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As many Jews deepen their sense of Jewish identity, Dr. Mijal Bitton joins the podcast to explore the significance of our Jewish heritage, texts, and peoplehood and what it means as we enter the Hanukkah season. Bitton is a sociologist, storyteller, podcast host, and Jewish advocate who also serves as the spiritual leader of the Downtown Minyan in Manhattan.  As one of the first Sacks Scholars, she helps young people reclaim and reimagine Jewish traditions. In this week's episode, Dr. Bitton discusses  Sephardic Jewry, Jewish peoplehood, academia, the needs of young Jews, and the realities of intergroup and interfaith after October 7. Resources: The Morality and Ethics of Global Jewish Advocacy: Lessons from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - AJC Advocacy Anywhere Jewish Unpacked - Wondering Jews podcast, with guest AJC CEO Ted Deutch Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: with Hen Mazzig, Einat Admony, and more. People of the Pod:  The Next Chapter in Catholic-Jewish Relations What's Next for the Abraham Accords Under President Trump? Honoring Israel's Lone Soldiers This Thanksgiving: Celebrating Service and Sacrifice Away from Home The ICC Issues Arrest Warrants: What You Need to Know Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. __ Transcript of Conversation with Mijal Bitton: Manya Brachear Pashman:   Dr. Mijal Bitton is a sociologist, storyteller and Jewish advocate. As the spiritual leader of the Downtown Minyan in Manhattan and one of the first Sacks Scholars, she helps young people reclaim and reimagine Jewish traditions.  Michal is no stranger to our AJC audiences. Earlier this month, she delivered a powerful Advocacy Anywhere to commemorate Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, for which the Sacks Scholars are, of course named.  And as co-host of Jewish Unpacked's podcast Wondering Jews, she and Jewish educator Noah Weisman explore questions we all ask about the Jewish experience, from the mundane to the miraculous. In fact, just recently, they interviewed AJC CEO Ted Deutch. The podcast has covered topics spanning from how summer camp shapes Jewish lives, how to constantly juggle joy and pain, the impact of the Jewish vote in the most recent election, and in turn, the impact of Trump's resulting victory on Jewish America. Mijal is with us now in our Midtown Manhattan studio to rehash a little of that, but also to discuss what led her to take on her many roles, including her newest project. Mijal, welcome to People of the Pod. Mijal Bitton:  Thank you, thank you for having me. Manya Brachear Pashman:   If you could please share with our listeners about your heritage, about your upbringing. You were born in Argentina, correct?  Mijal Bitton: I was born in Argentina. My father's family moved to Argentina from Morocco and Syria. My mother is from Spain. And part of what shaped my interest in Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, is that when we moved to America, we moved to a Persian Jewish community. So that was like my introduction to American Jews, this very tight knit Persian community in Long Island.  Eventually, I met my husband, who is a Syrian Jew, with Egyptian and Iraqi background, and I wrote my PhD on the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn, which all just shows you a little bit my fascination. It's not just an identity, it's a tradition that I draw from and that I believe can actually give us very powerful tools right now. Manya Brachear Pashman:  Now, is this a Syrian Jewish community from Aleppo or Damascus?  Mijal Bitton: Historically, there is a big difference. I would say that a lot of these communities, you can think of them as pre-immigration and then new settlement in America. Right now in America, it's one community. The differences between Aleppo and Damascus are not that pronounced, maybe like when you cook a little bit the recipe that you use, or slightly different songs that you might have, depending where your family is from. Manya Brachear Pashman:  You are, in fact, a visiting researcher at NYU, and you are the director of the National Study of the Sephardic and Mizrahi in the United States. What is that study all about? Mijal Bitton: Yeah. So when I wanted to do a PhD at NYU, which I did, on Syrian Jews, and I wanted to study Sephardic Jews, what I realized very quickly, and you might have seen this from your other podcast, is that there is very little good scholarship, good literature to explain to us who these Jews are. This is a problem, both in terms of historical research, and for me, I'm really interested in contemporary Jewish life.  There was a huge gap of not having resources to understand Sephardic Jews in the United States. So I had to do my PhD, kind of trying to reconstruct, you know, even, like the categories of study, how do we think about Jewish observance and really religiosity with Jews from the Middle East. So this study is an early attempt by early I mean, we hope it's the first of many studies to begin to tease out the main pillars of what we need to know to understand Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews roughly.  And again, we'll go into this more in the actual report, which will come out in a couple of months, roughly 10% of American Jews are Sephardic or Mizrahi, very similar to, let's say, the Orthodox Jewish population, the Russian-speaking Jewish population, but much less understood, much less studied. So it's an important first attempt to begin to lay out the foundations of knowledge. Manya Brachear Pashman:  So would you say that study is overdue?  Mijal Bitton: Yes, very much overdue. I think it's overdue for many reasons. One of them is that in the American Jewish community we've had for many years now, conversations around diversity, around inclusion and the like. And Sephardic Jews have not really been part of this conversation. Or let me say this with more precision, they have not been part of this conversation in terms that they would want to be part of this conversation. Maybe I'll be a little bit more explicit as to what I mean.  Many of the Jews that we've cited that I know tend to reflect more socially conservative, Middle Eastern forms of Jewish life, and these communities don't fit in very neatly in diversity efforts that tend to align with progressive understandings of diversity. So that means that there's been a real gap in how Sephardic Jews are included or not included in many spaces that are trying to be more inclusive. So we really believe that diversity is not easy, and that it begins with listening and understanding, who are the individuals and communities that we want to include.  Manya Brachear Pashman:  I mean, how does kind of a deeper and broader knowledge of one's Jewish identity, one's Jewish history, how does your deeper and broader knowledge of your identity and history help you be a better advocate? And how can it help others be better Jewish advocates? Mijal Bitton: That's a great question. So you know, you mentioned before that I started a weekly Jewish wisdom Substack. It's called Committed and I'll be grateful to share the link with everyone. The first piece that I wrote there on Genesis was actually about Jewish pride, and it was an idea that I had been thinking for a long time about, and it was that, especially since October 7, I have been in all of these spaces with people who are newly reawakened, energized, outraged about what's been happening. And they speak constantly about the need for Jewish pride, Jewish pride. We need more Jewish pride, more Jewish pride, more Jewish pride.  And on the one hand, I love that. I love that awakening. It resonates with me strongly. On the other hand, I had like this little voice whispering to me, because, as a sociologist, I've actually done research that talks about pride as something, I want to try to say this carefully, as something that is sometimes the last thing a group holds on to before assimilating fully.  So in very simplistic terms, if you think about Italian Americans or Irish Americans right over three or four generations in this country, they will slowly lose a lot of their communal elements. They will move away from their neighborhoods. They will stop only cooking Italian food. They will stop working in certain professions. But they will still have a little bit of that Irish pride in St Patrick's Day.  So I have been concerned when we speak about Jewish pride, that Jewish pride can be seen as unsustainable if we don't know what we are proud of. There is a world of a difference between someone who says there's something here, that seems really good, and I think I'm proud. I'm proud. And it's different that if you're standing there and you say, I am proud of a heritage spanning 1000s of years, I stand on the shoulders of giants. I am continuing a legacy of Jews who have survived persecutions, who've survived assimilation, who've survived living in different countries and in different times, and I am holding all of this when I stand up as a Jew. That, to me, is the kind of confident pride that can help us as advocates when we are facing challenges, because we are facing challenges and we're going to continue to face challenges. So we desperately need that sense of Jewish history, that sense of spiritual sustenance. We have to know what we are proud of, what we are fighting for. Manya Brachear Pashman:  You wrote a piece shortly after October 7, and it was titled, The Pain You're Feeling is Peoplehood. And it was incredibly powerful. It went viral. Because it so perfectly captured what so many Jews were feeling at that moment. And for those who haven't read it, can you share what led you to write it and kind of summarize it for our listeners. Mijal Bitton: I lead a community, I'm the spiritual leader of a community called the Downtown Minyan. And like many spiritual leaders and clergy on that Simchat Torah. I had to, you know, I'm not saying anything new. Here I was, I was heartbroken, reeling. I don't use a phone on Shabbat didn't always happening. My family in Israel, the reports that were coming in, I felt like my soul, my heart was being ripped. I think many of us felt this. And I had a Shul to run, and I had to figure out, like, what Jewish wisdom can I use right now? And it was very primal and instinctive.  There was a teaching that I had taught before because I thought it was important, but at that moment, it felt essential, and it just like, came out. I stood in front of my community who were in pain, and I wanted to give them names to explain what was happening. And I described, I use a very famous teaching by Rav Soloveichik, who speaks about who asked the question, can we still speak of ourselves as Jewish people, even with all of our diversity and differences and disagreements?  And it brings up a Talmudic question about, if you have a man of two heads, is this considered one person or two? And it's a complicated question, if you take it seriously, and he offers a gruesome test to figure this out. You pour boiling water on one head, and then you look at the other, and if it cries out in pain, it is one people. If it doesn't, it is two. The reason that this teaching was important for me to say, and I think the reason you said it went viral is because, you know. I haven't said this like this before, so I am expressing this now, thinking with you. I think for very long, for us Jews in America, we have been pushed and compelled to think of Judaism along Protestant religious terms.  What I mean by this, it's a faith, it's a set of beliefs, it's a value system. It has to fit in like some universalistic framework, and that pain that we felt on October 7 was different. It was a reminder that to be a Jew is to be part of a family. That it doesn't matter how different we are from each other, how much we disagree. When your relative is in pain, you cry with them. And it's almost like that pain, to me was like a way of saying we are reminded that we're part of a family. And there's something. I don't have the right words here. There's something almost to treasure about the pain, because it reminds us that we are connected to each other, committed to each other, responsible for each other.  And I think we all felt it, and it took away some of the layers of conditioning that many of us have had, to pretend like we aren't a family. That's what I think was one of the things that were so powerful about the tragedy that we all experienced. Manya Brachear Pashman:  Yeah, because we're so trained to be individuals, right, especially here in America, right, that individual spirit, and that's, that's not part of peoplehood. Or is it? I don't know. Maybe that's not the point.  Mijal Bitton: Yeah, listen, I think our tradition is amazing and complex, and there's strands of faith that brings up individualism and agency, but there's powerful strengths that talk about us as a family, as a collective, as a tribe, and there's powerful elements in our culture that have been pushing against that. And in many parts of our community, I think we drank the Kool Aid and we said we are not like, you know, that's backwards. That's not who we are anymore.  And then we were reminded that there's something there that we all felt was true. It existed before October 7, but I think October 7 kind of like woke it up. When I've shared this metaphor of the two headed men with people, many of them have offered an objection, and they've said, how awful is it for us to speak about who we are based on antisemitism? It shouldn't have to be like that. But, I mean, I would agree with that critique on theoretical terms. On sociological human terms, there is nothing that is more potent than having a shared enemy, a shared tragedy. Think about a family again, how tragedy brings us together.  So I think that unfortunately, the fact that there is still antisemitism vibrant in our societies and our streets has served to continue to reinforce that initial sense that we had after October 7. Of course, there are rifts. We can talk about debates that are happening. We are not as united as right after the tragedy. But, you know, I wrote a piece for CNN basically saying that the virulent anti semitism in the anti-Zionist movement is creating more Zionists. It's creating more Jewish solidarity. And it hasn't gone away. I am a religious woman. When I pray to God, I ask God that God should give us the challenge of having to remain connected in good times. I prefer that, but being that we don't have that right now, I do think that we have to double down on what our response is. Manya Brachear Pashman:  You wrote another piece for CNN that had to do with the anti-Israel protests on university campuses and the fear that it was inducing in so many Jewish young people, and the solidarity that was coming out of that. So with that in mind, one thing that the Jewish communal world is experiencing, we're certainly seeing it here at AJC, is an influx in involvement. Not just solidarity, but activism and advocacy, people who want to be more involved. Have you given any thought to this influx, and whether or not the infrastructure is in place here in America especially, to kind of sustain that, that level of involvement and activism.  Mijal Bitton: So one of the things that I've seen, and I'll be honest, that I'm still trying to understand it, but one of the things that I'm seeing is, there's, there's the thing called the organized Jewish community, okay? And it's a powerful ecosystem, you know, with lovers of power and influence. And I'm also privy, partially because of my work with young Jews, to a whole world of people who are wanting to be active, but who either don't have the access or the orientation to do so, you know, within the organized Jewish community And for me, part of what's still missing are the bridges between these different ecosystems. There's all of these people who are active on social media, right? The world of influencers, there's these groups of young Jews who are creating pop up Shabbat dinners, like all over the place, and like creating new clubs to celebrate Shabbat with each other and Jewish identity. And there is a lot of energy there. And what I'm trying to figure out is, I'm thinking of this as almost two powerful ecosystems, and I think that they would both be more powerful if they're in better conversation with each other.  So that, to me, again, it's a little bit abstract. I'm still thinking it through. I am a scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund, and this is one of the questions that I have right now in this post-October 7 world: what would it mean to better bridge between these different ecosystems? Manya Brachear Pashman:  We just talked about the campus protests and the solidarity that they fuel, and we've also talked about the lack of research and scholarship out there about Jews in the Middle East and and North Africa and the diversity of the Jewish community. Do you think if young people had a better grasp of the thousands of years of history, of Jewish history in the Middle East, do you think that would shift the conversation at all, that education? And I don't mean obviously just within the Jewish community, I mean more broadly. Mijal Bitton: I mean, broadly speaking, yeah. So I would say two things I take to heart with my friend Haviv Retig Gur, who's a brilliant analyst. He speaks a lot about the fact that Jews, we don't know our own story. And I do think there is, like, huge lack of literacy in understanding that there were nearly 1 million Jews all across the Middle East and North Africa, and they left, fled, or were expelled in like massive Arab nationalist, anti-Zionist regimes that were propped up across the region. So I do think that for people to know these stories would be incredibly powerful.  I do want to note something, though, as someone who has been active in academia, I still have one foot there. I think that in many places, and we need to not be naive. In many places, people have vested interest in certain narratives, and they are emotionally attached to this narrative, and they have no incentive to change them, no matter how many counterfactuals you provide to them.  So there are definitely many parts in academia that want to think of the world as divided between the oppressors and the oppressed, and who want to think of Jews and Israel and Zionists as aligned with the oppressors, who they equate to Europeans and white and Westerners. And no matter how many counterfactuals you will give to them, they will find a way again, and I'm happy to explain this. They will find ways to make it fit into their narrative.  So we need a multi-pronged approach. One approach is to give the literacy to those who are seeking it as a way to have greater strength and intellectual tools at their disposal. Also, there's like a huge middle to convince, you know that can be moved. And when it comes to those ideologues, we have to battle their narratives. Manya Brachear Pashman:  In other words, offering that literacy to the Jewish community first, to those who actually want it, who are curious enough to want it, that's step one.  Mijal Bitton: Yeah, Jewish community, friends of the Jewish community, people who are intellectually honest and want to have a better discourse around Israel, the Middle East and current reality. Manya Brachear Pashman:  So Mijal, I am curious how your conversations have changed and evolved since October 7. Initially I wanted to ask you about interfaith dialog, but maybe intercultural dialog is a better way to put it. But did you have more intercultural dialog before October 7 or after October 7, or is your work really immersed in the Jewish community and Jewish dialog? Mijal Bitton: Yeah, so I would say like this: I think before October 7, I had spent many years focused on interfaith work. I think that the interfaith work was often anchored in more liberal and progressive spaces, and many of those efforts really imploded. And I think that I represent, because I've heard this from so many people who basically said, we've invested years into showing up for others and into relationships. And then if I can't get someone to say that–you don't need to like Israel, you don't need to like Netanyahu, but just that Hamas raping and murdering is wrong and evil–then what am I doing here? So I think that definitely, I have been affected by that, by seeing that.  And right now, I think we're in a place a year out when there is new energy in trying to figure out, okay, like, who are those people that we can still talk to, and they exist. And also I think that, and this is like work that is ongoing, there is a real sense that we need to re-examine the work that we were doing. Perhaps we were investing in the wrong interfaith relationships and spaces. Which doesn't mean interfaith work is bad, but maybe we need to invest in other parts of interfaith work. Manya Brachear Pashman:  Can you expand on that a little bit? Mijal Bitton: I mean, yeah, this is like, personal. I am not going to be spending time in interfaith work with people who give Hamas a pass. I'll just say this, you know, like that. And I think there's a lot for me. I am much more interested right now in pursuing relationships with socially conservative leaders of other faiths, that perhaps in the past, we wouldn't have been in the same tables around interfaith work and who have spoken up with clarity when it comes to defending Jews and speaking up against antisemitism.  This doesn't mean, again, I don't want to imply that we should walk away from spaces you said before, it's important to have people fighting in many different areas. I think the real question we have to ask ourselves is, what are the lines, that if they are crossed, we walk away? Because I think too many Jews, for too long, have stayed in spaces where our basic story, dignity and humanity, was trampled, and we accepted that price. And that is not something we can do anymore.  So we have to figure out, how do we reconfigure relationships? How do we stand up for ourselves in different ways? How do we, and I'll say this: in many places Jews showed up and agreed to, you know, like, pound their chest about, like, their white Jewish privilege as a price of entry into coalitions and relationships in ways that just were not honest. We need to fight all of this. Manya Brachear Pashman:  You recently hosted AJC CEO Ted Deutch on your podcast Wondering Jews, and I'm curious what you learned from that exchange with him, both on and off the air. Mijal Bitton: Yeah, it was wonderful. I co-host the podcast Wondering Jews with Noam  Weissman, and it was really nice. I mentioned this on that episode, but I have a very fond personal memory of my first encounter with Ted. It was the March in Washington. I was one of their earliest featured speakers at the March. You know, 300,000 people in person, many watching live. And I was very nervous. And I was like, pacing behind backstage. And I see Ted.  I've never met him before, but I had read about him. And when I read about him, I was very curious. I'm like, who leaves sitting Congress to go and work for the Jews? So I was already, fascinated by like, who would make this career switch? And then I saw him, and I don't know why, I turned to him, and I asked him if I could practice with him. And he literally had me practice my speech. I memorized it, and I practiced, and he gave me some feedback, and I changed some of the words, and his wife lent me a hostage tag necklace because I wanted to have one on stage. And it was early days, I didn't have one.  So my first encounter with him was that it felt like a very personal one, and that's what came across, I think, in the in the podcast, that Ted is this, you know, was a member of Congress, like runs AJC, but he just, he's so warm, and it is so obvious in everything that he says, that this is not like a job for him, but it is a passion and a life's mission. And the way that he spoke about just his love for the Jewish people, for spirituality, for what it means to stand up in the world, his hope and optimism. He speaks about relationships that you can insist on and make sure that you can have right now. It's very moving to find leaders who are running institutions and who themselves are able to embody a very powerful sense of conviction. We need more leaders like that. Manya Brachear Pashman:  So tell us about your newest project.  Mijal Bitton: Yeah, it's called Committed. That's the name of the Substack. I started it on Simchat Torah. I'm still tinkering with it. Like you know, how long it should be, the tone, this, that. I'm very lucky to have a lot of readers and students who eagerly give me feedback as to what works and what doesn't, which is lovely, because I love learning Torah with them. But really, as many conversations that I've had with people about anti semitism and advocacy and Zionism on campus, as many conversations that I've been having around like antisemitism and Israel and politics, I have been having the same number of conversations about Judaism and spirituality and the soul and what it means to be part of this magnificent tradition.  I have been taken aback that often in my my classes and lectures, it will end with people coming to me afterwards and wanting to speak about their Jewish journeys, what it means to raise Jewish children, what it means to learn Torah, if you didn't grow up learning Torah, and now you want to what it means to to know that we are souls with bodies, as opposed to bodies with souls, all of these things.  I have felt that it's really important to try to to have weekly touch points that we can have to ask big questions and to be able to address them using Jewish tradition. So I've in my Substack so far, I've explored, like I mentioned before, Jewish pride, what it means to have Jewish pride. I've explored what it means to have, using the stories of Abraham and Rebecca, what it means to, when the world is burning, to know that we have multiple modes of responses. One of them is to provide justice, put out the flame.  Another mode is to help those who have burn marks and to just show care to them and be with them in times of need. The one that I wrote that I think went the farthest. One was around sacrifice, the binding of Isaac, which I wrote about what it means to from America. Look at Israeli parents and know that they are raising children who are willing to sacrifice in a way that American children are just not being taught.  I use the story of Jacob and Esau, and I did a beautiful thought experiment. What would have happened if a Chabad emissary would have met the bad twin of Jacob? And there's all of this text that actually allow us to imagine that Esau could have become a leader of the Jewish people if he would have been shown the kind of love that Chabad emissaries give. So I think there's amazing ways to approach Jewish tradition and to use those as and use Jewish tradition as a way to ask the most critical questions about what it means to live as a Jew today.  Manya Brachear Pashman: I imagine you'll be lighting candles soon for Hanukkah. Any other special traditions? Mijal Bitton The one thing I would say that I love that we do in our Sephardic communities, we light a little bit differently. And this is a traditional way. There's some Sephardic Jews that have changed this a little bit, but traditionally we light one Hanukkiah (menorah) as a family. So in many Ashkenazic communities, each individual lights their own. Classically, in the Sephardic tradition, a family has one Hanukkiah, and we try to light it either by a window or, even better, outside. So my family, my parents, my siblings, they have a special Hanukkiah with glass panels, and we always light it outside the house, facing the streets in a very real way.  And I think that's an important symbol for us, what it means to insist on our lights in public spaces, what it means to fight for public spaces, and what it means, I would say . . . you know, Hanukkah has become such a commercialized holiday in America that, like lives alongside Christmas, and that feels good.  And it's become not just a watered down version of its original premise, but in many ways the opposite, because what the Maccabees did is they took on not just the Greek Empire in military terms. They took on the Greek Empire in cultural and spiritual terms, and they resisted assimilation with everything they had. So in a funny way, in America, to fit in, we've remade Hanukkah in terms that have been opposite in its original meaning.  And I think this last year asked us to reconsider what Hanukkah should look like, and what would it mean, you know, we shouldn't, I'm not saying we should be like the Maccabees exactly. You know, they're a complicated story as well. But what would it mean to make sure that we're not only lighting a light outside, but that we are expressing our Judaism in Jewish terms, even when it's a little bit uncomfortable for others.  Manya Brachear Pashman:  Mijal, thank you so much for joining us.  Mijal Bitton: Thank you for having me. Really great to be here. 

