Mijal
Coming up on Wondering Jews…
Mijal
…You’ve also had a post that says, you know, I’m a liberal, which is why I’m not a Democrat. you know, I don’t do those things anymore. Can you like tell us a bit more about that?
Matthew Nouriel
My gosh, you’re getting into the big issues.
Mijal
Hi everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam. I’m Mijal and I’m flying solo today. Noam is busy flying just about everywhere in the world right now. So we miss you, Noam, but I’m really excited to be having this conversation. As you might recall, we are right now in the middle of a series in which we are bringing up all kinds of questions about family, biological family, the Jewish people as a family. And today’s guest is gonna really help us explore this.
I had the privilege of speaking with Matthew Nouriel about what it means to grow up in a Persian Jewish family, about his activism on social media, his refusal to kind of like fit into narrow labels, and about how to stay sane and stay brave in this charged and changed environment. So, Matthew, welcome to Wondering Jews.
Matthew Nouriel
Thank you, it’s so good to be here.
Mijal
Can you just remind me, when did we do you remember when we first met? I’m trying to just recall. When did we connect?
Matthew Nouriel
my gosh, I I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I’m certain it’s through JIMENA.
Mijal
Yes, JIMENA. So so you you work at JIMENA. Do you wanna just tell everybody a little bit first about JIMENA and then we’ll we’ll dig in more?
Matthew Nouriel
Yeah, sure. JIMENA is an acronym. It stands for Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. And essentially at the crux of everything we do is advocacy and education. We work to achieve recognition of the almost one million Jewish refugees or former refugees and their descendants who came out of the Middle East and North Africa. And my my role is a director of community engagement.
Mijal
Right.
Mijal
How long have you been with JIMENA?
Matthew Nouriel
I have been with JIMENA for four years now.
Mijal
Wow, wow. So that’s actually I think four years ago it’s when I started collaborating with JIMENA. so as some of the folks listening might know or not know, I directed a pretty significant national research study into Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the US. And that was commissioned by JIMENA. and and I had close collaboration with you, with with Sarah, who who leads JIMENA and the whole team there.
just trying to really bring more data and more awareness about, you know, Mizrahi Sephardic Jews in the US, who we are and how to understand us more broadly.
Matthew Nouriel
It’s a groundbreaking study, I suggest everyone go look at it. And your your work with it was absolutely not only paramount, but incredible. Just incredible work.
Mijal
Thank you, thank you. We’re gonna link it in the show notes in the so everybody can see it. But you before JIMENA, like I I believe like you started your your activism like doing other things. Can you just tell us a little bit more about your journey?
Matthew Nouriel
gosh. Okay. okay, how far back do we want to go? So r around right f
Mijal
You know, go way back. You grew up in London, I just learned that about you, right?
Matthew Nouriel
Yeah, so I was born in the UK in London. my parents were fresh off the boat from Iran, just like literally just prior to the revolution, and grew up there.
Mijal
Mm.
Mijal
So they left for for those who don’t know, they left in the seventies then? Okay. They went from Tehran to London.
Matthew Nouriel
The late seventies, yeah. Late seventies. Precisely. My dad’s family had already been planning to move there right when they got married, they moved there. My mom’s entire family stayed in Iran, however, so it was very interesting growing up with the sort of seeing
the side of Iranians that were privileged enough to to to get out before. And then also seeing my mother go through everything with her family with watching all of them have to separate and flee and one go in this direction, one going that direction, and then eventually reunite in Los Angeles. yeah, it was a very interesting duality to grow up with. but activism. So activism started, I think, when I sort of really
So god, I don’t even know how to begin with this. So when I was growing up and well into my twenties and thirties, I kind of ran away from my Jewish identity a lot and I ran away from my Iranian identity a lot because I viewed it as a source of pain. and the acceptance that I didn’t receive as as somebody who’s LGBT. I sort of blamed that. Or I thought that me being LGBT was incompatible with with those societies or those communities. And
Matthew Nouriel
To put it in a nutshell, at some point a couple of years before COVID, I would say, maybe a few years before COVID, I realized that I was doing a disservice to myself and to both the Jewish and the Iranian and the Jewish Iranian communities, by removing myself. And while I’d removed myself, I saw that there was an entire movement of people who were doing what I should have been a part of, which was not running away and saying, We’re here, we’re present, we’re part of this community and we’re not going anywhere. So
Mijal
Mm.
