Noam (00:00)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam. And I’m Noam. And today we are discussing the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran right now. We are not here to be reporters. On my other podcast on Packing Israeli History, we just explored the history of how we got to this moment with Israel and Iran.
Mijal (00:02)
Michal.
Noam (00:20)
But we’re here to take the broad view and to try to understand this moment, maybe pastorally, maybe theologically, maybe emotionally, in so many different ways.
Mijal (00:32)
Yeah, and would say that it’s especially intense, at least for me, that this is happening in the days before Purim. So we’re literally just like having this conversation at a time in which so long ago, you know, Persia was at the center of Jewish history and we couldn’t think of a better person to invite to have this conversation that my friend Rabbi Tarland Rebizadeh, Tarland we met, I don’t know when we met, we met some time ago and we’ve…
bonded over Sephardic and Persian and other kinds of heritage and community. And before we jump in, I’ll say that one of the things that I knew about you before I met you is that you had been an activist for quite some time, advocating from Los Angeles, from the Persian Jewish community in Los Angeles, advocating for freedom ⁓ for Iranians. So thank you so much for joining us. We acknowledge this is a very emotional and sensitive
time period and are grateful that you’re joining us here to share some reflections.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (01:34)
Thank you for having me.
Mijal (01:36)
So, Taran, for those who don’t really know much, can you tell us a little bit when you started to really think of yourself as an activist and as a voice that is speaking from the West, from Los Angeles, on behalf of the people of Iran?
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (01:53)
Yeah, I gotta be honest, I never really thought about myself as an activist until I started just posting things on social media about what was happening in Iran over the death of Massah Amini ⁓ a few years ago. The woman that, one of the laws in Iran right now is that you have to have your hair covered as a woman and she had a piece of her hair showing and her ankle was showing and she was beaten brutally to death by the morality police to the point where she went into a coma and died. And I started posting about it because my friends in Iran were posting about
and I wanted to share and then I realized that my whole small group of know rabbis and cantors who are my friends didn’t even know this was happening. It wasn’t actually posted on mainstream media until a few days later and then by then it was not even all accurate. So I just started posting and posting more and I realized I was like a main news outlet for people. So that’s kind of how it started.
Mijal (02:46)
This was the woman life freedom. This is what sparked this tragedy. It’s what sparked the woman life freedom movement in Iran three years ago.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (02:53)
Yes. Wow. Life is a blur. Yeah. Three years ago, woman life freedom movement. Yeah. Giving women rights, you know, without women, there’s no life and that they need freedom. And they came into the streets because one of the, you know, and they were getting beaten. These people are unarmed. They were actually getting beaten and shot, you know. And they said one of the lines I’ll never forget that they said was, you know, we’ve been living sort of in prison our whole lives. You know, we’re kind of dead inside, so we’re not really afraid of the actual death.
Mijal (03:20)
You know, Teran, I think a lot of observers now are surprised or confused by the kind of, well, first of all, they’re surprised by the Iranians ⁓ celebrating outside of Iran and in Iran, because many of them have this like very simplistic binary, you know what I mean? Like, know, West and East and who’s with who and who isn’t. And the other thing that’s surprising them is that there’s so many ⁓ Persian Jews who are
part of the diaspora who are having very strong opinions and feelings right now. And there’s been also so much footage coming out of Israelis and Iranians, Muslim Iranians, kind of like dancing in the streets from Los Angeles to London to New York. So that’s a lot of things that are confusing people, but can you tell us a little bit from your understanding, you’re part of the Persian Jewish community in Los Angeles. There has been a very long history of Jews.
in Persia and a symbiosis and a relationship there going back a long time, including your own family.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (04:23)
We’ve been living there for thousands and thousands of years. when we were, when Jews were kicked out of Israel, I mean, I know you know this history, but I’ll tell you for the audience, when they were kicked out of Israel, we kind of lingered there, right? Cyrus the Great allowed us to come and observe Judaism freely in Babylon. And we loved it. fact, when we were invited to go back to Israel, we stayed. know, it’s crazy that, you a lot of people don’t know this, but yeah, I mean, the holiday of Purim is coming up. It’s a Jewish holiday set in
whether it’s real or not, we’re very proud of the fact that, you know, we have a holiday dedicated to this.
