Podcasts about iranian jewish

On today's Supernatural Friday Podcast we share a testimony of an Iranian Jewish man that experienced salvation and then a supernatural healing miracle.  Listen in and be encouraged.  

What happens when you transition from a traditional upbringing to becoming a trailblazer in the world of fashion and social media? In this episode, we sit down with Elaine Chaya, an influential fashionista from Los Angeles, to uncover her remarkable journey. Elaine opens up about her roots in a tight-knit Iranian Jewish community, her shift from conventional career paths to the glamorous realm of fashion blogging, and the pivotal moments that shaped her path. From her early career in PR and event management to her rise as a social media icon, Elaine's story is a testament to the power of following one's passion despite societal expectations.As we navigate the evolving landscape of social media, Elaine shares her insights on the growing prominence of video content, spurred by platforms like Instagram and TikTok. She emphasizes the significance of authenticity, taking us behind the scenes of movements like "#wokeupthisway," which aim to counteract the pressure of curated perfection. We dive deep into the mental health implications of social media, the benefits of vulnerability, and how genuine connections can be a game-changer for anyone looking to grow their online presence.But this episode isn't just about fashion and social media. We broaden our scope to explore the rich tapestry of Iranian Jewish traditions and the challenges faced by the community, from the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to modern-day anti-Semitism. Elaine speaks candidly about the emotional toll recent events have taken on Jewish individuals and the importance of unity and support. Join us for a profound conversation that blends cultural heritage, personal resilience, and practical advice for navigating life's complexities with grace and authenticity.Follow Elaine Chaya:www.elainechaya.cominstagram - @elainechayaSupport the Show.

In our tenth episode of The Lowdown, host Judith Offenberg is joined by Shahrzad Osterer, an Iranian-Jewish activist and journalist. Released on March 8 to celebrate International Women's Day and the relaunch of the EUJS Women's Network, Shahrzad shares her insights into the Iranian women's resistance against the Islamic Republic. She also sheds light on how this struggle is intertwined with the battle against antisemitism and the denial of sexual violence since the October 7 Massacre, offering a powerful narrative of unity and resilience.

In the summer 2023 issue of Sapir, Roya Hakakian, an Iranian Jewish refugee to America, published an essay titled “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Idealist." Its form echoes some of the most important arguments in modern times: Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution was written as a letter, as was perhaps the foremost Zionist polemic in English, Hillel Halkin's Letters to an American Jewish Friend. In it, Hakakian acknowledges the misgivings that her correspondent—a benighted, well-intentioned, kind-hearted, idealist—has about Israel, and confronts that point of view with her own gratitude for Israel. And by examining the different judgments at which she and her correspondent have arrived, she is also able to shed light on the effects that America has had on Zionism in general. This week, she joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to discuss her letter, the fervor that now surrounds the subject, and the resurgent presence of the anti-Zionist idealists to whom Hakakian addresses herself. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Growing up, Elaine Chaya had only two choices; go to medical or law school. As a first-generation Iranian-American Jew, her parents expected her to put her desires aside to pursue a reliable, trusted profession and their version of the “American Dream." The pressure of her parents' expectations led to suffering in her mental health. She had no examples in media of people that looked like her to know she was capable of achieving her wildest dreams. That all changed when she made the scariest decision of her life to believe in herself and pursue her passion by accepting a full-time position at one of the biggest PR agencies, PMK*BNC. Elaine Chaya soon became one of the first social media influencers in 2012, before the word "influencer" was created, showing followers what it meant to defy societal expectations, chase your dreams, and unapologetically be yourself. Today, Elaine Chaya uses her platform to help her 82K followers tap into the unique special powers so they can defy all odds and make positive marks on the world simply by being themselves—especially in the Iranian Jewish community. Elaine Chaya is widely known for her bright colors, positive messaging, and her three major impact-driven viral campaigns: “Woke Up This Way Challenge”, “Class of Quarantine 2020” and “The 2020 Wall”. You can find her on IG: @elainechaya. You can also find me on IG @sherylbenjy_art and www.sherylbenjy.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sheryl-benjy/support

Nate Looney is an American Jewish University alum and a social entrepreneur. A US Army veteran and an urban farmer, Nate has a broad range of experience across multiple disciplines. He wears numerous hats such as a diversity strategist and currently serves as the Director of Community Safety and Belonging on the Jewish Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) team at Jewish Federations of North America. Having served in the Task Force Gator after Hurricane Katrina and deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, Nate brings a wealth of experience in safety, security and critical problem-solving. Presently, he focuses on building community and spearheading change in safety and security, antisemitism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and racial justice. Matthew Nuriel is a member of JIMENA - Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa and serves as their Community Engagement Director. As an activist with Iranian Jewish heritage based in Los Angeles, California, Matthew works relentlessly for numerous causes close to their heart including LGBTQ+ rights, equality within the Iranian and Jewish communities, the fight against antisemitism, and their active support of the Women Life Freedom movement for a free Iran. Furthermore, Matthew is a passionate advocate and a digital influencer who uses social media to amplify their voice around these issues. Besides, Matthew engages with audiences through panel discussions and speaking engagements across the country and has had their articles featured in various publications.

Today we release the new book by Saul Singer and me: “The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World”, which you can order now at: www.amazon.com/Genius-Israel-Small-Nation-Teach/dp/1982115769/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LKV3ZLWLBOL1&keywords=dan+senor&qid=1694402205&sprefix=dan+senor%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1 OR www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-genius-of-israel-dan-senor/1143499668 Today’s guest is Ruby Namdar, who was born and raised in Jerusalem to a family of Iranian-Jewish heritage. His first […]

Today we release the new book by Saul Singer and me: "The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World", which you can order now at: www.amazon.com/Genius-Israel-Small-Nation-Teach/dp/1982115769/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3LKV3ZLWLBOL1&keywords=dan+senor&qid=1694402205&sprefix=dan+senor%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1 OR www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-genius-of-israel-dan-senor/1143499668 Today's guest is Ruby Namdar, who was born and raised in Jerusalem to a family of Iranian-Jewish heritage. His first book, "Haviv" (2000), won the Israeli Ministry of Culture's Award for Best First Publication. His novel "The Ruined House", has won the Sapir Prize, Israel's most prestigious literary award. He currently lives in New York City with his wife, he has two daughters, and teaches Jewish literature, focusing on Biblical and Talmudic narrative. Items discussed in this episode: Our piece in The Free Press, “Israel's Blueprint for a Revival of the West”: https://www.thefp.com/p/israel-blueprint-for-a-revival-of-the-west Ruby Namdar's piece in The Atlantic, "For Israel, Another New Layer of Trauma": https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/10/israel-hamas-yom-kippur-war/675587/ Ruby Namdar's book, The Ruined House: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-ruined-house-ruby-namdar/1125687349?ean=9780062467485 Bret Stephens's column in The New York Times, "For America's Jews, Every Day Must Be Oct 8: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/opinion/us-jewish-israel-sept-11.html

Judith's Iranian Jewish parents expected her to date, and ultimately marry, someone of her cultural background. But her new relationship is creating tension with her relatives--and within herself. And Samira Mehta, a religion and family politics scholar, debunks myths about interfaith marriage in the U.S. and shares strategies for making religious spaces and family traditions more inclusive.Featured Expert:Our expert this week is Samira K. Mehta. Samira is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and the Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist. Mehta is currently working on two academic book projects. The first, God Bless the Pill: Sexuality and Contraception in Tri-Faith America, examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-twentieth century to the present and is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press. The second, A Mixed Multitude: A History of Jews of Color in the United States, under contract with Princeton University Press, will trace that history through much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging, was released by Beacon Press in January 2023. In addition to these academic book projects, Mehta serves as the primary investigator for the Henry Luce Foundation–funded collaboration Jews of Color: Histories and Futures and is working on editing scholarly and literary collections related to her research topics.She serves as a Creative Editor at the journal American Religion and co-chairs both the North American Religion Section of the American Academy of Religion and the board of eFeminist Studies in Religion. She holds degrees from Swarthmore College, Harvard University, and Emory University. In addition to speaking at colleges and universities, Mehta frequently teaches and speaks at high schools, churches, and synagogues. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @samirakmehta. Learn more about her work here.If you liked this show listen to Raised Mormon, She Left the Church Fearing for Her Safety and A Historical Would He's Trying To Understand.We'd love to hear your stories of triumph and frustration so send us a detailed voice memo to hello@talktomamipapi.com. You might be on a future episode! Let's connect on Twitter and Instagram at @TalkToMamiPapi and email us at hello@talktomamipapi.com. And follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.  

In the series premiere of Kitchen Radio, Tannaz Sassooni makes us a meatless Gondi Kashi from her grandmother's Iran and recounts a lively tradition Persian Jews play during Passover. Born in Tehran to a Jewish family, Tannaz is a Los Angeles-based food writer exploring Los Angeles' global culinary landscape and interviewing mothers and grandmothers from Iran for a regional Iranian Jewish cookbook. Follow Tannaz on Instagram: @tannazsassooni.The Kitchen Radio podcast brings listeners to the table of communities from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia for intergenerational stories of community life and ritual practices from guests who are part of a rising renaissance of creative food projects exploring the oft-overlooked Jewish history and heritage.In each episode, hosts Regine Basha (Founder of Tuning Baghdad) and Nathalie Basha (The Travel Muse), will feature a specific dish and a conversation to introduce the still little-known Jewish culture of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and re-seed Jewish life into a cultural space where their contribution was forgotten, rendered invisible or white-washed. Guests include: Tannaz Sassooni, Sephardic Spice Girls, Rafram Chaddad, Claudia Roden.Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: ▼Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3Z2pTlH▼Spotify Podcasts: https://spoti.fi/3QdA2HT ▼Google Podcasts: http://bit.ly/3GCtSOE ▼Goodpods: https://bit.ly/GoodpodsRebootPesentsLearn more about Reboot and get involved:▼Website: https://rebooting.com/ ▼Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebootjewish/▼Twitter: https://twitter.com/reboot▼Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rebooters/▼TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rebooters ▼Newsletter: https://rebooting.com/get-involved/▼YouTube: https://bit.ly/RebootYouTubeSubscribe

Matthew Nouriel has always worn many hats. A drag queen who goes by the stage name “The Empress Mizrahi,” the nonbinary activist is also the Community Engagement Director at JIMENA - Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, which connects Matthew to their Iranian Jewish roots. Host Steven Shalowitz sits down with Matthew to discuss their journey towards coming to terms with their identities, how Middle Eastern and African Jews are not a monolith, and the importance of compassion when it comes to Israel advocacy.

Welcome back to Fresh Look! This week's episode features a unique conversation with a non-binary digital activist and content creator of Iranian Jewish descent, Matthew Nouriel. In recent years, Matthew has been using their voice to passionately advocate and fight for the causes they believe in - namely LGBTQ+ rights and equality within the Iranian and Jewish communities, and combating antisemitism - using their social media as a means to reach those who relate to their perspective and lived experiences, as well as engaging audiences on panel discussions and speaking engagements across the country. They have taken on leadership roles with both queer and non-queer organizations such as JDC Entwine, JQ International, Tel Aviv Institute, and most recently joined the team at JIMENA - Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. In 2021 they were the recipient of the TrailBlazer Award at the JQ International annual Impact Awards. Welcome to the show, Matthew!

