Unfortunately, the Iranian government has invested its time and resources in creating a cartoon series aimed at increasing fear and anti-semitism in the minds of young people. See an excerpt of this new series thanks the Middle East Research Institute's TV Monitor project:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1715.htm
Showing posts with label Cultural Stereotypes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cultural Stereotypes. Show all posts
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Iranian Jews still awaiting apology from Muslim singer
Karmel Melamed. Contributing Writer. 4/4/08. Jewish Journal
(http://jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=19158)
Dariush live in Las Vegas 2007
The concert at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas was advertised as a "night to remember," and it lived up to the hype.
During the Dariush Eghbali concert on Dec. 23, which drew about 5,000 Iranian Americans, local Iranian Jewish fans were shocked when the popular Iranian Muslim singer made what some considered to be an anti-Semitic remark between songs.
Despite a recent meeting with Eghbali, the controversy continues, more than three months later, as the Iranian Jewish community awaits an official apology from the singer.
During the concert, Eghbali quoted an alleged passage from a book he attributed to Lebanese American poet Khalil Gibran, best known in the United States for the book "The Prophet."
In a video clip (since removed) from the Las Vegas concert posted to Eghbali's Web site, dariush2000.com, the singer speaks in Persian, saying, "Different people have different talents." He elaborates, saying that Iranians notice one bad tree in a beautiful park; Germans are power-seekers; Italians are fashion-oriented; and Jews are "mochareb," which is the Persian word for "saboteurs."
After making the statement, Eghbali reiterated that the words were Gibran's and told the audience he had a message of harmony and peace for all peoples.
Iranian Jews who attended the concert began circulating e-mails denouncing the singer, calling for boycotts of his shows. Others called on Calabasas-based concert promoter Tapesh to pressure Eghbali into making a formal apology. Tapesh issued a written statement to the media indicating they were not responsible for the comment he made and did not endorse it.
In late February, Iraj Shamsian, a close Iranian Jewish friend of Eghbali, brokered a meeting between the singer and nine leaders from the local Iranian American Jewish Federation (IAJF).
"At the meeting Dariush said he really didn't think Jewish people are saboteurs and it was something he read in a Farsi-translated book," Shamsian said. "At the meeting he clarified that he never meant to hurt anyone and was sorry some people were hurt by what he said."
Elias Eshaghian, chairman of the IAJF, said that while he and other Iranian Jewish leaders were initially pleased with the outcome of the meeting with Eghbali, they are awaiting a formal letter of apology from the singer.
"We are surprised that even though he expressed his regret over his statement ... he has still not released a written apology to start healing the wounds in our community," Eshaghian said.
Shamsian said the 57-year-old singer, who lives in Los Angeles and Paris, was shocked by the allegations of anti-Semitism and disappointed with the e-mails circulated about him.
"He was very hurt when he received those e-mails," Shamsian said. "He told me it was one of the worst experiences of his life, because after 40 years of being a beloved performer in the Persian community he never thought Jewish people would think he was anti-Semitic. He's always had a message of harmony amongst all people."
The controversy surrounding Eghbali's statement briefly unified the local Iranian Jewish community, which is often plagued by infighting. During a Jan. 2 meeting, nearly 70 Iranian Jewish leaders from different organizations gathered at the IAJF synagogue in West Hollywood to discuss the community's response to Eghbali's comments.
The community leadership agreed that a tempered response to the incident would be needed once the singer issued a formal apology.
"We need to respond to [Eghbali] properly but also calm our community because emotions are running high," said Rabbi David Shofet of the Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills. "We need to use our energies in more productive ways to help resolve other more serious issues the community faces."
Iranian Jews who have seen the online video of Eghbali's Las Vegas concert said his statement may have been insensitive but was not intended to be anti-Semitic when placed in context, since he was calling on all people of the world to set aside their differences and unite in harmony.
"There is no benefit in him [Eghbali] saying something negative about Jews," said Bijan Khalili, an Iranian Jewish publisher. "Unlike Ahmadinejad who wins support in the Arab streets by bad-mouthing Israel and the Jews, Dariush wins nothing by make any alleged anti-Semitic statement -- so it's obvious there was no negative intent by him."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karmel Melamed has more on this story in the Iranian American Jews blog.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Khalili said Eghbali is not known to have made anti-Semitic remarks in the past and has enjoyed a strong Jewish fan base for 30 years.
Shamsian also defended Eghbali, saying the singer "does not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body [nor] have I never heard Dariush say anything anti-Semitic or express hate for any religious group."
Eghbali, who is on tour in Europe, did not return repeated calls for comment.
Iranian Jews, for the most part, have enjoyed warm relations with their Muslim compatriots since both groups immigrated to Southern California following the 1979 Iranian revolution. Khalili and other local Iranian Jews said they did not want isolated incidents like the one involving Eghbali blown out of proportion and jeopardizing their existing friendships with Iranian Muslims.
Dariush Fakheri, one of the founders of the Eretz-SIAMAK Cultural Center in Tarzana, said he was disappointed with the IAJF for missing the opportunity to really engage Eghbali and educate local Iranian Muslims about anti-Semitism through help from Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.
"We are not radical Islamic leaders to issue fatwas against people who insult us," Fakheri said. "We as Jews are a peace-loving people and should have put together seminars to educate Muslims about issues of anti-Semitism -- after this incident we see the importance of gatherings such as these."
(http://jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=19158)
Dariush live in Las Vegas 2007
The concert at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas was advertised as a "night to remember," and it lived up to the hype.
During the Dariush Eghbali concert on Dec. 23, which drew about 5,000 Iranian Americans, local Iranian Jewish fans were shocked when the popular Iranian Muslim singer made what some considered to be an anti-Semitic remark between songs.
Despite a recent meeting with Eghbali, the controversy continues, more than three months later, as the Iranian Jewish community awaits an official apology from the singer.
During the concert, Eghbali quoted an alleged passage from a book he attributed to Lebanese American poet Khalil Gibran, best known in the United States for the book "The Prophet."
In a video clip (since removed) from the Las Vegas concert posted to Eghbali's Web site, dariush2000.com, the singer speaks in Persian, saying, "Different people have different talents." He elaborates, saying that Iranians notice one bad tree in a beautiful park; Germans are power-seekers; Italians are fashion-oriented; and Jews are "mochareb," which is the Persian word for "saboteurs."
After making the statement, Eghbali reiterated that the words were Gibran's and told the audience he had a message of harmony and peace for all peoples.
Iranian Jews who attended the concert began circulating e-mails denouncing the singer, calling for boycotts of his shows. Others called on Calabasas-based concert promoter Tapesh to pressure Eghbali into making a formal apology. Tapesh issued a written statement to the media indicating they were not responsible for the comment he made and did not endorse it.
In late February, Iraj Shamsian, a close Iranian Jewish friend of Eghbali, brokered a meeting between the singer and nine leaders from the local Iranian American Jewish Federation (IAJF).
"At the meeting Dariush said he really didn't think Jewish people are saboteurs and it was something he read in a Farsi-translated book," Shamsian said. "At the meeting he clarified that he never meant to hurt anyone and was sorry some people were hurt by what he said."
Elias Eshaghian, chairman of the IAJF, said that while he and other Iranian Jewish leaders were initially pleased with the outcome of the meeting with Eghbali, they are awaiting a formal letter of apology from the singer.
"We are surprised that even though he expressed his regret over his statement ... he has still not released a written apology to start healing the wounds in our community," Eshaghian said.
Shamsian said the 57-year-old singer, who lives in Los Angeles and Paris, was shocked by the allegations of anti-Semitism and disappointed with the e-mails circulated about him.
"He was very hurt when he received those e-mails," Shamsian said. "He told me it was one of the worst experiences of his life, because after 40 years of being a beloved performer in the Persian community he never thought Jewish people would think he was anti-Semitic. He's always had a message of harmony amongst all people."
The controversy surrounding Eghbali's statement briefly unified the local Iranian Jewish community, which is often plagued by infighting. During a Jan. 2 meeting, nearly 70 Iranian Jewish leaders from different organizations gathered at the IAJF synagogue in West Hollywood to discuss the community's response to Eghbali's comments.
The community leadership agreed that a tempered response to the incident would be needed once the singer issued a formal apology.
"We need to respond to [Eghbali] properly but also calm our community because emotions are running high," said Rabbi David Shofet of the Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills. "We need to use our energies in more productive ways to help resolve other more serious issues the community faces."
Iranian Jews who have seen the online video of Eghbali's Las Vegas concert said his statement may have been insensitive but was not intended to be anti-Semitic when placed in context, since he was calling on all people of the world to set aside their differences and unite in harmony.
"There is no benefit in him [Eghbali] saying something negative about Jews," said Bijan Khalili, an Iranian Jewish publisher. "Unlike Ahmadinejad who wins support in the Arab streets by bad-mouthing Israel and the Jews, Dariush wins nothing by make any alleged anti-Semitic statement -- so it's obvious there was no negative intent by him."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karmel Melamed has more on this story in the Iranian American Jews blog.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Khalili said Eghbali is not known to have made anti-Semitic remarks in the past and has enjoyed a strong Jewish fan base for 30 years.
Shamsian also defended Eghbali, saying the singer "does not have an anti-Semitic bone in his body [nor] have I never heard Dariush say anything anti-Semitic or express hate for any religious group."
Eghbali, who is on tour in Europe, did not return repeated calls for comment.
Iranian Jews, for the most part, have enjoyed warm relations with their Muslim compatriots since both groups immigrated to Southern California following the 1979 Iranian revolution. Khalili and other local Iranian Jews said they did not want isolated incidents like the one involving Eghbali blown out of proportion and jeopardizing their existing friendships with Iranian Muslims.
Dariush Fakheri, one of the founders of the Eretz-SIAMAK Cultural Center in Tarzana, said he was disappointed with the IAJF for missing the opportunity to really engage Eghbali and educate local Iranian Muslims about anti-Semitism through help from Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.
"We are not radical Islamic leaders to issue fatwas against people who insult us," Fakheri said. "We as Jews are a peace-loving people and should have put together seminars to educate Muslims about issues of anti-Semitism -- after this incident we see the importance of gatherings such as these."
Friday, January 4, 2008
Taking Issue with Article: The Dating Game
"According to Goldman, who puts on parenting workshops for adults throughout the academic year, several factors explain the double standard. First is the influence of the Islamic culture that, some critics say, dictates the second-class status of women."
Wrong and even if it were true why would a community nearly 10000 miles from those nasty Moslems and after 30 years would still choose to practise backward Islamic customs in place of their tolerant Jewish ways?
""The woman's job was to be subservient," Goldman said. "She had to stay home and take care of the children."
My word, has this lady met any Iranian women? I mean to say, The mere hint of male chauvinism in our family would be enough to start WW III. Ms. Goldman should look closer to home for cultural bias towards women. God bless the United States of Amnesia.
"Women must still wear the traditional head covering, the chador, and are forbidden to ride bicycles in public parks and streets."
They are forced to wear the head scarf which is not the same as the chador by the fanatics in power. We should send Ms. Goldman to Southern California or indeed BC, Canada to see for herself the heights reached by Iranian women in academia and employment. Remember the first female tourist in space, Anoosheh Ansari? Paid for the trip out of her own vast wealth made from selling her telecom company. How about Nazanin Afshin-Jam? Does she look oppressed to you? Dr. Fariba Sadri, the head of computer science at Imperial College, London - I mean to say, Judging by her CV she does come across as a shrinking violet who couldn't manage her life without a man.