Joining Jill and Doron on the 31st episode of the podcast, the thirteenth of our second season, to tell us her story is designer and businesswoman Adeline Shayegan, who attended Carmel College from 1989 to ‘90. Adeline was born in Bath to Persian Jewish parents, and grew up in England, Iran, France and America, where she currently resides, in Beverly Hills, with her husband of 9 years, Robert, and their dog.  She owns the three-storey “Love Love Tennis” boutique by Rodeo Drive, where she designs, manufactures and sells luxury tennis apparel, as well as jewelry and bags.  She is also a former professional poker player and the author of two books on tennis. Hear Adeline talk about which former student she owes her strong legs to, ‘borrowing' a powerboat from the boathouse, starting her first business at Carmel, the differences between being a pupil in Mongewell Park and Beverly Hills, and meeting her husband on the tennis court. Thank you, Adeline Shayegan, for turning us again to Carmel days!   Personal mentions in this episode: Philip Skelker (Headmaster) Miss Pennistone (Housemistress) Elinor Zeitouni Simon Kay Rossana Shokrian Meir Javedanfar Nadia Rosenberg Alan Ingram Robert Serr Sebastian Marcu Jo Cowan Jessie D'Acampo Shira Tilles Marcus   Feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you liked about this episode, and rate us on your favorite podcast platform

