January 17, 2024

Immediately after Oct. 7, I couldn’t stop doomscrolling through social media and checking my newsfeed. Everything I saw made me feel depressed, anxious and scared. I couldn’t sleep, I wasn’t eating right and I couldn’t think straight.

But every night, when I’d cuddle with my daughters before bedtime, I’d feel better.

When my husband and I would talk about what was going on, I’d instantly calm down.

While learning Torah over the phone with my study partner in Lakewood, I’d become a little more centered.

Why? All these things brought me closer to Hashem. 

Receiving and spreading Hashem’s love is our mission as the Jewish people. And yet, so often these days, that’s being left out of the conversation.

Many people are afraid, sharing stories about antisemitism and the atrocities happening to Jews in Israel and around the world. Trust me, I’m very familiar with it. Whenever I talk about being Jewish on social media, I get hundreds of antisemites coming after me. 

It’s not very encouraging, but I choose not to focus on it. Instead, I focus on what’s right in front of me: Hashem. So many of us are spiritually dehydrated right now and feeling worn out and beaten down. But there are ways to turn this around.

For instance, whether or not we keep Shabbat, Shabbat exists. We can choose to step into this holy day and feel calm and collected. We can sit around the Friday night table with family and friends, eat a soul-satisfying chicken soup and laugh and cry and feel less alone. We can go to synagogue to listen to an inspiring speech from our rabbi and connect with our community.

During the week, we can learn Torah on our own or with a friend, or we can tune into a podcast for a few minutes per day.  And we can pray from a prayerbook or simply from our hearts. Hashem hears every request, big or small.

As human beings, our perspective is limited, but Hashem can grant miracles. He can turn everything around in an instant. I know, because I’ve seen it.

As human beings, our perspective is limited, but Hashem can grant miracles. He can turn everything around in an instant. I know, because I’ve seen it. In my 20s, I was constantly struggling and pleading to Hashem for help. There were so many times I couldn’t afford my basic necessities. I’d tell Him, “Please send me money to pay my bills.” And then I’d say, “I trust you, Hashem. Now I’m going to stop worrying about it and go on with my day. I know You’ll take care of me.”

Within minutes, I’d have that money in my bank account. 

This is just a small example, but it’s one that I believe anyone can learn and implement in their everyday lives. 

It’s important to put down your phone and stop looking at everything bad. Instead, think of what you can do to connect to Hashem. It can be as simple as saying a blessing before you eat a certain food or saying Shema or telling your children how much you love them. 

If you’re having trouble solving a problem – and you know you’ve tried your best to figure it out yourself – ask Hashem for help. Then, leave it in His hands and see what happens.

Remember: Human beings have free will; Hashem gives us choice so that we can have an authentic relationship with Him. If our sins immediately led to punishment and our good deeds immediately resulted in rewards, an authentic relationship would not be possible. 

But because free will exists, bad things happen. People make bad choices all the time. We don’t have to focus on the bad. We can focus on all the good. We can think more broadly about what happens in the world and say, “Hashem is in control. I trust in Him.”

This is difficult at times, but it’s what gets me through. Since I started believing in Hashem, my life has improved greatly. And it has been the ultimate source of comfort since Oct. 7.

Are you ready to open your eyes and see Hashem? I know He’s ready for you.

What’s been bringing you comfort? Email me: Kylieol@JewishJournal.com.

Kylie Ora Lobell is the Community Editor of the Jewish Journal.

As a long-distance grandmother of a 12-year-old girl, I’m starting to notice our connections are fraying. While she is busy making her new life with friends, I’m standing in the dust outside her room, missing our cozy bedtime stories and hugs. I know I shouldn’t kvetch. On the rare summer day that she is in town we still enjoy hanging at the beach or strolling to Jeni’s for an ice cream together. But I know which direction this gap is going in, and it makes me sad.

To buy more time before Piper goes full teenager, I decided to meet her on her own ground. I asked her to help me understand the one subject about which every pre-teen and teen girl is expert — pop music savant and Person-of-the-Year Taylor Swift. I asked her to help me “get it” so that I too could be swept up in a hysterical fad that looks like a lot of fun, if you don’t mind crying and fiddling with beaded bracelets. I requested an interview to lock in personal time with P, who is very busy.

