About Jewish Ppl (Iranian Jewish)

[Rasputin]

يهوديان ايراني خواهان خروج از كشور خود نيستند. «ال*پاييس»روزنامه پرتيراژ اسپانيا با انتشار گزارشي درباره وضعيت يهوديان ايراني با تاكيد بر جمله فوق مي*نويسد: جامعه يهوديان ايران ريشه*هاي قوي در اين كشور دارند و حاضر به ترك وطن خود نيستند.
گزارشگر اين روزنامه با ذكر مشاهدات خود از آزادي يهوديان در انجام فرائض مذهبي خود در ايران مي*نويسد: يهوديان ايران مشكلي در انجام وظايف مذهبي خود نمي*بيند
در بخشي از اين گزارش با توصيف شرايط مناسب يهوديان براي انجام فرائض مذهبي خود آمده است: بوي مرباي به، ريحان و اكليل كوهي به مشام مي*رسد. هنوز يك ساعت و نيم به طلوع خورشيد مانده است، اما يهوديان تهران براي انجام نيايش صبح در كنيسه يوسف آباد در مركز اين شهر اجتماع كرده*اند. آنان كلاه بر سر و شال به گردن با دعاهاي مختلف به مدت حدود دو ساعت به نيايشي مي*پردازند كه در طول دو هزار و ۷۰۰سال گذشته يعني از وقتي كه جامعه يهوديت در ايران مستقر شده، تغيير چنداني نكرده است.

اين روزنامه با «موريس معتمد» نماينده يهوديان در مجلس شوراي اسلامي هم گفت*وگو كرده و به نقل از او مي*نويسد: ايران در طول تاريخ خود با تحولات مختلفي روبرو شده كه تاثير خود را بر جامعه يهوديت داشته، اما اين جامعه در ايران هيچگاه همچون اروپا يا ديگر كشورهاي آسيايي با مشكل مواجه نشده است.
گزارشگر ال*پاييس با روايت مواجهه خود با ساير يهوديان هم به نقل از آنان مي*نويسد: ايران بخشي از هويت ما است. ما مي*خواهيم در همين جا بمانيم و اكثريت ما تمايل به ادامه زندگي در كشور خود را دارند ايران قرنهاي بسياري است كه يك مجموعه رنگارنگ فرهنگي و مذهبي است.

خبرنگار ال*پاييس سپس به شرح ديدار خود از مدرسه كليميان در تهران پرداخته و مينويسد: مدرسه ابريشمي متعلق به انجمن يهوديان تهران است. هنگام بازديد از اين مدرسه كه در نزديكي ميدان فاطمي واقع است دانش*آموزان را در حال آماده كردن جشن «پوريم» مشاهده كردم. اين جشن به يادبود افشاي طرح «هامان» براي از بين بردن يهوديان پارسي برگزار مي*شود.

يكي از آموزگاران اين مدرسه هم به خبرنگار اسپانيايي مي*گويد: ما براي انجام مراسم مذهبي خود آزادي داريم. وي براي تاييد سخنان خود خبرنگار ال*پاييس و همراهانش را به كنيسه*اي كه در طبقه بالاي ساختمان وجود دارد، دعوت مي*كند؛ مكاني كه در آنجا دانش*آموزان براي انجام نيايش صبح حاضر مي*شوند.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The Iranian Foreign Ministry recently facilitated a day-long visit to significant Jewish sites in Tehran for the diplomatic corps. Privately, Iranian officials said the event was designed to reassure Iranian Jews, after unease over the December conference.

Jewish leaders portrayed themselves as ordinary Iranians, facing the same problems and with the same aspirations for their nation.

"The Jewish community was probably one of the first [minority groups] to join in with the revolution, and in this way gave many martyrs," Maurice Motamed, holder of the one seat set aside for Jews in Iran's 290-seat parliament, told the diplomats. "And after that, during the eight years of the imposed [Iran-Iraq] war, there were many martyrs and disabled given to Iranian society."

"Every revolution is followed by some issues, problems, and restrictions [on minorities]," said Mr. Motamed. "Fortunately, all these effects have been completely removed in the last ten years."