In this special 2-PART SERIES, we're dropping you inside a Tony Robbins Business Mastery seminar. Learn HOW TO BUILD A BRAND, SHOWCASE YOUR X FACTOR, and BRING YOUR UNIQUE PRODUCT or SERVICE to the COMPETITIVE MARKET! In PART ONE, Tony Robbins sits down for an exclusive one-on-one with SAM NAZARIAN, the visionary entrepreneur behind an empire of hospitality, nightlife, and real estate. Best known for founding SBE Entertainment Group in 2002, Nazarian transformed it into a global powerhouse, boasting an impressive portfolio of hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, and luxury residences. His brainchild, the SLS brand, redefined luxury hospitality with its innovative design and expanded globally under his leadership. Born into a Persian Jewish family in Tehran, Nazarian's journey from immigrant to business mogul is nothing short of inspiring. Nazarian's remarkable achievements include acquiring iconic properties like the Delano and the Mondrian to merging SBE with hospitality giant AccorHotels, creating SBE | AccorHotels and solidifying his position as a leader in the luxury hospitality sector. Nazarian's entrepreneurial spirit and determination is nothing short of inspiring. Don't miss this exclusive opportunity to elevate your business game to new heights and learn how to turn your own dreams into empires! ***  Business Mastery is the world's premier business training event designed and hosted by the world's #1 authority on personal growth, business transformation and peak performance – Tony Robbins. This five-day event equips entrepreneurs, business owners and operators with cutting-edge systems, skills and strategies not found anywhere else to create an invincible advantage against competitors. Business Mastery is designed to help participants thrive in any economic climate as they discover critical factors impacting their businesses currently and design an action plan for the next phase of growth, whether they seek more profits or an exit strategy. This includes marketing tips, maximizing a business' digital presence to get seen and discovered online and how to anticipate and solve the biggest business problems. During this comprehensive program, participants gain the same proprietary tools and methodologies Tony Robbins has used to make more than 70 businesses profitable. They'll also unlock exclusive growth tips from industry giants from companies like Airbnb, Orangetheory, Shake Shack, SoulCycle, Warby Parker and more. Now available as an immersive virtual event, Tony Robbins's Business Mastery is drawing even larger crowds and a new generation of business owners.  Learn more about Business Mastery: https://tonyr.co/bm-podcast SHOW NOTES:  00:33 - Tony's Introduction 03:00 - Sam's Journey to America 05:48 - Sam's Father's Story of the American Dream 06:45 - "Never Look Backwards" 08:30 - Recognizing Opportunities, Filling Voids, and Scaling Up 09:23 - "Turbulence Defines You" 11:30 - Entry into the LA Nightclub Business 12:00 - Seeing Potential Where Others Don't 14:53 - Navigating Economic Challenges 16:20 - Sam's "Secret Sauce" to Success 18:29 - Impact of Design on Customer Experience 19:00 - Creating Memorable Customer Experiences 21:00 - Developing Original Restaurant Brands 22:57 - Knowing When to Sell 24:52 - Audience Question: Scaling Passion into Multiple Restaurants 29:08 - Audience Question: Scaling Multiple Brands in Hospitality 34:30 - Building Company Culture 37:42 - Importance of Removing Toxic Employees 39:18 - Insights from Stanford's Study on Employee Depression 40:45 - C3: Digital Restaurant Company 45:40 - Creating the Future You Want to See 50:30 - Establishing a New Legacy 53:00 - Tony and Sam's Joint Venture in Longevity 57:00 - Tony's Closing Remarks Tony Robbins is a #1 New York Times best-selling author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. For more than four and a half decades, millions of people have enjoyed the warmth, humor and dynamic presentation of Mr. Robbins' corporate and personal development events. As the nation's #1 life and business strategist, he's called upon to consult and coach some of the world's finest athletes, entertainers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and even presidents of nations.      