Too few people know that parts of the Arab world and Iran were once home to large Jewish communities. This Mizrahi Heritage Month, let's change the story, with the final episode of the first season of The Forgotten Exodus, the first-ever narrative podcast series devoted exclusively to the rich, fascinating, and often-overlooked history of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewry. Thank you for lifting up these stories to celebrate Mizrahi Heritage Month. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to listen to the rest of The Forgotten Exodus, wherever you get your podcasts.   __ Home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, the story of Jews in Iran has been one of prosperity and suffering through the millennia. During the mid-20th century, when Jews were being driven from their homes in Arab lands, Iran assisted Jewish refugees in providing safe passage to Israel. Under the Shah, Israel was an important economic and political ally. Yet that all swiftly changed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which ushered in Islamic rule, while chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” rang out from the streets of Tehran.   Author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian shares her personal story of growing up Jewish in Iran during the reign of the Shah and then Ayatollah Khomeini, which she wrote about in her memoir Journey From the Land of No. Joining Hakakian is Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history who wrote From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of AJC Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants.  In this sixth and final episode of the season, the Hakakian family's saga captures the common thread that has run throughout this series – when the history of an uprooted community is left untold, it can become vulnerable to others' narratives and assumptions, or become lost forever and forgotten. How do you leave behind a beloved homeland, safeguard its Jewish legacy, and figure out where you belong? __ Show notes: Listen to The Forgotten Exodus and sign up to receive updates about future episodes.  Song credits:  Chag Purim · The Jewish Guitar Project Hevenu Shalom · Violin Heart Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Oud Nation”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Haygaz Yossoulkanian (BMI), IPI#1001905418 “Persian”: Publisher: STUDEO88; Composer: Siddhartha Sharma “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: N/; Composer: DANIELYAN ASHOT MAKICHEVICH (IPI NAME #00855552512), UNITED STATES BMI Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Persian Investigative Mystery”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Peter Cole (BMI), IPI#679735384 “Persian Wind”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Sigma (SESAC); Composer: Abbas Premjee (SESAC), IPI#572363837 “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) “Persian Fantasy Tavern”: Publisher: N/A; Composer: John Hoge “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. ___ Episode Transcript: ROYA HAKAKIAN: In 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. When I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them.  MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: Leaving Iran MANYA: Outside Israel, Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East. Yes, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2022. Though there is no official census, experts estimate about 10,000 Jews now live in the region previously known as Persia.  But since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Jews in Iran don't advertise their Jewish identity. They adhere to Iran's morality code: women stay veiled from head to toe and men and women who aren't married or related stay apart in public. They don't express support for Israel, they don't ask questions, and they don't disagree with the regime. One might ask, with all these don'ts, is this a way of living a Jewish life? Or a way to live – period?  For author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian and her family, the answer was ultimately no. Roya has devoted her life to being a fact-finder and truth-teller. A former associate producer at the CBS news show 60 Minutes and a Guggenheim Fellow, Roya has written two volumes of poetry in Persian and three books of nonfiction in English, the first of which was published in 2004 – Journey From the Land of No, a memoir about her charmed childhood and accursed adolescence growing up Jewish in Iran under two different regimes.  ROYA: It was hugely important for me to create an account that could be relied on as a historic document. And I did my best through being very, very careful about gathering, interviewing, talking to, observing facts, evidence, documents from everyone, including my most immediate members of my family, to do what we, both as reporters, but also as Jews, are called to do, which is to bear witness. No seemed to be the backdrop of life for women, especially of religious minorities, and, in my own case, Jewish background, and so I thought, what better way to name the book than to call it as what my experience had been, which was the constant nos that I heard. So, Land of No was Iran. MANYA: As a journalist, as a Jew, as a daughter of Iran, Roya will not accept no for an answer. After publishing her memoir, she went on to write Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, a meticulously reported book about a widely underreported incident. In 1992 at a Berlin restaurant, a terrorist attack by the Iranian proxy Hezbollah targeted and killed four Iranian-Kurdish exiles. The book highlighted Iran's enormous global footprint made possible by its terror proxies who don't let international borders get in the way of silencing Iran's critics.   Roya also co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, an independent non-profit that reports on Iran's human rights abuses.  Her work has not prompted Ayatollah Khameini to publicly issue a fatwa against her  – like the murder order against Salman Rushdie issued by his predecessor. But in 2019, one of her teenage sons answered a knock at the door. It was the FBI, warning her that she was in the crosshairs of the Iranian regime's operatives in America. Most recently, Roya wrote A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious about the emotional roller coaster of arriving in America while still missing a beloved homeland, especially one where their community has endured for thousands of years. ROYA: I felt very strongly that one stays in one's homeland, that you don't just simply take off when things go wrong, that you stick around and try to figure a way through a bad situation. We came to the point where staying didn't seem like it would lead to any sort of real life and leaving was the only option. MANYA: The story of Jews in Iran, often referred to as Persia until 1935, is a millennia-long tale. A saga of suffering, repression, and persecution, peppered with brief moments of relief or at least relative peace – as long as everyone plays by the rules of the regime. SABA SOOMEKH: The history of Jews in Iran goes back to around 2,700 years ago. And a lot of people assume that Jews came to Iran, well at that time, it was called the Persian Empire, in 586 BCE, with the Babylonian exile. But Jews actually came a lot earlier, we're thinking 721-722 BCE with the Assyrian exile which makes us one of the oldest Jewish communities.  MANYA: That's Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history and the author of From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants. Saba's parents fled Iran in 1978, shortly before the revolution, when Saba and her sister were toddlers. She has devoted her career to preserving Iranian Jewish history.   Saba said Zoroastrian rulers until the 7th Century Common Era vacillated between tolerance and persecution of Jews. For example, according to the biblical account in the Book of Ezra, Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian rule, granted all of them citizenship, and permitted them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple.  The Book of Esther goes on to tell the story of another Persian king, believed to be Xerxes I, whose closest adviser called Haman conspires to murder all the Jews – a plot that is foiled by his wife Queen Esther who is Jewish herself. Esther heroically pleads for mercy on behalf of her people – a valor that is celebrated on the Jewish holiday of Purim.  But by the time of the Islamic conquest in the middle of the 7th Century Common Era, the persecution had become so intense that Jews were hopeful about the new Arab Muslim regime, even if that meant being tolerated and treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmi status. But that status had a different interpretation for the Safavids. SABA: Really things didn't get bad for the Jews of the Persian Empire until the 16th century with the Safavid dynasty, because within Shia Islam in the Persian Empire, what they brought with them is this understanding of purity and impurity. And Jews were placed in the same category as dogs, pigs, and feces. They were seen as being religiously impure, what's referred to as najes. MANYA: Jews were placed in ghettos called mahaleh, where they wore yellow stars and special shoes to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They could not leave the mahaleh when it rained for fear that if water rolled off their bodies into the water system, it would render a Shia Muslim impure. For the same reason, they could not go to the bazaars for fear they might contaminate the food. They could not look Muslims in the eye. They were relegated to certain artisanal professions such as silversmithing and block printing – crafts that dirtied one's hands.  MANYA: By the 19th century, some European Jews did make their way to Persia to help. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based network of schools founded by French Jewish intellectuals, opened schools for Jewish children throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including within the mahalehs in Persia.  SABA: They saw themselves as being incredibly sophisticated because they were getting this, in a sense, secular European education, they were speaking French. The idea behind the Allianz schools was exactly that. These poor Middle Eastern Jews, one day the world is going to open up to them, their countries are going to become secular, and we need to prepare them for this, not only within the context of hygiene, but education, language.  And the Allianz schools were right when it came to the Persian Empire because who came into power was Reza Pahlavi, who was a Francophile. And he turned around and said, ‘Wow! Look at the population that speaks French, that knows European philosophy, etc. are the Jews.' He brought them out of the mahaleh, the Jewish ghettos, and said ‘I don't care about religion. Assimilate and acculturate. As long as you show, in a sense, devotion, and nationalism to the Pahlavi regime, which the Jews did—not all Jews—but a majority of them did. MANYA: Reza Pahlavi took control in 1925 and 16 years later, abdicated his throne to his son Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1935, Persia adopted a new name: Iran. As king or the Shah, both father and son set Iran on a course of secularization and rapid modernization under which Jewish life and success seemed to flourish. The only condition was that religious observance was kept behind closed doors. SABA: The idea was that in public, you were secular and in private, you were a Jew. You had Shabbat, you only married a Jew, it was considered blasphemous if you married outside of the Jewish community. And it was happening because people were becoming a part of everyday schools, universities.  But that's why the Jewish day schools became so important. They weren't learning Judaism. What it did was ensure that in a secular Muslim society, that the Jewish kids were marrying within each other and within the community. It was, in a sense, the Golden Age. And that will explain to you why, unlike the early 1950s, where you had this exodus of Mizrahi Jews, Arab Jews from the Arab world and North Africa, you didn't really have that in Iran.  MANYA: In fact, Iran provided a safe passage to Israel for Jewish refugees during that exodus, specifically those fleeing Iraq. The Pahlavi regime considered Israel a critical ally in the face of pan-Arab fervor and hostility in the region. Because of the Arab economic boycott, Israel needed energy sources and Iran needed customers for its oil exports.  A number of Israelis even moved to Tehran, including farmers from kibbutzim who had come to teach agriculture, and doctors and nurses from Hadassah Hospital who had come to teach medicine.  El Al flew in and out of Tehran airport, albeit from a separate terminal. Taking advantage of these warm relations between the two countries, Roya recalls visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins in Israel.  ROYA: We arrived, and my mom and dad did what all visiting Jews from elsewhere do. They dropped to their knees, and they started kissing the ground. I did the same, and it was so moving. Israel was the promised land, we thought about Israel, we dreamed about Israel. But, at the same time, we were Iranians and, and we were living in Iran, and things were good.  This seems to non-Iranian Jews an impossibility. But I think for most of us, it was the way things were. We lived in the country where we had lived for, God knows how many years, and there was this other place that we somehow, in the back of our minds thought we would be going to, without knowing exactly when, but that it would be the destination. MANYA: Relations between the Shah and America flourished as well. In 1951, a hugely popular politician by the name of Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister and tried to institute reforms. His attempts to nationalize the oil industry and reduce the monarchy's authority didn't go over well. American and British intelligence backed a coup that restored the Shah's power. Many Iranians resented America's meddling, which became a rallying cry for the revolution. U.S. officials have since expressed regret for the CIA's involvement.  In November 1977, President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah and his wife to Washington, D.C., to discuss peace between Egypt and Israel, nuclear nonproliferation, and the energy crisis.  As an extension of these warm relations, the Shah sent many young Iranians to America to enhance their university studies, exposing them to Western ideals and values.  Meanwhile, a savvy fundamentalist cleric was biding his time in a Paris basement. It wouldn't be long before relations crumbled between Iran and Israel, Iran and the U.S,. and Iran and its Jews.  Roya recalls the Hakakian house at the corner of Alley of the Distinguished in Tehran as a lush oasis surrounded by fragrant flowers, full of her father's poetry, and brimming with family memories. Located in the heart of a trendy neighborhood, across the street from the Shah's charity organization, the tall juniper trees, fragrant honeysuckle, and gold mezuzah mounted on the door frame set it apart from the rest of the homes.  Roya's father, Haghnazar, was a poet and a respected headmaster at a Hebrew school. Roya, which means dream in Persian, was a budding poet herself with the typical hopes and dreams of a Jewish teenage girl.  ROYA: Prior to the revolution, life in an average Tehran Hebrew Day School looked very much like life in a Hebrew Day School anywhere else. In the afternoons we had all Hebrew and Jewish studies. We used to put on a Purim show every year. I wanted to be Esther. I never got to be Esther. We had emissaries, I think a couple of years, from Israel, who came to teach us how to do Israeli folk dance. MANYA: There were moments when Roya recalls feeling self-conscious about her Jewishness, particularly at Passover. That's when the family spent two weeks cleaning, demonstrating they weren't najes, or dirty Jews. The work was rewarded when the house filled with the fragrance of cumin and saffron and Persian dishes flowed from the kitchen, including apple and plum beef stew, tarragon veal balls stuffed with raisins, and rice garnished with currants and slivers of almonds.  When her oldest brother Alberto left to study in America, a little fact-finding work on Roya's part revealed that his departure wasn't simply the pursuit of a promising opportunity. As a talented cartoonist whose work had been showcased during an exhibition in Tehran, his family feared Alberto's pen might have gone too far, offending the Pahlavi regime and drawing the attention of the Shah's secret police.  Reports of repression, rapid modernization, the wide gap between Tehran's rich and the rest of the country's poor, and a feeling that Iranians weren't in control of their own destiny all became ingredients for a revolution, stoked by an exiled cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini who was recording cassette tapes in a Paris basement and circulating them back home.  SABA: He would just sit there and go on and on for hours, going against the Shah and West toxification. And then the recordings ended up in Iran. He wasn't even in Iran until the Shah left. MANYA: Promises of democracy and equality galvanized Iranians of all ages to overthrow the Shah in February 1979. Even the CIA was surprised.  SABA: I think a lot of people didn't believe it. Because number one, the Shah, the son, was getting the most amount of military equipment from the United States than anyone in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf. And the idea was: you protect us in the Gulf, and we will give you whatever you need. So they never thought that a man with a beard down to his knee was able to overthrow this regime that was being propped up and supported by America, and also the Europeans. Khomeini comes in and represents himself as a person for everyone. And he was brilliant in the way he spoke about it. And the reason why this revolution was also successful was that it wasn't just religious people who supported Khomeini, there was this concept you had, the men with the turbans, meaning the religious people, and the you know, the bow ties or the ties, meaning the secular man, a lot of them who were sent by the Shah abroad to Europe and America to get an education, who came back, saw democracy there, and wanted it for their country.  MANYA: Very few of the revolutionaries could predict that Tehran was headed in the opposite direction and was about to revert to 16th Century Shia Islamic rule. For almost a year, Tehran and the rest of the nation were swept up in revolutionary euphoria.  Roya recalls how the flag remained green, white, and red, but an Allah insignia replaced its old sword-bearing lion. New currency was printed, with portraits bearing beards and turbans. An ode to Khomeini became the new national anthem. While the Shah had escaped on an Air France flight, corpses of his henchmen graced the front pages of newspapers alongside smiling executioners. All celebrated, until the day one of the corpses was Habib Elghanian, the Jewish philanthropist who supported all of Iran's Hebrew schools. Charged and convicted as a Zionist spy.  Elders in the community remembered the insurmountable accusations of blood libel during darker times for Iran's Jews. But younger generations like Roya's, who had not lived through the eras of more ruthless antisemitism and persecution, continued to root for the revolution, regardless of its victims. Meanwhile, Roya's Jewish day school was taken over by a new veiled headmistress who replaced Hebrew lessons with other kinds of religious instruction, and required robes and headscarves for all the students.  ROYA: In the afternoons, from then on, we used to have lessons in a series of what she called: ‘Is religion something that you inherit, or is it something that you choose?' And so I think the intention, clearly, was to convince us that we didn't need to inherit our religions from our parents and ancestors, that we ought to consider better choices. MANYA: But when the headmistress cut short the eight-day Passover break, that was the last straw for Roya and her classmates. Their revolt got her expelled from school.  Though Jews did not universally support Khomeini, some saw themselves as members of the Iranian Communist, or Tudeh Party. They opposed the Shah and the human rights abuses of his monarchy and cautiously considered Khomeini the better option, or at least the lesser of two evils. Alarmed by the developments such as Elghanian's execution and changes like the ones at Roya's school, Jewish community leaders traveled to the Shia holy city of Qom to assure the Supreme Leader of their loyalty to Iran.  SABA: They did this because they wanted to make sure that they protected the Jewish community that was left in Iran. Khomeini made that distinction: ‘I am not against Jews, I'm against Zionists. You could be Jewish in this country. You cannot be a Zionist in this country.'  MANYA: But that wasn't the only change. Right away, the Family Protection Law was reversed, lifting a law against polygamy, giving men full rights in divorce and custody, and lowering the marriage age for girls to nine. Women were banned from serving as judges, and beaches and sports events were segregated by gender.  But it took longer to shut down universities, albeit for only two years, segregate public schools by gender, and stone to death women who were found to have committed adultery. Though Khomeini was certainly proving that he was not the man he promised to be, he backed away from those promises gradually – one brutal crackdown at a time. As a result, the trickle of Jews out of Iran was slow.  ROYA: My father thought, let's wait a few years and see what happens. In retrospect, I think the overwhelming reason was probably that nobody believed that things had changed, and so drastically. It seemed so unbelievable. I mean, a country that had been under monarchy for 2,500 years, couldn't simply see it all go and have a whole new system put in place, especially when it was such a radical shift from what had been there before. So I think, in many ways, we were among the unbelievers, or at least my father was, we thought it could never be, it would not happen. My father proved to be wrong, nothing changed for the better, and the conditions continued to deteriorate. So, so much catastrophe happened in those few years that Iran just simply was steeped into a very dark, intense, and period of political radicalism and also, all sorts of economic shortages and pressures. And so the five years that we were left behind, that we stayed back, changed our perspective on so many things. MANYA: In November 1979, a group of radical university students who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized hostages, and held them for 444 days until President Ronald Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981. During the hostages' captivity, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. The conflict that ensued for eight years created shortages on everything from dairy products to sanitary napkins. Mosques became distribution centers for rations. ROYA: We stood in line for hours and hours for eggs, and just the very basic things of daily life. And then it became also clear that religious minorities, including Jews, would no longer be enjoying the same privileges as everyone else. There were bombings that kept coming closer and closer to Tehran, which is where we lived. It was very clear that half of my family that was in the United States could not and would not return, because they were boys who would have been conscripted to go to war. Everything had just come apart in a way that was inconceivable to think that they would change for the better again. MANYA: By 1983, new laws had been passed instituting Islamic dress for all women – violations of which earned a penalty of 74 lashes. Other laws imposed an Islamic morality code that barred co-ed gatherings. Roya and her friends found refuge in the sterile office building that housed the Jewish Iranian Students Association. But she soon figured out that the regime hadn't allowed it to remain for the benefit of the Jewish community. It functioned more like a ghetto to keep Jews off the streets and out of their way. Even the activities that previously gave her comfort were marred by the regime. Poetry books were redacted. Mountain hiking trails were arbitrarily closed to mourn the deaths of countless clerics.  SABA: Slowly what they realize, when Khomeini gained power, was that he was not the person that he claimed to be. He was not this feminist, if anything, all this misogynistic rule came in, and a lot of people realize they, in a sense, got duped and he stole the revolution from them. MANYA: By 1984, the war with Iraq had entered its fourth year. But it was no longer about protecting Iran from Saddam Hussein. Now the Ayatollah wanted to conquer Baghdad, then Jerusalem where he aspired to deliver a sermon from the Temple Mount. Meanwhile, Muslim soldiers wounded in the war chose to bleed rather than receive treatment from Jewish doctors. Boys as young as 12 – regardless of faith – were drafted and sent on suicide missions to open the way for Iranian troops to do battle.  SABA: They were basically used as an army of children that the bombs would detonate, their parents would get a plastic key that was the key to heaven. And the bombs would detonate, and then the army would come in Iranian army would come in. And so that's when a lot of the Persian parents, the Jewish parents freaked out. And that's when they were like: we're getting out of here.  MANYA: By this time, the Hakakian family had moved into a rented apartment building and Roya was attending the neighborhood school. Non-Muslim students were required to take Koran classes and could only use designated water fountains and bathrooms.  As a precaution, Roya's father submitted their passports for renewal. Her mother's application was denied; Roya's passport was held for further consideration; her father's was confiscated.  One night, Roya returned home to find her father burning her books and journals on the balcony of their building. The bonfire of words was for the best, he told her. And at long last, so was leaving. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Roya and her mother, Helen, fled to Geneva, and after wandering in Europe for several months, eventually reunited with her brothers in the United States. Roya did not see her father again for five years. Still unable to acquire a passport, he was smuggled out of Iran into Pakistan, on foot.  ROYA: My eldest brother left to come to America in the mid-70s. There was a crack in the body of the family then. But then came 1979, and my two other brothers followed. And so we were apart for all those very, very formative years. And then, in 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. So, you know, it's interesting that when I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them.  MANYA: While her father's arrival in America was delayed, Roya describes her arrival in stages. She first arrived as a Jewish refugee in 1985 and found her place doing what she had always done – writing in Persian – rebuilding a body of work that had been reduced to ashes.  ROYA: As a teen I had become a writer, people were encouraging me. So, I continued to do it. It was the thing I knew how to do. And it gave me a sense of grounding and identity. So, I kept on doing it, and it kind of worked its magic, as I suppose good writing does for all writers. It connected me to a new community of people who read Persian and who appreciated what I was trying to do. And I found that with each book that I write, I find a new tribe for myself.  MANYA: She arrived again once she learned English. In her first year at Brooklyn College, she tape-recorded her professors to listen again later. She eventually took a course with renowned poet Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry was best known for its condemnation of persecution and imperial politics and whose 1950s poem “Howl” tested the boundaries of America's freedom of speech.  ROYA: When I mastered the language enough to feel comfortable to be a writer once more, then I found a footing and through Allen and a community of literary people that I met here began to kind of foresee a possibility of writing in English. MANYA: There was also her arrival to an American Jewish community that was largely unaware of the role Jews played in shaping Iran long before the advent of Islam. Likewise, they were just as unaware of the role Iran played in shaping ancient Jewish life. They were oblivious to the community's traditions, and the indignities and abuses Iranian Jews had suffered, continue to suffer, with other religious minorities to keep those traditions alive in their homeland.   ROYA: People would say, ‘Oh, you have an accent, where are you from?' I would say, ‘Iran,' and the Jews at the synagogue would say, ‘Are there Jews in Iran?' MANYA: In Roya's most recent book A Beginner's Guide to America, a sequel of sorts to her memoir, she reflects on the lessons learned and the observations made once she arrived in the U.S. She counsels newcomers to take their time answering what might at first seem like an ominous or loaded question. Here's an excerpt: ROYA: “In the early days after your arrival, “Where are you from?” is above all a reminder of your unpreparedness to speak of the past. You have yet to shape your story – what you saw, why you left, how you left, and what it took to get here. This narrative is your personal Book of Genesis: the American Volume, the one you will sooner or later pen, in the mind, if not on the page. You must take your time to do it well and do it justice.” MANYA: No two immigrants' experiences are the same, she writes. The only thing they all have in common is that they have been uprooted and the stories of their displacement have been hijacked by others' assumptions and agendas. ROYA: I witnessed, as so many other Iranian Jews witness, that the story of how we came, why we came, who we had been, was being narrated by those who had a certain partisan perspective about what the history of what Jewish people should be, or how this history needs to be cast, for whatever purposes they had. And I would see that our own recollections of what had happened were being shaded by, or filtered through views other than our own, or facts other than our own. MANYA: As we wrap up this sixth and final episode of the first season of The Forgotten Exodus, it is clear that the same can be said about the stories of the Jewish people. No two tales are the same. Jews have lived everywhere, and there are reasons why they don't anymore. Some fled as refugees. Some embarked as dreamers. Some forged ahead without looking back. Others counted the days until they could return home. What ties them together is their courage, perseverance, and resilience–whether they hailed from Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or parts beyond. These six episodes offer only a handful of those stories–shaped by memories and experiences. ROYA: That became sort of an additional incentive, if not burden for me to, to be a witness for several communities, to tell the story of what happened in Iran for American audiences, to Jews, to non-Iranian Jews who didn't realize that there were Jews in Iran, but also to record the history, according to how I had witnessed it, for ourselves, to make sure that it goes down, as I knew it. MANYA: Iranian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left their homes in the Middle East to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Many thanks to Roya for sharing her family's story and for helping us wrap up this season of The Forgotten Exodus. If you're listening for the first time, check out our previous episodes on Jews from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Sudan. Go to ajc.org/theforgottenexodus where you'll also find transcripts, show notes, and family photos. There are still so many stories to tell. Stay tuned in coming months. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories.  Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions and memories alive. Call 212.891.1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Tune in every Friday for AJC's weekly podcast about global affairs through a Jewish lens, People of the Pod, brought to you by the same team behind The Forgotten Exodus.  Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed the episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

