Trump’s in the Torah
You learn a great deal at your average Shabbat dinner, not just about the family and the latest goings on in everyone’s lives, but also about God, religion, science and economics.
These days, if you like your relatives and wish to stay related to them, you avoid talking politics except to say, “Yes, ma’am, I know I should be ashamed of myself for voting for crazy, corrupt Hillary and before her, Muslim-spy-intent-on-destroying-this-country Obama. I understand that Trump is going to save America and you and me with it. I’m glad you already feel safer, richer and more powerful.”
You learn that every news article in The New York Times and The Washington Post is “fake,” and that renowned, anti-Trump, conservative columnists like David Brooks and George F. Will are “desperate liberals.” You also learn, as I did last Friday night, that Donald J. Trump’s name appears several times in the Torah.
This latest gem of knowledge, you’re told, has been unearthed by scholars of the Old Testament for some time, and now is available at your neighborhood Orthodox shul. It may not be readily visible to the average person reading the Torah, but it’s clear as day to the experts, like Tom Hanks in “The Da Vinci Code,” who can detect and interpret signs and patterns and secret codes buried in the text.
You learn all this and if you want people to like you, or at least not dislike you very much, you throw your hands up and say, I sure hope you’re right.
I realize there were Trump voters in this country who kept their intentions to themselves until they went into the voting booth, but I assure you they weren’t Iranian Jews. Among our kind, it’s the Democrats who keep a low profile, get laughed at or vilified for their beliefs, get shouted at, lectured to, accused of taking money from liberal groups to spread misinformation about one candidate or another. As far as I can tell, somewhere around 60 percent of Iranian-American Jews and at least 30 percent of Iranian-Americans of Muslim background are Trump supporters. The Jews like his support of Israel, the Muslims like his opposition to the regime in Iran.
Well, who am I to say if these people are right or wrong? I have my opinion and they have theirs. I’m always wary of candidates who promise a great deal, and I’m quick to see and point out shortcomings in candidates I voted for. I’d be an imbecile to want to change anyone’s mind or to think that’s actually possible in today’s political climate. But if I were foolhardy enough to try to engage my Trumpist countrymen, and stupid enough to expect a civil response, I would really, truly, sincerely want to know how they explain the distance between what they advocate for the rest of the world and what they want for themselves.
Iranian hawks on Israel, for example, will tell you that peace with the Arabs is impossible, but they wouldn’t be caught dead letting a single one of their children serve in the Israeli army, much less fight in a war. I’m talking about those Iranian Jews who came to the United States instead of settling in Israel, or who settled in Israel until their children were of military service age, then quickly moved to the States.
Iranian hawks on Iran — Iranians of Muslim heritage — can’t wait to send American troops to the region, but only because we don’t have a draft.
They have no problem with a president who will appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, couldn’t care less whether Roe v. Wade is overturned, but most of them wouldn’t hesitate to get an abortion. They say they’re not racist; they just happen to know that a woman who looks like Michelle Obama should not be allowed in the White House. They vote against LGBT rights until one of their own comes out. They say Barack Obama was a traitor because his middle name was Hussein and that he bowed to the Saudi king, but they don’t mind at all Trump’s cozy relationship with Putin.
They, who immigrated to this country less than four decades ago, truly believe that banning refugees who have been vetted for 36 months before being allowed into the country is morally and strategically sound. They, the majority of whom stayed in this country illegally — after their tourist or student visas ran out — and operated under the radar for years until they were able to gain political refugee status, who have put to excellent use the cheap labor provided by undocumented men and women from south of the border, who have made fortunes from manufacturing goods in Asia or South America or selling stuff to Mexico, will tell you without irony that all illegals should be deported and all economic borders should be protected. That anyone who breaks the law by staying in the United States without permission must be sent back.
I would like to know how they rationalize these contradictions, and I’d love to know which genius code breaker detected Trump’s name in the Torah, but I’ve already made myself unpopular enough with my people, so I let it rest.
