Hearing the Stories of Persian Jews - Rabbi Susan Nanus

The first time I really heard about the suffering of Persian Jews  -- not just in snippets, but in detail - was last week. This past Sunday, I cohosted an event with Sinai Temple to hear Dora Levy Mossanen, a Persian Jewish author, talk about her latest book, which took place in the Jewish Quarter of Teheran in the 1940’s.Fifty women gathered in the beautiful home our Persian Jewish hostess – half from Wilshire Boulevard Temple and half from Sinai to learn about the lives and treatment of Jews in Iran not just after the Islamic Revolution, but also before. The indignities, the insults, the pervasive dislike and distaste for Jews, the discrimination, the belief that Jews were not only inferior but unclean was a daily fact of life. And then, after the Islamic revolution, came the arrests, the brutality, the loss of property and civil rights, the terror, the firing squads, the fleeing in the middle of the night with only the clothes on their backs.Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history. Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard TempleWebsite: wbtla.orgYoutube: Wilshire Boulevard TempleInstagram: wilshireboulevardtemple