Rachel Sumekh was in college when she noticed the problem: her peers are hungry. Then she spotted the solution and moved instantly into action. No flinching here. (You can see why we're friends.)  It didn't take long for the administration to see her impact before they tried to shut it down. While they moved to block progress, the Obama White House named her organization a “Champion for Change.” What one authority called rebellion, another named Revolution.  Same coin, different sides. One truth. In this conversation, Rachel speaks openly about the influence her Iranian-Jewish background has on her experience as a human in service to other humans. You'll hear us talk about our duty, as people, to help end each other's suffering. Let's let that one hang. That's OUR duty: end each other's suffering.  We also explore the chapter-close of her decade-long role as the Founder of Swipe Out Hunger—a national nonprofit committed to ending college student hunger, which is something that went largely overlooked before her eyes and heart took notice—proving once again that it just takes One of us (to start). To date, the team at Swipe Out has proudly served over 4.8 million nourishing meals across more than 450 campuses.  “This is a baton pass,” Rachel says mid-interview about leaving Swipe Out in the hands of new leadership. “These problems are so big. I'd need to be the whitest of white men to believe that I need to stay there and solve this problem.” And with THAT truth, the episode is yours. Let's go.  WORKS:- Founder of Swipe Out Hunger—a national nonprofit committed to ending college student hunger. From its beginnings as a grassroots movement at UCLA in 2010, Swipe Out Hunger has since served 4.8 million nourishing meals across more than 450 campuses in all 50 states and Canada.- Board member for her LA based Jewish community, IKAR- Owner, TypicalPersianGirl.com   RESOURCES:If you or someone you know is experiencing hunger on a college campus, visit swipehunger.org to learn about resources TOOLS:- How to align your skill set with an issue you care about- Tools to recover from lone-wolf syndrome- Reminders that help us conceptualize away time from working- Incredible awarenesses around the true path to creating change- How to face the challenges of being idealistic as an adult- Reminders to find safe people who you can open up to- Stories that remind us HOW normal and common food insecurity really is  LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
BETTER is recorded on the unceded and ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples, the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, and has been stewarded by them since time immemorial.  BETTER with Mark Brand is produced by Pamela Rothenberg of I HEAR YOU STUDIOS and Adam Karch with Orbyt Media