The diplomatic tour – with a number of Foreign Affairs Ministry officials – visited a Jewish school, a home for the elderly, a community center, and one of 100 synagogues left from Iran, during Friday Sabbath prayers.

"We have obviously had migration out of Iran," says Afshin Seleh, a teacher of Jewish heritage with a white yarmulke skullcap, who says he loses two to three students per year in classes of up to 30. Upon the walls of the Jewish school are portraits of revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Iran's current supreme religious leader.

"There have been different voices [coming] from the government, so people felt unsafe," says Mr. Seleh. "But our existence here has always been separate from politics in Iran, and we always had peaceful coexistence with the Muslim community."

Part of that coexistence has been gratitude for the Dr. Sapir Hospital, a Jewish charity hospital that would have closed years ago, but for subsidies from Jews inside and outside Iran, doctors say.

During the 1979 revolution, the hospital refused to hand over those wounded in clashes with the security forces of the pro-West Shah Reza Pahlavi. Ayatollah Khomeini later sent a personal representative to express his thanks. Ahmadinejad, too, has made a $27,000 donation.

Still, the Iran-Israel standoff has spilled over into many avenues of life here, with varied results for Iranian Jews.

Strong anti-Zionist undercurrents developed in Iran – and across the Middle East – since Israel's creation in 1948. Those views came to a boil in Tehran after the 1967 war, when Israel crushed Arab foes and occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and Sinai. That war marked a turning point in Iranians' attitudes toward the Jewish state, and sometimes toward Iranian Jews.

During the Asian Cup final in 1968 (which Iran won, 2-1) Iranian fans wore eye patches and chanted abusive slogans, to mock the Israeli defense chief Moshe Dayan. According to published reminiscences, "some homes of Jews in Tehran were attacked and set on fire."

In a match-up between Iran and Israel in the final of the 1974 Asian Games in Tehran, protesters against Israel, members of then-shadowy Islamic groups, prepared to attack the Israeli soccer team.

"Our aim and dream," recalls Ezat Shahi, identified as a "revolutionary fighter" in recently published memoirs, "was to create an event similar to the 1972 Munich Olympics, when the Israeli team was taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen from "Black September," in a standoff that left 11 Israeli athletes dead.

Security measures forced protesters to scale back those plans, but rioting broke out that night.

"On that night, [the authorities] couldn‚t prevent people from doing what they wanted," says a witness who asked not to be named. "As soon as Israel expanded its power [in the 1967 war] and oppressed the Palestinians, even the liberal part of Iranian society started to call them Zionists." Those flames, encouraged by Islamist groups that would play a key role in the 1979 revolution, helped define the Islamic Republic's opposition to Israel – but not necessarily to Iranian Jews.

"There is always [talk] outside the country that religious minorities are under pressure," says Mr. Motamed. "It is important to say that what people say about minorities is completely wrong,"

"Jews here have great Iranian roots – they love Iran," says chairman Moresadegh. "Personally, I would stay in Iran no matter what. I speak in English, I pray in Hebrew, but my thinking is Persian."

[Rasputin]

نماینده* شورای* فدراسیون* روسیه* گفت:* تا پایان* امسال* پخش* شبکه* ماهواره* ای* جهانی* یهودیان* آغاز خواهد شد*.


به* گزارش شبكه خبر مسيحيان فارسي زبان به نقل از* "واحد مرکزی* خبر" از مسکو، "اینترفاکس" نوشت: "** ولادیمیر اسلوتسکر" مبتکر این* طرح* و عضو شورای* فدراسیون* روسیه* افزود: این* طرح* از مرحله* طراحی* و تدوین** به* مرحله* مذاکرات* تجاری* با شرکت* کنندگان* احتمالی* رسیده* است.
**
این* نماینده* شورای* فدراسیون* روسیه* که* در سالهای* *2005* و *2006* ریاست* کنگره* روسی* *یهودی* را بر عهده* داشت،* *گفت:* در شرایطی* که*مناقشات* نژادی* و مذهبی* در سرتاسر جهان* افزایش* می* یابد، *ساخت* به* موقع شبکه* تلویزیونی* برای* جامعه* بین* المللی* یهودیان* ضروری* است** .