"A second factor is class, Goldman said. In Iran, a country based on a class system, the upper echelon could afford to send their male children abroad for education. Thus the men had greater opportunities and freedom to mingle with Western women."
I can think of at least a dozen families who sent their daughters to places like France, Germany or the UK for university education.
"A third factor, according to Goldman, is the fact that Jews in Iran were a minority and consequently adhered more to their cultural ways. Most considered pre-marital
sex and intimacy unacceptable, as stipulated by Jewish laws."
Wait a moment! Ms. Goldman has just contradicted her earlier statement. So which is it to be, Islamic ways force-fed to Persian Jews or Jewish customs that impose these social inequities on Jewish women?
"Here in America, Jewish Iranians again represent a minority community. "But because mainstream American
culture is so different, some values are played out more strongly than they were in the homeland and adhered to with greater tenacity," Goldman said. In Iran this system seemed to work well, observers say. But America is a different story, especially for the new generation of youth born and reared in a culture so different from that of the older generation."
Does this not represent a different issue, that is to say, the inherent hostility in the U.S. towards anyone or anything different to the morality of Sex in the City? Let's all jump into bed with each other and pick up VD but who cares? We're Americans. The world is America and the rest of the planet a theme park which must live up to American standards.
I am getting fed up with the likes of Ms Goldman who on the surface purport to speak for reason and progress but in reality care for nothing but their own political agenda. I remember once reading one of these blogs in which the author referred to "Kalimi as a pejorative term. Kalimi means the people of the word of god. Of course, idiots like him do not care about the truth. Their aim is to blacken Iran and Iranians, as if we don't get enough negative publicity in the mainstream media. The picture created is often that of a country which is the ultimate Islamic paradise and the very symbol of hate and repression for everybody else. Only the other month the UN published a report condemning the treatment of Soofis in Iran. There's been no mention of the situation in the media here in the UK.
When I was little everyone was Iranian first and Moslem, Jewish, Christian, Baha'I etc. second. We could all get together under the same roof and eat Iranian food, laugh at Iranian jokes, listen to Iranian music and, well, gossip about other Iranians. Will we be doing the same thing in 20, 30, 40 years?
Islam, Judaism Christianity, they are all words of Allah, according to the Koran. Allah, a derivative of allam,that is, the ultimate universal set from which everything originates and which is represented in everything. The Persian word for God, Khoda is perhaps the closest you can get to the semantics of the concept. Just think, Khod-a, from within; the universe within. That's what it's all about and not a bunch of bearded blokes up there in the heavens who send down miracles or disasters to their respective followers.
Laurence Aryan
Wrong and even if it were true why would a community nearly 10000 miles from those nasty Moslems and after 30 years would still choose to practise backward Islamic customs in place of their tolerant Jewish ways?
""The woman's job was to be subservient," Goldman said. "She had to stay home and take care of the children."
My word, has this lady met any Iranian women? I mean to say, The mere hint of male chauvinism in our family would be enough to start WW III. Ms. Goldman should look closer to home for cultural bias towards women. God bless the United States of Amnesia.
"Women must still wear the traditional head covering, the chador, and are forbidden to ride bicycles in public parks and streets."
They are forced to wear the head scarf which is not the same as the chador by the fanatics in power. We should send Ms. Goldman to Southern California or indeed BC, Canada to see for herself the heights reached by Iranian women in academia and employment. Remember the first female tourist in space, Anoosheh Ansari? Paid for the trip out of her own vast wealth made from selling her telecom company. How about Nazanin Afshin-Jam? Does she look oppressed to you? Dr. Fariba Sadri, the head of computer science at Imperial College, London - I mean to say, Judging by her CV she does come across as a shrinking violet who couldn't manage her life without a man.
"A second factor is class, Goldman said. In Iran, a country based on a class system, the upper echelon could afford to send their male children abroad for education. Thus the men had greater opportunities and freedom to mingle with Western women."
I can think of at least a dozen families who sent their daughters to places like France, Germany or the UK for university education.
"A third factor, according to Goldman, is the fact that Jews in Iran were a minority and consequently adhered more to their cultural ways. Most considered pre-marital
sex and intimacy unacceptable, as stipulated by Jewish laws."
Wait a moment! Ms. Goldman has just contradicted her earlier statement. So which is it to be, Islamic ways force-fed to Persian Jews or Jewish customs that impose these social inequities on Jewish women?
"Here in America, Jewish Iranians again represent a minority community. "But because mainstream American
culture is so different, some values are played out more strongly than they were in the homeland and adhered to with greater tenacity," Goldman said. In Iran this system seemed to work well, observers say. But America is a different story, especially for the new generation of youth born and reared in a culture so different from that of the older generation."
Does this not represent a different issue, that is to say, the inherent hostility in the U.S. towards anyone or anything different to the morality of Sex in the City? Let's all jump into bed with each other and pick up VD but who cares? We're Americans. The world is America and the rest of the planet a theme park which must live up to American standards.
I am getting fed up with the likes of Ms Goldman who on the surface purport to speak for reason and progress but in reality care for nothing but their own political agenda. I remember once reading one of these blogs in which the author referred to "Kalimi as a pejorative term. Kalimi means the people of the word of god. Of course, idiots like him do not care about the truth. Their aim is to blacken Iran and Iranians, as if we don't get enough negative publicity in the mainstream media. The picture created is often that of a country which is the ultimate Islamic paradise and the very symbol of hate and repression for everybody else. Only the other month the UN published a report condemning the treatment of Soofis in Iran. There's been no mention of the situation in the media here in the UK.
When I was little everyone was Iranian first and Moslem, Jewish, Christian, Baha'I etc. second. We could all get together under the same roof and eat Iranian food, laugh at Iranian jokes, listen to Iranian music and, well, gossip about other Iranians. Will we be doing the same thing in 20, 30, 40 years?
Islam, Judaism Christianity, they are all words of Allah, according to the Koran. Allah, a derivative of allam,that is, the ultimate universal set from which everything originates and which is represented in everything. The Persian word for God, Khoda is perhaps the closest you can get to the semantics of the concept. Just think, Khod-a, from within; the universe within. That's what it's all about and not a bunch of bearded blokes up there in the heavens who send down miracles or disasters to their respective followers.
Laurence Aryan
Friday, December 28, 2007
Romance on Iranian TV Crosses Cultures
Radio Transcript
All Things Considered: September 20, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=14574945
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Here's a scene from "Zero Degree Turn," a popular serial that's running on television overseas. It's Paris 1940-something, Nazis are rousting French Jews from their homes deporting them to concentration camps.
(Soundbite of show "Zero Degree Turn")
Unidentified Man #1: (Farsi spoken)
SIEGEL: The Germans are speaking Farsi, so are the Jews. This is an Iranian holocaust drama in which the hero is a kind of Persian Schindler, an Iranian Muslim student named Habib Parsa, who obtains documents for the family of Sara Stroke, the Jewish woman he loves. With those documents, they can escape to Tehran. Or can they?
You can watch this series with subtitles on YouTube.
Farnaz Fassihi writes for the Wall Street Journal, watched it recently in Tehran and wrote about it and she's now back home in Beirut. What's going on here? A Jewish holocaust drama on Iranian television?
Ms. FARNAZ FASSIHI (Reporter, Wall Street Journal): It was a big surprise to me, too, to hear relatives and friends talking about this series with a plot about Jews and Holocaust and how popular it was. I think there are two things going on here. I think that the Iranian government is trying to send a message that it separates Judaism, people of the Jewish faith from what it calls Zionism, which are supporters of Israel. It also, I think, you know, shows the way in which Iran often uses its media, particularly television, to influence the masses and send political messages.
SIEGEL: Iran still has a Jewish community of 25,000. That's a lot smaller than it was before the Islamic revolution or for that matter, before the creation of the State of Israel. The message that seems to be coming out of this series is Jews are well regarded. How does this very empty Israel country, or government at least, deal with the issue of Zionism in this series?
Ms. FASSIHI: The way it deals with it is that it has subplot in the story where there's a little bit of history revisionism going on, where they try to push Iran's political belief that Israel was conceptualized by European governments to solve the problem after World War II, and that it wasn't a desire of Jewish people to have a home state.
And the second thing that it's doing is it's trying to portray the differences, a lot of violence, that Jewish people killing other Jews because they don't agree with going to - resettling in Arab lands. So there's both of that going on.
SIEGEL: Do the Iranian Jews seem to approve of this?
Ms. FASSIHI: The Iranian Jews have approved of this. They have come out and put out a statement praising the show. When I spoke to them and when I spoke to Maurice Motamed, who is the parliamentarian - Jewish parliamentarian in Iran, he praised it and he said that every Monday night, he finds the television set and watches it and that it's a captivating show.
SIEGEL: Now in the story, Sara, the young Jewish woman who's getting out, I gather, is trying to get to Tehran is in love with the Iranian Muslim student, Mr. Parsa, or Habib. If all goes well, according to this drama, in the end, I assume if she makes it to Tehran, she's not going to be Jewish by the end of the series.
Ms. FASSIHI: No, that's not - Iranian men are, by sharia law, allowed to marry women of other faiths. And their wives are allowed to practice and keep their faiths. However, because Islam is a religion that's passed on by the father, Muslim women are prohibited from changing their religion or marrying a man outside of the faith.
SIEGEL: What historical truth is there at all to the idea that Iran or Iranians in occupied France were helping European Jews - French Jews get out and get to Tehran?
Ms. FASSIHI: It is a well-documented historical fact. The charge d'affaires at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, a man named Abdul Hussein Zathary(ph) forged Iranian passports for about a thousand Jews and smuggled them to Iran and claimed to the German authorities in occupied France that they belong to an Iranian tribe. So this is a true story.
SIEGEL: Farnaz Fassihi, thank you very much for talking with us.
Ms. FASSIHI: Thank you very much for having me.
SIEGEL: That's Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal who was talking to us about the Iranian TV show, "Zero Degree Turn." She spoke to us from Beirut.
All Things Considered: September 20, 2007
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=14574945
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Here's a scene from "Zero Degree Turn," a popular serial that's running on television overseas. It's Paris 1940-something, Nazis are rousting French Jews from their homes deporting them to concentration camps.
(Soundbite of show "Zero Degree Turn")
Unidentified Man #1: (Farsi spoken)
SIEGEL: The Germans are speaking Farsi, so are the Jews. This is an Iranian holocaust drama in which the hero is a kind of Persian Schindler, an Iranian Muslim student named Habib Parsa, who obtains documents for the family of Sara Stroke, the Jewish woman he loves. With those documents, they can escape to Tehran. Or can they?
You can watch this series with subtitles on YouTube.
Farnaz Fassihi writes for the Wall Street Journal, watched it recently in Tehran and wrote about it and she's now back home in Beirut. What's going on here? A Jewish holocaust drama on Iranian television?
Ms. FARNAZ FASSIHI (Reporter, Wall Street Journal): It was a big surprise to me, too, to hear relatives and friends talking about this series with a plot about Jews and Holocaust and how popular it was. I think there are two things going on here. I think that the Iranian government is trying to send a message that it separates Judaism, people of the Jewish faith from what it calls Zionism, which are supporters of Israel. It also, I think, you know, shows the way in which Iran often uses its media, particularly television, to influence the masses and send political messages.
SIEGEL: Iran still has a Jewish community of 25,000. That's a lot smaller than it was before the Islamic revolution or for that matter, before the creation of the State of Israel. The message that seems to be coming out of this series is Jews are well regarded. How does this very empty Israel country, or government at least, deal with the issue of Zionism in this series?