GINA NAHAI’s most recent novel is “The Luminous Heart of Jonah S”
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After a few months, we arrive at the New York airport. I’m with two little children and my wife. And my wife, who knows my temperament, she said, “You just don’t argue with anybody. Let’s go through this.” I said, “Fine.” So the guy calls me and says, “Why didn’t you let go of our hostages?” I said, “Excuse me?” “You Iranians,” he says. “Why didn’t you let go of our hostages?” … The third time, which is, you know, typical, he came and he said, “You still didn’t respond to me.” I said, “You know what, why don’t you and I go to Iran together and release the hostages? It’s a simple solution!” 
This is little me on the front steps of our apartment building in West Hollywood, in my coolest athletic gear. Most people living in that community were immigrants and it brought us so much closer together knowing we had this generous network of friends and babysitters we could rely on. A few years after arriving to America, my grandparents immigrated and moved in next door. My grandmother used to make Russian dumplings by hand and sell them to delis. She used her earnings to pay her way through school, where she studied English and accounting. Last year, she was able to comfortably retire. She’s a huge inspiration. 
My family and I left the Soviet Union in 1989 when I was 10. We were escaping anti-Semitism, which was rampant. Jewish refugees could not go directly to the U.S., and places like Austria, where we were initially settled, were overrun with refugees. The situation could get very heated, with Austrian protestors holding picket signs that said, “Shoot the Jews!“ and yelling “Sterben!” — “Die!” Later, we settled in a beautiful Italian coastal town, Santa Marinella. It had magnificent views of the Tyrrhenian Sea, palms, beach and a medieval castle, but none of it was really enjoyable since we were living in limbo. People had heart attacks, aneurisms, nervous breakdowns. Then came the vetting process and questions such as, “Were you ever members of the Communist party?” The only correct answer was “No!” Who would check? How can you prove it?
I can remember the black sky from the burning. And we were in terror because they were looking for the Jews. … We lost everything. We had property, we had money in the banks. … I remember coming in [to the refugee camp in Italy] and not knowing where we’re going to sleep, what we’re going to eat, whatever. I was 17. And my mom was a widow at that time. … But maybe because my personality is I’m always looking to the positive on anything, I was happy to leave [Libya]. I was happy to leave to a place where I was subjugated to always worry, always with the head half turned back, you never know when you’re going to be pinched or someone’s going to try to kill you. So for me, we were on our way to freedom and it was a good feeling.
I was 12 years old. Knew no English pretty much, just some really bad words that the soldiers taught me at the German [displaced persons] camp. … This [photo above] was in East Orange, N.J. — that was kind of our first stop in America. … We were at that DP camp in Germany in Regensburg for about a year and a half, and that was kind of my first schooling. That’s where I learned the alphabet, I learned what two plus two is — you know, some math.. … The big joke in the Regensburg camp was, “Don’t worry about it — you’re going to find money on trees in America.” Me, being a foolish 12-year-old, I started looking at the trees.
The black-and-white photo features my mother and me in Iran in the mid-1980s. Iran printed the word “Jew” next to our names on our passports. Months later, on the same document, the Americans printed the three greatest words that have ever been written about us, stamped in a miraculous, indisputable promise: “Protected Refugee Status.” That alone should tell us something about the differences between repressive theocracies and redemptive democracies. I am eternally grateful to Congress and to HIAS (formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) for the gift of a renewed life, as this photo of my son and me in America in 2017 conveys. It also captures my inner joy at not having had to wear a mandatory Muslim head covering in more than 28 years.
Even after a successful procedure, Mark realized he no longer looked like himself. When a music industry job brought him to Los Angeles a few years later, he embraced the city’s larger Jewish community but felt guilty about his nose job. Fully comfortable in his Jewish skin, he found he wanted his old nose back.
Dr. Nima Shemirani, a Beverly Hills facial plastic surgeon, said although younger Jewish patients explore rhinoplasty and other procedures to fit Hollywood ideals of beauty, future generations will be more accepting of their natural ethnic features. He recommends beginning the “Why rhinoplasty?” conversation earlier in life with a board-certified practitioner, especially because revision rhinoplasty is always more complex than primary rhinoplasty, with double the healing time — especially for Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jews.