To prepare, Piper suggested that I listen to the recent albums “Evermore,” “Folklore” and “Lover” — albums she thought I could “handle.” Swift’s music was easy to listen to. No matter the situation, Swift brings a sparkly light touch to all her subject matter. Essentially hers is the story of girlhood and I get it. I was a girl once. 

Yearning to go haywire over the singer-songwriter, I dug deeper. I watched the TV documentary “Miss Americana,” saw the charming NPR Tiny Desk concert. I even convinced a friend to see the “Eras” concert film with me on a big screen. After two hours, we got it enough to bolt. 

By the time I came to town for Hanukkah latkes and the interview, I knew my subject as well as any 73-year-old grandma could. Like other big female singers before her, Swift has broken up with her management, ditched bad boyfriends and set off on her own. Where she did something new was to rerecord six albums (and own the master recordings) and then sell them back to the same fans. Hers is the story of a beautiful suburban girl born with huge talent and supportive parents who writes and sings the stories of her life to great acclaim. All while seeming nice enough for a grandma to like.

It was delightful to sit in Piper’s room again and have some personal time together. Piper patiently explained her fandom. “Her [Swift’s] life and songs are inspirational.” When I asked what she thought of the whole Travis Kelce brouhaha, she shrugged. “I like them together,” she confessed. If it doesn’t work out? “She’ll keep on dating. Or maybe she’ll just stay single. I like where she is right now,” P declared.

The first time I got swept up in a pop music fad, young women were picking out which Beatle to marry and screaming their brains out to catch their attention …

Her tone was much more down-to-earth than I expected. The first time I got swept up in a pop music fad, young women were picking out which Beatle to marry and screaming their brains out to catch their attention — as I did at their Forest Hills Tennis Stadium concert in 1964. My counterintuitive pick was Ringo since I figured that Paul and John were just too obvious and George was just too weird. Mr. Starr, in my teen brain, was the accessible one who would be easier to live with. I kissed his picture every night and prayed for him to find me. Yes, I loved the music, but there was also something hormonal going on. 

Jump ahead a few years and I trekked to Woodstock to worship new musical idols. Sex, drugs and rock n roll were in full swing by then. We weren’t just concert-goers; we were making the world a better place, right? None of us knew what was really going on at that mad concert, but ticket sales and merch were the last things on our minds. We just wanted to survive the rain, liberate the republic and be reborn as the free children of the Aquarian age. 

Today’s pop music feels less magical. Swift’s fans have hard cold data on their crush. They know about her high school scandals, her gal pals, her business strategy and the public slaps she has endured. In an odd way, today’s fans meet the mega performer on a more level, if virtual, playing field. To them she’s just another girl trying to figure things out. As Piper explained, “Taylor just started doing what she wanted. She stopped pleasing others and she deserves her success.” I agree. What’s not to like about a woman at the top of her powers?

I stopped listening to Swift’s music soon after our interview. It was all a ruse anyway. I never really “got it” on a visceral level. As the cultural gap continues to grow between us, I’ll continue to look to my granddaughter for cultural updates. Meanwhile, I’ve gone back to listening to my latest crush, jazz singer Samara Joy, with weekends devoted to my forever heartthrob, Bach.

Los Angeles food writer Helene Siegel is the author of 40 cookbooks, including the “Totally Cookbook” series and “Pure Chocolate.” She runs the Pastry Session blog.

There is a remarkable exhibition currently at the Skirball Cultural Center called “This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement.”  It was organized by the Center for Documentary Expression and Art in Salt Lake City and Cleveland’s Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, and is on view through Feb. 25th.  I have seen it four times, not just because I find it so informative and challenging, but because my daughter Alissa happens to be the curator for the present edition of the show.  If she weren’t, I probably would have only seen it twice!

The show consists of 157 photographs as well as 15 archival objects added by the Skirball that together tell the story of those who in the 1960s put their lives on the line for civil rights. The nine photographers whose work is featured remind us of the sacrifices made by Black Americans and their allies during one of the most difficult times in U.S. history.