Episode Description Sign up to receive podcast:  People Group Summary: https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups//19241 #AThirdofUs                    https://athirdofus.com/ Listen to "A Third of Us" podcast with Greg Kelley, produced by the Alliance for the Unreached: https://alliancefortheunreached.org/podcast/ ·        JoshuaProject.net/frontier#podcast provides links to podcast recordings of the prayer guide for the 31 largest FPGs. ·        Go31.org/FREE provides the printed prayer guide for the largest 31 FPGs along with resources to support those wanting to enlist others in prayer for FPGs. ·        Indigitous.us/home/frontier-peoples has published a beautiful print/PDF introducti ·        on to FPGs for children, supported by a dramatized podcast edition.

In this episode, we speak with Food Network star, Penny Davidi, a madre of 2, who said EFF IT and got divorced at a time when divorce was taboo. On top of that, coming from a Persian Jewish upbringing, it was very frowned upon. But, she knew it was not what she wanted anymore, and once she left,  an onslaught of EFF IT moments followed: she bought pizza joints even though she knew nothing about it; manifested herself onto the Food Network; and found the love of her life. It just goes to show that you have to make things EFFing happen for you by putting yourself into different environments and take advantage of the opportunities that are all around you because they always are. You just have to be willing and open to accepting them. To check out all the projects Penny is involved in, go to Instagram and give her a follow at @pennydavidi. Also, check out her book, “It's my Thyme,” on Amazon.

Galeet Dardashti returns to Paradigms to share her new project Monajat wherein Galeet brings together her love of music, her work as an anthropologist, and her celebration of her grandfather Younes Dardashti who was a famous Persian Jewish singer. In … More ... The post Galeet Dardashti – New Album “Monajat” appeared first on Paradigms Podcast.

Their grandfather was a famous singer known as The Nightingale of Iran. Their father was a Tehran teen idol. It's always been a mystery to our host Danielle Dardashti (storyteller / documentarian) and her sister Galeet Dardashti (anthropologist / musician) : What drove their Persian Jewish family to leave Iran during a golden age for Jews, so long before the Islamic revolution? The Nightingale of Iran – a new audio documentary about identity, belonging, and music – reveals painful secrets unspoken for generations. The series will resonate with outsiders everywhere. Coming soon…Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts.