Mm-hmm. Matthew, but you know, part part of the reason that I was so excited to speak with you is that this is part of our series and family. And I think that I I want I want to make sure that our listeners kind of understand some of the texture of what you’re of what you’re sharing because I I I I know what you know Mizrahi and Iranian communities can be like and why you’re saying that can be painful and you could have experience feeling like this doesn’t fit.
But for all of our listeners who might not understand that, could you just share a little bit more like growing up? What were the things that were happening around you that made you feel that you that you had to run away?
Matthew Nouriel
Sure. So I’ll preface by saying, you know, I grew up in the eighties and nineties. this was not something that was very common or even heard of in the Jewish Iranian community. I would even go as far as to say in Iranian society in general, you know
being a member of the LGBT community or being gay or whatever was something that was very, very, very taboo. and add to that the the sort of conservatism of the Iranian Jewish community. so essentially when
I moved to LA with my mother when I was fourteen. I came out by the time I was fifteen. And what ended up happening was I ended up being, you know, taken to various doctors, taken to therapists, put on antidepressant medications, taken to a quote an Iranian doctor who was a hormone specialist and put on a round of testosterone therapy because my mom was told that would be a cure. So all of these things were sort of like a slow drip into
My being, telling me there’s something wrong with you, you’re not whole, you’re incomplete, you’re not lovable, you’re not acceptable, all of these things. And I, through my young eyes, I, you know, I thought, well, this is a product of the community that I come from. And to an extent, it was, and it is.
Mijal
Let me make the just a bit sharper for for anyone who’s listening. So many like the community and and I’m not from that community, but I know it through research and I am from a similar community. But Matthew, tell me if if I’m capturing this right. These communities then and even now to some extent are enclaves, which means they are like focused in like a particular neighborhood. and and they’re communities where they’re very tight knit.
Everybody knows each other, or at least like kind of knows somebody who knows somebody. Families get together, everybody’s in each other’s business. and there’s also like a lot of like strong expectations and it’s like a strong pressure to go with the crowd, and reputation is really important, and all of these things can can lead. you know, I’ll share with you one thing. I I wonder how what you think about this. And I know that you evolved in in your relationship with the community, but I remember once interviewing a man
from the Syrian community in Brooklyn, who who is gay and he described the pain that he underwent by saying that a lot of the things that were blessings were also themselves the source of the pain, right? Like everybody caring about you, that’s like a blessing, but it also means that everyone’s gonna come and tell you, No, this is wrong or or whatever that is. So I don’t know is is that a good way of illustrating it for
Matthew Nouriel
Absolutely, absolutely. And and I and I think it’s confusing for a lot of people. When I tell people these stories, like the the hormone therapy, and all of the I mean they are horror stories, but I think they they view it through the lens of that that’s evil, but you can’t view it that way. You have to view it in you have to take into consideration the the time it happened and the fact that there was no one else to look to and the the mindset that was there. In my family’s mind, this was an
Unnatural medical and psychological issue that needed to be fixed. Okay. We understand now that that is not the case. And we understand now that that is a horrible thing to think, but at that time it was because they cared that’s why they did those things. And unfortunately, it took me going through all of those things for them to realize that nothing’s gonna change it. and the damage was done.
Mijal
Hm, mm.
Matthew Nouriel
but yeah, it was absolutely because they were all in my b I mean we had, you know, there’s always sort of a a matriarchal figure in every sort of clan or family. And ours sat me down with my mom. I mean, you have to understand it was the 90s, like the mid-90s. This was a big issue because of all the things that you just mentioned, and especially how reputation is important. Everybody knows everybody, everybody’s in each other’s business. And I was sat down and in this sort of private family meeting with the matriarch and told
You know, if you want to do this, just keep it to yourself. Don’t tell anybody, do it in secret, and marry a woman, have kids, go become a doctor, a lawyer. You know, she laid out the whole like Persian-Jewish ideal for me. And thank God, even at that young age, I was like, this is insane. That’s that’s not gonna happen.
Mijal
Mm-hmm.