We have a scroll, we have a Megillah that has, what other Megillah is there other than the Torah? So it’s fantastic. But yeah, Michal, to your point, I have a lot of people asking me in my world, when did I convert? They don’t really know that there are Persian Jews in the world because so many Americans are used to Ashkenazi Jewry. And I always joke and I say, you guys kept moving east to Poland and Russia. We hung around by Israel, and not to mention 40 years through the desert, who do you think survived with, Maitan or yours? I always joke.
just to kind of bring them into the fold, but it’s the truth. People are celebrating. This is a dictator world. mean, my parents left Iran thinking they were going to go to college and then go right back home. They never went back. They left mid-70s. They came to the United States for college. My dad was in Philadelphia. My mom was in San Francisco. All their cousins, like Alabama, people came, study engineering. Oil is huge in Iran, or was, or still is.
Mijal (05:43)
When did they leave Tarland?
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (05:59)
And so they came here, there’s not enough universities in Iran, they came to the United States to study with the hope of going back. And of course they said goodbye to all their friends, know, imagine leaving for high school for college and then never ever going back. So 47 years people have been holding their breath. It’s not just Jews. You’re right. It’s Muslims, it’s Baha’i, it’s Zoroastrian, it’s anybody who didn’t want to live under such a dictatorship. Under the previous king, you know, Shah, people were free. Women could be doctors, women could be lawyers. You didn’t have to cover your hair.
unless you wanted to out of religious reasons. Now it’s mandatory. Women can’t do anything. They can’t even get a driver’s license to drive without a man. mean, the world is very, very different. And so people are in tears, crying and celebrating, including me. I I grew up hearing about a world I never got to go visit, so now there’s a semblance of hope. So I don’t know how else to clarify how exciting this is that the Ayatollah Khamenei is dead.
Mijal (06:57)
Yeah. And you know, and you live in what folks from the outside called tarangeles. I don’t know if you use that term or not. But from what I understand, it’s it includes both a very significant Jewish Persian population, Muslim Persian, Bahá’í Persian. They use Iranian, I think people use Persian or Iranian depending on where they’re from. And that’s I don’t even know how big like hundreds of thousands of.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (07:24)
Yeah.
Mijal (07:25)
Iranians and their descendants were living in a very significant diaspora. Most of them had to leave because of the revolution and its violence.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (07:34)
You got it. mean, between Orange County and Los Angeles, I like to say Erangelis because my family is from Shiraz, but yes, ⁓ this is the largest population of Iranians outside of Iran, LA.
Noam (07:35)
Yeah.
Yeah
I
think there are 500,000 people, 500 to 600,000 people of Iranian descent living in the LA metropolitan area. And specifically Jewish, I think it’s around 50,000 Iranian Jews living in the LA metropolitan area. there are, I think, around 8 to 10,000 still, Iranian Jews still living in Iran. Is that correct?
Mijal (08:08)
those
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (08:09)
Those numbers, we don’t think it’s any more than 10,000, but Noam, I know once upon a time you lived in LA, so that’s great data. I do know that a lot of Iranians don’t participate in census. That’s the part of the problem, so we don’t exactly have a number, but I can tell you in the protests, with the largest protests we had in LA, pro-regime change, pro what’s happening right now in Iran, was about 350,000 showed up in LA. But there was also buses that were brought in from Orange County. So yes, ⁓ amongst all of the
Noam (08:16)
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (08:39)
religions, there’s a huge Persian population. And by the way, people say Persian because they want to associate themselves with the culture and not the nationality. So me being born here, I’m Persian. ⁓ My parents interchangeably use Iranian or Persian.
Noam (08:48)
Mm-hmm.
Mijal (08:56)
Can you share with us any moments from today in LA? I mean, I know like what I’ve been experiencing, I’ve also been in touch with, I’ve got a Persian family from Great Neck. So I know like what’s been going on like in our WhatsApp chats and in our conversations. ⁓ But can you just share with us a little bit, any moments? And I’m not assuming they’re all, they’re all celebration. There’s also a lot of fear going on and just angst and anxiety.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (09:16)
Yeah, I mean, I
I mean,
yesterday was Shabbat. as a rabbi, I wasn’t really tuned in. But I can say that I turned my phone on to my aunt being like, I’m booking my trip to Shiraz. And everyone was so happy. know my friends went to join the protest, a lot of them. And I think today it’s just sinking in that, is this real? Is Trump going to continue? Because if the American anti-the Democrats, there’s a lot of people.
Mijal (09:31)
You
Noam (09:32)
Yeah
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (09:48)
pressuring him that they don’t want to do war, is he going to finish the job? We know Israelis, you lot of my friends are in bunkers, but they’re saying, we are down to stay in bunkers if it’s going to erase this terrorist regime once and for all, considering they’re the reason, you know, October 7th happened. They’re the ones, they’re the main funders. So there are people that are seeing the bigger picture, and then there’s people who are asking, is this America first? And of course, my answer is yes.