The audience is in for an in-depth look at Persian Jewry as shared by Jewish Iranian community leader & activist, Sharon Nik, whose family on both sides spans thousands of years in Iran. Jews first came to Iran as part of the Babylonian Exile, and it was Cyrus the Great who later freed all slaves in Persia, including Jews, and established the Persian Empire. Under Cyrus, Jews were free to return to Israel, but many stayed behind and became thriving members of the then new society. When Islam took over Iran, many centuries later, the treatment of Jews shifted, depending on geography. Unlike in Yemen, where the cities were antisemitic and the villages, far less so, in Iran, the cities tended to be more tolerant, with more rural areas more anti-Jew. Sharon's family experienced both post-Islamic incursion treatments. However, there were Jews who worked in close proximity to the most recent Shah, saw the friendship grow between Israel and Iran, pre-Revolution of 1979, and Jews contributed greatly to Iran on all fronts. Jews were also very assimilated in Iran, sharing the same foods as Muslims, same music, and in many cases, culture. The only difference was faith, to which Jews in Persia held on strongly. Join us as we discuss Persian Jewish customs, Persian Jewish community bonds, the return to Israel and immigration to the U.S; among other topics. We also touch on a potential post-Islamist regime change Iran, and Sharon's honest thoughts regarding a potential reconciliation with Israel. 

The first time I really heard about the suffering of Persian Jews  -- not just in snippets, but in detail - was last week. This past Sunday, I cohosted an event with Sinai Temple to hear Dora Levy Mossanen, a Persian Jewish author, talk about her latest book, which took place in the Jewish Quarter of Teheran in the 1940's.Fifty women gathered in the beautiful home our Persian Jewish hostess – half from Wilshire Boulevard Temple and half from Sinai to learn about the lives and treatment of Jews in Iran not just after the Islamic Revolution, but also before. The indignities, the insults, the pervasive dislike and distaste for Jews, the discrimination, the belief that Jews were not only inferior but unclean was a daily fact of life. And then, after the Islamic revolution, came the arrests, the brutality, the loss of property and civil rights, the terror, the firing squads, the fleeing in the middle of the night with only the clothes on their backs.

Born in Iran and raised in California, Penny is the first Persian Jewish chef and businesswoman to be featured on hit culinary and reality television shows.  Beata and Bita learn about Penny's hybrid, mixed culture family and Persian Passover traditions old and new.   Listen and learn what green onion beatings are all about in Persian Passovers, as well as Penny's family tradition of playing hide and seek with Matzo crackers!   Feel free to submit a question for our Ask the Beats segment of our show and we will feature it in a future episode!  Email us with your question, hello@modernpersianfood.com or leave us an audio message through Instagram @modernpersianfood   Modern Persian Food podcast references: Episode 107:  The Persian Medicine of Hot & Cold Foods with Candice Walker Episode 124:  Vegan Persian Food with Elham   All Modern Persian Food podcast 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   Sign up for the email newsletter here!   Subscribe+ to the Modern Persian Food podcast on your favorite podcast player, and share this episode with a friend.   Podcast production by Alvarez Audio

Jewish Diaspora Report - Episode 53  On this episode of the Jewish Diaspora Report, Host Mike Jordan discusses the story of Purim from the Book of Esther in the Hebrew writings. We learn the history behind the stories and what happened to the Persian Jewish community following the near Genocide.  Explore these challenging issues and join the Jewish Diaspora Report for future episodes on issues of Politics, Culture, Current Events and more!   Check us out on Instagram @jdr.podcastSupport the show

Tune into this beautifully flowing interview filled with a myriad of golden nuggets from Liana Chaouli! Here are just a few of the topics we discuss: Liana's multi-faceted experience of growing up as a Persian Jewish girl in Germany;coming home to who she is as a woman, including accessing her pain, vulnerability and victory at the same time; the super power that women have been gifted;being fierce and loving simultaneously;seeing the past as pieces of a puzzle that inform the present but don't define who we are now;the halos of love in our eyes - and much more! Liana's gift:  Discover Your Essential Formula Video Series: betheoffer.comSupport the showThank you for listening, I appreciate you! If you'd like to support the podcast, you can do so by becoming a monthly supporter here or by buying me a coffee here. Thank you so much! To hang out with me and the speakers, join us in our private Sacred Feminine Power FB group.Learn more about Emmi's work at Feminine Revered. And to book a complimentary Sacred Energy Activation session with Emmi, click here.

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.

Shani's eloquent interpretation of the symphony highlights the contrasting moods of this three-movement work. Under his baton, the orchestra conveys every last spark of the intense, restless energy of its outer movements, whose turbulence reflects the wartime backdrop against which the symphony was written. Creating an oasis of calm between the two, the conductor and orchestra give a wonderfully lyrical reading of the central slow movement, which quotes part of a traditional song from the Persian Jewish community that Ben-Haim had recently arranged for pioneering Israeli folk singer Bracha Tzfira.Purchase the music (without talk) at:Paul Ben-Haim: Symphony No. 1 (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store)Your purchase helps to support our show! Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and Uber. @CMDHedgecock#ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive#LaMusicaFestival #CMDGrandOperaCompanyofVenice #CMDParisPhilharmonicinOrléans#CMDGermanOperaCompanyofBerlin#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofBarcelonaSpain#ClassicalMusicLivesOn#Uber Please consider supporting our show, thank you!Donate (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) staff@classicalmusicdiscoveries.com  This album is broadcasted with the permission of Crossover Media Music Promotion (Zachary Swanson and Amanda Bloom).

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.

Sam Salar is a Persian, Jewish Gay man who has created the law firm LEGALLY QUEER in order to give back to the LGBT community.Sam discusses the struggles he had growing up in his Persian, Jewish family/community. His parents struggled to understand and accept who he was as a gay man, but they ultimately came around and became the ones who would help other Persian/Jewish parents understand and accept their gay children. Sam earned his law degree and then started his career in litigation (where he had been working as a paralegal in that field) prior to passing the California bar exam.  When he passed the bar, his friends then asked him "Are you happy"?  But he knew he wasn't.  His mentor suggested to him that perhaps he should consider switching to a practice that would give back to the LGBT community.   So after some consideration of that suggestion, he created LEGALLY QUEER.  And today he IS happy!Contact Sam:   Sam Salar R., Esq.SamSalarLaw@gmail.com310-666-5546Instagram: @legallyqueer_Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/legallyqueerPhoto: Copyright Wilkinson/2022Opening and closing music courtesy the very talented Zakhar Valaha via Pixabay.To contact Wilkinson- email him at BecomingWilkinson@gmail.com

Meryl chats with Esther Amini about her 2020 memoir, Concealed, which chronicles her childhood and coming of age in a Persian-Jewish household in Queens, New York during the 1960s. As the American-born daughter of parents who had fled Mashdad, Iran, she shares how she was caught between these two cultures as she sought to carve her own path. Esther Amini is a writer, painter, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Her debut memoir, Concealed, was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2020. In addition, both Katie Couric and Zibby Owens selected Concealed as one of their favorite books and showcased it last year at The Streicker Center in Manhattan. Esther's short stories have appeared in Elle, Lilith, Tablet, The Jewish Week, Barnard Magazine, and numerous other publications. Her essays can also be found in Zibby Owens' Anthology: “Moms Don't Have Time To,” as well as in Zibby's most recently published anthology: “Moms Don't Have Time To Have Kids.” She was named one of Aspen Words' best emerging memoirists and awarded its Emerging Writer Fellowship in 2016 based on her memoir. Her pieces have been performed by Jewish Women's Theatre and was chosen by as their Artist-in-Residence in 2019. ChaiFlicks, (Jewish Netflix), is presently streaming an excerpt from “CONCEALED” called AM-REE-KAH. Esther lives in New York City with her husband. Author's website: EstherAmini.com Facebook: Esther Amini Instagram: @estheraminiauthor @Copyright by Authors on the Air Global Radio Network #AuthorsOnTheAir #AuthorsOnTheAirGlobalRadioNetwork #AOTA #EstherAmini #Memoir #Concealed #Immigration #PeopleoftheBook #ZibbyOwens #PersianRefugees #MomsDon'tHaveTimeToRead #ComingofAge #ClashofCultures #MomsDon'tHaveTimeToHaveKids #KatieCouric #Iran #Persia #Persian #PersianAmerican #IranianRefugees #MerylAin #TheTakeawayMen #LetsTalkJewishBooks #JewsLoveToRead