وی* افزود: یهودیان* در سراسر جهان* ازهم* جدا شده* اند و این* شبکه* تلویزیونی* ماهواره* ای* می* تواند به* مثابه* پلی* آنها را به هم* پیوند دهد* .

پخش* برنامه* های* این* شبکه* تلویزیونی* به* صورت* شبانه* روزی* خواهد بود و در ابتدا به* زبان* انگلیسی* برای* کشورهایی* که* تعداد یهودیان*بیشتری دارند،* *پخش* خواهد شد و پس از آن تعداد بیشتری* از کشورها را تحت* پوشش* قرار خواهد داد .

یکی* از طراحان* ایجاد این* شبکه* گفت:** این* شبکه* علاوه* بر خبر، *برنامه* های* مذهبی،* *فرهنگی*، *سیاسی*، *اقتصادی* و اجتماعی* برای* مخاطبان* پخش* می* کند* .

وی* افزود*: در حال* حاضر ما درجست و جوی* دفتر دبیرخانه* و استودیوی* مرکزی* هستیم* که* به* احتمال* زیاد یکی* ازکشورهای* اتحادیه* اروپا برای* این* امر انتخاب* خواهد شد.

[Rasputin]

[sooz]

Lots of Jewish people have gone to Israel, and other places, but most went before Ahmadinejad and many went pre-revolution.

I suspect they're all sticking together now. And I don't believe they think they're perfectly safe either, they just say they are.

I wonder if a few families do move to Israel, will it augur badly for those who remain in Iran? Don't know, but from what I've read and heard, the Iranian Jews, apart from religion, have very much an Iranian identity.

sooz

[Rasputin]

Jews of Kerala

There is very little reliable information about the origin of Kerala Jews. One belief is that 10 Jewish families released from jail by a Persian king in BC605 came by ship to Kodungallore. Another group must have followed in BC586 when Judea was defeated by Babylon. In AD 68 when the second temple of Jerusalem was destroyed another migration of a thousand Jews took place. There were subsequent waves of migration in AD369 and AD490. One source state that a large group of Jewish refugees came from Mesopotamia in AD 486.Most historians agree that the local Hindu rulers did everything to settle the new immigrants.


The Jews were already here when St.Thomas arrived in AD52.A Jewish emissary named Habban , mentioned in ancient Christian songs was supposed to have arrived in AD 52. His mission was to find a master builder who could build a church more beautiful than Solomon's. A Roman sailor who made a voyage from the red sea to the Malabar cost in the second century AD saw a colony of Jews there. In AD 4th century St.Jerome talks about the Jews of Malabar coast in correspondence.

A Hindu ruler named Bhaskara Ravivarmman issued copper plates to a leader of the Jewish settlement in Kodungallore. The date of this copper plate is variously claimed as AD 4 th century or Ad 10 th century. The translated writings spell out theprivileges awarded to the jews by the ruler. The Jews were serving the local rulers providing protection against foreign invaders. It is believed that the early Jewish settlements were in Kodungallore, Pandalayini and Ezimala.

For another 1000 years, after the awarding of the copper platesthe Jewish community of Kerala flourished with new arrivals from countries like Spain. Many Jewish scholars ave visited Kerala Jewish settlements. A fourteenth century poet and traveller Rabbi Nissim talks about his travels in a song which was popular amongst Cochin Jews.

Following rule of the descendants of Joseph Rabban in 1941 there was a split between two brothers as to who should rule .The younger brother won the struggle and fled to Cochin with his wife. Both sides sought favor from Samuthiri and the latter overran the Jewish settlements. The first Jewish temple was built in Cochin in 1344 AD. In 1524 the Arabs clashed with the Jews with help from Samuthiri. Jewish temples in Kodungallore and Cochin were destroyed.

In the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived by sea the Jewish presence was very nominal. As Portuguese influence led to further decline in Jewish settlements the remaining Jews took refuge with the Raja of Cochin. The ruler very graciously gave the Jews land . The Jewish town of 1567 and the Jewish synagog of 1568 were built on this land..