Home to one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, the story of Jews in Iran has been one of prosperity and suffering through the millennia. During the mid-20th century, when Jews were being driven from their homes in Arab lands, Iran assisted Jewish refugees in providing safe passage to Israel. Under the Shah, Israel was an important economic and political ally. Yet that all swiftly changed in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which ushered in Islamic rule, while chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” rang out from the streets of Tehran.   Author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian shares her personal story of growing up Jewish in Iran during the reign of the Shah and then Ayatollah Khomeini, which she wrote about in her memoir Journey From the Land of No. Joining Hakakian is Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history who wrote From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of AJC Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants.  In this sixth and final episode of the season, the Hakakian family's saga captures the common thread that has run throughout this series – when the history of an uprooted community is left untold, it can become vulnerable to others' narratives and assumptions, or become lost forever and forgotten. How do you leave behind a beloved homeland, safeguard its Jewish legacy, and figure out where you belong? ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits:  Chag Purim · The Jewish Guitar Project Hevenu Shalom · Violin Heart Pond5:  “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Oud Nation”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Haygaz Yossoulkanian (BMI), IPI#1001905418 “Persian”: Publisher: STUDEO88; Composer: Siddhartha Sharma “Meditative Middle Eastern Flute”: Publisher: N/; Composer: DANIELYAN ASHOT MAKICHEVICH (IPI NAME #00855552512), UNITED STATES BMI Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Persian Investigative Mystery”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Peter Cole (BMI), IPI#679735384 “Persian Wind”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Sigma (SESAC); Composer: Abbas Premjee (SESAC), IPI#572363837 “Modern Middle Eastern Underscore”: Publisher: All Pro Audio LLC (611803484); Composer: Alan T Fagan (347654928) “Persian Fantasy Tavern”: Publisher: N/A; Composer: John Hoge “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833.   ___ Episode Transcript: ROYA HAKAKIAN: In 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. When I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them.  MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus.  Today's episode: Leaving Iran MANYA: Outside Israel, Iran has the largest Jewish population in the Middle East. Yes, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2022. Though there is no official census, experts estimate about 10,000 Jews now live in the region previously known as Persia.  But since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Jews in Iran don't advertise their Jewish identity. They adhere to Iran's morality code: women stay veiled from head to toe and men and women who aren't married or related stay apart in public. They don't express support for Israel, they don't ask questions, and they don't disagree with the regime. One might ask, with all these don'ts, is this a way of living a Jewish life? Or a way to live – period?  For author, journalist, and poet Roya Hakakian and her family, the answer was ultimately no. Roya has devoted her life to being a fact-finder and truth-teller. A former associate producer at the CBS news show 60 Minutes and a Guggenheim Fellow, Roya has written two volumes of poetry in Persian and three books of nonfiction in English, the first of which was published in 2004 – Journey From the Land of No, a memoir about her charmed childhood and accursed adolescence growing up Jewish in Iran under two different regimes.  ROYA: It was hugely important for me to create an account that could be relied on as a historic document. And I did my best through being very, very careful about gathering, interviewing, talking to, observing facts, evidence, documents from everyone, including my most immediate members of my family, to do what we, both as reporters, but also as Jews, are called to do, which is to bear witness. No seemed to be the backdrop of life for women, especially of religious minorities, and, in my own case, Jewish background, and so I thought, what better way to name the book than to call it as what my experience had been, which was the constant nos that I heard. So, Land of No was Iran. MANYA: As a journalist, as a Jew, as a daughter of Iran, Roya will not accept no for an answer. After publishing her memoir, she went on to write Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, a meticulously reported book about a widely underreported incident. In 1992 at a Berlin restaurant, a terrorist attack by the Iranian proxy Hezbollah targeted and killed four Iranian-Kurdish exiles. The book highlighted Iran's enormous global footprint made possible by its terror proxies who don't let international borders get in the way of silencing Iran's critics.   Roya also co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, an independent non-profit that reports on Iran's human rights abuses.  Her work has not prompted Ayatollah Khameini to publicly issue a fatwa against her  – like the murder order against Salman Rushdie issued by his predecessor. But in 2019, one of her teenage sons answered a knock at the door. It was the FBI, warning her that she was in the crosshairs of the Iranian regime's operatives in America. Most recently, Roya wrote A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious about the emotional roller coaster of arriving in America while still missing a beloved homeland, especially one where their community has endured for thousands of years. ROYA: I felt very strongly that one stays in one's homeland, that you don't just simply take off when things go wrong, that you stick around and try to figure a way through a bad situation. We came to the point where staying didn't seem like it would lead to any sort of real life and leaving was the only option. MANYA: The story of Jews in Iran, often referred to as Persia until 1935, is a millennia-long tale. A saga of suffering, repression, and persecution, peppered with brief moments of relief or at least relative peace – as long as everyone plays by the rules of the regime. SABA SOOMEKH: The history of Jews in Iran goes back to around 2,700 years ago. And a lot of people assume that Jews came to Iran, well at that time, it was called the Persian Empire, in 586 BCE, with the Babylonian exile. But Jews actually came a lot earlier, we're thinking 721-722 BCE with the Assyrian exile which makes us one of the oldest Jewish communities.  MANYA: That's Dr. Saba Soomekh, a professor of world religions and Middle Eastern history and the author of From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture. She also serves as associate director of American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles, home to America's largest concentration of Persian Jewish immigrants. Saba's parents fled Iran in 1978, shortly before the revolution, when Saba and her sister were toddlers. She has devoted her career to preserving Iranian Jewish history.   Saba said Zoroastrian rulers until the 7th Century Common Era vacillated between tolerance and persecution of Jews. For example, according to the biblical account in the Book of Ezra, Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian rule, granted all of them citizenship, and permitted them to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple.  The Book of Esther goes on to tell the story of another Persian king, believed to be Xerxes I, whose closest adviser called Haman conspires to murder all the Jews – a plot that is foiled by his wife Queen Esther who is Jewish herself. Esther heroically pleads for mercy on behalf of her people – a valor that is celebrated on the Jewish holiday of Purim.  But by the time of the Islamic conquest in the middle of the 7th Century Common Era, the persecution had become so intense that Jews were hopeful about the new Arab Muslim regime, even if that meant being tolerated and treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmi status. But that status had a different interpretation for the Safavids. SABA: Really things didn't get bad for the Jews of the Persian Empire until the 16th century with the Safavid dynasty, because within Shia Islam in the Persian Empire, what they brought with them is this understanding of purity and impurity. And Jews were placed in the same category as dogs, pigs, and feces. They were seen as being religiously impure, what's referred to as najes. MANYA: Jews were placed in ghettos called mahaleh, where they wore yellow stars and special shoes to distinguish them from the rest of the population. They could not leave the mahaleh when it rained for fear that if water rolled off their bodies into the water system, it would render a Shia Muslim impure. For the same reason, they could not go to the bazaars for fear they might contaminate the food. They could not look Muslims in the eye. They were relegated to certain artisanal professions such as silversmithing and block printing – crafts that dirtied one's hands.  MANYA: By the 19th century, some European Jews did make their way to Persia to help. The Alliance Israélite Universelle, a Paris-based network of schools founded by French Jewish intellectuals, opened schools for Jewish children throughout the Middle East and North Africa, including within the mahalehs in Persia.  SABA: They saw themselves as being incredibly sophisticated because they were getting this, in a sense, secular European education, they were speaking French. The idea behind the Allianz schools was exactly that. These poor Middle Eastern Jews, one day the world is going to open up to them, their countries are going to become secular, and we need to prepare them for this, not only within the context of hygiene, but education, language.  And the Allianz schools were right when it came to the Persian Empire because who came into power was Reza Pahlavi, who was a Francophile. And he turned around and said, ‘Wow! Look at the population that speaks French, that knows European philosophy, etc. are the Jews.' He brought them out of the mahaleh, the Jewish ghettos, and said ‘I don't care about religion. Assimilate and acculturate. As long as you show, in a sense, devotion, and nationalism to the Pahlavi regime, which the Jews did—not all Jews—but a majority of them did. MANYA: Reza Pahlavi took control in 1925 and 16 years later, abdicated his throne to his son Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. In 1935, Persia adopted a new name: Iran. As king or the Shah, both father and son set Iran on a course of secularization and rapid modernization under which Jewish life and success seemed to flourish. The only condition was that religious observance was kept behind closed doors. SABA: The idea was that in public, you were secular and in private, you were a Jew. You had Shabbat, you only married a Jew, it was considered blasphemous if you married outside of the Jewish community. And it was happening because people were becoming a part of everyday schools, universities.  But that's why the Jewish day schools became so important. They weren't learning Judaism. What it did was ensure that in a secular Muslim society, that the Jewish kids were marrying within each other and within the community. It was, in a sense, the Golden Age. And that will explain to you why, unlike the early 1950s, where you had this exodus of Mizrahi Jews, Arab Jews from the Arab world and North Africa, you didn't really have that in Iran.  MANYA: In fact, Iran provided a safe passage to Israel for Jewish refugees during that exodus, specifically those fleeing Iraq. The Pahlavi regime considered Israel a critical ally in the face of pan-Arab fervor and hostility in the region. Because of the Arab economic boycott, Israel needed energy sources and Iran needed customers for its oil exports.  A number of Israelis even moved to Tehran, including farmers from kibbutzim who had come to teach agriculture, and doctors and nurses from Hadassah Hospital who had come to teach medicine.  El Al flew in and out of Tehran airport, albeit from a separate terminal. Taking advantage of these warm relations between the two countries, Roya recalls visiting aunts, uncles, and cousins in Israel.  ROYA: We arrived, and my mom and dad did what all visiting Jews from elsewhere do. They dropped to their knees, and they started kissing the ground. I did the same, and it was so moving. Israel was the promised land, we thought about Israel, we dreamed about Israel. But, at the same time, we were Iranians and, and we were living in Iran, and things were good.  This seems to non-Iranian Jews an impossibility. But I think for most of us, it was the way things were. We lived in the country where we had lived for, God knows how many years, and there was this other place that we somehow, in the back of our minds thought we would be going to, without knowing exactly when, but that it would be the destination. MANYA: Relations between the Shah and America flourished as well. In 1951, a hugely popular politician by the name of Mohammad Mosaddegh became prime minister and tried to institute reforms. His attempts to nationalize the oil industry and reduce the monarchy's authority didn't go over well. American and British intelligence backed a coup that restored the Shah's power. Many Iranians resented America's meddling, which became a rallying cry for the revolution. U.S. officials have since expressed regret for the CIA's involvement.  In November 1977, President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Shah and his wife to Washington, D.C., to discuss peace between Egypt and Israel, nuclear nonproliferation, and the energy crisis.  As an extension of these warm relations, the Shah sent many young Iranians to America to enhance their university studies, exposing them to Western ideals and values.  Meanwhile, a savvy fundamentalist cleric was biding his time in a Paris basement. It wouldn't be long before relations crumbled between Iran and Israel, Iran and the U.S,. and Iran and its Jews.  Roya recalls the Hakakian house at the corner of Alley of the Distinguished in Tehran as a lush oasis surrounded by fragrant flowers, full of her father's poetry, and brimming with family memories. Located in the heart of a trendy neighborhood, across the street from the Shah's charity organization, the tall juniper trees, fragrant honeysuckle, and gold mezuzah mounted on the door frame set it apart from the rest of the homes.  Roya's father, Haghnazar, was a poet and a respected headmaster at a Hebrew school. Roya, which means dream in Persian, was a budding poet herself with the typical hopes and dreams of a Jewish teenage girl.  ROYA: Prior to the revolution, life in an average Tehran Hebrew Day School looked very much like life in a Hebrew Day School anywhere else. In the afternoons we had all Hebrew and Jewish studies. We used to put on a Purim show every year. I wanted to be Esther. I never got to be Esther. We had emissaries, I think a couple of years, from Israel, who came to teach us how to do Israeli folk dance. MANYA: There were moments when Roya recalls feeling self-conscious about her Jewishness, particularly at Passover. That's when the family spent two weeks cleaning, demonstrating they weren't najes, or dirty Jews. The work was rewarded when the house filled with the fragrance of cumin and saffron and Persian dishes flowed from the kitchen, including apple and plum beef stew, tarragon veal balls stuffed with raisins, and rice garnished with currants and slivers of almonds.  When her oldest brother Alberto left to study in America, a little fact-finding work on Roya's part revealed that his departure wasn't simply the pursuit of a promising opportunity. As a talented cartoonist whose work had been showcased during an exhibition in Tehran, his family feared Alberto's pen might have gone too far, offending the Pahlavi regime and drawing the attention of the Shah's secret police.  