At a moment when Black-Jewish relations are particularly strained over different narratives regarding the Middle East, I was moved by the unity displayed back then. You might be familiar with the iconic photo from the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery in support of voter rights. There is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., arms linked with a number of his colleagues, among them John Lewis, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later a much revered member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Also is the front row you will find Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. A close friend of Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel was determined to be there for Black Americans when they needed him most.

Heschel isn’t the only Jew portrayed in the exhibition who, inspired by his Jewish values, cared more for justice than for his own safety. The show includes a heartbreaking display created by the Skirball about three young volunteers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the latter two, Jewish New Yorkers, whose effort to register Black voters cost them their lives. They didn’t die in vain: Historians argue that their murders in June of 1964 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were instrumental in gathering the support that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and later to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  In a well-deserved honor, the three martyrs were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2014.

The show also includes a photo of a bloodied older man sitting along the side of the road.  It turns out that he is Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, of Cleveland’s Fairmont Temple.  He had been badly beaten with a tire iron at a 1964 voter registration campaign event in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Next to the photograph, headphones offer visitors the chance to listen to the voice of photographer, Herbert Randall, who explains that when he stopped to assist the rabbi, Lelyveld told him in no uncertain terms, “Photographer, take the picture.”  He was more interested in documenting the brutality than in stopping the bleeding.

But in my mind the most touching example of the Jewish support for civil rights is a photo of a man with one leg on crutches, wearing a yarmulke and sweating profusely, as he persevered during 54 grueling miles on the trek from Selma to Montgomery. His name was Jim Letherer, an amputee who marched alongside Dr. King and other activists. Last month my daughter gave a tour of the exhibition to the celebrated civil rights leader Dr. Bernard Lafayette. Dr. Lafeyette paused in front of this photo and said “I remember this guy.  John (Lewis) and I kept asking him to take a break because we thought he was going to pass out during the march.  But he insisted on continuing on.”

How poignant it is to recall a period when Black and Jewish Americans were literally marching arm in arm.

Despite these trying times, we must do the work to keep that light aglow.  A step in the right direction is the Karsh Family Foundation’s gift to the Skirball highlighting and fostering connections between the Black and Jewish communities. As we celebrate what we have done together in the past, may we write a new chapter that one day observers will view with awe and appreciation.

Morton Schapiro is the former president of Williams College and Northwestern University.  His most recent book (with Gary Saul Morson) is “Minds Wide Shut:  How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us.”

As a writer, I have a love affair with words. But even I am left at a loss for words in describing the unique shame and pain of witnessing how, for the last 45 years, my former homeland, Iran, has brutalized the homeland of my soul, Israel. 

Last week, I wrote about the grim prospect of war between Israel and Iran. It’s a terrible thought, but an important one, and while I believe most American Jews can imagine what war between the Jewish State and the Islamic Republic would imply for Israelis, few may be thinking about what a post-Oct. 7 reality means for Jews of Iran, who currently comprise one of the largest Jewish communities in the Middle East outside of Israel.  

American Jews, by and large, don’t know enough about Iranian Jewry. That is why, as promised last week, I want to help readers understand more about this ancient community and what is at stake for its present, as well as its future. 

But I feel compelled to share something with readers that is not often mentioned by writers when reporting about the Jews of Iran: It’s an unspeakable code, an understanding, if you will, and anyone active in matters related to Iranian Jewry knows its limits. Quite simply, it is extremely difficult to write about the present-day state of Jews in Iran. If writers, even those in the West, condemn the regime too much, especially by making the grave mistake of actually quoting sources from within Iranian Jewry who might describe life as miserable, they may risk actual Jewish lives back in Iran. 

But if Western journalists — and I have seen so many, including from The New York Times and PBS NewsHour — downplay the risks and paint a rosy picture of a community that is generally doing well in a Middle East otherwise plagued by violence and antisemitism, they aren’t telling the whole story.

Here are some important facts about Jews in Iran: Many scholars believe that Jews are Iran’s oldest religious minority, having lived there nearly 2,700 years (if you count the first 100 years of Jewish captivity in Babylon, after the fall of the First Temple). Jews lived in Iran, which until 1935 was known as Persia, for over 1,000 years before the arrival of Islam. The land — its language, culture, prose and history — is ingrained in us, whether we still live in Iran or escaped in the last four decades and resettled in countries such as the United States, Israel, Canada or Italy.

Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Westernizing, secularizing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, there were nearly 100,000 Jews in Iran. Today, that number is less than 10,000, according to Israeli sources, though the regime (and Jewish leaders in Iran themselves) often elevate that number to 20,000. 

Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Westernizing, secularizing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, there were nearly 100,000 Jews in Iran. Today, that number is less than 10,000, according to Israeli sources, though the regime (and Jewish leaders in Iran themselves) often elevate that number to 20,000. 

Why? It’s simple: It is in Iran’s best interest to boast that it has a large, thriving Jewish population, especially when the regime is slammed with accusations of antisemitism as a result of everything from funding billions of dollars to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, to executing over 20 Jews since 1979 and hosting Holocaust cartoon contests. 

It’s no secret that Iran helped plan Oct. 7, and, as Mark Hetfield, president and CEO of HIAS (formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) told me, “Conditions in Iran — in particular for Jews — have deteriorated even further after Oct. 7.”

How do Jews fare in Iran today, especially during the last four months? More than ever before, they find ways to survive. 

It should be noted that in Iran, Jews (and Christians, Zoroastrians and other recognized religious minorities, excluding Baha’is) are considered a protected religious minority, and Jews and Christians are a people of the “ketab” (book/Bible). And unlike Jews who escaped Arab countries long ago, Iran’s Jews are not currently harassed or being killed. 

Again, optics are vital to the regime and the last thing it needs now, while it demands a better deal from the West and seeks to sabotage Saudi-Israel relations, is news that it has executed members of its own Jewish community, especially after Oct. 7.

Jews in Iran have synagogues, access to kosher meat (and wine for Shabbat, despite a national ban on alcohol) and one Jewish member of parliament to represent their community. In 2014, the regime extended a much-appreciated gesture to the Jewish community by unveiling a monument that honored Jewish soldiers who had fallen during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), in which over one million people died. That gesture helped Jews feel recognized as an identity by which they have always viewed themselves: Iranian. Still, the Jews of Iran live in a perpetual state of saying and doing anything that is necessary in order to survive. It’s not easy living in a theocratic state in which Zionism is punishable by death. 

Last Passover, some Jewish communities were forced to cancel Passover events in order to participate in the country’s annual “Quds Day,” celebrating Palestinian “resistance” and demanding an end to “the Zionist entity.” In October, shortly after worldwide false reporting that the IDF had bombed a hospital in Gaza, fanatics burned Israeli flags at the tombs of Esther and Mordechai in the northern town of Hamadan. The tomb is the holiest site in Iran for Jews, and as Iran expert Alireza Nader wrote on X, “This is the first time such an event has taken place within the grounds of the tomb.” 

In what may have been a first, after Oct. 7, the regime warned its Jewish citizens to cut all ties with relatives in Israel. According to Iran International, which is based in the U.K., Jews in Tehran and Shiraz received phone calls warning them not to be in contact with family in Israel. 

As you can guess, many Jews immediately left WhatsApp groups and even blocked messages from loved ones in Israel. According to Iran International, Iran’s attorney general “criminalized any action aimed at confirming, strengthening and consolidating Israel in cyberspace.”

Imagine that: Leaving a WhatsApp group chat with family in Israel because you are afraid of being arrested (or worse). Sometimes, I wonder if we appreciate the special freedoms we enjoy in this country. 

Most notoriously, on Oct. 30, hundreds of Jews in Iran were forced to march against Israel in what became the largest anti-Israel demonstrations by Jews since 1979 (those demonstrations also occurred under intense pressure to keep the Jewish community safe by towing an anti-Israel line). Images and videos of Jews in five Iranian cities — Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Yazd and Kermanshah — mostly men wearing yarmulkes and holding signs condemning the Jewish State, went viral. 

The forced protests even prompted a spokesperson from the State Department to announce that the Biden administration acknowledged that the protests were coerced, according to Voice of America (VOA). The spokesperson called the pressure against religious groups reprehensible, adding, “Iran’s apparent exploitation of this conflict to advance its repression and propaganda against its Jewish community is abhorrent.”

If it was possible to find humor in all this, it came in the form of a response issued by Iran’s U.N. mission in New York, which sent VOA a statement regarding criticism from the U.S.: The regime compared the Jews it forced to protest in Tehran with leftist American Jews who protested against Israel in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 18. 