The Portuguese period starting in AD 1500 was the dark ages for Jewish settlements. The Portuguese arrived with cross in one hand and sword in the other. There references in Portuguese documents about Jewish settlements in Cochin, Goa, Kodungallore, Kozikode and suratt.In a letter written by the Portuguese to their king in 1513 permission is sought for their extermination. The Portuguese destroyed the remnants of the Jewish population in Kodungallore. They also destroyed the Jewish settlement in Cochin and damaged the Jewish synagogue as well as historical documents.

In AD 1662 the Dutch attacked Cochin but were driven out. The Jews were severely punished by the Portuguese for allegedly aiding the Dutch. In AD 1663 the Dutch returned and defeated the Portuguese. The Jews were treated more tolerantly by the Dutch rulers. The Cochin Jews reestablished their links with European Jews. In 1687 a Jewish delegation from Amsterdam arrived under the leadership of mr. Thomas Perera. His report published in 1687 under the name "NOTSIAS DOS JUDEOS DE COCHIM " is the history of Cochin Jews.

The Dutch period was the Golden era for Cochin Jews. They provided services for the Cochin rulers and the Dutch East India Company. They dominated export trade .Eskiel Rahabbi was one such trader based in Mattancherri. He had close links with other local communities and European countries. He was also interested in science and mathematics. He reprinted in Amsterdam many of the books destroyed earlier by the Portuguese .

The British period starting 1795 was also favorable for the Cochin Jews. In 1832 a visiting rabbi David Beth published from Madras "Travels Of Rabbi Beth Hillel". This book gives a clear picture of India in the 19th century. The British established a school to teach English and Hebrew in 1835. When the Jews learned that the English had religious conversion in mind they withdrew their children from the school. The Cochin government took over the school later. A Hebrew Malayalam press was established in 1877.The first British viceroy who visited the Jewish synagogue in Cochin was Lord Karson in 1900.

Soon after India became independent in 1947 Israel also came in to existence. The Cochin Jews wanted to take part in the building of the new Jewish homeland. The first Jewish community that migrated was from Mala. After handing over their cemetery and church to the local panchayat the entire Jewish community of Mala sailed of to Israel on December 12, 1954. The Jewish churches in Cochin's south side and 'kadavumbhagam' are also closed now with most of the community having migrated to Israel.

Cochin Jews were known as 'white ' black' or' brown.' . This division is perhaps contrary to Jewish rules which state that children borne to a Jewish mother will be always Jewish irrespective of skin color. Cochin's Jews came from Amorite tribes, hirite tribes and local converts.

The Jewish synagog of Cochin which was established in 1568 came to be known as the 'urch of foreign Jews' (Paradesi Juda Palli ).The name is a misnomer as the congregation included both 'white' and'brown' jews.There are references to the two groups in travelogues of 1817 by Paiwa.

There is some indication that the converted Jews faced discrimination from the others and often rebelled to know avail. They wanted to build another Jewish church but the local British resident opposed it. They tried to worship from some private homes, but that was opposed by the Diwan of Cochin. In spite of this they managed to conduct their worship for some years from a private home on Cochin's Lillie street. A letter written by a Jewish company in Bombay on October 22, 1845 requests the Diwan to repeal discriminatory rules against converted Jews. Subsequently the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem ruled that all Jews converted and otherwise should have equal status in the religion..This led to removal all vestiges of discrimination in the foreign Jewish church of Cochin. The late prime minister of India Mrs.indira Gandhi inaugurated the 400th anniversary celebrations of the church on December 15, 1968.

[sooz]

Jewish church

Great article, particularly about the Jews of Cochin. I've done a bit of research on them and published an article about it for my local Jewish community.

But... "Jewish church"? There's no such thing! A "church" is a place particularly associated with Christianity, just like a mosque is for Muslims. Jews have synagogoes, also occasionally called temples, but definitely not churches or mosques. Small error in the content, but shouldn't detract from a great article.

Sooz

[sooz]

If anyone is interested in the general origin of Jews in Iran, here's some info (not sure if it's been published here before, sorry):

Iranian Jews are amongst the oldest inhabitants of the country. The origin of the Jewish diaspora in Persia is closely connected with various events in Israel's ancient history. At the time of the Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser III (727 BC) thousands of Jews were expelled from Israel and forced to settle in Media. According to the annals of another Assyrian king, Sargon II, in 721 BC, Jewish inhabitants of Ashdod and Samaria in present day Israel were resettled in Media after their failed attempt against Assyrian dominance. Records indicate that 27,290 Jews were forced to settle in Ecbatana (today's Hamadan) in northwest and Susa in southwest Persia. These settlers are referred to as one of the 'Ten Lost Tribes of Israel' in biblical records.