Reports of repression, rapid modernization, the wide gap between Tehran's rich and the rest of the country's poor, and a feeling that Iranians weren't in control of their own destiny all became ingredients for a revolution, stoked by an exiled cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini who was recording cassette tapes in a Paris basement and circulating them back home.  SABA: He would just sit there and go on and on for hours, going against the Shah and West toxification. And then the recordings ended up in Iran. He wasn't even in Iran until the Shah left. MANYA: Promises of democracy and equality galvanized Iranians of all ages to overthrow the Shah in February 1979. Even the CIA was surprised.  SABA: I think a lot of people didn't believe it. Because number one, the Shah, the son, was getting the most amount of military equipment from the United States than anyone in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf. And the idea was: you protect us in the Gulf, and we will give you whatever you need. So they never thought that a man with a beard down to his knee was able to overthrow this regime that was being propped up and supported by America, and also the Europeans. Khomeini comes in and represents himself as a person for everyone. And he was brilliant in the way he spoke about it. And the reason why this revolution was also successful was that it wasn't just religious people who supported Khomeini, there was this concept you had, the men with the turbans, meaning the religious people, and the you know, the bow ties or the ties, meaning the secular man, a lot of them who were sent by the Shah abroad to Europe and America to get an education, who came back, saw democracy there, and wanted it for their country.  MANYA: Very few of the revolutionaries could predict that Tehran was headed in the opposite direction and was about to revert to 16th Century Shia Islamic rule. For almost a year, Tehran and the rest of the nation were swept up in revolutionary euphoria.  Roya recalls how the flag remained green, white, and red, but an Allah insignia replaced its old sword-bearing lion. New currency was printed, with portraits bearing beards and turbans. An ode to Khomeini became the new national anthem. While the Shah had escaped on an Air France flight, corpses of his henchmen graced the front pages of newspapers alongside smiling executioners. All celebrated, until the day one of the corpses was Habib Elghanian, the Jewish philanthropist who supported all of Iran's Hebrew schools. Charged and convicted as a Zionist spy.  Elders in the community remembered the insurmountable accusations of blood libel during darker times for Iran's Jews. But younger generations like Roya's, who had not lived through the eras of more ruthless antisemitism and persecution, continued to root for the revolution, regardless of its victims. Meanwhile, Roya's Jewish day school was taken over by a new veiled headmistress who replaced Hebrew lessons with other kinds of religious instruction, and required robes and headscarves for all the students.  ROYA: In the afternoons, from then on, we used to have lessons in a series of what she called: ‘Is religion something that you inherit, or is it something that you choose?' And so I think the intention, clearly, was to convince us that we didn't need to inherit our religions from our parents and ancestors, that we ought to consider better choices. MANYA: But when the headmistress cut short the eight-day Passover break, that was the last straw for Roya and her classmates. Their revolt got her expelled from school.  Though Jews did not universally support Khomeini, some saw themselves as members of the Iranian Communist, or Tudeh Party. They opposed the Shah and the human rights abuses of his monarchy and cautiously considered Khomeini the better option, or at least the lesser of two evils. Alarmed by the developments such as Elghanian's execution and changes like the ones at Roya's school, Jewish community leaders traveled to the Shia holy city of Qom to assure the Supreme Leader of their loyalty to Iran.  SABA: They did this because they wanted to make sure that they protected the Jewish community that was left in Iran. Khomeini made that distinction: ‘I am not against Jews, I'm against Zionists. You could be Jewish in this country. You cannot be a Zionist in this country.'  MANYA: But that wasn't the only change. Right away, the Family Protection Law was reversed, lifting a law against polygamy, giving men full rights in divorce and custody, and lowering the marriage age for girls to nine. Women were banned from serving as judges, and beaches and sports events were segregated by gender.  But it took longer to shut down universities, albeit for only two years, segregate public schools by gender, and stone to death women who were found to have committed adultery. Though Khomeini was certainly proving that he was not the man he promised to be, he backed away from those promises gradually – one brutal crackdown at a time. As a result, the trickle of Jews out of Iran was slow.  ROYA: My father thought, let's wait a few years and see what happens. In retrospect, I think the overwhelming reason was probably that nobody believed that things had changed, and so drastically. It seemed so unbelievable. I mean, a country that had been under monarchy for 2,500 years, couldn't simply see it all go and have a whole new system put in place, especially when it was such a radical shift from what had been there before. So I think, in many ways, we were among the unbelievers, or at least my father was, we thought it could never be, it would not happen. My father proved to be wrong, nothing changed for the better, and the conditions continued to deteriorate. So, so much catastrophe happened in those few years that Iran just simply was steeped into a very dark, intense, and period of political radicalism and also, all sorts of economic shortages and pressures. And so the five years that we were left behind, that we stayed back, changed our perspective on so many things. MANYA: In November 1979, a group of radical university students who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized hostages, and held them for 444 days until President Ronald Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981. During the hostages' captivity, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. The conflict that ensued for eight years created shortages on everything from dairy products to sanitary napkins. Mosques became distribution centers for rations. ROYA: We stood in line for hours and hours for eggs, and just the very basic things of daily life. And then it became also clear that religious minorities, including Jews, would no longer be enjoying the same privileges as everyone else. There were bombings that kept coming closer and closer to Tehran, which is where we lived. It was very clear that half of my family that was in the United States could not and would not return, because they were boys who would have been conscripted to go to war. Everything had just come apart in a way that was inconceivable to think that they would change for the better again. MANYA: By 1983, new laws had been passed instituting Islamic dress for all women – violations of which earned a penalty of 74 lashes. Other laws imposed an Islamic morality code that barred co-ed gatherings. Roya and her friends found refuge in the sterile office building that housed the Jewish Iranian Students Association. But she soon figured out that the regime hadn't allowed it to remain for the benefit of the Jewish community. It functioned more like a ghetto to keep Jews off the streets and out of their way. Even the activities that previously gave her comfort were marred by the regime. Poetry books were redacted. Mountain hiking trails were arbitrarily closed to mourn the deaths of countless clerics.  SABA: Slowly what they realize, when Khomeini gained power, was that he was not the person that he claimed to be. He was not this feminist, if anything, all this misogynistic rule came in, and a lot of people realize they, in a sense, got duped and he stole the revolution from them. MANYA: By 1984, the war with Iraq had entered its fourth year. But it was no longer about protecting Iran from Saddam Hussein. Now the Ayatollah wanted to conquer Baghdad, then Jerusalem where he aspired to deliver a sermon from the Temple Mount. Meanwhile, Muslim soldiers wounded in the war chose to bleed rather than receive treatment from Jewish doctors. Boys as young as 12 – regardless of faith – were drafted and sent on suicide missions to open the way for Iranian troops to do battle.  SABA: They were basically used as an army of children that the bombs would detonate, their parents would get a plastic key that was the key to heaven. And the bombs would detonate, and then the army would come in Iranian army would come in. And so that's when a lot of the Persian parents, the Jewish parents freaked out. And that's when they were like: we're getting out of here.  MANYA: By this time, the Hakakian family had moved into a rented apartment building and Roya was attending the neighborhood school. Non-Muslim students were required to take Koran classes and could only use designated water fountains and bathrooms.  As a precaution, Roya's father submitted their passports for renewal. Her mother's application was denied; Roya's passport was held for further consideration; her father's was confiscated.  One night, Roya returned home to find her father burning her books and journals on the balcony of their building. The bonfire of words was for the best, he told her. And at long last, so was leaving. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Roya and her mother, Helen, fled to Geneva, and after wandering in Europe for several months, eventually reunited with her brothers in the United States. Roya did not see her father again for five years. Still unable to acquire a passport, he was smuggled out of Iran into Pakistan, on foot.  ROYA: My eldest brother left to come to America in the mid-70s. There was a crack in the body of the family then. But then came 1979, and my two other brothers followed. And so we were apart for all those very, very formative years. And then, in 1984, when my mother and I left and my father was left alone in Iran, that was yet another major dramatic and traumatic separation. So, you know, it's interesting that when I look back at the events of 1979, I think, people constantly think about the revolution having, in some ways, blown up Tehran, but it also blew up families. And my own family was among them.  MANYA: While her father's arrival in America was delayed, Roya describes her arrival in stages. She first arrived as a Jewish refugee in 1985 and found her place doing what she had always done – writing in Persian – rebuilding a body of work that had been reduced to ashes.  ROYA: As a teen I had become a writer, people were encouraging me. So, I continued to do it. It was the thing I knew how to do. And it gave me a sense of grounding and identity. So, I kept on doing it, and it kind of worked its magic, as I suppose good writing does for all writers. It connected me to a new community of people who read Persian and who appreciated what I was trying to do. And I found that with each book that I write, I find a new tribe for myself.  MANYA: She arrived again once she learned English. In her first year at Brooklyn College, she tape-recorded her professors to listen again later. She eventually took a course with renowned poet Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry was best known for its condemnation of persecution and imperial politics and whose 1950s poem “Howl” tested the boundaries of America's freedom of speech.  ROYA: When I mastered the language enough to feel comfortable to be a writer once more, then I found a footing and through Allen and a community of literary people that I met here began to kind of foresee a possibility of writing in English. MANYA: There was also her arrival to an American Jewish community that was largely unaware of the role Jews played in shaping Iran long before the advent of Islam. Likewise, they were just as unaware of the role Iran played in shaping ancient Jewish life. They were oblivious to the community's traditions, and the indignities and abuses Iranian Jews had suffered, continue to suffer, with other religious minorities to keep those traditions alive in their homeland.   ROYA: People would say, ‘Oh, you have an accent, where are you from?' I would say, ‘Iran,' and the Jews at the synagogue would say, ‘Are there Jews in Iran?' MANYA: In Roya's most recent book A Beginner's Guide to America, a sequel of sorts to her memoir, she reflects on the lessons learned and the observations made once she arrived in the U.S. She counsels newcomers to take their time answering what might at first seem like an ominous or loaded question. Here's an excerpt: ROYA: “In the early days after your arrival, “Where are you from?” is above all a reminder of your unpreparedness to speak of the past. You have yet to shape your story – what you saw, why you left, how you left, and what it took to get here. This narrative is your personal Book of Genesis: the American Volume, the one you will sooner or later pen, in the mind, if not on the page. You must take your time to do it well and do it justice.” MANYA: No two immigrants' experiences are the same, she writes. The only thing they all have in common is that they have been uprooted and the stories of their displacement have been hijacked by others' assumptions and agendas. ROYA: I witnessed, as so many other Iranian Jews witness, that the story of how we came, why we came, who we had been, was being narrated by those who had a certain partisan perspective about what the history of what Jewish people should be, or how this history needs to be cast, for whatever purposes they had. And I would see that our own recollections of what had happened were being shaded by, or filtered through views other than our own, or facts other than our own. MANYA: As we wrap up this sixth and final episode of the first season of The Forgotten Exodus, it is clear that the same can be said about the stories of the Jewish people. No two tales are the same. Jews have lived everywhere, and there are reasons why they don't anymore. Some fled as refugees. Some embarked as dreamers. Some forged ahead without looking back. Others counted the days until they could return home. What ties them together is their courage, perseverance, and resilience–whether they hailed from Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or parts beyond. These six episodes offer only a handful of those stories–shaped by memories and experiences. ROYA: That became sort of an additional incentive, if not burden for me to, to be a witness for several communities, to tell the story of what happened in Iran for American audiences, to Jews, to non-Iranian Jews who didn't realize that there were Jews in Iran, but also to record the history, according to how I had witnessed it, for ourselves, to make sure that it goes down, as I knew it. MANYA: Iranian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left their homes in the Middle East to forge new lives for themselves and future generations.  Many thanks to Roya for sharing her family's story and for helping us wrap up this season of The Forgotten Exodus. If you're listening for the first time, check out our previous episodes on Jews from Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Sudan. Go to ajc.org/theforgottenexodus where you'll also find transcripts, show notes, and family photos. There are still so many stories to tell. Stay tuned in coming months. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories.  Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions and memories alive. Call 212.891.1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Tune in every Friday for AJC's weekly podcast about global affairs through a Jewish lens, People of the Pod, brought to you by the same team behind The Forgotten Exodus.  Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC.  You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed the episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.