Well it takes a lot you know, it takes a lot of you know, it’s interesting ’cause you y somebody else might have thought, I am insane, you know? If everybody’s thinking a certain way, but it sounds like even from a young age you had a a a certain sense of confidence in your own i reality, and just like, you know, deciding to to fight for that reality even you know, even if it’s acutely lonely, and people don’t share it.
Matthew Nouriel
Yeah. I think I attribute part of that to the fact that I did grow up in the UK because in London the community wasn’t anything like it was over here. So you had no choice but to sort of be outside of the community, if that makes sense. so for me that sort of taught me some level of independence. And I think just innately that’s who I am, is to be sort of rebellious and independent. So
Mijal
Mm.
Mijal
So let’s but it’s interesting. So so ’cause I interrupted you before. You said that you ran away because of the pain. And then you said that you realize that that was a disservice to yourself and to the community. So tell us more about that, that kind of like, you know, going back and forth and coming back or coming differently or whatever that how you you would describe it.
Matthew Nouriel
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Nouriel
So it became exhausting because I began to fe I I I felt like I had to compartmentalize everything, right? So if I was around my family or if I was around a very Jewish environment or a very invi Iranian environment, I felt like I had to put on this sort of air about myself, or put on this costume of being like the good Persian Jewish boy, and okay, if I’m gay, then let them think that I’m, you know.
it’s just a a side, like it’s it’s it’s like, that’s a good Jewish boy, he also happens to be gay. Like don’t lead with gay, don’t you know, none of that. And then when I was around the LGBT community, I felt like a little bit like I maybe had to hide my
Mijal
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Nouriel
my Jewishness or my Iranianness or the the traditional is traditionalism, I don’t know if that’s a word, that my community and family comes from. So it became a and then I started doing drag. And then it was like, that would added a whole other layer. And I became tired like Mijal, it was exhausting. Like you’re put being a different person and I’m not like that. Like naturally I I I I’m a I like to think I’m a very authentic person.
Matthew Nouriel
So that’s when I realized, you know what, I’m not gonna compartmentalize anymore. I’m gonna lean into every facet of who I am and be authentic to to every part of who I am and whatever journey I’m on and be unabashidly true to myself. because if I felt the way that I’m feeling, other people must be feeling how I’m feeling, and it not even necessarily for being LGBT for whatever reason. so that’s when I started to sort of lean into to
Every part of who I was and that’s when doors started to open for
Mijal
Wow, that’s that’s really powerful, Matthew. I’m curious because it’s interesting. I’ve I’ve really gotten to know you in the last few years. I didn’t know you when you you know, as you’re describing this very powerful journey. And I’ve seen you emerge as someone who like you mentioned being authentic. and part of what I have seen from from my from where I’m sitting is that you have pushed back against
like other forms of like ideologies or like putting people in a backs, and you’ve emerged like in social media as somebody who is unabashedly pro-Israel, unabashedly against like simplistic political narratives, and like unabashedly holding on to your Mizrahi, your LGBTQ and your Jewish and other facets of yourself. so
you know, c could you tell us a little bit about this i if if I captured it right and you can tell me if I if I did, could you tell us a little bit about this like, you know, continuation of your journey as an activist?
Matthew Nouriel
Yeah, I mean the more I leaned into myself and as I said all facets of myself and the more I became involved in with the Jewish community and the Iranian community and and this coincided with certain things happening in the world and I think a big f flash point for me was and for s quite a number of people was the Sheikh Jara situation in May of twenty twenty one. And
Mijal
Can you tell folks about it in case they don’t know?
Matthew Nouriel
Sure. So essentially it wa I don’t want to get into the specifics of it, but essentially it was a a a dispute over tenants living in Sheikh Jara, which is I believe in the in the West Bank, in or in East Jerusalem. East Jerusalem. And
Mijal
It’s Jerusalem, East Jerusalem.
