Life as a Female Persian Rabbi

It’s not every day you meet a Persian female rabbi in a traditional community. So, one of the first questions I asked 34-year-old Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh was: “What’s the worst thing anyone’s ever said to you?”

“Someone in the Persian community once came up to me and said, ‘You’re becoming a Reform rabbi? Shame on you,’ ” Rabizadeh replied. But the most difficult comment came from an elderly Persian rabbi who officiated at her grandfather’s funeral. “Some things,” he said, “a woman just shouldn’t know.”

I first met Rabizadeh in 2019 at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., when I led a delegation of young Iranian-American Jewish leaders from 30 Years After’s Maher Fellowship. Rabizadeh spoke in front of 18,000 pro-Israel advocates. For the 30 Years After attendees, the sight of an olive-skinned, curly-haired, young, Persian female rabbi left them goggle-eyed. Her existence was even more extraordinary because her name is so Persian.

Born in Santa Monica, Rabizadeh was raised in a traditional Persian family, and her first language was Persian. Her family belonged to Nessah Synagogue, which was founded by the late Hacham Yedidia Shofet, the former chief rabbi of Iran, when the shul still was located in Santa Monica. 

“As Persians, most of us don’t fit under strict denominations like Orthodox, Conservative or Reform,” Rabizadeh said. “Those are more Ashkenazi constructs.”

This may explain why some Persian Jews in the U.S. don’t know much about the Reform movement. In Iran, most Jews practiced some form of Judaism, but there was a dichotomy, which began under the secular, Western-oriented Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who reigned from 1941 until his overthrow in 1979.  This dichotomy was between Jews who observed halachah and those who saw piety as a relic of the past — a time when Jews were confined to ghettos all over Iran.

Rabizadeh’s great-grandparents founded one of the largest synagogues in Shiraz — Rabizadeh Synagogue. When I mentioned that my husband and his family, who also are from Shiraz, belonged to her great-grandparents’ shul, Rabizadeh teared up. That’s the thing about Persian Jews. Even among younger people, our stories of Jewish life and community often are tied through Old World connections.

Until she was a teenager, Rabizadeh was content with her knowledge of Judaism. But as a sophomore at Milken Community High School, she was deeply moved by a class taught by Rabbi Sharon Brous, who later co-founded IKAR.

“I was annoyed by the biblical concept of ‘na’aseh v’nishmah,’ in which the Israelites’ declared, ‘We will do and we will listen to God’s decrees,’” Rabizadeh said. “I questioned why ancient Jews seemed to pledge blind devotion, and the way [Brous] answered the question made me feel there was so much more I could learn.” 

One morning, she told her parents she was going to be a rabbi. She was 16.

“I don’t self-identify as Reform. I’m just Jewish.” — Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh

“My dad stopped brushing his teeth and just looked at me. Finally, he asked, ‘Are you going to work at Chabad?’ My mom, who was worried about [kashrut], asked, ‘Does that mean you won’t eat at our house anymore?’ ”

I can’t blame Rabizadeh’s parents. If they’re anything like mine, they’re unconditionally loving, but they probably believe their Jewish experiences are enough and wonder why their daughter wants more.

Rabizadeh continued, “I think their lack of initial understanding came from the idea that being religious might not be a good thing, and that it held people back in Iran. And they didn’t understand what Reform Judaism [was].”

Ironically, Rabizadeh had to “break out” from the Persian community to gain the tools to serve its needs. She graduated from Boston University in 2008 with a degree in public policy and education, and a minor in Hebrew. She returned to L.A. and worked in interior design before attending Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), where she received a master’s in Jewish Education in 2013. A few years later, she decided to fulfill her lifelong dream and attended rabbinical school at HUC-JIR in New York City. She was ordained in 2018.

“I think I was the only non-Ashkenazi person for the three years I was at HUC,” she said. “One of my peers called me a ‘token of diversity.’ Another bought me a Yiddish dictionary as a parting gift. At the end of the day, it was Ashkenazim who gave me a chance to become, well, me.”

During a visit to North Carolina to perform Shabbat services as part of her rabbinical internship, Rabizadeh met Jews who asked when she’d converted. “They’d never seen a Persian Jew. So I playfully retorted, ‘Does it look like you wandered 40 years in the desert, or me?’”

In 2018, Rabizadeh moved to San Francisco to serve as a Jewish Emergent Network (JEN) rabbinical fellow at The Kitchen, where she learned how “to start a community from the ground up.” She led services, taught conversion classes and officiated at funerals. When the fellowship ended this July, she moved back to L.A. with a vision: to create a nondenominational community that would attract Persian and Ashkenazi Jews.

“This is it,” she said. “I am fulfilling my dream. I had to leave to find my voice. Now I am ready to be back home.” She hopes her project will be a blend of Persian and Ashkenazi communities. “I want to bridge those worlds,” she said. “I want to do something that will last generations.”

Rabizadeh’s journey has come full circle. She’s currently back at her alma mater, Milken, teaching Talmud and Bible studies to ninth and 10th graders. She officiates at life-cycle events but won’t perform marriage ceremonies on Shabbat. “I don’t self-identify as Reform,” she explained. “I’m just Jewish. I don’t know what box I fit into anymore. My dad says I’m a closeted Orthodox Jew.”

Today, though, she said, her parents are proud of her path. “I realized that the traditions I was taught at home stemmed from many talmudic passages I learned during rabbinical school. My parents’ home and my path aren’t mutually exclusive.”

The Iranian-American Jewish community has changed, too. In the past decade, a new generation of progressive young Iranian-American Jews actively have been searching for ways to honor rich traditions while embracing newer American realities. Some of them just might help Rabizadeh realize her dreams.

“Now that I’m back in L.A., I hear Persians say to me, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ I don’t know where they were 10 years ago,” she said.

At the same time, she’s compassionate toward the skeptics because she knows it takes time to soften hearts. Her greatest weapon in dealing with mostly older, disapproving Persians? Her last name. She introduces herself to community members, some of whom can’t help but smile upon hearing “Rabizadeh,” which, in one Persian translation, means “a descendant of rabbis.”

Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker and activist.