The next wave of Jewish settlers arrived to escape persecution from the Assyrian king Nabuchadadnezzar II. Many were settled in Isfahan around 680 BC. The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great, the Achaemenid emperor, also brought many Jews into the country. In 539 BC, Cyrus entered Babylon with little resistance. The temple of Marduk, their main deity, was restored and in fact Cyrus crowned himself in the name of Marduk.The Jewish exiles in Babylon were permitted to go home and reconstruct the temple of Jerusalem and some chose to emigrate to Persia. The restoration was confirmed by King Darius and commenced at the time of Artaxerxes I. Under Darius, around 30,000 Jews left Babylon to start work on the temple.

The mild treatment Achaemenian accorded their conquered subjects was part of the imperial doctrine. The policies of the central administration encouraged autonomy in internal affairs with little intervention from the Persians. For instance, the Satrap (Governor General) of Judah, which constituted the fifth Satrapy, had his own local governor in Samaria with the right of supervision over the deputy in Judah.

From 516 BC, there was no Persian deputy in Judah. At first Shabazzar, from the ancient Davidic House, was the regional leader in Jerusalem. He was followed by Zerubbabel another Jewish aristocrat. In the fifth to fourth century BC, the rulers of Judah where also appointed among the local residents. Seals used by the ruler of Judah in the fifth century BC identify him as Yehoazar. In 458 BC, the Jew Ezra is appointed the deputy of Judah. The same Ezra had served -- up to this time -- as a scribe in the central administration in Susa, the Capital of the Persian Empire.

Sourced from: http://www****anian.com/History/2000...ews/index.html

The rest of the artcle is at the link.

Sooz

[Rasputin]

2 عكس از مراسم ازدواج يك زوج يهودي ايراني

[Rasputin]

Iranian Jewish life is the focus of "Caspian Rain"

MacAdam Cage, 298 pages, $25 'Sometimes, exile is the best thing that can happen to a people," reflects Roxanna, the strong-willed runaway hero of Gina B. Nahai's highly regarded "Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith" (1999). In her novels, Nahai takes the enabling power of exile as her core subject, conjuring richly imagined tales of Iranian Jewish life in transition: from the old-world ghettos of Tehran, where Jewish families lived for centuries as a self-conscious minority according to strict social hierarchies and constraining codes of behavior, to the liberating air of Los Angeles, a sun-drenched "golden medina" where, since the fall of the shah in 1979, 30,000 Iranian Jews currently live, thriving in "a land of choices and chances," basking in, perhaps, the best of all possible diasporas.

Nahai's power as a storyteller in the tradition of magical realism flows from her desire to weave the brutal facts of modern Iranian history with fantastic narratives of familial rupture and political displacement. "The surreal is woven into the culture" of Iran, Nahai has said. Her fiction thus blends fable with social criticism; from her clear-eyed yet deeply empathic perch in the New World, Nahai sounds the emotional costs of exile as she explores the trauma of loss for her fellow emigres.

In "Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith," a banished daughter -- the dangerous Roxanna, "possessed with a thousand demons" -- sprouts wings to escape her mother's shame-ridden, murderous rage and flies off to enact a dream of personal freedom beyond the closed world of Iranian Jewry. The novel concludes with a powerful image of homecoming: Roxanna's long-alienated new-world daughter, Lili, is reconciled with her self-exiled mother, and together they hover in the skies over post-shah Tehran (a startling journey of reverse migration, from Los Angeles to Iran), as Roxanna unearths the repressed fragments of family history -- a therapeutic act of filial bonding through memory and love.

In her ultimately less exhilarating, somber new novel, "Caspian Rain," Nahai tells the story of another restless woman, Bahar, a poor Jew from the Tehran ghetto thwarted in her romantic desires, haunted by unspeakable shame, trapped in -- and by -- the gossipy web of Iranian Jewish life.