Matthew Nouriel
I don’t know if this bulldozing actually happened or not. I don’t remember. I have the worst memory for these things, but essentially what hap the the response to what had happened was this explosion of anti-Semitism. And we see everything that happened after October seventh, which make this pales in comparison to that. But
Prior to October seventh, we hadn’t really experienced it to that degree. I mean, there were people walking through sushi restaurants in West Hollywood where I lived at the time, asking who’s Jewish and then getting in fistfights with people. Like it was insane. people driving down Jewish neighborhoods in London with Palestinian flags waving and screaming, We’re gonna, you know, in
Not in so many words, assault, sexually assault your Jewish wives and daughters. And so and there was this discourse happening online, which I was new to the online world at that point, of of advocacy. And this discourse was very binary. It was either super
Israel can do no wrong, and or it was super anti-Semitic, which anti-Zionism, as far as I’m concerned, is. And at the time, I didn’t know the details of the situation. I didn’t know anything, to be honest with you. All I knew was this doesn’t feel right. And all I knew was, or what I thought I knew at the time, again, the details were a little foggy to me. I just saw people being evicted from their home and I thought that was wrong. So I just posted in bold letters, I’m a Zionist and I think what’s happening in Sheikh Shara is wrong. And it
It got way more attention than anything I’d ever done, like to the point that I didn’t understand what to do with that attention or what to do with myself. But what I did understand was that perhaps there’s a perspective or a nuance or something that’s missing from this discourse and perhaps coming from
Matthew Nouriel
where I come from, being LGBT, being Mizrahi, Iranian and Jewish and all of this, perhaps I can interject something that people want to hear. So I just kind of started from that and kept going. I do want to clarify that I I believe that the the situation in Sheikh Jara wasn’t quite as simplistic as I thought it was at the time. And I don’t know if I would hold the same opinion right now as I did then. But that was my foray into this world.
Mijal
Well you’re you’re I think what you’re saying is that that was like an early example of just feeling that you you either need to like say, you know, Israel can do no wrong or the the other extreme is like, you know, full on through anti Semitism. And it’s like every single j Israel’s a demon and every single Jew who’s pro Israel is responsible for it. Like it’s like and that’s only like, you know, that feels like a child’s
Matthew Nouriel
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Nouriel
Right.
Mijal
game in in comparison to what we’re seeing right now. yeah, you you know, Matthew, I’m curious. I I have noticed that there’s a lot of prominent voices that that are, you know, that are Mizrahi and often even like from the LGBTQ community that have been like very proudly supportive of Israel. Not like in a way that is like Israel can do no wrong, but in a way that says we are
Matthew Nouriel
Yeah.
Mijal
You know, we are Zionists and we’re not gonna give up on our Jewish family. Have you noticed that also? That’s like a thing?
Matthew Nouriel
Absolutely. A hundred percent. my god, there’s so many. I mean Akhan Mazig, Sheila Nazarian, there there’s a lot, and I qu quite a number of Iranian actually. there’s a lot and I think that there’s very specific reasons for that. I think first of all the persecution that we faced
Mijal
Who are like the big names out there that you would include there?
Mijal
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Matthew Nouriel
happened a lot more recently. And I think that that our communities have an understanding of for example, what happened on October seventh, that a lot of maybe Jews who’ve lived in the West for many more generations
We’re a lot more surprised by, right? I think that Jews from our communities understand the language that was used and understand the motive behind it because they’d seen it before. anybody’s Iraqi Jews whose grandparents lived through the Farhud, who we still have survivors from, under understand it in a in a way.
Mijal
The Farhud was a pogrom against Jews in Iraq, just for those who might not know. Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Nouriel
Nineteen forty one, yeah, Nazi inspired.
So there’s an understanding there, which leads me also to the fact that I think that I hope this isn’t bother anybody, but I think that a lot of our Jewish education systems have done a disservice to a lot of our kids by not teaching them more about these histories. Because I think that our young people and even our older people and adults would be a lot more well equipped to understand the anti-Semitism that’s happening right now and where it’s coming from if they were more familiar with our histories and our stories.