Rabbi Lizzi is joined by Arya Marvazy, the Senior Director of Programs for the Jews of Color Initiative.⁠ Arya (he/him) is a first-generation American born to Iranian-Jewish immigrants from Tehran. For nearly 15 years, Arya has cultivated his leadership in Jewish communal service at Hillel on campus, Hillel International, and JQ International. A proud queer Jew, Arya is passionate about empowering diverse Jewish identity, enriching equitable Jewish community, and ensuring inclusive pathways toward Jewish continuity.Today's episode is sponsored by Broadway In Chicago. Tickets are available now to Fiddler on the Roof at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, from May 17th - 22nd. Use Mishkan's special offer code ROOF45 for $45 Middle Balcony tickets.This conversation was originally streamed during the Virtual Friday Night Shabbat service on May 20th.  For upcoming Shabbat services and programs, check our event calendar, and see our Accessibility & Inclusion page for information about our venues. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook for more updates.Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.Transcript

The 18-year-old gunman who opened fire on a Buffalo grocery store over the weekend, killing 10 mostly Black victims, cited the ”Great Replacement Theory” in his manifesto. So what is that, exactly? And how does it find its way into mainstream culture?This conversation with the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt was taped just days before that shooting. Here Greenblatt explains the origins of the troubling conspiracy theory that motivated the shooter. We discuss Tucker Carlson, extremist politicians, and the role of tech giants and media in disseminating white nationalist ideas. In Greenblatt's view, all this drives a rise in anti-semitism, racism and threats of real world violence. Greenblatt explains the work the ADL is doing now – and has done over the last 100 years – to combat anti-semitism and hate.Greenblatt is the CEO of the ADL. He previously served as the Special Assistant to President Obama at the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. He co-founded Ethos Water in 2002, which was acquired by Starbucks. Greenblatt is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, and he and his wife, an Iranian Jewish refugee, are parents to three children.The Anti-Defamation League:➤https://www.adl.orgIn this conversation I reference materials provided by META in response to some of the claims made in the interview. You can find links here:Hate speech prevalence:➤https://bit.ly/3yORlsfCivil Rights audit and progress update:➤https://bit.ly/39BrLMZAlgorithms: ➤https://bit.ly/3sE6qJpBan on Myanmar military posts and ads:➤https://bit.ly/3wpTIA7You can follow Jessica Yellin here:➤Instagram: instagram.com/jessicayellin​➤Twitter: twitter.com/jessicayellin➤Facebook: facebook.com/newsnotnoise➤YouTube: youtube.com/newsnotnoise➤Website: NewsNotNoise.comSupport this work:➤patreon.com/NewsNotNoiseJessica Yellin is the founder of News Not Noise, a channel dedicated to giving you news with real experts and providing facts, not panic attacks. Jessica is a veteran of network news, traveling the globe, covering conflict and crisis. A former Chief White House Correspondent for CNN, she reported from around the world and won awards. Now, Yellin uses her voice to break down the news, calmly and clearly for you -- free of punditry, provocation, and yelling.

Iranian Jewry in the 20th century saw much upheaval. The rise of the Pahlavi dynasty brought much hope to the Persian Jewish community. Iran served as a center of some important events of World War II with the Anglo-Soviet invasion of the country, as host of the Teheran Conference, the exit of the Polish Anders Army through Iran and many Jewish refugees arriving there including the famous ‘Yaldei Teheran'.  Another period of relative stability was interrupted towards the end of the 1970's with the Revolution and the subsequent Iran-Iraq war. Much emigration occurred around this time. Rabbi Herman Neuberger and other activists engaged in the rescue of many Iranian Jews, and this sparked a renaissance of Iranian Jewish life in the United States. Many immigrated to Israel as well. Rabbi Neuberger arranged their attendance of Ner Israel - tuition free - and many emerged as leaders of the Iranian Jewish community.   For sponsorship opportunities about your favorite topics of Jewish history contact Yehuda at:  yehuda@yehudageberer.com   Subscribe To Our Podcast on:    PodBean: https://jsoundbites.podbean.com/   Follow us on Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites You can email Yehuda at yehuda@yehudageberer.com

Elie Alyeshmerni was born and raised in a Jewish family in Iran. During his high school years he studied in the United States. After his degree in linguistics from University of Minnesota he made a career in the U.S. in education, as a co-author of a linguistic college textbook, as an award-winning head of various Jewish schools and as a college instructor in Hebrew language. Currently Elie is the owner of an investment company. He served on the board of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, which is a prominent Conservative synagogue with a large Iranian-Jewish membership. Elie was part of a delegation from Sinai Temple in Los Angeles in 2015 that brought a new Torah to the Jewish community of Azerbaijan. Here are links to an article about this project in two different publications: https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/170003 and http://www.visions.az/en/news/660/6187f77c/ Here is the link to a video about the project: https://youtu.be/cI91Z4_tIxU

Psalm 137 depicts the ancient Hebrews, enslaved and weeping “by the rivers of Babylon,” as they remember their homeland, Jerusalem. Those words have inspired songwriters of reggae, Broadway, disco, folk and more, but one of the most memorable versions is featured in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco. The opera retells the story of the Babylonian captivity when Nebuchadnezzar (or Nabucco, in Italian) seizes Jerusalem, destroys the temple, and enslaves the Israelites in his kingdom. At the heart of the opera is “Va, pensiero,” also known as the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, in which the Israelites yearn for their lost home.  It's this yearning for home by those exiled from their homeland, and of refugees trying to build a new identity in a new land, that has helped make Verdi's first big hit resonate far beyond the opera house since its premiere. Host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore the experience of refugees and immigrants, the significance of memory and community, and the power of 100 voices joined in song. Donald Palumbo has been the chorus master at the Met Opera for 15 years. He can remember almost every time he has ever performed “Va, pensiero,” and usually ends up standing in the wings just to listen to it. He previously was the chorus master at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and has taught at Juilliard since 2016.  Professor Mark Burford is a musicologist at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He specializes in 19th-century Austro-German music, and twentieth century African American music, and is the author of the award-winning book Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field.  He previously taught at the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, Columbia University, and City College of New York. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is the Scholar in Residence at the National Council of Jewish Women. She writes books about the messy business of trying to be a person in the world, and about how spirituality can transform that work. She is the author of seven books, including Nurture the Wow and Surprised by God. She's been named one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis. Roya Hakakian is an Iranian Jewish writer and the author of two volumes of poetry in Persian. Her family was exiled from Iran following the 1979 revolution, after which they lived as refugees in Europe for a year before immigrating to the United States. Her most recent book is A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious. 

In Episode #47, co-hosts Bita and Beata learn about Iranian Jewish food and some of the traditional foods and customs shared on Rosh Hashanah by special guest, Tannaz Sassooni.  Tannaz works in animation technology by day while writing, teaching, and sharing about Iranian Jewish foods as her passion project.   An example of a classic Friday night Jewish Iranian meal might consist of “Chelo Abgoosht eh Ghondi” (also spelled gondi) - a chicken broth based soup with poultry and chickpea flour meatball dumplings.   Another example of a one pot Jewish Iranian recipe is “Ghondi/Gondi Kashi” - rice dish cooked with ground meat, herbs, beets, and fava beans - takes on a pinkish hue in some areas and sometimes forms a beautiful tahdig!   Rosh Hashanah traditions - as contrasting to simple apples and honey, in the Iranian Jewish custom, a whole seder is served for Rosh Hashana Beef tongue Black eyed peas Squash, fried zucchini or pumpkin Dates Apples and honey   Two main holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Custom of the start of the fast/ the eve of the fast include eating a Quince, Pomegranate Stew | Khoresht eh Beh, super sweet and sour Custom of breaking the fast - break the fast with the following 3 things: Chai | hot tea Soft boiled egg Grated apple with rose water and sugar served over ice | Faloodeh Seeb - gives a boost of energy and an uplifting aroma. Bita's daughters refer to it as “apple Randy”.   A tip, also known as “Beats Cheats” - Tannaz's favorite thing: Sharbat eh Golab which is simply water, sugar, & rose water over ice   Ask the Beats! Tannaz asks the Beats - what are some regional specialties in the areas your families are from Bita and Beata? Bita's folks and extended family come from Tabriz and the Azerbaijan region of Iran.   Ab-ghosht and Dizi Kofteh Tabrizi Dolmeh Beata's family is from Kermanshah Roghan eh Kermanshahee - a rich, delicious animal butter from the region Khormah Maloos - fried eggs with caramelized dates   Resources and recipes from this episode: All Modern Persian Food episodes can be found at: Episodes Co-host Beata Nazem Kelley blog: BeatsEats – Persian Girl Desperately Addicted to Food! Co-host Bita Arabian blog: Oven Hug - Healthy Persian Recipes | Modern Persian Recipes   Beata's Khormah Maloos Recipe: Khormah Maloos | Persian Dates and Eggs Special guest: Tannaz Sassooni Instagram: tannaz (@tannazsassooni) • Instagram photos and videos Cooking class with The Nosher: The Nosher Presents Our High Holiday Cooking Classes 2021 | The Nosher Podcast production by Alvarez Audio

Episode 215: Being resilient! In this episode, Dan is joined by Minneapolis-based comedian, Elise Cole (Twin Cities Jewish Humor Festival). Elise shares a story about bombing as the emcee because she said the headliner's name wrong multiple times.  Dan and Elise talk about finding a balance between comedy and life's responsibilities, intimidating crowds, being censored, and analyzing sets. Plus more! Please rate and review.Elise ColeElise Cole is an Iranian-Jewish comedian from Minnesota, and a 2018-2019 co-producer of the Minneapolis-based showcase, People Of Comedy. She was a 2019 semifinalist in Rick Bronson's House of Comedy contest and opened for NPR's Ophira Eisenberg at the 10th Annual Twin Cities Jewish Humor Festival. Elise works at Acme Comedy Club and is a wife, mother, waitress, grad student, and published writer who finds humor in the challenges she faces in her day-to-day life. Elise Cole Twitter: @elisecolecomedy Instagram: @elisecolecomedy  Art of Bombing:  Dead & Mellow: https://deadandmellow.com/  "Nobody Had a Podcast Called The Art of Bombing" Theme by John Hult  Bumpers provided by Joe Nicola Music  Website: https://www.artofbombingpod.com/    Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/blitzed-entertainment Buy me a beer: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbubcomedy  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/artofbombingpod  FB: https://www.facebook.com/artobpodcast/  Twitter: @artofbombingpod  Instagram: @artofbombingpod  YouTube: Art of Bombing Podcast  Dan Bublitz Jr: http://www.danbublitz.com/  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

August 9, 2021 - Sen. Anna Kaplan, a Long Island Democrat of Iranian Jewish descent, argues that most recent critiques of Israeli policies are rooted in anti-Semitism and defends her past analysis evoking the days leading up to the Holocaust.

In this episode, Kasim is joined by Dr. Sheila Nazarian. Born in New York to a Jewish family from Iran that wanted to obtain birthright citizenship for her in the U.S. due to Iran becoming an Islamic republic as a result of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Nazarian and her family returned to Iran and were not permitted to leave. When Nazarian was six, she and her family were smuggled out of Iran into Pakistan in a truck filled with corn, and, shortly thereafter, emigrated to the U.S. Tune in to hear their fascinating conversation and also to hear a special biblical encouragement from Dan Ostrem, Video Producer of the Israel Collective.