"Caspian Rain" is narrated by Yaas, the all-knowing and (as we sadly discover) self-sacrificing daughter of Bahar, a young woman who dreams of an alternate destiny, beyond the limits of the Jewish ghetto. Yaas' father is the repressed Omid Arbab, the son of wealthy parents obsessed with social boundaries, embarrassed by ill-mannered, declasse Jews. "Caspian Rain" chronicles her parents' disastrous marriage, above all Bahar's rage at her plight as ignored and eventually betrayed wife.

Nahai also explores Bahar's complex response to Yaas' slowly enveloping deafness. A family history of imagined judgment haunts Bahar in the figure of her deaf "Ghost Brother," who died as a young boy after being hit by a car. His specter returns at key moments to unsettle or, perhaps, beckon Yaas; he looms as a symbol of the repressed shame that haunts the family. Only 12 but deeply wise about her dysfunctional family, Yaas recognizes the malign effects upon her mother of what she calls " 'the end of hope, the setting in of shame.' "

"Caspian Rain" is thus Yaas' narrative of how she tries to salve her mother's emotional pain so Bahar can ultimately see her daughter. In this respect the novel deepens the core theme of "Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith": the impact of a mother's self-chosen exile on her daughter. As Roxanna recalls, "I saw how alone [Lili] was, how invisible she felt, how afraid she was to look in my eyes and realize I had not seen her."

In "Caspian Rain," Yaas feels invisible, exiled in her deafness. "When I went deaf," she reflects, "I became an exile in my own land." Yaas seeks, in effect, to overcome the mournful underside of exile -- exile experienced as loss and filial severing -- by restoring her place in Bahar's (occluded by shame) line of vision.

Nahai sets this deeply felt (if abstract) narrative of imagined mother-daughter restoration against a more accessible (if predictable) novel of Iranian-Jewish manners. American readers will be absorbed by Nahai's colorful evocation of the characters of Cyrus Street in the heart of Tehran's Jewish ghetto. Bahar is a restless daughter of this bounded neighborhood, possessing "an air of aloofness, a strange confidence that is unnerving," a "certain defiance of convention." She dreams of being a teacher and is filled with "unremitting joy," "unrestrained" laughter and an "indestructible faith . . . that she will love and be loved, desire and be desrired."

By contrast, Omid is a model of restraint and repression befitting his snobby family's upper-crust demeanor. Obsessed with "decorum and tact," the Arbabs "are modern Jews who believe themselves Iranians first and Jews second." In the tradition of immigrant Jewish American fiction, the more-assimilated Arabs recall Anzia Yezierska's parvenu Jews, on the move from New York City's Delancey Street (the equivalent of Cyrus Street in Tehran's ghetto) to the tonier precincts of Riverside Drive, disparagingly termed "alrightnik's row." Bahar, unfortunately, only sees the promise of freedom reflected in Omid's eyes, but clear-sighted Yaas recognizes that her mother is "blinded by joy, giddy with the prospect of escaping her destiny once and for all."

Bahar is also innocent of Omid's disdain for her natural exuberance, unaware that he severely judges her lack of "poise." "[S]he'll just have to learn the ways of civilized folk," Omid thinks to himself, revealing his bad faith and latent misogyny, "and become a person he can take with him to parties."

" 'I want to become someone,' " Bahar implores her new husband. " 'You've done that ... by marrying me,' " he replies acidly.

"Caspian Rain" chronicles the suffocating atmosphere of Bahar and Omid's doomed marriage, following the tragic arc of what their daughter calls "our desolate, haunted lives." Defying his family's concern with status and appearance, Omid eventually runs off to Los Angeles with a mysteriously beautiful woman, Niyaz, with whom he is infatuated, and starts a new family. She possesses "an air of aloofness, a strange confidence" -- qualities that, in their compelling power (Niyaz embodies the mobility and freedom he craves), ultimately dislodge Omid from the narrow orbit of Arbab civility.

