Tagged iranian Jews

What PBS got right — and so wrong — about the Jews of Iran

A Jewish woman casts her vote at the Yusef Abad Synagogue during elections in Tehran, Feb. 26, 2016. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
December 4, 2018 / Larry Cohler-Esses, JTA

(JTA) — Several days after the Jewish Daily Forward published the first-ever report from the Islamic Republic of Iran by a reporter openly representing a Jewish, pro-Israel news outlet, the host of CNN’s foreign affairs show “GPS” posed a vexing question. Citing the Forward’s surprisingly favorable account of the… Read more »

This Jewish grandmother was sentenced to death in Iran. She’s hoping for salvation in Holland.

Sipora, a Jewish refugee from Iran, looking out the window of her daughter's Netherlands home, Feb. 15, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
February 26, 2018 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

UTRECHT, Netherlands (JTA) — To the dozens of revelers of this city’s main Purim party, a Jewish grandmother who cooks the event’s annual Persia-themed holiday feast is a rare communal asset. Since she immigrated to the Netherlands in 2012 from her native Iran, the soft-spoken newcomer has been volunteering… Read more »

Refugee ban puts Jewish asylum seekers in limbo

Demonstrators at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York protest President Donald Trump’s executive order banning immigrants from certain countries, Jan. 28, 2017. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images)
January 31, 2017 / Cnaan Liphshiz

  (JTA) — A year after they submitted their application for asylum in the United States, Shahi and his mother expected to be let in. As Iranian Jews who applied for asylum through a federally recognized agency for refugee status, their case was expected to be simple. Shahi (not… Read more »

With fond memories of native land, Iranian Israelis worried by talk of war
May 7, 2012 / Ben Lynfield, JTA
Molok Shamshiri, an Iranian-Israeli restaurant cook, left Iran in 1964. (Ben Lynfield)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Avi Nobel lived in Tehran and is sure the Iranian people want peace. “There are a lot of poor people there and what they want is food and to work, not a nuclear bomb,” says Nobel, a spice seller here whose goods include some imported… Read more »