Because for the like listen, I I went to Orthodox Jewish school in London as a kid in primary school. I was taught about the Holocaust in our Jewish studies classes. I was taught about the pogroms in Eastern Europe. Never was it taught to me as a history that was outside of my own. It was taught to me as my history as a Jew. And I never was taught about the Farhud. I didn’t know about it till well into adulthood. I didn’t even know the history of the pogroms and force forced conversions that took place in my my own family’s country from Iran. I had no idea any of this and
Matthew Nouriel
I’ve I really feel strongly that if we are one people, which I firmly believe that we are, we are Amisrael, then we need to know all of these histories and absorb them as our own, not as a peripheral, that’s only 10% of the population. So we only need to know a little bit of no, we need to know these histories and absorb them as our own. And if we had, then our kids would first of all, when they’re in university right now and their professors are teaching them all of this ahistorical, excuse my French bullshit about who Jewish
People are, our kids would be able more equipped and better equipped to say, hold on a minute, that’s not true. We didn’t originate in Europe. We originated in the Middle East. This is where we come from, yada yada yada. And there’s a population of us that never left the Middle East. so I feel really strongly about that. That my history as an Iranian Jew belongs to the Ashkenazim and to every other Jew, and vice versa. I I need to, I want to know more about Ethiopian Jew. The only thing I ever heard was that they were a lost tribe that were airlifted back to Israel.
Mijal
Yeah. Yeah.
Mijal
Hmm. Right. Right. Right. And you know, it’s interesting. You you said your part of the logic that you brought is that we are one people. and this is part of like the way that we’re thinking in this, you know, in this podcast series about family. I I have felt that the Mizrahi and Sephardic experience that a lot of the Judaism that our communities have and our ancestors have is one the language that I’ve used, Matthew, is that we do less ideology and more family.
Mijal
And the way that we do family is both that like we like I always say like the the Shabbat table for Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews is much more important than like the school where you go, and that’s like family as the most important kind of like wellspring of Jewish identity. But the other thing is also like this like metaphor. It’s like saying, like, we as a Jewish people, I I don’t care about my fellow Jew because we believe in the same thing, because we might actually not, we may disagree a lot.
Matthew Nouriel
Hundred percent.
Mijal
But we are a family. We are an extended family. And it’s a metaphor that is on the one hand a metaphor, but on the other hand, it is so powerful and it has obligated us towards each other for so many generations. And I I think that’s actually a big reason why there’s so many Mizrahi activists that are like rising right now on social media and the like. Because there’s like this like powerful, like almost like prima, like yeah, this is like it’s not even like about being a Zionist, like a political thing. You know, you might
Matthew Nouriel
I agree.
Mijal
disagree with the Israeli government, this and that, but it’s like it’s my family and I’m like a you know, ride or die family person.
Matthew Nouriel
I absolutely 1000% agree with you. And I think that that’s also a difference. I think that if had I been born in the US many generations in, you grow up very assimilated with these where very sort of westernized ideals and very, very super left or liberal ideals, which in theory a lot of them are great. And if
You grow up with all of that and you’re disconnected from your Jewish identity in a sense, and your Jewish identity has been sort of whitewashed, sanitized, westernized, whatever you want to call it. you don’t feel as connected to it. And so I think that
Me growing up as an LGBT person, going to Shabbat every week and growing up with that Jewishness around me has taught me that we are one family. Whereas I think that the other people that I’m thinking of specifically, and I don’t want to name this as like Ashkenazi versus Mizrachi because it’s too simplistic. Right, it’s it’s not that. I think it’s more of a generational sort of how long you’ve been assimilated sort of a thing.
Mijal
Yeah, it’s not. It’s just some it’s yeah, it’s too simplistic. Yeah.
Matthew Nouriel
So I think that for me, that it’s that cliche saying that I didn’t keep Shabbat, Shabbat kept me. I always think about that because I I think had I
Mijal
Mm mm. Yeah, Akada Am coined that. more he said more than the Jews keep Shabbat, Shabbat keeps the Jews.
Matthew Nouriel
A hundred percent could not agree with that even more. Because no matter what was happening, listen, my family never kicked me out the house. No matter how messed up it got, I never got kicked out the house. I was never thrown out. I was never on the streets. I always had a roof over my head. I always had food. And I always had Shabbat. Like there was always Shabbat, no matter what. so growing up with that tradition, I think, really instilled who who you it instills in you who you are. so I I think it’s important.
Mijal
Right, right. Hm.
Mijal
Wow, I I just love I love what you just said. Like, you know, I always had Shabbat. It’s like it’s it’s beautiful. I you know, Shabbat is awesome. And you’re saying it’s also like, you know, people often think Shabbat is like this religious thing. It is a religious thing and I I observe it quite carefully, but you’re you’re bringing this you’re insisting that we think about it as like a this family thing and this container that keeps you together and that gives you strength to to stay together. which I think is is
Matthew Nouriel
It is.