Ms. FASSIHI: The way it deals with it is that it has subplot in the story where there's a little bit of history revisionism going on, where they try to push Iran's political belief that Israel was conceptualized by European governments to solve the problem after World War II, and that it wasn't a desire of Jewish people to have a home state.
And the second thing that it's doing is it's trying to portray the differences, a lot of violence, that Jewish people killing other Jews because they don't agree with going to - resettling in Arab lands. So there's both of that going on.
SIEGEL: Do the Iranian Jews seem to approve of this?
Ms. FASSIHI: The Iranian Jews have approved of this. They have come out and put out a statement praising the show. When I spoke to them and when I spoke to Maurice Motamed, who is the parliamentarian - Jewish parliamentarian in Iran, he praised it and he said that every Monday night, he finds the television set and watches it and that it's a captivating show.
SIEGEL: Now in the story, Sara, the young Jewish woman who's getting out, I gather, is trying to get to Tehran is in love with the Iranian Muslim student, Mr. Parsa, or Habib. If all goes well, according to this drama, in the end, I assume if she makes it to Tehran, she's not going to be Jewish by the end of the series.
Ms. FASSIHI: No, that's not - Iranian men are, by sharia law, allowed to marry women of other faiths. And their wives are allowed to practice and keep their faiths. However, because Islam is a religion that's passed on by the father, Muslim women are prohibited from changing their religion or marrying a man outside of the faith.
SIEGEL: What historical truth is there at all to the idea that Iran or Iranians in occupied France were helping European Jews - French Jews get out and get to Tehran?
Ms. FASSIHI: It is a well-documented historical fact. The charge d'affaires at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, a man named Abdul Hussein Zathary(ph) forged Iranian passports for about a thousand Jews and smuggled them to Iran and claimed to the German authorities in occupied France that they belong to an Iranian tribe. So this is a true story.
SIEGEL: Farnaz Fassihi, thank you very much for talking with us.
Ms. FASSIHI: Thank you very much for having me.
SIEGEL: That's Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal who was talking to us about the Iranian TV show, "Zero Degree Turn." She spoke to us from Beirut.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Divine discrimination
The Iranian. (http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/July/Sedaghat/index.html)
Nakissa Sedaghat. 07/24/2001
G. is a brilliant lawyer from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). A secular Jew herself, she has often come across cases that reflect the tensions between the Ultra-Orthodox minority and the secular Jewish majority in Israel. S. is a Palestinian lawyer who also practices public interest law in Israel. She deals with a lot of female clients who are subjected to what she believes is unequal treatment before the Palestinian Shari'a courts.
G. and S. confirmed my worst fears about political systems in which there is no separation from religious doctrine. Whether in Israel or Iran, women's rights are being restricted under the pretext of "religious" law. It is all the more difficult to attack this legal structure because "religious" law exudes superiority, a divine origin, and a group-based philosophy which should prevail over all other concerns of individuals. It was fascinating to realize, for once, the similarities rather than the differences between Israel and Iran.
As a Jewish state, Israel is by definition a country in which there is no separation between religion and state [1]. Even though the Israeli constitution is committed to gender equality, this right is specifically restricted as far as family law is concerned because in this area, among many others, religious law is the law of the land [2].
Though the Ultra-Orthodox are a minority in Israel, a mere 6%, they exercise a disproportionate amount of political influence and keep lobbying the government to "accommodate" their needs even if it imposes on the secular majority of the Israeli population a more restrictive standard than the one afforded by the Israeli Constitution.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are also a minority in Israel: They represent 19% of the population of the state and include 76% Muslims, 14% Christians, and 10% Druze. While Jews and Druze can choose between religious or civil courts, Shari'a Courts have exclusive jurisdiction for Muslims. Christians have parallel jurisdiction except in issues related to alimony. Issues of marriage and divorce remain exclusively under the jurisdiction of all religious courts.
In Iran, the revolution has resulted in a bizarre model of Islamic democracy. The government is elected and thus is supposed to represent the will of the people. However, since all laws have to ultimately approved by a council of Islamic clerics who sit at the top of the pyramid of power, it is very difficult to make any legal reforms no matter who you vote for in the elections. All bills deemed to be non-Islamic are rejected and the Islamic clerics' interpretation of the Koran cannot be challenged.
In both Iran and Israel, the religious law imposes unequal treatment of women, particularly in family matters. For example, in Iran, a man has the right to seek unilateral divorce from his wife. Custody of children leans heavily in favor of the man. Custody based on "best interest" of the child was not a recognized test in the Iranian family law courts until very recently.
An Iranian husband can have up to four wives, but adultery or the loss of "virginity" before marriage can literally become a death sentence for Iranian women. Also, the Islamic law in Iran provides for temporary marriage or "sigheh" whereby a husband can "legally" have an affair with a woman outside of marriage under a contract which will set out, among others, a time period and a sum of money to be paid to the woman.
Similarly, the Jewish law, while it does not explicitly declare that a wife must be submissive and obedient to her husband, has created a structure which delegates such a degree of authority and power to the husband that it allows him effectively to coerce his wife's obedience. And a Jewish wife cannot divorce without her husband's "permission", leaving her little room to leave an undesirable situation.
In S's opinion, application of the law in religious courts renders discrimination against women a systematic institution, whether they are Shari'a courts or church courts or Jewish courts. Regarding Muslim Palestinian women, she points out that they cannot divorce their husbands except in cases of impotency, mental illness and other very few restricted circumstances. If women obtain guardianship of their children after a divorce they might lose it automatically if they re-marry.
Women can lose all their rights if caught in adultery, and the amounts of money for alimony and child support judged in their favor are far from sufficient. Similar problems also occur in church courts. In addition, the Ministry of Religion under funds religious courts and women judges are not appointed to these courts.
Another result of "religious" law has been segregation of women, in Iran as well as Israel. For example, there is segregation practiced in the Israeli public transportation system and in government financed vocational courses. In Iran, segregation occurs routinely, though many classrooms are mixed, with the only stipulation being that genders sit at different sides of the room.
Gender segregation is a result of religious leaders' cultural viewing of women as sexual beings whose sole goal in life is to tempt men so that they can fulfill their own sexual desires. This cultural view affects the interpretation of Islamic and Jewish edicts on "modesty" of women, resulting in the wearing of the veil in Iran and of long skirts and wigs or hats for Ultra-Orthodox women in Israel.
This imposed "uniform" results in a further segregation of women when they venture out of their homes into the public sphere. It succeeds in dehumanizing them, and robbing them of their individuality. It sends the message to: "stay away", "do not address me", "do not even make eye contact". The dress code re-emphasizes physically the sharp distinction that exists between the civil status of men and women in society.
There is a high price to pay when one is not obedient to these social norms, and this is not specific only to Iran. Israeli media has reported many instances where secular Jewish women wearing "immodest" clothes have been the subject of violence by Ultra-Orthodox men, including verbal and physical assault and vandalism against their property.
In both Iran and Israel, women are encouraged culturally and religiously, if not by law (yet), to remain in the confines of their homes to fulfill their "duties" as wife and mother. Also, for the same reasons of "protection" against sexuality of women, women are not allowed to sing in public in Iran.
It is interesting to see that similar restrictions are being sought by the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel on the public singing of women in certain circumstances. In the area of entertainment, censorship is a normal way of life for Iranian film and television. The Ultra-Orthodox in Israel are similarly pushing for prohibition of theatres and other entertainment venues.
Regarding Palestinian women, S. explains that Palestinian women have been relegated to the domestic sphere because of military orders and restrictions imposed on them by men in their families. Their role has turned from breadwinner (as agricultural workers) to the "preservers of Palestinian culture": They are expected to maintain the continuity of Palestinian values, and pass on traditions and values.
In S's opinion, Palestinian women are currently educated and socialized within a patriarchal system that controls their public and private participation and freedom. The discrimination practiced by the Israeli government, and by religious courts, has only furthered their marginalization in society. As a result, Palestinian women suffer from double discrimination, as Palestinians and as women.
G. demonstrated through her case studies that the ACRI is reluctant to attack the government's legal "accommodations" of the Ultra-Orthodox minority because this group yields so much political power in Israel and attacks ferociously those it sees as the "left-wing attackers of Jewish faith".
The ACRI is already one of their favorite targets. Similarly, the Muslim community regards with deep suspicion a recently created non-governmental coalition which provides legal representation of Palestinian women in religious courts. S. has been confronted with the hostility and open scorn of Muslim judges in Shari'a courts time and time again. In Iran, women's rights activists such as Mehrangiz Kar, Shirin Ebadi and Shahla Lahiji are being silenced for their efforts to change the legal status quo.
It seems that whenever religion mixes with politics, it spells bad news for women. Religious garments may vary in design, from the clerical robes donned by Islamic clerics to the black coats favored by the Ultra-Orthodox, but are they all cut from the same cloth?
Notes
[1] Though the founders of the Jewish state were secular Jews with a socialist ideology, who wanted to break free from the orthodox religious Jewish communities of Europe, they had to relinquish this idea to gain the support of the Orthodox community who would have otherwise refused to recognize the new state of Israel. A new balance was thus struck between religion and the state, which has become a source of continuous controversy between the religious and the secular Jewish population in Israel ever since.
[2] The Women's Equality Act, 1951, section 5, 1951 S.H. 248
Nakissa Sedaghat. 07/24/2001
G. is a brilliant lawyer from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). A secular Jew herself, she has often come across cases that reflect the tensions between the Ultra-Orthodox minority and the secular Jewish majority in Israel. S. is a Palestinian lawyer who also practices public interest law in Israel. She deals with a lot of female clients who are subjected to what she believes is unequal treatment before the Palestinian Shari'a courts.
G. and S. confirmed my worst fears about political systems in which there is no separation from religious doctrine. Whether in Israel or Iran, women's rights are being restricted under the pretext of "religious" law. It is all the more difficult to attack this legal structure because "religious" law exudes superiority, a divine origin, and a group-based philosophy which should prevail over all other concerns of individuals. It was fascinating to realize, for once, the similarities rather than the differences between Israel and Iran.
As a Jewish state, Israel is by definition a country in which there is no separation between religion and state [1]. Even though the Israeli constitution is committed to gender equality, this right is specifically restricted as far as family law is concerned because in this area, among many others, religious law is the law of the land [2].
Though the Ultra-Orthodox are a minority in Israel, a mere 6%, they exercise a disproportionate amount of political influence and keep lobbying the government to "accommodate" their needs even if it imposes on the secular majority of the Israeli population a more restrictive standard than the one afforded by the Israeli Constitution.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are also a minority in Israel: They represent 19% of the population of the state and include 76% Muslims, 14% Christians, and 10% Druze. While Jews and Druze can choose between religious or civil courts, Shari'a Courts have exclusive jurisdiction for Muslims. Christians have parallel jurisdiction except in issues related to alimony. Issues of marriage and divorce remain exclusively under the jurisdiction of all religious courts.
In Iran, the revolution has resulted in a bizarre model of Islamic democracy. The government is elected and thus is supposed to represent the will of the people. However, since all laws have to ultimately approved by a council of Islamic clerics who sit at the top of the pyramid of power, it is very difficult to make any legal reforms no matter who you vote for in the elections. All bills deemed to be non-Islamic are rejected and the Islamic clerics' interpretation of the Koran cannot be challenged.