On this podcast we're talking about the art of intuition and more with someone our founder and Editor in Chief Tamara Rappa has known for a while. Deganit Nuur is a world renowned spiritual teacher, clairvoyant intuitive, acupuncturist, writer and speaker. Since they first met, Deganit has been named one of the Top 15 Intuitives Worldwide by Goop, and has been featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Forbes, and The New York Times. She works with a lot of thought leaders and celebrities, and over the years we've admired her drive and her mission, as she's gone from practicing to teaching thousands. Her mission? Be Light. An Iranian-Jewish immigrant who landed in Fresno, California, Deganit experienced a traumatic upbringing and was surrounded by visible domestic violence. On this podcast she shares her creative response and heart warming role to those around her when she was a child, and she believes that world peace starts with inner peace. We talk about her love of teaching and her love of writing. She has a book in the works, and we discuss how her work with countless broken adults has propelled her to teach children, in which she finds inspiration and hope for our future. We discuss the custom curriculum she created with her Nuurvana Method Of Clairvoyant Healing, and she explains something called “psychic tv”. Deganit wants people to understand that change is the only constant, and that everything is impermanent. Tamara can attest to Deganit's powerful gift, but whether you believe in psychic ability or not, there is much to learn about cultivating your own intuition, and more, from this incredibly special healer who loves and values community, and believes with all of her mind, body, and soul—-that we're all in this together. You can also discover Deganit's website and shop her #obsixed list of favorites here: 1. Nuurvana https://nuurvana.com/ 2. Oi Ocha Green Tea by Ioten https://rstyle.me/+ozOUFEjdbuFmdbGAfh3U2w 3. Angel Aura Quartz Stone by Energy Muse https://www.energymuse.com/angel-aura-quartz-stone.html?variant=21197605404726 4. Folk Song Short Robe in ‘Blossom' by Spell and The Gypsy Collective https://rstyle.me/+J9fvSql3cY-6huwF7UAYHQ 5. Watching Pose on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80241986 6. Watching Pen15 on Hulu https://www.hulu.com/series/pen15-8c87035d-2b10-4b10-a233-ca5b3597145d

Lillian Farzan - As a first-generation American and the daughter of Iranian Jewish immigrants, Lillian grew up with an acute awareness of oppression, discrimination, and inequity. Her passion for understanding the impact of intersectionality on an individual's trajectory has led her to the valuable work of therapy. Lillian's private practice, Grounded Therapy, welcomes clientele from diverse backgrounds and she focuses on working with individuals who are impacted by systemic injustice. With her clinical roots in working with survivors of sexual assault, she is passionate about providing trauma-informed and feminist-based treatment to individuals who may feel unwelcome in their communities due to [both internal and external] perceptions of their identity. Lillian also works with clients to provide clarity around topics such as racial identity development, lgbtq+ identity development, sexual trauma, and family systems. Lillian uses a relational and social justice-oriented approach with the understanding that identity plays a large component in an individual's anxiety and depression among other very human struggles. She works with her clients through assessing their unique strengths and areas of growth to create treatment plans that embrace their varying stories. Support the show: https://theanswersandiego.com/radioshow/8349 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Unorthodox, we’re sharing an episode of “Hearing with Tali Farhadian Weinstein,” a podcast from Pushkin Industries. Tali is an Iranian-Jewish prosecutor running for District Attorney in Manhattan, and her show features interviews with policy experts, journalists, and community members. In this episode of Hearing, Tali talks to former Unorthodox guest Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Manhattan's Central Synagogue about the points of intersection around faith, personal identity, and the fight for racial justice. To hear more episodes of Tali's show, check out www.pushkin.fm/show/hearing-with-tali-farhadian-weinstein/. Join us for these upcoming ‘Unorthodox’ virtual events! Wednesday, March 10: Mark, Stephanie, and Liel will be returning to the Washington Hebrew Congregation virtually to discuss The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia at 8 p.m. EST. Register here. Thursday, March 11: Stephanie and Mark will be discussing The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia as part of the Mandel JCC of the Palm Beaches' Book Festival at 7:30 p.m. EST. Register here. Thursday, March 25: Stephanie Butnick will be interviewing Menachem Kaiser about his new book, Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, at 7 p.m. EST. Register here. As always, send us comments and questions at unorthodox@tabletmag.com, or leave us a voicemail at (914) 570-4869. You can also record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to us. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Get a behind-the-scenes look at our recording sessions on our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group, and follow Unorthodox on Twitter and Instagram. Get your Unorthodox T-shirts, mugs, and baby onesies at bit.ly/unorthoshirt. Want to book us for a live show? Email producer Josh Kross at jkross@tabletmag.com. Check out all of Tablet’s podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts. Sponsors: Kol Foods has everything you need to create a kosher, ethical, sustainably-sourced Passover Seder spread, from delicious briskets to 100% grass-fed lamb shank bones. Use promo code UNORTHODOXPESACH for 10% of your entire Passover order at KOLFoods.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacqueline Saper was an eighteen year old Iranian Jewish girl who enjoyed her life in Tehran where she was born. Family life was good and care free for Iranians like Jacqueline who wore miniskirts like in the West, going to movies, eating out with friends, and living a carefree life. Then, the Islamic revolution came upon her and her Jewish family in full force. Hear this riveting story of a girl who lived in Iran under the Shah, the revolution, and then the oppressive Islamic Republic. What was it like to live as a Jewish girl in Iran, suddenly becoming a second class citizen, having to don a hijab, and live in fear of Modesty Police on street corners, having people in your community executed by the new regime, and having no chance to escape? Listen to this amazing interview. Then read the complete story in her book which won the 2020 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award in Traditional Nonfiction. Click here to find it: https://www.jacquelinesaper.com/from-miniskirt-to-hijab.html The Tamar Yonah Show 02FEB2021 - PODCAST

We talked with livestreamer & journalist Pardes Seleh about her start in California's small conservative political circles, the Groypers, her Iranian-Jewish roots, and the evil of ignorance. Be sure to subscribe to Break the Rules for commentary, opinion, news, and special guests with Lev and Jules. FOLLOW US Patreon - https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=uJuLYSGLsVo&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbWJCdkZPQ0JNS0pyV0ZuX25MY1BROThrZUd3UXxBQ3Jtc0ttN3RqbWEwU3FReVpEendRQjhrTmIxMl9aYldGMHRxRUw5cms0RElYcldZeXljYjhDUzNYT2lGandDOTFUeHdxU3dZOUpCN3lrbjQ1WXBaTGJBY1RlZ09Zd1VYcDlTQUpnQi11MU0yLU1QMmtJY1dBRQ%3D%3D&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.patreon.com%2Flevandjules (https://www.patreon.com/levandjules) Minds - https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=uJuLYSGLsVo&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa1RxbVdtSTVxSVR0aEpQQjlHLVU3QjR0N0MwZ3xBQ3Jtc0tuVEdZVEdGVHpMd3poZVp3YWFYY2hlWG1EaERETHY1a3k2VVJ2YXZ3RVU1NERWOEd6SnZhd2w2U2RrX3N6NlJGTy1rUnRXS0wzdGg5Wk9pVFh5R3dZcDB4cHlEb3BVZzFKRzdPWThoU013NGc1X3EtZw%3D%3D&q=http%3A%2F%2FMinds.com%2Flevandjules (http://Minds.com/levandjules) Instagram - https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=uJuLYSGLsVo&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa0ZZajc0UWZaWmlkRzVFLXV3NFJTNjVOMEtWZ3xBQ3Jtc0tuSEZnWnlfQ0FWYmhWem9rNGFhQmJIaHFTamFaalFYZEllUXR3Z19ndnpkMHZManN2ZDJHM0ZjakxPZk9rWU9mSFRqV0JZYlVRaEJOajlueWJrZnVNaGFFTDV6bWtqRkVCMDhuUXFUaFVNZUFham9EQQ%3D%3D&q=http%3A%2F%2Finstagram.com%2Flevandjules (http://instagram.com/levandjules) Twitter - https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=uJuLYSGLsVo&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa1NLdDVabVRiNmFmTWlBaC05SXREaGxrYlBSUXxBQ3Jtc0trSngzc2szNVZLZEFIdXRleUZBWVkwM2tBbS1yeS0tckRTdTh3TU44TXEwUFNLNTdScDJKZjBoTDNWWlFfbDRGc1paUkhNNGtIbU1QREJaYm1WcEhjbzRJeGRSZ0JLR3V1QXBYc3NiTnNDU0MzTFVUMA%3D%3D&q=http%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Flevandjules (http://twitter.com/levandjules) Facebook - https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=uJuLYSGLsVo&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbk5ybXRldFRmTVVaeXNSR1RrdVM0c1ZpcWFtQXxBQ3Jtc0tsT0UwbmRrMnhWcmpiamFWZ2xJN0VKam9CTFRnR3lwdTFjNGF3c2tyUkpfOWl6UjdTdndUaURJaVZEbnZTWjdfQWdqZ0JGN0pLV0ZyX2hnSzZvcUhrcEFlSDkwRE5jeUxmZk9yR3doYktHVEJTdVhsVQ%3D%3D&q=http%3A%2F%2Ffacebook.com%2Flevandjules (http://facebook.com/levandjules) Support this podcast

In this long, LONG, overdue episode, the Minyan joins friend and comrade Alireza to explore the complicated history of Iran from the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Along the way, we discuss the particular class character of 20th Century Iranian society, the messy and often disappointing foreign relations between Iran and the USSR, the role of first British and then US imperialism in propping up the reactionary Pahlavi Dynasty, the rise and fall of Mohammed Mosaddegh, and the developments, tensions, and occasional fusions of nationalist, Islamist, and Marxist movements in Iran, culminating with the Marxist guerrillas who swept out the Pahlavi Dynasty in 1979, only to be coopted and suppressed by the reactionary wing of the Islamist movement who consolidated control over what would become the Islamic Republic. Part 2, to be released at a later date, will focus on that consolidation of power in 1979 and the developments within the IR to the present day, in order to guide principled communists in how best to approach an anti-imperialist nation that is also thoroughly anti-communist and in general reactionary. ----- Intro Music: Nitsokhn Lid by Yiddish Glory, remixed by Eli Bertrum Bed Music: Nitsokhn Lid Screwed by Mr. Crane Outro Music: Bayāt-e Tork by Yonā Dardašti, one of--if not the--most famous Iranian Jewish classical singers. Suggested Reading: "Iran Between Two Revolutions" & "The Modern History of Iran" by Ervand Abrahamian "Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the Revolution" by John Foran "Soviet Politics and the Iranian Revolution of 1919-1921" by Stephen Blank

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative. Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative. Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative. Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative. Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative. Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, 2019) by Lior Sternfeld presents the first systematic study of the rich and variegated history of Jews in twentieth-century Iran. Lior begins his intervention by identifying a “lachrymose historical narrative” that has predominated modern Jewish history and framed it as a “homogenously tragic” history across the board, resulting in the privileging of Zionist historiography in Jewish historical writing and erased the complexity of Jewish histories that don’t neatly fit that narrative. Throughout his book, Lior complicates the narrative by showing how various Iranian Jewish communities exerted the agency to assert their space in Iran's social, cultural, and political milieu, whether it was through intellectual production or political activism. Lior explores Iran’s Jews in relation to local politics, urbanity, immigration, nationalism, leftism, Zionism, and more, demonstrating the multivocality and multivalence of these communities, and ultimately illuminating how deeply entwined Iranian Jews have been to the country of Iran itself. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It has been 40 years since the Iranian Revolution that changed the landscape in both Iran and the United States--even more particularly in Los Angeles. Rabbi Yoshi and UCLA Professor Saba Soomekh sit down to discuss the cultural impact of the Persian community on Los Angeles (and vice-versa) in advance of their upcoming three-part course on the topic.