Matthew Nouriel
Absolutely.
Mijal
Okay, so I I have another question, Matthew. I know that you’ve had some posts where you’ve kind of like pushed back against like labels. So for example, I know that you had this post where you said, and and tell me if I got it wrong, but that you don’t wanna use the word queer, you wanna use the word LGBT. You’ve also had a post that says, you know, I’m a liberal, which is why I’m not a Democrat. you know, I don’t do those things anymore. there’s something really interesting that you’re kind of like insisting that like you’re not gonna give up.
Matthew Nouriel
Yeah.
Matthew Nouriel
Ha ha.
Mijal
your values or your identity, but you will reject certain labels that you feel have become toxic and have become narrow to the point of, you know, diminishing returns. Can you like tell us a bit more about that?
Matthew Nouriel
my gosh, you’re getting into the big issues. So, first of all, I feel I feel like the Democratic Party has lost. I feel like it’s it’s gone way too far into. I mean, we’re seeing it happen before our very eyes, the the sort of socialist ideals. And what comes along with that is a is, and a lot of this is just from my own personal lived experience. I mean, I’ve been a liberal liberal thinking. In my mind, that means you’re open-minded, you’re open to discussion, you’re open to back and forth like a
Mijal
Yeah. Bring it on.
Matthew Nouriel
what we would call a classic liberal, right? I find that the Democratic Party is increasingly becoming less and less about that and more and more about dogma and more and more about there’s a strict set of rules that you have to abide by and beliefs that you have to have. And if you stray in the slightest, you’re out. So I’m out. I don’t want anything to do with that sort of dog dogmatic
behavior and it’s it’s very toxic and it’s very ugly and it’s very anti-Semitic. so that simply doesn’t work for me. And I felt like it was really important to put that out there because I think that there’s a lot of people, especially in the in the American Jewish community who’ve who have identified as a Democrat their entire lives and grew up with that. And I didn’t even necessarily grow up with that but
that’s the case, and I think and I see it time and time again that Jewish people saying that they feel lost, they feel abandoned by the Democratic Party because of its anti-Zionism and so on and so forth, and the Democratic socialists are doing this, that, and the other. And so I felt like it was important to sort of instead of you know, I don’t I don’t want to feed into this sort of feel sorry for me thing or this sort of like I’m lost without my my political party.
We don’t need political party like this. It’s become like religion where people like don’t know what they’re lost without it. We don’t need it. You’re a liberal, be a liberal. You can hold on to every belief that you had before, every liberal thought that you had before, your belief in Zionism, which I believe is a very liberal value, first of all, but that’s a whole other subject. you can hang on to all of that. You don’t need to belong to this, and and it’s a painful lesson. I think a lot of Jewish people in America are learning right now.
Mijal
Mm.
Matthew Nouriel
You d you just you need to be independent in your thinking.
Mijal
Hm. That feel it feels a bit it feels lonely. Is it lonely?
Mijal
Like when you’re on social and you’re very public and you’re public as somebody who’s like you you you’ve had a a a social media presence as a drug queen, as somebody who would like you know, ostensibly be on the left, you know? and yeah, like is it is it lonely? What what advice do you have for other people who who might be in a similar place or might feel similarly to you?
Matthew Nouriel
Uh-huh.
Matthew Nouriel
I could see how it would feel lonely for people. I think one of the advantages of growing up with all of the balagon that I grew up with.
Mijal
The mess, yeah.
Matthew Nouriel
The mess is that I learned to be very independent and I learned to be okay with being alone. So I’m good with that. I think there are things that happen that are more jarring and more hurtful when I see what some people will say to me or when people that I thought were that I actually thought I knew that are unfollowing me because I said I’m no longer a Democrat or whatever. But
Mijal
Mm.
Matthew Nouriel
ultimately, you know, the reason I say what I say and do what I do, and the reason I’m probably I I know for a fact why I don’t have way more followers than I I could have is because it’s I’m speaking to people who want to hear what I have to say and who relate to it. And because of those people, there’s enough of them that I don’t feel lonely because all I have to do is
You know, instead of focusing on the who unfollowed me and the comments that are cruel, I focus on the comments of the people that are saying like, you know, thank you for saying this. It makes me feel seen or it makes me feel validated. And so you can’t feel lonely when you have that.