In both Iran and Israel, the religious law imposes unequal treatment of women, particularly in family matters. For example, in Iran, a man has the right to seek unilateral divorce from his wife. Custody of children leans heavily in favor of the man. Custody based on "best interest" of the child was not a recognized test in the Iranian family law courts until very recently.
An Iranian husband can have up to four wives, but adultery or the loss of "virginity" before marriage can literally become a death sentence for Iranian women. Also, the Islamic law in Iran provides for temporary marriage or "sigheh" whereby a husband can "legally" have an affair with a woman outside of marriage under a contract which will set out, among others, a time period and a sum of money to be paid to the woman.
Similarly, the Jewish law, while it does not explicitly declare that a wife must be submissive and obedient to her husband, has created a structure which delegates such a degree of authority and power to the husband that it allows him effectively to coerce his wife's obedience. And a Jewish wife cannot divorce without her husband's "permission", leaving her little room to leave an undesirable situation.
In S's opinion, application of the law in religious courts renders discrimination against women a systematic institution, whether they are Shari'a courts or church courts or Jewish courts. Regarding Muslim Palestinian women, she points out that they cannot divorce their husbands except in cases of impotency, mental illness and other very few restricted circumstances. If women obtain guardianship of their children after a divorce they might lose it automatically if they re-marry.
Women can lose all their rights if caught in adultery, and the amounts of money for alimony and child support judged in their favor are far from sufficient. Similar problems also occur in church courts. In addition, the Ministry of Religion under funds religious courts and women judges are not appointed to these courts.
Another result of "religious" law has been segregation of women, in Iran as well as Israel. For example, there is segregation practiced in the Israeli public transportation system and in government financed vocational courses. In Iran, segregation occurs routinely, though many classrooms are mixed, with the only stipulation being that genders sit at different sides of the room.
Gender segregation is a result of religious leaders' cultural viewing of women as sexual beings whose sole goal in life is to tempt men so that they can fulfill their own sexual desires. This cultural view affects the interpretation of Islamic and Jewish edicts on "modesty" of women, resulting in the wearing of the veil in Iran and of long skirts and wigs or hats for Ultra-Orthodox women in Israel.
This imposed "uniform" results in a further segregation of women when they venture out of their homes into the public sphere. It succeeds in dehumanizing them, and robbing them of their individuality. It sends the message to: "stay away", "do not address me", "do not even make eye contact". The dress code re-emphasizes physically the sharp distinction that exists between the civil status of men and women in society.
There is a high price to pay when one is not obedient to these social norms, and this is not specific only to Iran. Israeli media has reported many instances where secular Jewish women wearing "immodest" clothes have been the subject of violence by Ultra-Orthodox men, including verbal and physical assault and vandalism against their property.
In both Iran and Israel, women are encouraged culturally and religiously, if not by law (yet), to remain in the confines of their homes to fulfill their "duties" as wife and mother. Also, for the same reasons of "protection" against sexuality of women, women are not allowed to sing in public in Iran.
It is interesting to see that similar restrictions are being sought by the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel on the public singing of women in certain circumstances. In the area of entertainment, censorship is a normal way of life for Iranian film and television. The Ultra-Orthodox in Israel are similarly pushing for prohibition of theatres and other entertainment venues.
Regarding Palestinian women, S. explains that Palestinian women have been relegated to the domestic sphere because of military orders and restrictions imposed on them by men in their families. Their role has turned from breadwinner (as agricultural workers) to the "preservers of Palestinian culture": They are expected to maintain the continuity of Palestinian values, and pass on traditions and values.
In S's opinion, Palestinian women are currently educated and socialized within a patriarchal system that controls their public and private participation and freedom. The discrimination practiced by the Israeli government, and by religious courts, has only furthered their marginalization in society. As a result, Palestinian women suffer from double discrimination, as Palestinians and as women.
G. demonstrated through her case studies that the ACRI is reluctant to attack the government's legal "accommodations" of the Ultra-Orthodox minority because this group yields so much political power in Israel and attacks ferociously those it sees as the "left-wing attackers of Jewish faith".
The ACRI is already one of their favorite targets. Similarly, the Muslim community regards with deep suspicion a recently created non-governmental coalition which provides legal representation of Palestinian women in religious courts. S. has been confronted with the hostility and open scorn of Muslim judges in Shari'a courts time and time again. In Iran, women's rights activists such as Mehrangiz Kar, Shirin Ebadi and Shahla Lahiji are being silenced for their efforts to change the legal status quo.
It seems that whenever religion mixes with politics, it spells bad news for women. Religious garments may vary in design, from the clerical robes donned by Islamic clerics to the black coats favored by the Ultra-Orthodox, but are they all cut from the same cloth?
Notes
[1] Though the founders of the Jewish state were secular Jews with a socialist ideology, who wanted to break free from the orthodox religious Jewish communities of Europe, they had to relinquish this idea to gain the support of the Orthodox community who would have otherwise refused to recognize the new state of Israel. A new balance was thus struck between religion and the state, which has become a source of continuous controversy between the religious and the secular Jewish population in Israel ever since.
[2] The Women's Equality Act, 1951, section 5, 1951 S.H. 248
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
A Sober Analysis of Iran
By only focusing on most extreme, radical notions coming out of Tehran, we let radicals win
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3459623,00.html)
Trita Parsi
Ynetnews.com
Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the worst possible welcome in New York, yet he managed to walk away the winner. He should dedicate his victory to Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University whose infantile introduction of Ahmadinejad provided the Iranian hardliner with an undeserved opportunity to present himself as a defender of academic integrity and freedom of speech.
As Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh commented: "I think it's generally a good idea when you're inviting people to your university not to tell them upon arrival that they're not welcome, because then you look crazier than Ahmadinejad."
Yet, the main point Ahmadinejad scored was the media’s willingness to let the limelight exaggerate his power and importance. For a few days, the media spoke of Ahmadinejad as if he actually determined Iran’s nuclear policy, as if he was in charge of the Iranian army and as if it was up to him whether Tehran would seek Israel’s destruction or not.
While the former Tehran mayor questioned the veracity of the Holocaust in New York, ordinary Iranians were glued to their TVs to watch a completely different drama – an Iranian series about the Holocaust, the suffering of the Jewish people and the heroic efforts of Iranian diplomats to help French Jews escape the Nazis by providing them with Iranian passports. The contrast with Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric could not have been any clearer. Apparently, the Iranian President even lacks the power to enforce his Holocaust theories on Iran’s state-run TV.
The contradiction between Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust rhetoric and the Iranian TV-drama exemplifies the dangers of the media’s infatuation with the Iranian hardliner – and all hardline statements coming out of Tehran. Not only does the unwarranted media attention make Ahmadinejad appear more powerful than he is, it also takes attention away from another side of Iran; one that doesn’t question the Holocaust, that understands the dangers of playing the anti-Israeli card to score points on the Arab streets and that is far more concerned about making friends with the US than making permanent enemies with the Jewish state.
Iran’s National Security Advisor Ali Larijani has carefully avoided echoing Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki’s has denied that Iran seeks the destruction of Israel. Their posture is far less sensational than Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, yet much more indicative of Iran’s real policy.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Iran’s position on Israel isn’t ideologically driven. Though the ideological component of Iran’s foreign policy is undeniable, it is secondary to Iran’s geostrategic considerations.
Ideology and geopolitics
Throughout the existence of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian theocracy has adopted a harsh, provocative and uncompromising rhetoric on Israel to boost Iran’s credentials as a leader of an imaginary Islamic bloc and use the anti-Israeli card to bridge Iran’s difficulties with the Arab states.
But the rhetoric has only been translated into actual policy when Tehran deemed that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincided. When these two pillars of Iran’s foreign policy have clashed – as they did in the 1980s during the Iraq-Iran war when Tehran quietly sought Israel’s aid and the Jewish state made many efforts to get Iran and the US back on talking terms – Iran’s geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed over its ideological impulses.
Today, Tehran believes that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincide in regards to the Jewish state. On a strategic level, Iran opposes Israel due to a perception that the Jewish state seeks Iran’s prolonged isolation and exclusion from regional affairs. Whether in Washington or in Ashkhabad, Iran perceives Israel to be countering its interest. On an ideological level, the Islamic Republic’s pretense to leadership in the Islamic world compels it to pursue a line that often times make Iran more Palestinian than the Palestinians.
The key to changing Iran’s behavior vis-à-vis the Jewish state lay in the dynamics between ideology and geopolitics. If these two forces of Iranian foreign policy once again can be arranged to counter each other, the force behind Iran’s belligerence against Israel can be put to rest.
This, however, cannot be achieved solely by increasing pressure or by making threats of war. Only through a larger US-Iran accommodation can Iran’s foreign policy impulses shift away from its current stance on Israel.
To explore this strategic opportunity, Israel must first adopt a more sober analysis of Iran; one in which it sees through Iran’s deliberately misleading hyperbole and pays attention not only to the dangerous rhetoric but also to the less sensationalist voices in the Iranian government. Iran’s pragmatists may not be friendly towards the Jewish state, but neither are they apocalyptic. By only focusing on the most extreme and radical notions coming out of Tehran, we let the radicals win. And their victory is a loss for all.
Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of the new book 'Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US' (Yale University Press)
************************************
(http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3459623,00.html)
Trita Parsi
Ynetnews.com
Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the worst possible welcome in New York, yet he managed to walk away the winner. He should dedicate his victory to Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University whose infantile introduction of Ahmadinejad provided the Iranian hardliner with an undeserved opportunity to present himself as a defender of academic integrity and freedom of speech.
As Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh commented: "I think it's generally a good idea when you're inviting people to your university not to tell them upon arrival that they're not welcome, because then you look crazier than Ahmadinejad."
Yet, the main point Ahmadinejad scored was the media’s willingness to let the limelight exaggerate his power and importance. For a few days, the media spoke of Ahmadinejad as if he actually determined Iran’s nuclear policy, as if he was in charge of the Iranian army and as if it was up to him whether Tehran would seek Israel’s destruction or not.
While the former Tehran mayor questioned the veracity of the Holocaust in New York, ordinary Iranians were glued to their TVs to watch a completely different drama – an Iranian series about the Holocaust, the suffering of the Jewish people and the heroic efforts of Iranian diplomats to help French Jews escape the Nazis by providing them with Iranian passports. The contrast with Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric could not have been any clearer. Apparently, the Iranian President even lacks the power to enforce his Holocaust theories on Iran’s state-run TV.
The contradiction between Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust rhetoric and the Iranian TV-drama exemplifies the dangers of the media’s infatuation with the Iranian hardliner – and all hardline statements coming out of Tehran. Not only does the unwarranted media attention make Ahmadinejad appear more powerful than he is, it also takes attention away from another side of Iran; one that doesn’t question the Holocaust, that understands the dangers of playing the anti-Israeli card to score points on the Arab streets and that is far more concerned about making friends with the US than making permanent enemies with the Jewish state.
Iran’s National Security Advisor Ali Larijani has carefully avoided echoing Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki’s has denied that Iran seeks the destruction of Israel. Their posture is far less sensational than Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, yet much more indicative of Iran’s real policy.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Iran’s position on Israel isn’t ideologically driven. Though the ideological component of Iran’s foreign policy is undeniable, it is secondary to Iran’s geostrategic considerations.
Ideology and geopolitics
Throughout the existence of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian theocracy has adopted a harsh, provocative and uncompromising rhetoric on Israel to boost Iran’s credentials as a leader of an imaginary Islamic bloc and use the anti-Israeli card to bridge Iran’s difficulties with the Arab states.