This week on Unorthodox, one young man's journey out of white nationalism. Our Jewish guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow, whose latest book is Rising out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, which tells the story of Derek Black, the son of Stormfront founder Don Black and heir apparent to the White Nationalist movement. After enrolling in a diverse college and befriending a wide range of people—including Jewish students who invited him to weekly Shabbat dinners after he was outed as a white supremacist—Derek began to challenge his ingrained assumptions, ultimately denouncing the movement he was raised to lead and his family's involvement in it. We also talk to Derek himself, who tells producer Shira Telushkin about life after white nationalism, explains the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at the root of the movement (plus the whole thing about lizard people), and shares the remorse and guilt he feels that the ideas he once publicly espoused and proliferated inspired the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter. We're heading to the West Coast! We'll be at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. for a special Shabbat show with actor and director Lauren Miller Rogen, 'Black-ish' producer Jonathan Groff, and Iranian-Jewish philanthropist Rachel Sumekh; get your tickets here. Then we'll be at the Stroum JCC in the Seattle area Saturday, Feb. 2 for a special live show with Dan Savage of the Savage Lovecast. Get your tickets here. We love to hear from you: Send comments and questions for Unorthodox to Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. This episode is sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books Summer Program for high school juniors and seniors. To learn more and apply, visit: www.yiddishbookcenter.org/greatjewishbooks. This episode is also sponsored by JChef, the new kosher meal kit. Go to Jchef.com/unorthodox and use coupon code Unorthodox30 to get 30 percent off your first order. Additional support for this episode comes from Harry's. Get a free trial shave set at Harrys.com/UNORTHODOX. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode was recorded at Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C., in partnership with the Association of Reform Jewish Educators. Thanks to our friends at ARJE for making this show happen. Our Jewish guest is food historian Michael Twitty, author of the James Beard Award-winning book The Cooking Gene, who returns to the show to tell us about his years as a Hebrew School teacher, when he was often the first black person his students interacted with, and his next book project, Kosher Soul, which focuses on his Jewish identity. He also explains what ptcha is, and why it's one of Tablet's 100 Most Jewish Foods. Our gentile of the week is Congresswoman Katie Porter, the newly-elected Representative of California’s 45th District and the first Democrat to hold the seat since it was created in 1953. She tells us about dining at Yale's kosher kitchen with our own Mark Oppenheimer back in college, how she's trying to help furloughed government workers during the shutdown, and her life as a single mother now shlepping between California and Washington, D.C. all the time. Her question for the panel is why Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish Arbor Day, falls in the dead of winter. We're heading to the West Coast! We'll be at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. for a special Shabbat show with actor and director Lauren Miller Rogen, 'Black-ish' producer Jonathan Groff, and Iranian-Jewish philanthropist Rachel Sumekh; get your tickets here. Then we'll be at the Stroum JCC in the Seattle area Saturday, Feb. 2 for a special live show with Dan Savage of the Savage Lovecast. Get your tickets here. We love to hear from you: Send comments and questions for Unorthodox to Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. This episode is sponsored by JChef, the kosher meal kit. Go to Jchef.com/unorthodox and use coupon code Unorthodox30 to get 30 percent off your first order. This episode is also sponsored by Harry's. Get a free trial shave set at Harrys.com/UNORTHODOX. This episode is also sponsored by Hebrew College. The Jewish community needs rabbis who are creatively engaging with Jewish tradition, and Hebrew College's rabbinical school is currently accepting applications. Visit Hebrewcollege.edu/unorthodox to find out more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Unorthodox, we're setting it up. Our Jewish guest this week is longtime matchmaker Tova Weinberg, who founded the Jewish dating website Saw You at Sinai. In an interview recorded at our Hanukkah live show in Pittsburgh, she tells the hosts about ditching dentistry to become a matchmaker (she estimates she's made 350 matches over the past 40 years), and her opinion on what it is that men and women really want. She also helps out a listener with some first date tips. Our Gentile of the Week is producer Scott Ellis, whose long list of theater and television credits includes The Good Wife, Weeds, She Loves Me, and more. He sits down with Stephanie to talk about getting his start on TV with the sitcom Frasier, putting himself up for an Emmy nomination, (and actually getting the nomination!) for an episode of 30 Rock, and being entrusted by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino to direct a few episodes of the award-winning Amazon series. (Scott even got Stephanie and producer Josh Kross into Season 2, Ep. 3 as extras—check out the very last scene). We're heading to the West Coast! We'll be at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 1 at 7 p.m. for a special Shabbat live show; Guests will include writer, director, actor, and producer Lauren Miller Rogen and Iranian-Jewish philanthropist Rachel Sumekh, Get your tickets here. Then we'll be at the Stroum JCC in the Seattle area Saturday, Feb. 2 for a special live show with Dan Savage of the Savage Lovecast, and . Get your tickets here. We love to hear from you: Send comments and questions for Unorthodox to Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. This episode is sponsored by JChef, the new kosher meal kit. Go to Jchef.com/unorthodox and use coupon code Unorthodox30 to get 30 percent off your first order. Additional support comes from The Branch, a new podcast from Hadassah that explores how positive relationships between Israeli Jews and Arabs can bring new hope for a truly shared society. Check it out at Hadassah.org/thebranch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I speak with Lior Sternfeld, a social historian of the modern Middle East with a particular interest in the histories of the Jewish populations of the region. Lior and I talk about the 2,700-year history of the Iranian Jewish population focusing mostly on the 20th century and the misperceptions of the lives of Jews in Iran. We further talk about how Iranian Jews became a prominent community within Iran during the course of the 20th century, whether Iranian Jews identify primarily as Jewish or Iranian, the difference between the Jewish communities of Iran and of other Middle Eastern countries, the status of Jews under the Islamic Republic, the Iranian Jewish community in Israel and the United States and other related topics.

Dorit Rabinyan was born in Israel to an Iranian-Jewish family. Her first two novels Persian Brides and Strand of A Thousand Pearls were both international best sellers. In 2014 Rabinyan published her third novel, All The Rivers, an immediate best seller in Israel. In January 2016 All the Rivers became the center of a political scandal in Israel when the Ministry of Education banned the book from high school's curriculum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker: Dr. David Menashri Affiliation: Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University Title: "The Place of the Iranian Jewish Community in the Contemporary Islamic World" Convener: Dr. Charles Asher Small, Founder and Executive Director, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) Location: Yale University, New Haven, CT Date: November 15, 2007 Description: Dr. David Menashri discusses the place of the Iranian Jewish community in the contemporary Islamic world.

The Immune System: A Dewey Decimal Novel & Love Maps  & The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. (Akashic Books)  Join us tonight for a special event brought to you by one of the most exciting independent presses in the country, Akashic Books. The Immune System is the explosive final installment in Nathan Larson's Dewey Decimal trilogy. Picking up months after the events of The Nervous System, Dewey finds himself running dirty operations for the crooked Senator Howard. When Dewey is tasked with disrupting unrest from a growing group of outcast civilians, and simultaneously given the assignment of protecting a pair of Saudi royals, he is forced to look within and make some impossible choices. Ultimately, this puts him at odds with his benefactor and the powers that be.  In the course of the novel, we learn the true nature of the 2/14 cataclysm that decimated New York City, and by the end of it, Dewey must choose whether or not to face his own past. He must also decide if he is to be part of the elite control system, or if he's willing to commit himself to the unknown, without the protections he enjoys in the good favor of the landlords of the new New Order. Praise for the Dewey Decimal Series: “The most incredible thing about Larson's novel is just how credible it is . . . and the prose is perfect, as tweaked and jumpy and memorable as the man known as Dewey Decimal. I'm a Library of Congress girl myself, but Larson's uncannily original fiction deserves its own number within any system of library classification.”—Laura Lippman, author of After I'm Gone “Larson's vividly imagined world and his quirky narrator are likely to win him a cadre of loyal fans.”—Publishers Weekly “Whiplash prose, teeth-gnashing dialogue and post-civilization concepts that make a crazy (amateur) librarian in a pitch-black world a hell of a lot of fun . . . A good time for fans of the likes of Charlie Huston and Charles Stross.”—Kirkus Reviews Nathan Larson is an award-winning film music composer, having created the scores for over thirty movies, including Boys Don't Cry, Dirty Pretty Things, and Margin Call. The Dewey Decimal System and The Nervous System are the highly acclaimed first two installments in his Dewey Decimal crime-fiction trilogy. Larson lives in Harlem, New York City, with his wife and son. --- The love in Love Maps is not the kind associated with domestic bliss; it is the kind that bubbles up at inopportune moments, attaching itself to people who might be better off free, causing mayhem and longing, along with moments of rare beauty. The title is taken from a series of paintings by Sarah Marker, an artist who ekes out a living teaching humanities at a fancy high school in Connecticut.  The story begins when Sarah receives a letter from Philip, her erstwhile husband. They have lived separately for seven years, without having seen each other once, without having formally severed ties, in a state of sustained ambivalence. Now he wants to visit. As much as Sarah would like to see him, she is terrified at what he will do when he discovers that he has a son.  Sarah bundles up her son and once again takes flight, only to arrive in a place she had not intended. While navigating the terrain of the 1980s art scene in New York City, she must confront the terrible events surrounding Philip's departure, and reconcile the expectations of domestic life with her own fractured experience of family, confronting the violence and aching love at the heart of this story. Praise for Love Maps: “Who can plot the turns and reversals of the heart? Who can follow its illogical loyalties and mysterious obsessions? Who can reconcile its competing claims from lovers and family? Eliza Factor, that's who, in this stunningly assured novel about a pair of sisters—one a successful artist, the other a famous singer—and the handsome architect who comes between them. The cover should come with a warning to put your life on hold for a few days, because once you pick it up, you won't be able to do anything else until you finish.”—Bliss Broyard, author of One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets “Eliza Factor's second novel is a beautiful and uplifting journey through the New York art scene of the 1980s, as lived by one true artist. You'll be hard-pressed to find a character more fully and honestly revealed across the pages of a book than Sarah Marker. A stunning and original exploration of family, romantic love, and the possibility of healing.”—Joseph Weisberg, creator/executive producer of The Americans (FX Network) “By turns lyrical and flinty, searching and suspenseful, Love Maps is animated by the strivings and travails of characters who seek (and find) the real and the true, the territory instead of the map.”—Thad Ziolkowski, author of Wichita “Eliza Factor's Love Maps is a delight, and I read it with mounting pleasure and admiration. It feels strange to think of Love Maps as a pleasure—this is, after all, a book that captures in technicolor detail the pain and vulnerability that come with just about every variety of human relationship. But prose this witty and psychologically deft, and structures this intricate and heartbreaking, don't come around often.”—Ben Dolnick, author of At the Bottom of Everything Eliza Factor is a writer and the founder of Extreme Kids & Crew. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and three children. Her debut novel, The Mercury Fountain, was published in 2012 by Akashic Books. -- From Tehran to Los Angeles, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is a sweeping saga that tells the story of the Soleymans, an Iranian Jewish family tormented for decades by Raphael's Son, a crafty and unscrupulous financier who has futilely claimed to be an heir to the family's fortune. Forty years later in contemporary Los Angeles, Raphael's Son has nearly achieved his goal--until he suddenly disappears, presumed by many to have been murdered. The possible suspects are legion: his long-suffering wife; numerous members of the Soleyman clan exacting revenge; the scores of investors he bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme; or perhaps even his disgruntled bookkeeper and longtime confidant. Award-winning novelist Gina B. Nahai pulls back the curtain on a close-knit community that survived centuries of persecution in Iran before settling and thriving in the United States, but now finds itself divided to the core by one of its own members. By turns hilarious and affecting, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. examines the eternal bonds of family and community, and the lasting scars of exile. Praise for The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. "A wide-ranging, page-turning, magical realist, multigenerational family saga and Iranian-Jewish-American immigration tale enveloped in a murder mystery...it both entertains and instructs, and its differing genres seem more complimentary than conflicting."--New York Journal of Books "Nahai has crafted an engaging combination of family saga and murder mystery, placed it in the framework of a relatively unknown subculture, and people it with fascinating characters. Flavored with both elements of magical realism and down-to-earth observations, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. brings a little-known Los Angeles community to vivid life."--Shelf Awareness "What results is a novel that feels more universal than anything, and an engrossing, expansive epic that charts not only thousands years of Iranian Jewish life, but the brutality of one family's survival amidst revolution and cultural upheaval." --Kirkus Reviews "One of the many pleasures of this sprawling, multigenerational story is the way it transcends the specifics of the Iranian diaspora with insights that could apply to anyone."--LA Weekly "One of Nahai's gifts is her astute observation of this community, her own, which she describes with unsparing precision."--Los Angeles Review of Books "Nahai's eye for detail, whether it's succinctly summing up a funeral or providing a description of a Tehran summer, always seems to be spot on."--PopMatters "An intriguing murder-mystery journey anchored within the Iranian-Jewish community of Los Angeles. Vivid and raw...Nahai masterfully introduces us to the mythical and mundane layers that make up Iranian-American identity."--Washington Independent Review of Books "It's the family connections--the true Iranian heritage--that is the luminous heart of the novel."--The Reporter Group Gina B. Nahai is a best-selling author, columnist, and full-time lecturer at USC's Master of Professional Writing Program. Her novels have been translated into eighteen languages, and have been selected as “Best Books of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. She has also been a finalist for the Orange Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and has won the Los Angeles Arts Council Award, the Persian Heritage Foundation's Award, the Simon Rockower Award, and the Phi Kappa Phi Award. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles magazine, Publishers Weekly, and the Huffington Post, among others. She writes a monthly column for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, and is a three-time finalist for an LA Press Club Award. Nahai holds a BA and a Masters degree in International Relations from UCLA, and a Master of Professional Writing from USC. She's a former consultant for the Rand Corporation, and a frequent lecturer on the politics of pre- and postrevolutionary Iran.

Esther Amini’s mother—or Bibi (“grandma” in Farsi), as the family calls her—grew up in Mashhad, a holy Islamic city in Iran. To escape persecution, Bibi and other Jews kept their religious observance well-hidden. She immigrated in 1948 to the United States, where Esther was born. In the years that followed, the holiday of Thanksgiving—celebrating, among other things, the gift of religious freedom—came to hold a privileged place for her and her family, alongside Rosh Hashanah and Passover. Amini’s account of this family tradition is one of eight narratives in Saffron and Rosewater: Songs and Stories From Persian Women, a theatrical production of the

Israel's security forces are hoping for the best...but preparing for the worst... On Today's show: The Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ)... Who is behind it? What are the objectives of the GMJ? What are the likely outcomes? How is Israel preparing?...Are they prepared? What has Iran got to do with the GMJ, and what about the Iranian Jewish community? Plus...The event is scheduled for "Land Day", this Friday, March 30th...What is THAT all about?...And what about the Arab-Israeli citizens?...A dangerous internal threat? Also...The end of arch-chameleon, Tzipi Livni's reign over Ariel Sharon's Kadima Party...Only to be replaced Shaul Mofaz, ex-General, turned suit-your-position-to-the-polls chameleon... All this and more on The Marty Roberts Show