Mijal
Mm. Right. Well it’s it’s having your own tribe, right? A little bit of that. It’s building your own tribe. Wow. do you think that there is I’m curious a bit more if you can t we didn’t touch on this earlier and I wanna make sure that we don’t miss it completely, Matthew, as we’re talking. You’ve also you’ve also been very loud and proud, not just as a Jew, not just a as a member of the LGBT community, but also as an Iranian. you’ve
Matthew Nouriel
Kinda, yeah. Yeah.
Mijal
done like a lot of advocacy and activism, kind of like supporting the the people in Iran in their quest towards like freedom and democracy and against the current regime. You had a video, I I’m not gonna say celebrating, but with like a certain amount of like d joy and satisfaction w when Khomeini was was killed. there it’s very clear that that’s part of of who you are and what you care about.
Could you just describe a bit more your your activism there and and why that feels so central to who you are?
Matthew Nouriel
I mean there’s a number of reasons why it’s so important for me. First of all, it’s just this grave sense of injustice that’s happened. Second of all, it’s growing up seeing what that regime, the effect that it had on my mom’s entire family, watching them lose so much, watching the trauma and that they experienced, and watching them, you know. I remember going to visit Austria and Switzerland and Rome and all these places where different families, like brother, her mother, her father, all went out in a separate way.
And so going to see them once they finally arrived in those destinations before they got visas to come to the US. So this was something that hit very close to home for me. Also, another reason is when I was doing drag and I was on social media for it, there were kids, young LGBT kids from Iran who would reach out to me. and they just wanted to know how to do makeup or how to I mean, this was it’s such a something we take for granted here, this sort of freedom, right? In Iran, they don’t have that freedom.
Mijal
Mm. Mm.
Matthew Nouriel
So it’s for them. It’s for the Jews in Iran who are may as well have a gun to their head every time they walk out of the door. It’s for the 90 million plus Iranians who want freedom. So there’s a lot of reasons why it’s important and important for me.
Mijal
Matthew, I wanna I wanna actually ask you three sets of questions right now, just like advice. Okay. So like three categories based on our conversation, what advice would you give? So first question is what advice would you give to Jewish leaders, institutions, parents, in terms of how they can be more supportive of young progressive Jews, whether they are LGBTQ or or or not.
Matthew Nouriel
Yes.
Mijal
But who are feeling really destabilized by feeling often homeless in their progressive environments and just trying to figure out where am I right now? So what advice would you give to those who could potentially be supportive?
Matthew Nouriel
I think it’s really, really important to be just that. Be supportive, be welcoming. D th there should be no, you know, I think within certain areas of the Jewish world or certain communities, especially when it comes to LGBT people, they’re not as welcoming or
I think it’s just really, really important to let we, you know, we want to stand by this idea that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Well, we have to really live that. We c it’s not just a saying, it’s something we have to absolutely live. And if you live it, that means welcoming everybody. And Chabad does a really good job of this, by the way. welcoming everybody, irrespective of where they come from, what their sexual identity or gender identity or whatever is, at the end of the day, we have to realize that all we have is each other in this world.
Mijal
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Nouriel
That’s also why we have some of these Jewish kids with the Queers for Palestine, is because they didn’t feel accepted in the Jewish world as LGBT, right?
So if we don’t create a home for our fellow Jews, they’re gonna try to find it somewhere else. And oftentimes, if we don’t create a home for our fellow Jews, then they’re gonna feel like the Jewish world is a hostile world towards them, and they’re gonna find that home amongst other people who are hostile towards us. So I know that because I was on that path for a long time.
didn’t quite get there, thank God, but I thi it’s really important.
Mijal
Wow. Okay. Thank you. Second second third of question for advice is you are on social a lot. I’ll just say for myself I struggle with being on social, partially because of like the overwhelming hatred that you see. and you know it can really be anxiety provoking if you’re giving advice to again, young Jews who happen to already be on social, about what it means to be there and kind of like fortify yourself or survive.
in light of what you’re seeing, what advice would you give?