Meryl chats with Esther Amini about her 2020 memoir, Concealed, which chronicles her childhood and coming of age in a Persian-Jewish household in Queens, New York during the 1960s. As the American-born daughter of parents who had fled Mashdad, Iran, she shares how she was caught between these two cultures as she sought to carve her own path. Esther Amini is a writer, painter, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Her debut memoir, Concealed, was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2020. In addition, both Katie Couric and Zibby Owens selected Concealed as one of their favorite books and showcased it last year at The Streicker Center in Manhattan. Esther's short stories have appeared in Elle, Lilith, Tablet, The Jewish Week, Barnard Magazine, and numerous other publications. Her essays can also be found in Zibby Owens' Anthology: “Moms Don't Have Time To,” as well as in Zibby's most recently published anthology: “Moms Don't Have Time To Have Kids.” She was named one of Aspen Words' best emerging memoirists and awarded its Emerging Writer Fellowship in 2016 based on her memoir. Her pieces have been performed by Jewish Women's Theatre and was chosen by as their Artist-in-Residence in 2019. ChaiFlicks, (Jewish Netflix), is presently streaming an excerpt from “CONCEALED” called AM-REE-KAH. Esther lives in New York City with her husband. Author's website: www.EstherAmini.com Facebook: Esther Amini Instagram: @estheraminiauthor @Copyright by Authors on the Air Global Radio Network #AuthorsOnTheAir #AuthorsOnTheAirGlobalRadioNetwork #AOTA #EstherAmini #Memoir #Concealed #Immigration #PeopleoftheBook #ZibbyOwens #PersianRefugees #MomsDon'tHaveTimeToRead #ComingofAge #ClashofCultures #MomsDon'tHaveTimeToHaveKids #KatieCouric #Iran #Persia #Persian #PersianAmerican #IranianRefugees #MerylAin #TheTakeawayMen #LetsTalkJewishBooks

Meryl chats with Esther Amini about her 2020 memoir, Concealed, which chronicles her childhood and coming of age in a Persian-Jewish household in Queens, New York during the 1960s. As the American-born daughter of parents who had fled Mashdad, Iran, she shares how she was caught between these two cultures as she sought to carve her own path. Esther Amini is a writer, painter, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Her debut memoir, Concealed, was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2020. In addition, both Katie Couric and Zibby Owens selected Concealed as one of their favorite books and showcased it last year at The Streicker Center in Manhattan. Esther's short stories have appeared in Elle, Lilith, Tablet, The Jewish Week, Barnard Magazine, and numerous other publications. Her essays can also be found in Zibby Owens' Anthology: “Moms Don't Have Time To,” as well as in Zibby's most recently published anthology: “Moms Don't Have Time To Have Kids.” She was named one of Aspen Words' best emerging memoirists and awarded its Emerging Writer Fellowship in 2016 based on her memoir. Her pieces have been performed by Jewish Women's Theatre and was chosen by as their Artist-in-Residence in 2019. ChaiFlicks, (Jewish Netflix), is presently streaming an excerpt from “CONCEALED” called AM-REE-KAH. Esther lives in New York City with her husband. Author's website: EstherAmini.com Facebook: Esther Amini Instagram: @estheraminiauthor @Copyright by Authors on the Air Global Radio Network #AuthorsOnTheAir #AuthorsOnTheAirGlobalRadioNetwork #AOTA #EstherAmini #Memoir #Concealed #Immigration #PeopleoftheBook #ZibbyOwens #PersianRefugees #MomsDon'tHaveTimeToRead #ComingofAge #ClashofCultures #MomsDon'tHaveTimeToHaveKids #KatieCouric #Iran #Persia #Persian #PersianAmerican #IranianRefugees #MerylAin #TheTakeawayMen #LetsTalkJewishBooks #JewsLoveToRead

With the holiday of Purim coming up, that takes place in Persia, we commemorate evil turning around to good. How apropos that today we have the pleasure of speaking with Esther Amini who grew up in a Persian-Jewish household. Esther wrote a heart wrenching memoir titled Concealed where the reader can see that even though one can physically escape religious persecution, emotionally they can still be in that same place, and in essence the past is never dead. Concealed speaks not only to Iranians and their first-generationAmerican children, but to every immigrant and descendant who feels that complicated push-pull of their legacy, honoring traditional customs vs. breaking the mold and fighting oppression. Concealed has received international praise! In addition to giving us a brief summary of the book, and the fascinating reason she felt compelled to author it, she explains why she chose Concealed as the title, since it has multiple meanings. Esther also discusses what it was like growing up in thefree world as the daughter of Jewish Iranian parents who suffered persecution, and she read a passage from her book that illustrates her point that silence in her home was expected, and how she dealt with it. Esther then goes into detail about life in Mashdad today as opposed to her parents' days.

With the holiday of Purim coming up, that takes place in Persia, we commemorate evil turning around to good. How apropos that today we have the pleasure of speaking with Esther Amini who grew up in a Persian-Jewish household. Esther wrote a heart wrenching memoir titled Concealed where the reader can see that even though one can physically escape religious persecution, emotionally they can still be in that same place, and in essence, the past is never dead. Concealed speaks not only to Iranians and their first generation American children, but to every immigrant and descendant who feels that complicated push-pull of their legacy, honoring traditional customs vs. breaking the mold and fighting oppression. Concealed has received international praise! In addition to giving us a brief summary of the book, and the fascinating reason she felt compelled to author it, she explains why she chose Concealed as the title, since it has multiple meanings. Esther also discusses what it was like growing up in the free world as the daughter of Jewish Iranian parents who suffered persecution, and she read a passage from her book that illustrates her point that silence in her home was expected, and how she dealt with it. Esther then goes into detail about life in Mashdad today as opposed to her parents' days.

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

PGP answers listener submissions related to interracial relationships and how to bounce back in a relationship when you've been kept a secret and their family dislikes/disapproves of you. They also answer some questions related to physical attributes Persian women are attracted to, what cars they like to drive, and if they bring their boyfriends to their family dinners&parties. Lastly they give advice to a Black Jew whose type is Persian Jewish girls. Intro song:Mary Jane- Arash Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/persiangirlpodcast)

PGP sits down with singer/songwriter Nazanin. They discuss her Persian Jewish upbringing in Great Neck, studying pre-med to becoming a singer, living in LA, and navigating the iroonis of both cities.Find Nazanin on spotify:https://open.spotify.com/artist/05fn3rtT6R754HUGdior3V?si=AqTHYIZ0S7aDuul8E3TyUQ&nd=1Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/nazaninxmusic/Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfk2Ei1HwTExW7qeHPVYftwSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/persiangirlpodcast)

Galeet Dardashti takes us on a journey into Persian Jewish Prayer, shares exquisite compositions, and speaks intimately on weaving her voice with the voices of her ancestors, across place and time.

