An engaging panel discussion on the involvement of Persian Jews in Jewish activism was held at Sephardic Temple on April 22. The event, organized by StandWithUs and Kol Israel, drew dozens of Persian Jews from both the older and younger generations. Moderated by Roz Rothstein, CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs, the panel featured three activists running for the World Zionist Congress who urged the Jewish community to vote for Kol Israel, Slate 4.

Kol Israel is a nonpartisan, nondenominational faction that brings together Jews from all backgrounds and political ideologies — right and left, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Secular, Sephardic and Ashkenazi. Its mission is to educate and empower the next generation of leaders and activists committed to advancing Jewish continuity. The group believes Zionism should be inclusive and free of labels or predispositions, aiming to serve as a welcoming home for all Jews who wish to work toward a better Israel and a stronger sense of Jewish peoplehood, without being confined by political or religious frameworks.

Roz Rothstein, who moderated the panel, said she deeply understands the fears of the older Persian generation — those who immigrated to the U.S. from Iran and were oppressed and afraid to speak up. 

“I’m a daughter of Holocaust survivors and I was embedded in this fear, in this trauma and in this PTSD. So, right away, I felt a strong connection to the Persian community,” said Rothstein. “To say that you are not involved is not true. Our team at StandWithUs includes many Persian members working on global issues. But from an outside perspective, I do think the Persian community could become even more engaged and do more for the Jewish community.”

Dr. Sheila Nazarian, a plastic surgeon, TV personality and public speaker, also shared her story. She escaped from Iran with her sister and mother after the revolution. Her activism began in 2021, following the events in Sheikh Jarrah and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Until then, she said, she was a busy mother of three kids, ages, 13, 16 and 17 and had made a name for herself as a successful plastic surgeon and the host of the Netflix series, “Skin Decision: Before and After.”

“I have one son in college, and I realized how much antisemitism there is on college campuses. I went to Columbia University. I wanted to create a safe place for my kids and that’s how I got involved in activism,” Nazarian told The Journal.

Initially, her efforts were met with skepticism and resistance. “Everyone said, ‘What are you doing? What makes you think you can make a difference? You have kids — you need to think about your safety.’ I replied, ‘I’m doing it for my kids. If we don’t speak up now, what will our grandkids have to go through?’”

Nazarian admitted that at first, she herself wasn’t sure her activism would make a difference — but it did.

“I’m very busy with work, but when I saw my colleagues shouting ‘Apartheid,’ ‘Genocide,’ and all those ridiculous accusations, I went into survival mode. I started waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety — something I’d never experienced before. I lost a lot of followers, but I knew I couldn’t stop. It felt like Iran all over again. And I thought, our parents didn’t bring us to America to stay silent. They left everything behind so we could have freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”

The younger Persian generation, however, is more actively engaged, Nazarian said. They see firsthand what’s happening on college campuses. They witness the hate and feel compelled to take action. Since Oct. 7, many students have spoken out, including in front of Congress, sharing their campus experiences, the rise in antisemitism, and the failure of university administrations to protect them. Notably, many of these outspoken students are the children of Iranian Jewish immigrants.

 “There was a recent poll that showed younger people believe Israel is responsible for all the problems in the Middle East,” said Nazarian.

Matthew Nouriel, a nonbinary digital activist and content creator, serves as the Community Engagement Director at JIMENA — Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. Like Nazarian, he began his Jewish activism in May 2021. Fearlessly, Nouriel took to social media to set the record straight about what was happening in Israel and to express support for the country. As expected, those posts drew significant backlash, but that didn’t stop him.

 “Zionism is fighting for its life right now and the people opposing us love to see us divided,” said Nouriel. “All this slate cares about is the continuation and survival of Zionism and the next generation. They intentionally chose a delegation with a diverse background — Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, LGBTQ+. We care solely about the survival of Zionism and making sure the next generation understands what it truly is, because that’s what’s at stake right now.”

Chloe Levian, senior southwest campus regional manager at StandWithUs and a UCLA graduate who once served as president of Bruins for Israel, said she never thought she would become an activist. But everything changed once she started college.

“I came out of my bubble and realized there are people who don’t like Jews. With every incident, I became louder and louder,” said Levian. That awakening led her to get involved with StandWithUs. “Now I get to empower Jewish students across many campuses to share their stories.”