But the rhetoric has only been translated into actual policy when Tehran deemed that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincided. When these two pillars of Iran’s foreign policy have clashed – as they did in the 1980s during the Iraq-Iran war when Tehran quietly sought Israel’s aid and the Jewish state made many efforts to get Iran and the US back on talking terms – Iran’s geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed over its ideological impulses.
Today, Tehran believes that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincide in regards to the Jewish state. On a strategic level, Iran opposes Israel due to a perception that the Jewish state seeks Iran’s prolonged isolation and exclusion from regional affairs. Whether in Washington or in Ashkhabad, Iran perceives Israel to be countering its interest. On an ideological level, the Islamic Republic’s pretense to leadership in the Islamic world compels it to pursue a line that often times make Iran more Palestinian than the Palestinians.
The key to changing Iran’s behavior vis-à-vis the Jewish state lay in the dynamics between ideology and geopolitics. If these two forces of Iranian foreign policy once again can be arranged to counter each other, the force behind Iran’s belligerence against Israel can be put to rest.
This, however, cannot be achieved solely by increasing pressure or by making threats of war. Only through a larger US-Iran accommodation can Iran’s foreign policy impulses shift away from its current stance on Israel.
To explore this strategic opportunity, Israel must first adopt a more sober analysis of Iran; one in which it sees through Iran’s deliberately misleading hyperbole and pays attention not only to the dangerous rhetoric but also to the less sensationalist voices in the Iranian government. Iran’s pragmatists may not be friendly towards the Jewish state, but neither are they apocalyptic. By only focusing on the most extreme and radical notions coming out of Tehran, we let the radicals win. And their victory is a loss for all.
Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of the new book 'Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US' (Yale University Press)
************************************
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Iranian Children's Show. The Jews Equal the Evil Queen
Middle East Media Research Institute. Iranian Children's Show Villainizes Jews:
http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1329#
http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1329#
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Dating Game
An anthology prepared by students in Professor Gissler's 2001 seminar
Shandray Mehdian
(http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/race/2001/date_mehdian.shtml)
Accessed 06/ 25/2007)
It was not a typical teen-age fight over a girl. The outraged student at Great Neck North High School in suburban Long Island was defending the honor of his Jewish-Iranian sister who had been smeared by what he deemed a vicious rumor. She had been accused of dating an American boy.
To the Jewish-Iranian community, the rumor was double trouble. Any form of dating by teen-age girls is prohibited, and dating outside the faith deepens the disgrace. At stake is the family's reputation and the girl's chance for marriage. So the brother punched out the Jewish-Iranian student who had spread the false tale - and was suspended for two days.
"My best friend went crazy," Sasha, an 18-year-old senior, said of the fist swinger. Like many other Jewish-Iranian students, Sasha asked that only his first name be used.
However, schools officials familiar with the Jewish-Iranian community, were not shocked by the fight. "For a girl to be seen with someone, or even a rumor about her, can get brothers and fathers excited," said Angelo Sabatelli, assistant principal at Great Neck North. "Because then the marriage proposal is gone. Now everyone thinks she is not pure."
Though the fight was unusual , the issue of dating plagues many of the Jewish-Iranian teens at Great Neck North, which has a 38 per cent Iranian student population, most of them Jewish. Not only does the strict bar against girls dating or socializing with the opposite sex collide with American popular culture, but the rule, under Jewish-Iranian tradition, also exempts boys who are free to date any and all girls - a double standard that sometimes creates puzzlement and resentment among Jewish-Iranian girls.
The remarkable situation at Great Neck North can be traced to the 1978-79 revolution in Iran. Waves of Jewish Iranian immigrants fled to the United States, finding new homes all over the country, with the largest populations in New York and southern California. In Great Neck alone, Jewish Iranians estimate that there are nearly 3,500 families. With so many families packed into a small town of about 37,000, they say, a close-knit subculture inevitably emerges and defense of family integrity - and particularly the reputation of young women - becomes crucial.
In the Jewish-Iranian culture, women uphold the values and virtues of the community. When it comes to dating and socializing with the opposite sex, women must abide by the strictest standards and remain a symbol of purity. Thus "casual" dating by females, with no intention of marriage, or dating outside the community is out of the question, said Shanaz Goldman, a social worker at Great Neck North since 1994. "I have not yet met a Jewish-Iranian mother who'd feel comfortable with her daughter having an American boyfriend," said Goldman, also a member of the Pupil Personnel, a group of psychologists, social workers and mental health professionals.
Usually, the slightest deviance can mar the reputation of a young woman and her family's integrity. "God forbid that a girl have a bad name in the society," Goldman said. "Her prospects of finding a mate will be doomed."
On the other hand, the opposite is true of Jewish Iranian boys. Not only are they expected to date at an early age, but they are encouraged to date non-Iranian women. "Boys can do whatever the girl cannot," Goldman said. "Parents will encourage him to have a girlfriend - it's like a badge of honor."
Sabatelli agreed. "While Iranian girls are not permitted to date, Iranian boys are encouraged to 'have fun,'" he said. "The boys are not discouraged from dating the American girls." Sabatelli, who has been at the high school for 20 years, says 60 per cent of the Jewish-Iranian male seniors are dating non-Iranian females. "But you'll never see an Iranian girl holding hands with another boy," he said. "You just don't see it -- not even at the prom."
Though the double standard is deeply rooted in the traditional Iranian culture, Sabatelli, who has studied European and Middle Eastern history, feels it has also become a "macho thing" among the high school boys at Great Neck North to date American girls.
According to Goldman, who puts on parenting workshops for adults throughout the academic year, several factors explain the double standard. First is the influence of the Islamic culture that, some critics say, dictates the second-class status of women. "The woman's job was to be subservient," Goldman said. "She had to stay home and take care of the children." In present day Iran women must still wear the traditional head covering, the chador, and are forbidden to ride bicycles in public parks and streets.
A second factor is class, Goldman said. In Iran, a country based on a class system, the upper echelon could afford to send their male children abroad for education. Thus the men had greater opportunities and freedom to mingle with Western women.
A third factor, according to Goldman, is the fact that Jews in Iran were a minority and consequently adhered more to their cultural ways. Most considered pre-marital sex and intimacy unacceptable, as stipulated by Jewish laws and mores. Here in America, Jewish Iranians again represent a minority community. "But because mainstream American culture is so different, some values are played out more strongly than they were in the homeland and adhered to with greater tenacity," Goldman said.
In Iran this system seemed to work well, observers say. But America is a different story, especially for the new generation of youth born and reared in a culture so different from that of the older generation.
"If their culture means that much to them, that's great," said Jessica, a junior who has been in the Great Neck public school system since elementary school. "But I think it's overdone a little." Jessica says she comes from a Jewish-Iranian family that is more open-minded but she must still marry only a Jewish-Iranian male.
Jessica said her parents, who "love each other to death" and who have been together for 25 years, met each other in Iran and were married six days later. Those sorts of marriages were common in Iran 20 or 30 years ago.
But now times are different. And tension and conflict arise when the older generation demands to uphold the traditional values of the Jewish-Iranian culture and their first- generation children wish to follow the ways of their non-Iranian peers. And in no other area does this tension surface more clearly than when it comes to dating and socializing. At times Jessica feels confused. "Iranian girls aren't supposed to date until they want to get married," she said. "But how will you gain dating experience for marriage when you haven't had any relationships?"
As for the double standard, Jessica thinks it's wrong for parents to impose a set of strict standards for one child and not for the other. "It's so annoying," she said. "My brother was allowed to do everything at my age - had no curfews and about a hundred girlfriends. If I had one boyfriend my parents would say 'what's going on?'"
"There's definitely, definitely a double standard," Goldman said. "All these girls want is to have a normal adolescent life. But their parents are so fearful that they place restrictions on behavior. They have limits on their freedom-no sleepovers, no camps, early curfews, and no unchaperoned parties."
What sometimes happens, said Goldman, herself a mother of three, is that the children who face restrictions without any knowledge of their culture or understanding of their values, end up with resentment, fear and anathema. "Those are the ones who hate the culture, who don't like to speak Farsi, or be called Iranians," Goldman said. "They have no sense of identity with the culture."
On the other hand, Goldman argues that the Jewish-Iranian children who "embrace their heritage" and have a good sense of their culture and where they come from are more accepting of their parent's values.
"All the kids my age are still living in that mentality, in the shadow of their parents," Jessica said. "And as long as that happens, it's never going to end." But after a moment's thought, Jessica modified her conclusion: "It's stressful, but it works out well in the end because it leans towards a more disciplined life."
Mark, a 16-year-old Jewish-Iranian student with spiked hair, has no problem with the double standard. "It's better for Iranian girls to be like that," he said. "When an Iranian guy is ready to get married he's not going to look for the girl who's been dating ever since she was a teen-ager." Sabatelli explained it further. "When it comes to marriage, the boys know they must marry a 'nice, Iranian girl,'" he said. "The parents want to hold on to those values to ensure that their daughter or son marry within the Iranian culture."
"The young boys want to marry someone pure," Goldman said. "That's what's been ingrained in them."
Mark said his sister didn't date until she was ready for marriage. He estimates that at Great Neck North 15 per cent of Iranian girls date casually but 75 per cent would do it "if they could."
So are there any signs of change in how Jewish-Iranian traditions play out at Great Neck North? Yes and no, say students and school officials. While basic values remain in tact and dating is restricted, "girls and guys can hang out [???] when they wouldn't even think about that years ago," Mark said, referring to groups of friends going to see a movie together.
Sasha, the senior, agreed that "times are changing," but only in limited ways. He sees more Iranian girls casually dating than in the past. "Now we're in America," he said. "American guys are out there." But the traditional values ingrained in first-generation Jewish Iranians are still strong. "Iranian girls really respect their parents, they're really into the family thing - very traditional," he said. "They really do care." Therefore if they do date casually, said Sasha, the boy has to be very special and it must be secretive. "Iranian girls are still uptight about it because they think about marriage - it's on their minds."
"A very little portion of society has become open-minded," Goldman said. "There's still so much concern about what others think." Goldman refers to the Iranian concern with "keeping face" in the community - or aberu. If aberu is gone, then so is the family's name and honor.
Preoccupation with aberu - denying one's self in order to be well regarded in the community - continues to impel parents to restrict their daughters' dating. "Even those parents who have lived here longer, who are more open-minded, don't allow their kids to go out with non-Iranians because they fear what others may think of them," Goldman said.
Even the younger generation practices this concept. "At a party you want to drink with your friends but you feel uncomfortable doing it in front of other people because you know they'll say 'Oh she's such a slut, you should have seen her this weekend…,'" said Jessica.
"The kids are very confused," Sabatelli said. "They want to uphold the old Iranian traditions and culture. They can't break away from it because then they'd have to break away from the family, but there's also a lot of resentment."
In past years Goldman put together an Iranian girls group that would meet to talk about their experiences growing up in Iranian families. "It was great support," she said. "One girl would talk about her experience and then another would say 'I can relate to that' and so on and so on."
"You have to understand how different cultures operate," said Sabatelli, who believes he understands the Iranian culture better because of his own Italian background. "Or else you make mistakes." Sabatelli said that Great Neck North began noticing differences between Iranian and American cultures once the number of Iranians started to grow. Then in 1994, the school decided to hire a Farsi-speaking social worker to deal with the teens and their families.