Matthew Nouriel
There’s two pieces of advice I’d want to give. If you insist on doing it, and this is really what you want to want to do, then just keep doing it and keep powering through and find that support system outside of it, meaning find it with your friends, find it with your family, find it with your synagogue, find it wherever you can find it, so that you have that foundation of support, that scaffolding that’s holding you up, so that when it feels like there are all these people that are attacking you, you have that support of people that are telling you, no, you’re you you’re good, you’re on the right path.
Have your your have the real people, absolutely real people. and also take breaks if you have to take breaks. the other piece of advice that I give, and I say this a lot to young people when I’m speaking, for colleges and high school kids and so on, is that it’s not for everybody. And that’s okay. I think that there’s this pressure right now that you feel like this is the only way you can contribute to your cause or your world, is through social media, and it is absolutely not.
Mijal
Real people. Right.
Mijal
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Nouriel
I think some pe everybody is good at something. I think what’s important is to figure out what it is that you’re good at and what it is that you love that makes you feel good. And whether that be art, whether that be writing, whether that be law or whatever it is, and you can take a certain percentage of your time with that and dedicate it to uplifting your community, right? Whether it be the Jewish community, the Iranian community, whatever it is. So for example, if you’re a writer, you can take
5-10% of your time to write something dedicated to the Jewish community or about the Jewish community expressing whatever it is that you want to express. With art, you can do the same. If you’re a lawyer, you can give a little percentage of your time pro bono to help Jewish causes, and so on and so forth. There’s always, and no matter what it is that you’re doing, you can figure out a way to do it.
Mijal
Right. Right. Right. Love that. You can always contribute in different ways and you don’t need to hurt your mental health if that’s if social media is is really getting to you. last question of advice, which really goes to like your role at Jimena and the work that you do there. you know, you spoke really powerfully about how we often learn Ashkenazi Jewish history in Jewish institutions and how that is amazing and we should, and that’s our history too. But how it would be even more powerful.
Matthew Nouriel
Exactly.
Mijal
if there was like an expansion into more Sephardic and Mizrahi and other forms of Jewish history. So just putting you on the spad, if you had to give some recommendation for folks who want to start learning, either what books to read or or what to follow, just like a couple of like advice like in order to expand like your sense of who we are and where we came from.
Matthew Nouriel
There’s a book called The Jews of Arab I think it’s the Jews of Arab Lands. I forget who wrote it. Stillman, is it? Yes. Yes.
Mijal
Norman Stillman, that’s it, the two the two the two set of of books.
Matthew Nouriel
I think that is probably a good start. And then also my favorite book is a book by a friend of mine. well, he edited it. His name is Houman Sarshar, and it’s sort of an encyclopedia. This is strictly for the the Persian Jews. It’s an sort of encyclopedia of Persian Jewry, and it’s called Esther’s Children, and it’s a it’s a huge book, and it’s so comprehensive. So I would recommend that.
Mijal
Right. Okay. That’s that w we have a lot of reading to do. but really Matthew, thank you so much. I I really appreciated everything you shared. And there’s something I I’ll just say that I really I have a special because of my own biography, I have a lot of admiration for people who maybe like struggle with family and might consider walking away, but then they realize there’s a lot of treasure in our family and that we can kind of like
Matthew Nouriel
Mm.
Mijal
We can kind of like fight to make our way back, but also to make it back in a way that we make our family better. and I and I hear so much of that in what you’re sharing, both in terms of like your your your personal family, the Persian community that you’re part of, and just the way that you’re showing up in the world as a very proud Jew. so super grateful that you joined us. and just wanna tell everybody, follow Matthew.
Matthew Nouriel
Thank you.
Mijal
Can you tell us your handles like on the Instagram handles, Substack, whatever? How how should folks follow you?
Matthew Nouriel
Sure. yeah, Instagram is my main sort of source of of of content. And it’s just my full name, Matthew Nuriel, also on Substack. if you want to subscribe, that’ll help me out a lot. If not, everything’s free because I want everybody to be able to read everything. X I’m on, but that’s one place where I kind of have to pull away from a lot because it’s it’s psychotic. so yeah, I would say Instagram and Substack and Facebook.
Mijal
It’s bad. Yep.
Yeah. Awesome.
Matthew Nouriel
So thank you so much, Mijal. This was really, really lovely. Thank you. Me too.
Mijal
So glad you joined us. Thank you.