There was a consensus among the panel that while the Persian community is known for being generous and giving, its involvement often remains within the community rather than extending outward. The younger generation — mostly children of Iranian immigrants — tends to be more engaged, as they better understand what’s at stake.

“During Yom Kippur, I gave a speech here [in Sephardic Temple] and said, ‘I know you’re afraid, but for God’s sake, don’t discourage your kids from speaking up,’” said Nazarian. “This isn’t Iran. We have laws and protections here. We either act now and save America, or it will be too late. When these young people grow up, we won’t have much support left.”

It’s a message she hopes resonates with the younger generation—the grandchildren and great-grandchildren—to never stay silent in the face of antisemitism and injustice.

Nazarian acknowledged that she risked losing everything she had worked so hard to build. “There was so much fear of being canceled in 2021, but I thought, you know what? I’ve been successful, if I lose my patients, so what? I’m doing what’s right.”

Fortunately, the opposite happened. Despite losing 150,000 followers, her clinic is thriving. “I have more patients today and they’re all aligned with me,” she told the Journal. “We talk about meaningful topics, we have really interesting conversations and I no longer feel like I have to walk on eggshells. I would do it all over again. God rewards authenticity. God rewards courage. And when you have a strong moral compass, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

In March, Rivka Halperin was watching KAN, a satellite Israeli TV station, from her home in New York when she excitedly heard about Israel’s song choice for the 69th annual Eurovision Song Contest, set to take place in Basel, Switzerland, this week. The Israeli artist, Yuval Raphael, was soulful; the song, “New Day Will Rise,” was pulsating and resonant. But there was one problem with the song that was meant to represent Israel at this year’s Eurovision that jolted Halperin.

“I’m sitting at home, anxious, curious, and listening to the song, and all of the sudden, I say to myself, ‘I can’t believe it. Of all the smart people in Israel, how could someone have made such a mistake’?”

As a former professor of Hebrew language and Israeli culture, whether at Princeton, New York University (where she obtained her doctorate), Columbia University or the Jewish Theological Seminary, Halperin immediately heard the mistake: The song, which is mostly sung in English, briefly quoted King Solomon’s Song of Songs. Raphael sang in Hebrew, “Many waters cannot quench the love, nor can rivers flood it; should a man give all the property of his house for love, they would despise him.” But due to the differences between biblical and modern Hebrew, Raphael mistakenly sang the word, “V’neharot” (rivers) instead of the correct version, “U’neharot.”

“I thought my ears were burning, literally,” recalled Halperin. “They used a few Hebrew words in the whole song. How was it possible that one of them was a mistake?”

Halperin admits that most Hebrew-language listeners, especially Israelis themselves, may not have cared much about the mistaken word. “But,” she added, “You have to hear it from my point of view as a professor of Hebrew. In the Bible, there are even vowels underneath the words. It was avoidable.”

Perhaps if Halperin had hailed from France, Spain or other larger countries that compete each year at Eurovision, which enjoys an extraordinary following worldwide (except in America), the mistake would have gone unchecked. But Halperin is from Israel, a tiny state where seemingly everyone is linked by one or two degrees of separation. The retired academic and grandmother simply took to her laptop to find an email address for someone at the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC/KAN), the participating broadcaster in the Eurovision contest that is also responsible for selecting and producing Israel’s annual song entry. 

Halperin praised the song as hopeful and “very, very appropriate” for such a difficult time, and shared kind words about the well-known Israeli songwriter Keren Peles. But in an email to the broadcaster, she also pointed out the mistake. To her delight, KAN wrote back immediately. “They acknowledged it and apologized, and promised they would change it,” she said. Later that evening, Halperin was waiting for her usual Israeli TV news program to begin, and there it was: An announcement that the 24-year-old singer, Raphael, was going to rerecord the whole song because someone had found a mistake in it.

Only in Israel. And only with Israelis. 

For her part, Raphael is an inspiring young woman with a heartbreaking story: she survived Hamas’ horrific massacre at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, by hiding under dead bodies for hours inside a bomb shelter. In various interviews with Israeli media, Raphael has said that she expects jeers, protests and many Palestinian flags in the audience this week in Basel, which holds a special place in Jewish and Zionist history. It was in Basel where, on Aug. 29, 1897, Theodor Herzl convened the first World Zionist Congress. Switzerland was also where Raphael spent three years as a young child.