Today Goldman says she sees some change in the families with which she has worked. For example, more and more Iranian parents allow their daughters to go away to college, a privilege traditionally reserved for young males. "These girls come to me and beg me to speak to their parents," Goldman said. "I work together with the families to open the communication lines and break that resistance." This year, she says, is the first year that no one came to her. She attributes that to parents' better understanding of the issues that their teen-agers face.
Sabatelli is also optimistic. "Though the majority are still holding on to the traditional ways, they are changing somewhat," he said. "When this first generation has children, they will continue to assimilate more and more. Within two generations it will be mostly assimilated. The shift will be towards greater liberalization and acceptance."
Shandray Mehdian
(http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/race/2001/date_mehdian.shtml)
Accessed 06/ 25/2007)
It was not a typical teen-age fight over a girl. The outraged student at Great Neck North High School in suburban Long Island was defending the honor of his Jewish-Iranian sister who had been smeared by what he deemed a vicious rumor. She had been accused of dating an American boy.
To the Jewish-Iranian community, the rumor was double trouble. Any form of dating by teen-age girls is prohibited, and dating outside the faith deepens the disgrace. At stake is the family's reputation and the girl's chance for marriage. So the brother punched out the Jewish-Iranian student who had spread the false tale - and was suspended for two days.
"My best friend went crazy," Sasha, an 18-year-old senior, said of the fist swinger. Like many other Jewish-Iranian students, Sasha asked that only his first name be used.
However, schools officials familiar with the Jewish-Iranian community, were not shocked by the fight. "For a girl to be seen with someone, or even a rumor about her, can get brothers and fathers excited," said Angelo Sabatelli, assistant principal at Great Neck North. "Because then the marriage proposal is gone. Now everyone thinks she is not pure."
Though the fight was unusual , the issue of dating plagues many of the Jewish-Iranian teens at Great Neck North, which has a 38 per cent Iranian student population, most of them Jewish. Not only does the strict bar against girls dating or socializing with the opposite sex collide with American popular culture, but the rule, under Jewish-Iranian tradition, also exempts boys who are free to date any and all girls - a double standard that sometimes creates puzzlement and resentment among Jewish-Iranian girls.
The remarkable situation at Great Neck North can be traced to the 1978-79 revolution in Iran. Waves of Jewish Iranian immigrants fled to the United States, finding new homes all over the country, with the largest populations in New York and southern California. In Great Neck alone, Jewish Iranians estimate that there are nearly 3,500 families. With so many families packed into a small town of about 37,000, they say, a close-knit subculture inevitably emerges and defense of family integrity - and particularly the reputation of young women - becomes crucial.
In the Jewish-Iranian culture, women uphold the values and virtues of the community. When it comes to dating and socializing with the opposite sex, women must abide by the strictest standards and remain a symbol of purity. Thus "casual" dating by females, with no intention of marriage, or dating outside the community is out of the question, said Shanaz Goldman, a social worker at Great Neck North since 1994. "I have not yet met a Jewish-Iranian mother who'd feel comfortable with her daughter having an American boyfriend," said Goldman, also a member of the Pupil Personnel, a group of psychologists, social workers and mental health professionals.
Usually, the slightest deviance can mar the reputation of a young woman and her family's integrity. "God forbid that a girl have a bad name in the society," Goldman said. "Her prospects of finding a mate will be doomed."
On the other hand, the opposite is true of Jewish Iranian boys. Not only are they expected to date at an early age, but they are encouraged to date non-Iranian women. "Boys can do whatever the girl cannot," Goldman said. "Parents will encourage him to have a girlfriend - it's like a badge of honor."
Sabatelli agreed. "While Iranian girls are not permitted to date, Iranian boys are encouraged to 'have fun,'" he said. "The boys are not discouraged from dating the American girls." Sabatelli, who has been at the high school for 20 years, says 60 per cent of the Jewish-Iranian male seniors are dating non-Iranian females. "But you'll never see an Iranian girl holding hands with another boy," he said. "You just don't see it -- not even at the prom."
Though the double standard is deeply rooted in the traditional Iranian culture, Sabatelli, who has studied European and Middle Eastern history, feels it has also become a "macho thing" among the high school boys at Great Neck North to date American girls.
According to Goldman, who puts on parenting workshops for adults throughout the academic year, several factors explain the double standard. First is the influence of the Islamic culture that, some critics say, dictates the second-class status of women. "The woman's job was to be subservient," Goldman said. "She had to stay home and take care of the children." In present day Iran women must still wear the traditional head covering, the chador, and are forbidden to ride bicycles in public parks and streets.
A second factor is class, Goldman said. In Iran, a country based on a class system, the upper echelon could afford to send their male children abroad for education. Thus the men had greater opportunities and freedom to mingle with Western women.
A third factor, according to Goldman, is the fact that Jews in Iran were a minority and consequently adhered more to their cultural ways. Most considered pre-marital sex and intimacy unacceptable, as stipulated by Jewish laws and mores. Here in America, Jewish Iranians again represent a minority community. "But because mainstream American culture is so different, some values are played out more strongly than they were in the homeland and adhered to with greater tenacity," Goldman said.
In Iran this system seemed to work well, observers say. But America is a different story, especially for the new generation of youth born and reared in a culture so different from that of the older generation.
"If their culture means that much to them, that's great," said Jessica, a junior who has been in the Great Neck public school system since elementary school. "But I think it's overdone a little." Jessica says she comes from a Jewish-Iranian family that is more open-minded but she must still marry only a Jewish-Iranian male.
Jessica said her parents, who "love each other to death" and who have been together for 25 years, met each other in Iran and were married six days later. Those sorts of marriages were common in Iran 20 or 30 years ago.
But now times are different. And tension and conflict arise when the older generation demands to uphold the traditional values of the Jewish-Iranian culture and their first- generation children wish to follow the ways of their non-Iranian peers. And in no other area does this tension surface more clearly than when it comes to dating and socializing. At times Jessica feels confused. "Iranian girls aren't supposed to date until they want to get married," she said. "But how will you gain dating experience for marriage when you haven't had any relationships?"
As for the double standard, Jessica thinks it's wrong for parents to impose a set of strict standards for one child and not for the other. "It's so annoying," she said. "My brother was allowed to do everything at my age - had no curfews and about a hundred girlfriends. If I had one boyfriend my parents would say 'what's going on?'"
"There's definitely, definitely a double standard," Goldman said. "All these girls want is to have a normal adolescent life. But their parents are so fearful that they place restrictions on behavior. They have limits on their freedom-no sleepovers, no camps, early curfews, and no unchaperoned parties."
What sometimes happens, said Goldman, herself a mother of three, is that the children who face restrictions without any knowledge of their culture or understanding of their values, end up with resentment, fear and anathema. "Those are the ones who hate the culture, who don't like to speak Farsi, or be called Iranians," Goldman said. "They have no sense of identity with the culture."
On the other hand, Goldman argues that the Jewish-Iranian children who "embrace their heritage" and have a good sense of their culture and where they come from are more accepting of their parent's values.
"All the kids my age are still living in that mentality, in the shadow of their parents," Jessica said. "And as long as that happens, it's never going to end." But after a moment's thought, Jessica modified her conclusion: "It's stressful, but it works out well in the end because it leans towards a more disciplined life."
Mark, a 16-year-old Jewish-Iranian student with spiked hair, has no problem with the double standard. "It's better for Iranian girls to be like that," he said. "When an Iranian guy is ready to get married he's not going to look for the girl who's been dating ever since she was a teen-ager." Sabatelli explained it further. "When it comes to marriage, the boys know they must marry a 'nice, Iranian girl,'" he said. "The parents want to hold on to those values to ensure that their daughter or son marry within the Iranian culture."
"The young boys want to marry someone pure," Goldman said. "That's what's been ingrained in them."
Mark said his sister didn't date until she was ready for marriage. He estimates that at Great Neck North 15 per cent of Iranian girls date casually but 75 per cent would do it "if they could."
So are there any signs of change in how Jewish-Iranian traditions play out at Great Neck North? Yes and no, say students and school officials. While basic values remain in tact and dating is restricted, "girls and guys can hang out [???] when they wouldn't even think about that years ago," Mark said, referring to groups of friends going to see a movie together.
Sasha, the senior, agreed that "times are changing," but only in limited ways. He sees more Iranian girls casually dating than in the past. "Now we're in America," he said. "American guys are out there." But the traditional values ingrained in first-generation Jewish Iranians are still strong. "Iranian girls really respect their parents, they're really into the family thing - very traditional," he said. "They really do care." Therefore if they do date casually, said Sasha, the boy has to be very special and it must be secretive. "Iranian girls are still uptight about it because they think about marriage - it's on their minds."
"A very little portion of society has become open-minded," Goldman said. "There's still so much concern about what others think." Goldman refers to the Iranian concern with "keeping face" in the community - or aberu. If aberu is gone, then so is the family's name and honor.
Preoccupation with aberu - denying one's self in order to be well regarded in the community - continues to impel parents to restrict their daughters' dating. "Even those parents who have lived here longer, who are more open-minded, don't allow their kids to go out with non-Iranians because they fear what others may think of them," Goldman said.
Even the younger generation practices this concept. "At a party you want to drink with your friends but you feel uncomfortable doing it in front of other people because you know they'll say 'Oh she's such a slut, you should have seen her this weekend…,'" said Jessica.
"The kids are very confused," Sabatelli said. "They want to uphold the old Iranian traditions and culture. They can't break away from it because then they'd have to break away from the family, but there's also a lot of resentment."
In past years Goldman put together an Iranian girls group that would meet to talk about their experiences growing up in Iranian families. "It was great support," she said. "One girl would talk about her experience and then another would say 'I can relate to that' and so on and so on."
"You have to understand how different cultures operate," said Sabatelli, who believes he understands the Iranian culture better because of his own Italian background. "Or else you make mistakes." Sabatelli said that Great Neck North began noticing differences between Iranian and American cultures once the number of Iranians started to grow. Then in 1994, the school decided to hire a Farsi-speaking social worker to deal with the teens and their families.
Today Goldman says she sees some change in the families with which she has worked. For example, more and more Iranian parents allow their daughters to go away to college, a privilege traditionally reserved for young males. "These girls come to me and beg me to speak to their parents," Goldman said. "I work together with the families to open the communication lines and break that resistance." This year, she says, is the first year that no one came to her. She attributes that to parents' better understanding of the issues that their teen-agers face.
Sabatelli is also optimistic. "Though the majority are still holding on to the traditional ways, they are changing somewhat," he said. "When this first generation has children, they will continue to assimilate more and more. Within two generations it will be mostly assimilated. The shift will be towards greater liberalization and acceptance."
Saturday, March 24, 2007
36 Questions About The Holocaust in Farsi
http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7D/36QUESTIONSINFARSI.PDF
Saturday, March 10, 2007
"Iran's Global War Curriculum"
"Iran's Global War Curriculum" by Dr. Arnon Groiss is published by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace. The text presents findings on anti-semitic text in Iranian school textbooks.
http://www.edume.org/
http://www.edume.org/
Friday, February 23, 2007
Purim: Conscious Re-enactments of Collective Memory
February 23, 2007/ 6 AdarI 5767
Tiffany Collins
When I first started the Jewish Persian connections project, there was a subject that kept gnawing at my conscience. Why do we Jews eat Haman ears to celebrate Purim? For those of you that need a refresher, let’s start with some history.
Purim is a festive Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of all the Jews under the authority of the Persian Empire from Haman's plot to exterminate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. The king of Persia chooses Esther, from among hundreds of applicants, to be his bride but is unaware of her Jewish heritage. The King's Prime Minister Haman initiates an edict to destroy all the Jews of the land. Esther, at the risk of her own life, reveals her Jewish identity to the King and successfully convinces him to terminate Haman's plot.