Asking whether these American Jews had also been “subject to pressure,” Iran’s U.N. mission declared that “Iranian Jews, akin to other Jews worldwide … are indeed fed up with the egregious crimes committed by the occupying regime [Israel] against innocent Palestinian women and children.”

Yes, we all know that Jews in Iran enjoy as much agency and freedom to condemn Israel as a bunch of left-wing American Jews who have, more or less, been allowed to shut down everything from freeways to airports because they live in a democracy.

I asked Dr. David Menashri, founding director of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, whom I also quoted in last week’s column, one not-to-simple question: Are today’s Jews of Iran safe?

Like me, Menashri knows what’s at stake in offering an inaccurate response that might suggest that Iran’s Jewish community currently faces existential peril. I’ve known Menashri, one of the world’s foremost Iran experts, for nearly two decades and admire that his research-driven approach to studying Iranian Jews, including those who live in Israel, is imbued with compassion and humanity. 

“Are Jews safe in Iran today?” he asked me, mirroring my question. “When there is a trend of [government] denial of the Holocaust and shouts of ‘Death to Israel!’ Jews, no matter where they live, cannot be indifferent to such messages,” he said. “Iran’s government isn’t actively harassing Iranian Jews or pushing them out of the country, but there are the subjective feelings of the people (Jews) themselves. Iranian Jews have done whatever they can do to be faithful to Iran. Iranian Jews, no matter where they live, love Iran, are attached to the culture and to Persian civilization. You can see this in Israel, Los Angeles and elsewhere. And some remain in Iran because of their attachment to the culture.”

It’s true, despite how surprising it may be: Many Jews still choose to live in Iran, and the reasons range from old age and financial security to nationalism. “If they haven’t left in 45 years, maybe they want to live there,” said Menashri, “but again, we don’t know. All their statements from their [Jewish] leaders are in line with policies of the regime.” 

Menashri also reminded me that there are two sides to every coin. “Things like access to kosher meat or a parliament member make it more pleasant for them when there are Holocaust denial conferences and other forms of antisemitism,” he said. 

Menashri, who was born in Iran, also reiterated, “We can assess people by what they do or say, but not what they think,” referring to whether some Iranian Jews do sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis. 

“Antisemitism is a common phenomenon in the history of Iran, period,” he said. “So living 45 years in the Islamic regime, they [Jews] learned to live with it, and they’re not scared of being executed every day. Yes, 21 Jews have been executed since the revolution, but when you look at how many Muslims have been executed, it shows a broader trend.”

The Jews of Iran are living threads in an ancient tapestry that weaves a story of many other Jewish communities in exile, a story that recent Torah portions have highlighted in the plight of Jews in Egypt once a new pharaoh who held them in contempt took power. “When you live in the Diaspora, you live with the temperament and the development of the country you’re in,” said Menashri. “You live with the law. By our Jewish tradition, we pray for the good health of the leaders of the state. In millennia, Iranian Jews learned to adjust to be faithful to the state.” 

Next week, I’ll share what options, if any, exist for Jews to currently leave Iran and offer insights from experts, including HIAS leaders, who are leading these efforts on the ground, especially in the U.S. 

For now, I’ll leave readers with a final observation by Menashri, who edited a new, 600-page book in Hebrew, “Iranian Jews in Israel: Immigration, Challenges of Integration and Absorption,” which was published last month (and which I’ll report on separately): “The clear expression of Jewish feelings after the revolution is the migration of most Jews from Iran,” he said. According to Menashri, more Jews of Iranian descent live in Israel – probably more than in the rest of the world combined– because many arrived as early as the 19th century through the establishment of the State of Israel in the 1940s and 1950s.

But, he said, “For better or worse, after the Islamic Revolution, most of the Jews who emigrated from Iran have not immigrated to Israel. It can be said that the higher their socioeconomic status, the more they flew West – mainly to the large concentrations of Iranian immigrants in Los Angeles and Long Island. Iran, by contrast, one of the oldest Diasporas in Jewish History – and the largest in the Muslim World then – has fallen to a historic low.”

Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer, speaker and weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Follow her on X and Instagram @TabbyRefael