Last year, Eurovision forced Israel to rewrite its song, “Hurricane,” which was performed by Eden Golan, because it was deemed too political. “I’m 100% focused on the music, I’m 100% focused on my song,” Raphael said in an interview with The Times of Israel in March. TOI claimed that Raphael was adopting a “carefully apolitical tone” ahead of the song contest. 

Currently, 72 former Eurovision contestants have called for Israel to be banned from the competition. Ireland has asked to meet with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to discuss Israel’s inclusion in the annual contest. Israel has won Eurovision four times: 1978, 1979, 1998 and 2018.

In the long scheme of things, with a seven-front war, excruciating loss, a country burdened with mass Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and a renewed call for tens of thousands of IDF reservists to reenter Gaza, does one word in a European song contest in which last year’s Israeli representative, Golan, was booed and harassed, truly matter?

“I always tried to put in my students a love of the language and Jewish tradition, history and culture,” said Halperin. “I know the mistake was a minor thing, not only in relation to Eurovision, but in general. But after they corrected the song, I emailed them a beautiful quote in Hebrew that there was ‘a restoration of the crown to its former glory.’”

Halperin, who was born in Poland and moved to Israel as a little girl, is so passionate about the Hebrew language that in 2006, she accepted an offer by a Franciscan monk to establish a Hebrew department at the Higher School of Hebrew Philology in the historic Polish town of Toruń. She taught at the university until 2013.

Given her love of language, it is no surprise that Halperin’s daughter, Shirley, is also a wordsmith. She is currently the co-editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter, after having served at Los Angeles Magazine, Variety, and many other magazines. “As an appreciator of language, it thrills me to no end that my mom — aka מורה‭ ‬רבקה‭ ‬— is having her peak Hebrew teacher moment,” Shirley told The Journal. “For once, I’m glad she’s correcting someone other than me!”

Halperin believes that a lack of familiarity with one’s mother tongue is not unique to Hebrew. “Like in many other languages, the younger generations introduce words in English into their everyday speech, which degrades the purity of the Hebrew language,” she lamented. “And it’s not just slang and social media; hosts and pundits on television insert English phrases interchangeably, and these are the people who were trained in proper grammar and usage.” 

She continued, “Hebrew is based on the biblical language. But even on television, long viewed as a fortress of proper speech, as these ways of speaking become normalized, authentic Hebrew loses in the proposition.” For Halperin, the distance “from the roots of the language stretches even farther. Not when citations from the Bible contain mistakes; that’s a big no-no from this linguist’s point of view. [But] Hebrew isn’t just a language, it’s also tradition and culture, and that’s why I couldn’t let the mistake go.”

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 

Eli Tsives went to UCLA to study and earn a degree. However, since Oct. 7, he has become more than just a student — he’s now also an activist and influencer. It wasn’t a role he planned to take on, but one that was sort of thrust upon him.

A few days ago, he posted a video on his Instagram account taken by a fellow Jewish student. In it, Tsives is seen surrounded by a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators wearing black-and-white keffiyehs — a scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. One of them is heard yelling at him, “You don’t belong here.” The scene was violent and frightening.

The following day, Tsives explained in an interview with The Journal what had preceded the attack. “It was 9 p.m. They had a movie screening of the one-year anniversary of the encampment at Bruin Plaza, and they aren’t allowed to do that because the chancellor had banned the club,” said Tsives. “The police were sent immediately to disperse them, and then the protesters moved to the Hill, which is the residential area. I was standing there with my Israeli flag. One of them grabbed it and ran away, and I ran after him. As I was catching up to them, they circled around me — like eight or so protesters — and they started grabbing me and taking swings. One got me in a headlock. The entire thing was very quick.”

The movie the protesters intended to watch was “The Encampments,” a 2024 film about pro-Palestinian protests at several university campuses. Around 200 protesters began gathering at Wilson Plaza at 7:30 p.m. and later marched along Bruin Walk to De Neve Plaza. They blocked traffic until reaching the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center pedestrian area.

According to UCLA, one police officer was physically assaulted during the protest. One protester, who is not affiliated with UCLA, was arrested for battery. Reports indicate that he slapped a security officer and has since been issued an administrative “stay-away” order, preventing him from returning to campus.