Traditionally at Purim, Jews publicly recite the Book of Esther, give mutual gifts of food and drink, provide charity to the poor, and eat a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). It is one of the most festive Jewish holidays and one of my personal favorites. Jews around the world throw parties and even carnavals and disguise themselves with colorful masks and costumes. Drinking alcohol on this holiday is a Mitzvah or benediction. Another enjoyable Purim custom is the sending of the mishloach manot, wrapped baskets of sweets, snacks and other foods given to family members, friends and even the poor. According to the Halakha, each Jew over the age of bar/bat mitzvah must send two different, ready made foods to one friend, and two charitable donations (either money or food) to two poor people.
For all of its celebratory traditions, the holiday also expresses more aggressive rites. It is customary to use a "ra'ashan" noisemaker which is spun by hand, often made of wood, when Haman's name is mentioned. In many synagogues, congregants stamp and rattle at the mention of Haman during the reading of the Megillah (which occurs 54 times). Although some rabbis protested the excessive practice historically, ra’ashans are still in widespread use in synagogues. Through my research, I have come to learn that other practices included writing Haman’s name on shoe soles and stomping ones' feet at the sound of his name in contempt, burning his effigy, pelting and burning a doll in his form and setting fire to his wax figure.
During Purim it is traditional to serve triangular pastries called hamantaschen ("Haman's pockets") in Yiddish and oznei Haman ("Haman's ears") in Hebrew. These sweet cookies are shaped in the form of trangles and are filled with poppyseed, prunes, dates, apricots, and even chocolate. The pastry's triangular shape is said to either represent the tri-cornered hat which Haman wore, or the alleged shape of his ears.
Ironically, Esther’s Megillah (story) never mentions God. This is one of the explanations for Purim costumes, we dress up to remind ourselves how God remained “hidden”. Growing up I remember being told in Jewish school that we drink because the Jews of Persia were so ecstatic about being saved from mass extermination that they drank until they could no longer recognize one another.
Purim has come to symbolically represent any sort of deliverance from an anti-semitic ruler or group. Some families have even had "family Purims" throughout the centuries, celebrated at home, whereby they celebrate their escape from persecution, an accident, or any other type of misfortune. What a beautiful message, the human spirit can be saved through courage and bravery!
Through the story of Purim we teach our children about triumph in the face of adversity and about the power of perseverance over hatred. We can also interpret the story of Purim to show the power of compromise, forgiveness, and honest communication. The emphasis on the human capacity to create positive change prevails in this story. Additionally, God encourages the heroine to act without overt intervention.
Esther, the Jewish heroine of the story is married to the Persian King Ahasueras (who is a gentile). Therefore, the story of Purim is also a positive message about the triumph of an interfaith marriage. Esther was not the first. Among others Moses had a wife who was most probably Ethiopian or Sudanese. Esther did not feel that she was compromising her Jewish identity by marrying the Persian king. And she did not fail to assert that identity in a time of crisis. Purim can be seen as a celebration of Jewish solidarity in a time of danger, but also as one of reaching out to someone with a different background.
So in light of the multiple positive messages intertwined in the story of Purm, why not change the name of Haman’s ears to something more inspiring? Why not teach our children compassion through our tradition as opposed to teaching them to eat enemies’ears? Today, more then ever, as the war drums beat and we are bombarded with conflict by the media, our children need symbols of courage and communicative action. As Jews we are instructed that even the way we eat should be moral as symbolized by Kashrut (Kosher eating). It is time we had the courage to reconstruct the collective memory of hatred into one of true courage and catalyze our power of choice towards a future of peace.
Tiffany Collins
When I first started the Jewish Persian connections project, there was a subject that kept gnawing at my conscience. Why do we Jews eat Haman ears to celebrate Purim? For those of you that need a refresher, let’s start with some history.
Purim is a festive Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of all the Jews under the authority of the Persian Empire from Haman's plot to exterminate them, as recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. The king of Persia chooses Esther, from among hundreds of applicants, to be his bride but is unaware of her Jewish heritage. The King's Prime Minister Haman initiates an edict to destroy all the Jews of the land. Esther, at the risk of her own life, reveals her Jewish identity to the King and successfully convinces him to terminate Haman's plot.
Traditionally at Purim, Jews publicly recite the Book of Esther, give mutual gifts of food and drink, provide charity to the poor, and eat a celebratory meal (Esther 9:22). It is one of the most festive Jewish holidays and one of my personal favorites. Jews around the world throw parties and even carnavals and disguise themselves with colorful masks and costumes. Drinking alcohol on this holiday is a Mitzvah or benediction. Another enjoyable Purim custom is the sending of the mishloach manot, wrapped baskets of sweets, snacks and other foods given to family members, friends and even the poor. According to the Halakha, each Jew over the age of bar/bat mitzvah must send two different, ready made foods to one friend, and two charitable donations (either money or food) to two poor people.
For all of its celebratory traditions, the holiday also expresses more aggressive rites. It is customary to use a "ra'ashan" noisemaker which is spun by hand, often made of wood, when Haman's name is mentioned. In many synagogues, congregants stamp and rattle at the mention of Haman during the reading of the Megillah (which occurs 54 times). Although some rabbis protested the excessive practice historically, ra’ashans are still in widespread use in synagogues. Through my research, I have come to learn that other practices included writing Haman’s name on shoe soles and stomping ones' feet at the sound of his name in contempt, burning his effigy, pelting and burning a doll in his form and setting fire to his wax figure.
During Purim it is traditional to serve triangular pastries called hamantaschen ("Haman's pockets") in Yiddish and oznei Haman ("Haman's ears") in Hebrew. These sweet cookies are shaped in the form of trangles and are filled with poppyseed, prunes, dates, apricots, and even chocolate. The pastry's triangular shape is said to either represent the tri-cornered hat which Haman wore, or the alleged shape of his ears.
Ironically, Esther’s Megillah (story) never mentions God. This is one of the explanations for Purim costumes, we dress up to remind ourselves how God remained “hidden”. Growing up I remember being told in Jewish school that we drink because the Jews of Persia were so ecstatic about being saved from mass extermination that they drank until they could no longer recognize one another.
Purim has come to symbolically represent any sort of deliverance from an anti-semitic ruler or group. Some families have even had "family Purims" throughout the centuries, celebrated at home, whereby they celebrate their escape from persecution, an accident, or any other type of misfortune. What a beautiful message, the human spirit can be saved through courage and bravery!
Through the story of Purim we teach our children about triumph in the face of adversity and about the power of perseverance over hatred. We can also interpret the story of Purim to show the power of compromise, forgiveness, and honest communication. The emphasis on the human capacity to create positive change prevails in this story. Additionally, God encourages the heroine to act without overt intervention.
Esther, the Jewish heroine of the story is married to the Persian King Ahasueras (who is a gentile). Therefore, the story of Purim is also a positive message about the triumph of an interfaith marriage. Esther was not the first. Among others Moses had a wife who was most probably Ethiopian or Sudanese. Esther did not feel that she was compromising her Jewish identity by marrying the Persian king. And she did not fail to assert that identity in a time of crisis. Purim can be seen as a celebration of Jewish solidarity in a time of danger, but also as one of reaching out to someone with a different background.
So in light of the multiple positive messages intertwined in the story of Purm, why not change the name of Haman’s ears to something more inspiring? Why not teach our children compassion through our tradition as opposed to teaching them to eat enemies’ears? Today, more then ever, as the war drums beat and we are bombarded with conflict by the media, our children need symbols of courage and communicative action. As Jews we are instructed that even the way we eat should be moral as symbolized by Kashrut (Kosher eating). It is time we had the courage to reconstruct the collective memory of hatred into one of true courage and catalyze our power of choice towards a future of peace.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Exhibition
ALJazeera.net (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/archive/archive?ArchiveId=25137)
UPDATED ON:
MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 2006
2:52 MECCA TIME, 23:52 GMT
An international contest of cartoons on the Holocaust has opened in Tehran in response to the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper last September.
More than 200 entries from Iran and abroad are on display
The exhibition, launched on Monday, shows 204 entries from Iran and abroad.
Masoud Shojai, head of the country's "Iran Cartoon" association and the fair organiser, said that "we staged this fair to explore the limits of freedom Westerners believe in".
He said: "They can freely write anything they like about our prophet, but if one raises doubts about the Holocaust he is either fined or sent to prison."
At the opening ceremony of the month-long fair in Tehran's Palestine contemporary art museum, Shojai said: "Though we do not deny that fact that Jews were killed in the [second world] war, why should the Palestinians pay for it?"
He added that around 1,100 cartoons were submitted by participants from more than 60 countries and that more than 200 are on show.
Prize money
One cartoon by Indonesian Tony Thomdean shows the statue of liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other.
Muslims angered by the Danish
cartoons protested worldwide
Shojai said the top three cartoons will be announced on September 2, with the winners being awarded prizes of 12,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively.
He did not elaborate on the source of the prize money, but emphasised that it did not come from any governmental body.
The fair is being staged by Iran Cartoon and the country's largest selling newspaper Hamshahri, which is published by Tehran's conservative municipality.
The contest was announced in February after caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were first printed in Denmark and then picked up and published worldwide, enraging Muslims.
Many Muslims considered the cartoon offensive and a violation of traditions prohibiting images of the prophet.
The entries on display came from nations including the United States, Indonesia and Turkey.
Holocaust revisionists
About 50 people attended the exhibition's opening.
Zahra Amoli said: "I came to learn more about the roots of the Holocaust and the basis of Israel's emergence."
Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionists, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews and other groups during World War II was either invented or exaggerated.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has also prompted international anger by dismissing the Holocaust as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.
UPDATED ON:
MONDAY, AUGUST 14, 2006
2:52 MECCA TIME, 23:52 GMT
An international contest of cartoons on the Holocaust has opened in Tehran in response to the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper last September.
More than 200 entries from Iran and abroad are on display
The exhibition, launched on Monday, shows 204 entries from Iran and abroad.
Masoud Shojai, head of the country's "Iran Cartoon" association and the fair organiser, said that "we staged this fair to explore the limits of freedom Westerners believe in".
He said: "They can freely write anything they like about our prophet, but if one raises doubts about the Holocaust he is either fined or sent to prison."
At the opening ceremony of the month-long fair in Tehran's Palestine contemporary art museum, Shojai said: "Though we do not deny that fact that Jews were killed in the [second world] war, why should the Palestinians pay for it?"
He added that around 1,100 cartoons were submitted by participants from more than 60 countries and that more than 200 are on show.
Prize money
One cartoon by Indonesian Tony Thomdean shows the statue of liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other.
Muslims angered by the Danish
cartoons protested worldwide
Shojai said the top three cartoons will be announced on September 2, with the winners being awarded prizes of 12,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively.
He did not elaborate on the source of the prize money, but emphasised that it did not come from any governmental body.
The fair is being staged by Iran Cartoon and the country's largest selling newspaper Hamshahri, which is published by Tehran's conservative municipality.
The contest was announced in February after caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were first printed in Denmark and then picked up and published worldwide, enraging Muslims.
Many Muslims considered the cartoon offensive and a violation of traditions prohibiting images of the prophet.
The entries on display came from nations including the United States, Indonesia and Turkey.
Holocaust revisionists
About 50 people attended the exhibition's opening.
Zahra Amoli said: "I came to learn more about the roots of the Holocaust and the basis of Israel's emergence."
Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionists, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews and other groups during World War II was either invented or exaggerated.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has also prompted international anger by dismissing the Holocaust as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran
By NAZILA FATHI December 11, 2006 Published in the New York Times
TEHRAN, Dec. 11 — Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world gathered at a government-sponsored conference here today to discuss their theories about whether six million Jews were indeed killed by the Nazis during World War II and whether gas chambers existed.
In a speech opening the two-day conference, Rasoul Mousavi, head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, which organized the event, said it was an opportunity for scholars to discuss the subject “away from Western taboos and the restriction imposed on them in Europe.”
The foreign ministry had said that 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries were scheduled to take part. Among those speaking today are David Duke, the American white-supremacist politician and former Ku Klux Klan leader, and Georges Thiel, a French writer who has been prosecuted in France over his denials of the Holocaust.
Mr. Duke’s remarks late this afternoon are expected to assert that no gas chambers or extermination camps were actually built during the war, on the ground that killing Jews that way would have been much too bothersome and expensive when the Nazis could have used much simpler methods, according to an advance summary of his speech published by the institute.
“Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine,” Mr. Duke’s paper says, according to the summary.
One of the first scheduled speakers, Robert Faurisson of France, also called the Holocaust a myth created to justify the occupation of Palestine.
The conference is being held at the behest of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who likewise called the Holocaust a myth last year, and repeated a well-known slogan from the early days of the 1979 revolution in Iran, “Israel must be wiped off the map.” He has spoken several times since then about a need to establish whether the Holocaust actually happened.
Most of the speakers at the conference today praised Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments.
Bendikt Frings, 48, a psychologist from Germany, said he believed Mr. Ahmadinejad was “an honest direct man,” and said he had come to the conference to thank him for what he had initiated.
“We are forbidden to have such a conference in Germany,” he said. “ All my childhood, we waited for something like this.”
Toben Feredrick, from Australia, said Mr. Ahmadinejad has opened an issue “which is morally and intellectually crippling the Western society.”
“People are imprisoned in Germany for denying the Holocaust,” he added.
Mr. Feredrick said he was jailed for six months in 1999 because of his ideas, and that a court in Germany has ordered him arrested if he speaks out publicly again denying that the Holocaust took place.
Other Western “revisionists” presented what they called new facts about the Holocaust at the conference, which also attracted attendees from some ultra-Orthodox Jews belonging to anti-Zionist sects that reject the state of Israel. One participant wearing the traditional long black coat and hat of such groups wore a badge saying: “A Jew, not a Zionist.”
It was not entirely clear how the lineup of speakers at the conference was set. The Institute’s website had invited scholars and researchers to submit papers in advance for consideration, but revealed little about how they were evaluated. The Iranian foreign ministry also provided little information about participants, saying that it feared they would be prosecuted by their home countries.
The conference included an exhibition today of various photos, posters and other material meant to contradict the accepted version of events, that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews and other “undesirables” in death camps during the war. New captions in Persian on some familiar photos of corpses at the camps argued that they were victims of typhus, not the German state.
Anti-Zionist literature, including a 2004 book by the American author Michael Collins Piper, about Zionist influence in America, was offered for sale to visitors at the conference. So, apparently, was a video recording of 12 Holocaust survivors telling their stories, suggesting that the views represented at the conference may not have been entirely one-sided.
The conference prompted outrage in the West. The German government summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in Berlin to complain. The French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, warned that the conference would be strongly condemned if it propagated claims denying the Holocaust.
Iran also organized an exhibition last summer of cartoons about the Holocaust, which outraged Jews inside Iran and out.
Iranian Jewish leaders reacted angrily to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denying comments last year, issuing a statement saying that his words were spreading fear among Jews in Iran.
“We consider the Holocaust as a fact and a disgrace for humanity,” Haround Yashayai, a leading voice among Iranian Jews, said today. “We cannot say that such a conference cannot be held here. We have condemned similar events in the past, and see no reason to condemn it again.”
TEHRAN, Dec. 11 — Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world gathered at a government-sponsored conference here today to discuss their theories about whether six million Jews were indeed killed by the Nazis during World War II and whether gas chambers existed.
In a speech opening the two-day conference, Rasoul Mousavi, head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, which organized the event, said it was an opportunity for scholars to discuss the subject “away from Western taboos and the restriction imposed on them in Europe.”
The foreign ministry had said that 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries were scheduled to take part. Among those speaking today are David Duke, the American white-supremacist politician and former Ku Klux Klan leader, and Georges Thiel, a French writer who has been prosecuted in France over his denials of the Holocaust.
Mr. Duke’s remarks late this afternoon are expected to assert that no gas chambers or extermination camps were actually built during the war, on the ground that killing Jews that way would have been much too bothersome and expensive when the Nazis could have used much simpler methods, according to an advance summary of his speech published by the institute.
“Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war, and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine,” Mr. Duke’s paper says, according to the summary.
One of the first scheduled speakers, Robert Faurisson of France, also called the Holocaust a myth created to justify the occupation of Palestine.
The conference is being held at the behest of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who likewise called the Holocaust a myth last year, and repeated a well-known slogan from the early days of the 1979 revolution in Iran, “Israel must be wiped off the map.” He has spoken several times since then about a need to establish whether the Holocaust actually happened.
Most of the speakers at the conference today praised Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments.
Bendikt Frings, 48, a psychologist from Germany, said he believed Mr. Ahmadinejad was “an honest direct man,” and said he had come to the conference to thank him for what he had initiated.
“We are forbidden to have such a conference in Germany,” he said. “ All my childhood, we waited for something like this.”
Toben Feredrick, from Australia, said Mr. Ahmadinejad has opened an issue “which is morally and intellectually crippling the Western society.”
“People are imprisoned in Germany for denying the Holocaust,” he added.
Mr. Feredrick said he was jailed for six months in 1999 because of his ideas, and that a court in Germany has ordered him arrested if he speaks out publicly again denying that the Holocaust took place.
Other Western “revisionists” presented what they called new facts about the Holocaust at the conference, which also attracted attendees from some ultra-Orthodox Jews belonging to anti-Zionist sects that reject the state of Israel. One participant wearing the traditional long black coat and hat of such groups wore a badge saying: “A Jew, not a Zionist.”
It was not entirely clear how the lineup of speakers at the conference was set. The Institute’s website had invited scholars and researchers to submit papers in advance for consideration, but revealed little about how they were evaluated. The Iranian foreign ministry also provided little information about participants, saying that it feared they would be prosecuted by their home countries.
The conference included an exhibition today of various photos, posters and other material meant to contradict the accepted version of events, that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews and other “undesirables” in death camps during the war. New captions in Persian on some familiar photos of corpses at the camps argued that they were victims of typhus, not the German state.
Anti-Zionist literature, including a 2004 book by the American author Michael Collins Piper, about Zionist influence in America, was offered for sale to visitors at the conference. So, apparently, was a video recording of 12 Holocaust survivors telling their stories, suggesting that the views represented at the conference may not have been entirely one-sided.
The conference prompted outrage in the West. The German government summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in Berlin to complain. The French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, warned that the conference would be strongly condemned if it propagated claims denying the Holocaust.
Iran also organized an exhibition last summer of cartoons about the Holocaust, which outraged Jews inside Iran and out.
Iranian Jewish leaders reacted angrily to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denying comments last year, issuing a statement saying that his words were spreading fear among Jews in Iran.
“We consider the Holocaust as a fact and a disgrace for humanity,” Haround Yashayai, a leading voice among Iranian Jews, said today. “We cannot say that such a conference cannot be held here. We have condemned similar events in the past, and see no reason to condemn it again.”
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Muslim Community Leader's Stand on the President of Iran's Holocaust Denial Stance
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful
True Muslims Must Never Deny the European Holocaust
By Ibrahim Ramey
History will recall the tragedy of the genocide that slaughtered some six million European Jews between the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933 and the culmination of the Second World War in Europe in May, 1945.
The evidence of this crime, and the horrible magnitude of this killing, is irrefutable. From sources as varied as Nazi war records, film documentation, and most importantly, the testimony of survivors and witnesses, we know that the mass murder of European Jews was, indeed, the single greatest crime of genocide in the twentieth century.
Yet the world now witnesses yet another wave of historical revisionism and Holocaust denial, this time emerging not from European Anti-Semites, but from none other than the President of Iran. Indeed, this head of state has taken the unprecedented act of hosting an international conference of anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and even white racists like former Klan leader David Duke, to gather in Tehran to deny the magnitude, if not the very existence, of this barbaric act.
As a Muslim of African decent in the United States, whose ancestors were victimized by the enormous crime of slavery, I object. And I believe that all Muslims, like other human beings who value compassion and truth, must vigorously object to this gathering as well.
Like many in the global Muslim community, I regard the occupation of Palestinian land and the policies of the State of Israel as issues of extreme importance. I am certainly among those who believe that the occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of full human rights to Palestinians, and even to Arab people regarded as Israeli citizens, is deplorable.
But I find it to be morally unconscionable to attempt to build political arguments and political movements on a platform of racial hatred and the denial of the suffering of the human beings who were victimized by the viciousness of Hitler's genocidal rampage through Europe.
President Ahmedinejad should recognize that the issue of the Palestinian people must not, and cannot, be transmogrified into the ugly and spiritually bankrupt context of racial hatred. The cause of freedom must never drink from the well of hatred and racism.
And indeed, as the Holy Qur'an compels Muslims to demand justice for the oppressed, we are also called to witness against ourselves when we are in error.
And in this case, the President of Iran most certainly is.
********************************
The writer is the Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
True Muslims Must Never Deny the European Holocaust
By Ibrahim Ramey
History will recall the tragedy of the genocide that slaughtered some six million European Jews between the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933 and the culmination of the Second World War in Europe in May, 1945.
The evidence of this crime, and the horrible magnitude of this killing, is irrefutable. From sources as varied as Nazi war records, film documentation, and most importantly, the testimony of survivors and witnesses, we know that the mass murder of European Jews was, indeed, the single greatest crime of genocide in the twentieth century.
Yet the world now witnesses yet another wave of historical revisionism and Holocaust denial, this time emerging not from European Anti-Semites, but from none other than the President of Iran. Indeed, this head of state has taken the unprecedented act of hosting an international conference of anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and even white racists like former Klan leader David Duke, to gather in Tehran to deny the magnitude, if not the very existence, of this barbaric act.
As a Muslim of African decent in the United States, whose ancestors were victimized by the enormous crime of slavery, I object. And I believe that all Muslims, like other human beings who value compassion and truth, must vigorously object to this gathering as well.
Like many in the global Muslim community, I regard the occupation of Palestinian land and the policies of the State of Israel as issues of extreme importance. I am certainly among those who believe that the occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of full human rights to Palestinians, and even to Arab people regarded as Israeli citizens, is deplorable.
But I find it to be morally unconscionable to attempt to build political arguments and political movements on a platform of racial hatred and the denial of the suffering of the human beings who were victimized by the viciousness of Hitler's genocidal rampage through Europe.
President Ahmedinejad should recognize that the issue of the Palestinian people must not, and cannot, be transmogrified into the ugly and spiritually bankrupt context of racial hatred. The cause of freedom must never drink from the well of hatred and racism.
And indeed, as the Holy Qur'an compels Muslims to demand justice for the oppressed, we are also called to witness against ourselves when we are in error.
And in this case, the President of Iran most certainly is.
********************************
The writer is the Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
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