What the bleep were they thinking?
It’s like 4:30 am on Saturday morning and I can’t sleep – because of the muezzin, my hacking cough (mostly) and a chirping cricket who made its way into my house.
My brother-in-law and nephew both came in for a very short visit. They called my brother but didn’t call me to tell me they were in town so I didn’t know they were here until they left. Hmmph. Made me feel quite the family outcast. That’s what you get when you’re not the Orthodox Shining Light, Community Leader in the family.
Then there was the notice I read in the papers of Seeds of Peace, a group bringing together Arab and Jewish youth for summer camps in the US and activities in Jerusalem, that they were closing their Jerusalem office. They were moving to Ramallah and Tel Aviv. Wow. What a logical move. No Israeli Jewish teen will be able to step foot into Ramallah and there are hardly any Arabs living in Tel Aviv – I guess things will be easier for them, eh, peacewise, but what the fuck are they thinking? Maybe I’ll find out more if I go to their Seeds of Peace Cafe on Sunday night.
Russian compound
Then if that wasn’t enough, walking around the Russian Compound, I got angry at the fact that they had closed down the beautiful once-bustling pub neighborhood in order to destroy these landmarks, to build office buildings.
Jerusalem doesn’t have the strict no-destroying-old-picturesque buildings rule that, say, London has. They destroyed nothing and what used to be slummy areas, are now expensive townhouses. There is no need to destroy these structures!!
The last thing pissing me off this week was going to an Iranian (Jewish) shop to buy a veggie juicer. Iranian Jews. I haven’t had the pleasure of ever meeting non-Jewish Iranians, except in Canada when my then 5-year old daughter in Canada’s Wonderland looked at this woman all covered up in black, including her face, and asked me, within her earshot, if she was a monster.
“No sweetie. She’s just all covered up because of modesty. Like some Jewish women cover their hair and elbows and knees because of modesty, she’s covering up even more.”
The woman, listening to my explanation, thanked me profusely for explaining her garb in such a nice way. She didn’t get too many “nice” feelings from the general populace walking around the streets of Toronto. And the next time I met non-Jewish Iranians was when I went to their photo studio to get photos done for our Israeli ID/passports right before we moved to Israel. I remember laughing when we were there, telling them what we were getting the family photos for. Wonder what they were thinking. But I never had a meaningful conversation with any.
Getting back to Iranian Jews. Here many are sales merchants (selling shoes, cheap bric-a-brac, electrical appliances) and hucksters, in general.
Walking into their electrical store, I had decided on the Breville model because all the “fresh juice” sellers in town pretty much owned one.
He turned to me and said “Don’t buy that one. You’ll regret it. The motor burns out every two months and they’re always replacing it.”
“Of course their motor burns out – they’re using it all day long!!” I reasoned.
He showed me another one he had – 600 watts compared to the 450 watt one I wanted. It looked like a piece of shit compared to the Breville. I insisted on the Breville.
“With this” he said, showing me the shit, “I’ll give you a one-year guarantee and with this” showing me the Breville and his face turning red, “you’ll get NO guarantee”.
Hubby explained to me that they probably make more money with the shittier brand as the markup is higher on that.
“I’ll take the Breville please”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“I doubt it.”
I used it a couple times this week to make carrot juice, carrot-beet-apple juice, and I have not regretted buying it – not at all.
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The seeds of peace thing is too bad. About Iranian Jews, living in West Los Angeles gives me daily exposure to them. I often get confused for one, too. All I know is that here in Los Angeles Iranian Jews are generally a very wealthy and very insulated community. I don’t know if their business ethics are as bad as the ones you mentioned, but I’m sure some of them are. They practically control Beverly Hills.
The famous Persian Music Channel (PMC) is based in LA, too, I think. It’s the best music channel ever, and if you have Arab Sat you’ll be able to get it, even though it’s supposedly not allowed because there’s a lot of women who reveal too much skin (most video clips are “Westernized.”) Of course I have to give credit to Minoo for introducing me to this channel during my brief visit to Tehran.
My politics professor is an Iranian Jew, but he’ll never call himself an Iranian. When asked about his origins, he’ll say Italian, Swiss, American, anything but Iranian. I’m not sure why he’s ashamed (or bitter/hateful) towards Iran, I’m sure there’s a story behind it (most likely exile for political reasons,) but I wonder if Iranian Jews generally feel this way. He’s the only one I met, but his wife, who I think is also an Iranian Jew, feels the same way too. I think he even stopped speaking Farsi and picked up other languages just to rid himself of his real identity. It’s pretty sad.
Sad? Why? That’s what American immigrants often do when they have experienced oppression in their native countries. They leave their pasts behind. When my grandparents came to America with their parents, they stopped speaking their native languages and started speaking English instead. They cut any ties they had with their pasts and became Americans. On one hand, it is sad. On the other hand, this is how some immigrants (particularly Jews) become Americans.
I have met many Iranians who felt so traumatized by the revolution that they have stopped speaking Persian and immersed themselves into the culture of their adopted countries. None of the ones I know are Jewish. Some are Christians, most are Muslims. (or born Muslim, since you are not allowed to openly relinquish a Muslim identity without being subject to possible retribution.)
Maybe this is something people have gotten used to do. My grandparents had to leave Iran after religious leaders were beheading Iranian Sunnis, and my grandfather found that so disturbing that he didn’t want to be called an Iranian. They came to Bahrain only to be discriminated against for being Iranian immigrants, so he didn’t want to be a Bahraini either. He went through that long “I don’t know who I am anymore” phase which he described as pretty depressing.
He was never allowed to have a passport here, so he ended up leaving my grandmother and marrying a woman from the UAE to gain citizenship and an identity. And that destroyed my family, because my grandmother was left with 9 children to take care of herself, and my mother and her sisters were forced to leave school to support their siblings. When I think of these things, I just start thinking about the millions of people who have to go through this because of how they’re treated in their homelands. I don’t think people enjoy running around trying to convince others that they’re rootless cosmopolites, that’s why I think it’s sad.
I live in Los Angeles as well. My Jewish friends from Iran have always referred to themselves as Persian.