While Tsives said he is not scared or worried for his own safety, he expressed concern for students who might not know how to defend themselves. “The reality is that a lot of Jewish parents are very nervous after seeing this video, and rightfully so. But I need to remind Jewish parents that we can’t let our emotions get the better of ourselves. We can’t start freaking out during a time of uncertainty. We will win — we already are winning. If you look at UCLA and compare it to last year, it’s amazing how much it has changed. It’s getting better. It really is.”

One of the major changes, Tsives said, is the appointment of new Chancellor Julio Frenk, who assumed the role on Jan. 1 of this year.

“He is amazing and is doing a lot for Jewish students,” said Tsives. “He is Jewish himself, his family survived the Holocaust, and he is a big supporter of the state of Israel. He is the reason why SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] is banned and why police presence is so common on campus now.”

Although SJP was banned by the new chancellor, their Instagram account is still active and they are still organizing gatherings and protests.

“What we need to be asking,” Tsives said, “is how we can work with the administration, the government, and different organizations to ensure that Jewish students feel safer on campus.”

He emphasized the need for law enforcement to be empowered: “California’s government has placed restrictions on police when it comes to controversial issues like this. We need to give district attorneys the freedom to prosecute and make sure students who break the rules are held accountable.”

Meanwhile, like many Jewish parents with children at UCLA, Tsives’ parents are concerned.

“My mother is scared — but more furious,” he said. “Still, I have confidence in this new administration. They’re doing a lot. Other schools? Not so much. It’s unfortunate that it took the federal government threatening funding cuts for universities to act. But if that’s what it takes, so be it.”  

American Jewish University (AJU) hosted its annual gala on Sunday, April 27 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The evening honored Harold J. Masor, outgoing chair of the board of directors, in recognition of his visionary leadership and enduring contributions to Jewish education and communal life.

Remarks from AJU leadership, including President Dr. Jeffrey Herbst and Dr. Bruce Powell, dean of the Masor School for Jewish Education and Leadership, highlighted the institution’s progress and its ambitious path forward.

 “To serve this increasingly complex, messy and exciting world, Jewish institutions must evolve rapidly,” said Herbst. “I came to American Jewish University in 2018 because I believed that the power of a nondenominational university — devoted to Jewish wisdom and spirituality to serve the entire Jewish lifecycle — could be of tremendous service to the changing Jewish world.”

Dr. Herbst outlined the University’s multifaceted approach to Jewish education, citing programs like Camp Alonim, the Brandeis Camp Institute, the Miller Introduction to Judaism Program and the Whizin Center for Open Learning as examples of AJU’s reach across all ages and stages of Jewish life.

A beautiful tribute video was screened during the evening, featuring family members and friends who spoke about Masor’s incredible contribution to Jewish education.

“Harold and I decided to keep Friday night Shabbat dinners ever since Sarah was born in 1983,” said his wife, Amy. “Not only is Harold generous, he’s generous with his heart and we are very fortunate to have each other.”

Sarah Rosenstock recalled those Shabbat dinners and how her father still blesses each child and grandchild during the weekly tradition. “I hope to carry that on,” she said.

“He saw through his own experience the powerful transformative quality of Jewish life,” said Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei, senior rabbi of Adat Ari El. “That’s why I believe that Harold so invested in institutions like Camp Alonim, the AJU and here at Adat Ari El, because he knows that Judaism can transform people’s lives.”

Powell emphasized the essential role of leadership in driving this mission forward. “Harold embodies the definition of leadership: have a vision, support the vision and support the professionals who execute the vision,” he said. “Because of his financial support, the newly named Masor School for Jewish Education and Leadership has experienced exponential growth and is now the largest degree-granting program in the nation in Jewish early childhood education.”

Masor, who served as chair of the board for four years, is a longtime leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community. A founder of de Toledo High School and past president of Adat Ari El synagogue, he has focused his philanthropic efforts on ensuring Jewish continuity through education. In 2024, Harold and his wife, Amy, made a landmark gift to AJU’s endowment, prompting the renaming of the School for Jewish Education and Leadership in their honor.

Reflecting on his service, Masor shared, “Over the many years of my involvement with the Jewish community in various leadership positions, my main focus has been on the continuity of the Jewish people. I believe that the university has a bright future. As the Jewish world continues to evolve, AJU has the flexibility to grow, adapt and have a presence where it matters most — today and for generations to come.”