Mijal (10:13)
And tell us, you started off by telling us you were in touch with friends in Iran. I know that there’s been some challenges around communication and internet outages, so it’s not always easy to get information in real time. But have you been able to hear from any of your friends in Iran right now?
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (10:32)
I haven’t talked to them directly. Some landlines have worked in the last few weeks. Starlink works here and there. Right now it’s really, really hard, although there are some reporters that I do follow that get news from the ground. So, you know, that’s been good, but it’s been sparse. But the few times videos did come out, we had songs about Bibi, like pro songs about Bibi, and then one motorist, that was a really cool reel that I saw ⁓ yesterday playing Am Yisrael Chai.
So that was, that’s, you know, a sign of defiance also being able to blast that on your motorcycle in the middle of a highway in Iran. So just, just, just the point that Iranian people look at what Israel did as their savior. They love Trump. They love Bibi. They want to be rescued from this dictatorship.
Mijal (11:24)
Yeah, I mean, of course, there’s always a small minority that is like pro the dictatorship, but the vast majority just seems to be, you know, the protests in the streets that we’ve seen the last few months and people just risking everything and the global diaspora just supporting this. Just it seems like it gives overwhelming data and expression as to the celebrations right now. I know for me, Tarla, I was taken aback when I saw the statement of my mayor, Zerran Mamdani, who not only
you know, came out against the war that is right, but also had like a paragraph in which he said something along the lines of I am here supporting all like Iranian New Yorkers and implying that they were with him in terms of his views. And I’m reading that and I have so many Persian and Iranian friends and acquaintances and thinking all of them in the West left because of what happened. And they are dreaming of a free Iran and they want this regime to go down.
So do you experience this kind of like weird, I don’t know how to describe it, like the voices that generally care about human rights and seem to ⁓ understand things when it comes to Iran, they really misread what’s going on and they don’t know what to make of it.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (12:35)
Yes. Yeah, I don’t know what Momdania is talking about at all. I would say that, you know, if I would want to be generous, would say maybe 20 percent really want this dictatorship to stay in power. That’s me being generous. Nobody wants this dictatorship in power. So I’ve encouraged my friends when they see things on Reuters or CNN to actually look at the comments under and watch the thousands and hundreds of Iranian people saying, what are you talking about? We don’t want this. Why are you
posting people crying that the dictator died. Everyone is dancing. Where are the videos of people dancing? So I encourage people to do their research.
Noam (13:14)
what do you think that people, just generally, just don’t understand about this moment, what do you think we’re missing? Not just this moment, but for the last couple of years, what are you upset about? What are you annoyed at people about? What frustrates you? Yeah, I’m here, I’m here for it, tell me.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (13:29)
Dude, I’ll tell you what Christ’s Grace means.
Mijal (13:30)
Hahaha
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (13:33)
Listen, I I teach an online program for students from around the world. And I’ll just tell you that we had to read history books when I was growing up. But now, apparently, TikTok is the best way to get your news. And what’s really upsetting is that the New York Times and Washington Post, I mean, they’re all posting incorrect things. mean, the things coming out with, there was something about the Ayatollah came out today. I think it was the Washington Post. I don’t want to mis-
Mijal (13:57)
They were obituary,
they are full obituary. That was the Washington Post, yeah.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (13:59)
Yes, about how,
yeah, like his beard being like snow. I’m like, what are you talking about, dude? ⁓ Yeah. Or just like, talking, like it’s like a tribute. Instead of this monster murdered and asked for the rape of virgins on purpose before killing them, and this is not religion, how could someone do this? are, nothing like that. No, we’re just talking about whatever we’re talking about.
Noam (14:06)
Santa Claus the Santa Claus thing like they treat like they’re acting like he’s Santa Claus. Yeah, okay
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (14:27)
Here’s the thing I think, Michal and Noam, I was raised Jewish to ask questions. got, poor I’m coming up, but Passover is about asking questions so that you don’t become enslaved. You ask questions of your leaders. I am not seeing people asking the right questions. I am seeing people say, I’m Democrat, I’m Republican. So what does that mean? Does that mean that if you voted for Trump, you like what he’s doing with ICE? You don’t think that what he’s doing is maybe, I mean, I get he has to clean up shop, but does he have to do it like this?
If I meet Trump, I’m going to be like, listen, bro, before you ran for president, I heard you say pro-choice. What the hell happened? So you think I agree with Trump on everything? No. But with this, I agree with it. And yeah, does he have self-interest? Of course he does. He wants to make America great again. So he cares about the economy. He cares about oil prices. He cares about nukes. Does he care about the Iranian people? Probably not a lot, but I don’t think he’s that evil, because I’ve seen evil, that he doesn’t care about Iran at all.