Fun + deep thoughts with comedian and Superior Donuts actor Maz Jobrani! We talk: His book, I'm Not A Terrorist But I've Played One on TV Flying during covid Expensive flights Misinformation A wild story about an email I got from one celebrity's rep Class projects Looking symptoms up online and thinking you're going to die Maz's Persian Jewish friends Being the lead character in your own movie The pressure of posting on social media Sweating the small stuff vs. the big stuff Being late to his own stand-up comedy tour shows How he sees himself Being a comedian vs. an actor His podcast, Back to School with Maz Jobrani The rush of being onstage Getting into the zone Grit Passion vs. grit The politics of your career His experience at UC Berkeley and UCLA How to get where you want to be in life What to do when you're discouraged His pandemic puppy The secret to success in relationships The best shows on TV, according to me and Maz Jobrani Hacks  Miracle Workers Gomorrah Links: Get your FREE 30-day trial of Amazon PRIME VIDEO https://amzn.to/3BgzY2l  More Maz Jobrani Catch Maz's podcast, Back to School with Maz Jobrani, get tickets to his comedy shows and learn more about Maz at https://www.mazjobrani.com/  Get Maz's book, I'm Not a Terrorist But I Played One on TV https://amzn.to/3llTJQK  Dream Hollywood https://www.dreamhotels.com/hollywood  Join my new Really Famous Friends & Fans Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/reallyfamous/ Watch my talk with Gomorrah star Salvatore Esposito https://youtu.be/u5GvfkaEn1M  Watch Maz Jobrani and me on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/reallyfamous  Share your thoughts! Email me reallyfamouspodcast@gmail.com Join my Special Insiders Group  Connect with me and get behind-the-scenes scoop on social media: Instagram Facebook Twitter TikTok Shop on my Amazon Storefront to: Support the show! Get really cool stuff! Amazon.com/Shop/ReallyFamous   Connect with me: Subscribe to Really Famous on YouTube: YouTube.com/ReallyFamous Follow me on Instagram: @karamayerrobinson Follow me on Twitter: @kara1to1 Follow me on Facebook: @karamayerrobinson Follow me on TikTok: @karamayerrobinson Live events notification: really-famous.com/contact Everything! https://linktr.ee/reallyfamous  Celebrity interview by Kara Mayer Robinson Music credit: Take a Chance by Kevin MacLeod incompetech - Creative Commons

Cantor Jacqueline Rafii is the Cantor at Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills, California, where she develops and directs all musical programming, creative prayer experiences, and music education. Cantor Rafii had a previous career as an entertainment lawyer before switching career paths and following her calling. She is a Wexner Graduate Fellow, and as part of her Master's Thesis collected and notated Persian-Jewish prayer melodies to bring awareness to global Jewish music. She is a composer and pianist, and sings in 5 languages.Teach students that we must be holy because we are made in the image of G-d and G-d is holy.Empower students to expand their understanding and build a relationship with G-dEncourage your students to question.Learn to balance tradition and innovation.Make Torah relevant for our students.We learn best by doing.Learn to be flexible.Include the whole family in the learning process.Find her music: https://www.jacquelinerafii.com/Academy For Jewish Religion- CA: https://ajrca.edu/Amazon We receive a small commission for any items purchased through my Amazon link.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/JewishEducationExperiencePodcast)

Forty years ago, thousands of Jews fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution, settling primarily in Los Angeles. Nicole Nowparvar is a member of that Persian Jewish community. She's a psychotherapist, and the cofounder of Chaya, a community of intimate gatherings for Jewish Iranians. In this conversation, Clarissa talks with Nicole about how social, familial, and cultural expectations shape the community and the way that Chaya is helping individuals navigate what it means to be Jewish Iranian in the U.S.EPISODE NOTESNicole Nowparvar's WebsiteNicole Nowparvar's InstagramChaya CommunityTaarof You can follow Clarissa on Twitter and Instagram @ClarissaRMarksTo request a transcript, suggest a topic or a guest, or just say “hi,” send an email to hello@onwandering.co If you liked this episode try out: Embracing Yiddish Language, Theater, Culture, and History, with Rokhl Kafrissen and Hebrew Tattoos w/Artist and Calligrapher Gabriel Wolff Like the show? Here are three great ways to support!· Rate On Wandering 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts. This helps others find the show!· Share On Wandering with a Friend (IRL or via Twitter)· Buy Me a Coffee. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps create the best show possible. On Wandering is produced and presented by Clarissa Marks.The intro music for this episode is by Gillicuddy and the outro music by Sound: The EncounterThe show is recorded on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People past, present and emerging. As a land-based people in diaspora, we recognize first nations and indigenous people as the stewards of this land from time immemorial. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.

Forty years ago, thousands of Jews fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution, settling primarily in Los Angeles. Nicole Nowparvar is a member of that Persian Jewish community. She’s a psychotherapist, and the cofounder of Chaya, a community of intimate gatherings for Jewish Iranians. In this conversation, Clarissa talks with Nicole about how social, familial, and cultural expectations shape the community and the way that Chaya is helping individuals navigate what it means to be Jewish Iranian in the U.S.EPISODE NOTESNicole Nowparvar’s WebsiteNicole Nowparvar’s InstagramChaya CommunityTaarof You can follow Clarissa on Twitter and Instagram @ClarissaRMarksTo request a transcript, suggest a topic or a guest, or just say “hi,” send an email to hello@onwandering.co If you liked this episode try out: Embracing Yiddish Language, Theater, Culture, and History, with Rokhl Kafrissen and Hebrew Tattoos w/Artist and Calligrapher Gabriel Wolff Like the show? Here are three great ways to support!· Rate On Wandering 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts. This helps others find the show!· Share On Wandering with a Friend (IRL or via Twitter)· Buy Me a Coffee. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps create the best show possible. On Wandering is produced and presented by Clarissa Marks.The intro music for this episode is by Gillicuddy and the outro music by Sound: The EncounterThe show is recorded on the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People past, present and emerging. As a land-based people in diaspora, we recognize first nations and indigenous people as the stewards of this land from time immemorial. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe.

In this episode, Millie and Natalie interview Persian Jewish comedian Aaron Zarabi. Aaron is from New York and recently grew to prominence after being featured as the asshole of the week on antisemitism.org....The three discuss censorship in comedy, pushing boundaries with his humor, laughing at the truth, "fluffy" PG Persian comedians, Aaron's two bar mitzvahs, and what it was like living in Iceland. Interview begins at 4 minutes.Follow Aaron Zarabi on TikTok and Instagram @aaronzarabiCheck out his podcast Your Boyz: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-boyz/id1550770554Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/persiangirlpodcast)

I am sharing this information. The history of Khazaria presents us with a fascinating example of how Jewish life flourished in the Middle Ages. In a time when Jews were persecuted thruout Christian Europe, the kingdom of Khazaria was a beacon of hope. Jews were able to flourish in Khazaria because of the tolerance of the Khazar rulers, who invited Byzantine and Persian Jewish refugees to settle in their country. Due to the influence of these refugees, the Khazars found the Jewish religion to be appealing and adopted Judaism in large numbers. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/isotruthjustice/message

For the first episode of season 3, PGP interviews Doris Yadidi Micheletti, a certified sex coach and clinical sexologist. They discuss the emphasis of women's virginity in the Persian Jewish community, vaginal anatomy-like where is the choochooleh (clitoris) and g spot, old school customs of monitoring sex, how Doris educates her children about sex, vaginismus, female ejaculation, consent, and self pleasure. Shoot a DM or email for questions to be answered in the upcoming instagram live with Doris!Find more about Doris on her website: https://www.dorismicheletti.com/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/persiangirlpodcast)

