satellite offices in Queens and on Long Island). Although Dr. Ghatan is staff dermatologist at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York Community Hospital and Maimonides Medical Center, he considers himself first and foremost a throwback to the old-fashioned family physician.

"With all the state of art equipment and all of the cutting-edge technology," he says, "there is still a special satisfaction I get from something as simple as stitching up a child's wound at some odd hour of the night."

Certified by the American Academy of Dermatologists and the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada, a recognized expert in the treatment of conditions ranging from insect bites and acne to psoriasis and skin cancer, Dr. Ghatan is also a respected scholar - his work has appeared in scientific journals, and his exhibits have become a fixture at medical conferences - and the author of two books, one a popular dermatological training manual, the other of a study of women in Judaism (The Invaluable Pearl, Bloch Publishing, 1986).

A father of five - the youngest is his first boy. Dr. Ghatan has his entire immediate family living in the U.S. It took time and not a little effort, but over the years he managed to bring his three sisters ("all of them now married to shomer Shabbos Persian husbands," he says) and his parents (for whom Dr. Ghatan has built a private apartment in his home) out of Iran.

"That," he says, "is something I wouldn't have believed possible, not even for a moment, if you would have told it to me back in 1977, when I was this homesick and just doing my best to master a difficult new language and fit in a strange new country.

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