As for Bahar, she has a short-lived moment of happiness by the Caspian shore, where the family journeys to salvage its future. For Yaas, the Caspian looms in her memory as the cherished site of reawakening. "I feel my heart expand with joy," she recalls; by the sea, on the threshold of total deafness, she was able, somehow, to hear the rain fall. Yaas associates this ecstatic moment with the sound of her mother's voice. Indeed, she returns to her broken family with the desire never to forget that sound. The ability to remember her mother's voice, she feels, will enable her to preserve the deeper self exiled by deafness: to be "able to hear -- through memory -- even after I have gone deaf."

Despite this moving evocation of a daughter's desire to build a bridge with her mother through words, via the connective tissue of memory, the startling revelation at the end of "Caspian Rain" feels imposed, a narrative surprise. As does Yaas' refusal, born of profound daughterly love, "to save her [mother] from the good fortune that will augur such devastation in her life." Why is Bahar doomed to repeat a life of "despair" (the meaning, it turns out, of Yaas' name in Farsi)? Why does Yaas decide not to alter her mother's disastrous destiny?

By tethering the story of "Caspian Rain" to its native Iranian roots, Nahai refuses her women the redemptive potential of exile; she withholds from Bahar and Yaas the mythic promise of American self-invention. Perhaps Nahai will adjust her gifted storyteller's eye -- born of exile and filled with empathy -- to consider the sprawling spectacle of Iranian-Jewish life in Los Angeles, which is in places comic, if still haunted by loss. She is, after all, that subculture's finest chronicler. Perhaps in her next novel Nahai will hover over the luxurious gardens of Brentwood, or fly through the benighted hills of Beverly Glen, conjuring ghosts.

[Rasputin]

Iran was responsible for the bombing in Argentina in the Israeli Embassy and Jewish community center over a decade ago Alberto Nisman who served as the investigating prosecuter, said at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Institute on Tuesday night.

Nisman said that during the investigation eviddence was produced that directly linked former
Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani ald Ali Falahian, the head of Iranian intelligence at the time.
Following the attacks Argentina issued an international warrant for the arrests of the two and Iran attempted to bribe many countries to vote against the Interpol decision he said.

Nisman said Argentinian intelligence received information from the US and Israeli intelligence establishments at the time. He also noted that one of the judges involved in the case Jose Galiano was
suspected of receiving bribes from the Iranians.

The breakthrough came when Nisman together with his team identified the terrorist who perpetrated the truck bombing near the Jewisdh community center in July 1994. The man was identified as Ibrahim Hussein Berro of Lebanese descent.Muhsin Rabani a senior Shiite cleric of Iranian descent who lived in Argentina at the time was also suspect, and was believed to have received funds in order to purchase the vehicle used by the suicide bomber at the Israeli Embassy attack in 1992 in which 29 were killed including seven Israelis.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

The Majlis Deputy for Iran's Jewish Community has called on followers of all religions to vigilantly confront acts of religious sacrilege.

"It is a logical principle in today's world to respect the rights of other nations and observe the red lines of all religions," Morris Mo'tamed told Mehr News Agency.

Commenting on the ways to fight religious blasphemy, the MP said dialogue among divine religions would go a long way toward removing misunderstandings.

He called on the spiritual leaders of divine religions to provide opportunities for cordial and constructive talks among religions to help them stand against acts of desecration.

Iran's religious minorities have strongly protested the recent spate of blasphemous acts, he concluded, calling it the duty of all followers of divine religions to condemn such measures.

A 15-minute anti-Islam film made by a Dutch lawmaker has enraged Muslims throughout the world.

Earlier, Danish papers had printed blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), which sparked protests in Muslim countries across the world.

[Dokhtar Bandari]

I like no I love Jewish people. They are smart, have family values and are non violent unless provoked (defense), even then they rely on their faith to guide them. No matter where they establish themselves they bring prosperity and culture to the area. They always promote Art, music and artistic performances. They have contributed enormously to evolution of mind and Man through science and religion and that is why the likes of IR want to eliminate Israel and deal a blow to the heart of Jewish community.
IR is against evolution and progress. They are children of the Dark side under disguise, but they will not succeed because good always wins.
One look at their loyalty to our king and it makes you wonder why IR considers them such bad people.
Don't forget that Abraham was Persian and children of Abraham no matter where they are, should be considered descendants of Persians.