Valley Beit Midrash is proud to present “'Concealed'— Memoir of a Jewish/Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America," a virtual event about Esther Amini's book of the same name. Facilitated by Elana Storch, this event is a riveting account of Esther's life and the Persian-Jewish experience in America. You can learn more about Esther on her website: http://estheramini.com/ Follow her on Instagram: @estheraminiauthor PURCHASE THE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3imPu2L Esther Amini is a writer, painter, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Her short stories have appeared in Elle, Lilith, Tablet, The Jewish Week, Barnard Magazine, TK University’s Inscape Literary, and Proximity. She was named one of Aspen Words’ two best-emerging memoirists and awarded its Emerging Writer Fellowship in 2016 based on her memoir entitled: “Concealed.” Her pieces have been performed by Jewish Women’s Theatre in Los Angeles and in Manhattan, and was chosen by JWT as their Artist-in-Residence in 2019. DONATE: http://www.bit.ly/1NmpbsP For podcasts of VBM lectures, GO HERE: https://www.valleybeitmidrash.org/learning-library https://www.facebook.com/valleybeitmidrash

Ever wonder what it's like being an influencer? Curious to hear more from a top blogger and content creator? Would you be surprised that one could find an imbalance in all that glitz and glam....? On Episode 12 of Chat With Betty you will learn from Elaine Chaya, a Persian Jewish babe who shares all things with love to inspire you to be YOU. With over 93K following, she's definatly figured it all out... Elaine started off mainly focusing on fashion and creating her brand (formerly known as @fashionlaine). But over time, she want to find a way to implement her everyday type self into the content and inspire colorful and brightness not just through pictures but through actions and words. She created the “Woke Up This Way Challenge” that encouraged people to “bring realness back to social media” and the Class of Quarantine 2020 movement that reminded people that we're really “all in this together” in a fun cheeky graduating class type way while tying it to a pay it forward partnership with the LA Food Bank to provide meals to people in need during these times. "My journey has shown me, and what I hope for it to show others, how there are so many ways that you can go about being you and expressing your messages with the world." Elaine Chaya, changing the game and bringing a whole new meaning to "Influencing" on Chat With Betty The Podcast Episode Find Elaine Chaya on instagram @elainechaya ! * Remember to FOLLOW us and send a review! @bettygulko @chatwithbetty * For Inquiries: chatwithbettypodcast@gmail.com * --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/betty-gulko/support

Many of us hear the term “genetic testing” and feel weirded out by it. We think it's something that's done only by certain people when they are expecting a baby. This episode with Estie Rose from @getjscreened will debunk the myths and misconceptions! Estie discusses how JScreen has transformed the Jewish community's (specifically the Persian Jewish community) access to genetic testing!

Happy Thanksgiving!! On today's episode, a delicious treat for you...we are proud to present a recording of a classic, beloved piece from our Salon Saffron & Rosewater, which highlighted the experiences of Iranian Jews through a fragrant evening of incredible stories, song, and lovely surprises. Hear a celebration of being Jewish and American with Saffron [...]

Happy Thanksgiving!! On today's episode, a delicious treat for you...we are proud to present a recording of a classic, beloved piece from our Salon Saffron & Rosewater, which highlighted the experiences of Iranian Jews through a fragrant evening of incredible stories, song, and lovely surprises. Hear a celebration of being Jewish and American with Saffron [...]

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.

The world of dating today is tough in general, but in my Persian Jewish community, the expectations are raised to another level. On today's episode I bring on therapist, dating coach, and "Question of the Day" founder Rodney Rabbani to chat with me about all the stigmas around dating, what it means to "zehrang" and go after the guy, if girls need "to settle" in order to get married, and more.Follow Rodney on Facebook and Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1117498381644971/ www.instagram.com/rodneyrabbaniAnd Follow me on Instagram: www.instagram.com/elainechaya

On this episode we have London Laed, owner of London’s Life Coaching, an amazing life coach and also a Persian Jewish lesbian who shares her journey of self discovery in life and love. We can all learn so much from her story! Follow us: Instagram: instagram.com/loveinlimboland Facebook: facebook.com/loveinlimboland Twitter: twitter.com/loveinlimboland Email: loveinlimboland@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lifeinlimboland/support

This week's episode was recorded live at Adat Shalom in Los Angeles. Our first Jewish guest is Rachel Sumekh, who founded Swipe Out Hunger, the leading nonprofit in addressing hunger on college campuses. She tells us why Swipe Out Hunger is a fundamentally Jewish project, inspired in part by her family's dependence on food assistance after her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Iran, and how, as a Persian Jewish woman in the technology and social entrepreneurship world, she's hoping to be more of a norm than an exception. Our second Jewish guest is actor, screenwriter, and director Lauren Miller Rogen, whose most recent film, Like Father, stars Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer and is streaming on Netflix. After her mother was diagnosed, at age 55, with early onset Alzheimer's, Lauren created Hilarity for Charity, which has raised more than $10 million for Alzheimer's awareness and research through star-studded variety shows fundraisers. Lauren tells us about moving from Long Island to Lakeland, Fl and becoming one of very few Jewish students, explaining Hanukkah to her dentist, and what it’s like directing her husband Seth in her films. Our gentile of the week is Jonathan Groff, executive producer and co-showrunner on ABC's Blackish. He also worked on How I Met Your Mother and Scrubs, and spent five seasons as head writer on Late Night with Conen O'Brien. He tells us about sharing a name with that other Jonathan Groff (this Jonathan Groff's Twitter handle is @NotThatGroff), and growing up in a rectory as the son of an Episcopal priest Join us Wednesday, February 13 at 7:30 p.m. at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan for a special Valentine's Day live show featuring dating app ghostwriter Meredith Golden and married female comedians Jess Salomon, who is Jewish, and Eman El-Husseini, who is Palestinian. Get your tickets here. This episode is 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. 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. Tablet’s new book, 'The 100 Most Jewish Foods: A Highly Debatable List' comes out March 19! Featuring the biggest names in food—Jewish and not—and recipes for some of the most beloved, polarizing, and enduring Jewish foods, it’s the perfect gift to bring to this year’s Passover seder. Pre-order your copy today and you could win a $150 gift card to Russ & Daughters: to enter, forward a copy of your receipt or confirmation to 100foods@tabletmag.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our third episode, PGP talks about a recent dating experience; are drinks the new dinner? phone calls or texts? We interview our first guest (starts at 24:50), a 17 year old Persian-Jewish girl from LA, and discuss the younger generation of Persians, the difference of communities in LA vs. NY, doodool talahs, what it's like coming of age as a Persian girl, high school, career aspirations, family expectations, therapy, knockoff designer items, and more...

The 24-year-old producer and creator of the blog givememora.com discusses being honest about her anxiety in the Persian Jewish community and how a career in entertainment can be harmful to mental health. Plus, she goes over things not to say to someone with anxiety.

With a body of work noted for its pulsing athleticism and intelligent composition, Benjamin Levy has become one of the Bay Area's most sought-after choreographers, creating a style marked by personal inspiration distilled into pure movement. In his 2007 work tentatively called "Bone Lines," Levy translates into dance the story of his own family, Persian Jewish immigrants who fled Iran during the religious revolution of the 1970s. Levy brings Spark inside the process of creating this piece premiering at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. For this production, he collaborates with his five-member troupe along with designers Colleen Quen and Rick Lee and composer Keeril Makan, whose original score will be recorded by the Kronos Quartet.