So let’s watch him do his thing. I mean, I don’t know how else to explain it. mean, you know, it’s almost like, God forbid there’s a fire or you’re being raped or something and the police guy comes to rescue you and you tell him, you know, I heard you’re not a really good guy, so I don’t need to be rescued. Like, what the hell?
Mijal (15:43)
Yeah.
I think people’s brains are broken. I’m not sure if it’s like an anti-Western thing or some or it might be like an anti-Israel thing that they think, this is helping Israel or Israel is leading it. Hence, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So so they told I can’t be so evil because of, know, because Israel is supporting this, which is ridiculous.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (15:57)
Yeah. You’re totally.
You’re absolutely right. I mean, it doesn’t fit into the anti-Israel narrative or the free Palestine narrative. They don’t get that these are funders of free Palestine because, wait a minute, I thought we have to be pro-Palestine. It’s like we’re pro-Palestinian people. We’re not pro-Hamas. So these are Hamas people. And so I don’t know how to do the breakdown. And our algorithms are out of whack. So nothing we’re doing is really reaching.
And, you know, I don’t know, Michal, it’s almost like when people call me reform or conservative or orthodox, you know, don’t put me in a box. It depends on the venue. It depends on the day. It depends on the topic, you know, and that’s what it is.
Mijal (16:37)
Yeah, but with that, mean, there’s also values that are ironclad. So I think for me to see so many so-called feminists who said nothing for so long, and especially in the last few months when there were people of Iran were really standing up in a way that was so courageous and risking so much. And reports have come out saying that like within very little time, 30,000, if not more, were murdered by the regime and they’re a blackout of any news. And then just seeing them be quiet and only now speak up and say, hey,
you know, don’t hurt the eye at all. And I’m like, what is wrong with you? You have no credibility. You have no value, suspect of human rights or feminist rights or anything like that.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (17:17)
I think the other thing, yes, and the other thing that I don’t know if everybody realizes, like, please believe me. You know, when the Iran deal happened and what is it, $1.5 billion were unfrozen at, know, given to Iran. The way they’re using their money is having, you know, protesters on university campuses or algorithms being skewed. So these young minds…
Mijal (17:38)
or a billion dollars
to Hezbollah per year.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (17:40)
Exactly. People are going to the streets being like, like screaming and I’m just like, can you come to class? Let me teach you what’s going on. But the problem is half those professors are also being funded by them. You know what I’m saying? Meanwhile, I’ll tell you one of my mom’s best friends, a doctor can’t find a job in Iran. So I don’t know where the money is going, but it’s to keep their greed and their power intact. So protests happening around the world, I have a feeling money is going into bank accounts for those protests.
Mijal (18:08)
Yeah, there’s been interesting tweets of people basically saying like, get ready when the regime falls for a list of names and we’ll see which both armies were funded by Iran and which influencers have been funded by Iran. I’ll say, by the way, something I haven’t mentioned before, but part of what felt personal to me today, I forgot his name, but one of the people in the Iranian military that was killed ⁓ was part of the group of people responsible for the attack in Argentina.
the Amir attack, which was ⁓ funded by Iran basically. this is like an, you know, the amount of when I heard how many died, by the way, like there was both celebration, but I also looked at his picture and I’m like, this is such like he looks so pathetic and he has been single handedly responsible for the death of so many hundreds of thousands, if not millions in so many different places. And it’s almost hard to believe that so much evil can can exist. ⁓
Noam (19:08)
By the way, know what’s on top of that? No, Michal, you know what’s… I told my wife, I’m like, you know Ahmadinejad was just killed? And she’s like, Ahmadinejad? Like, we were talking about Khomeini, but like Ahmadinejad for a decade or so, he was the name of the person that was on the wall of like, hey, this guy, he’s the one that said wipe Israel off the map and came to Columbia to speak. And I was just like, that was barely even news, that Ahmadinejad.
Mijal (19:08)
Anyways, sorry, that was just like, yeah, go ahead.
Noam (19:37)
also has been eliminated.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (19:38)
Yeah, it was
one of the top 40 officials that was killed. Yeah, mean Khomeini, Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, all terrible people, and unfortunately instead we’re fighting for why did Israel strike yesterday. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know, or I got a question.
Noam (19:54)
Is that
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (19:56)
Yeah, man,
I got a question also from another rabbi about, know, Oman said that we’re in talks and I don’t know what the heck happened. These people suddenly, we were in talks, Marco Rubio was going to come to Israel on Monday and then they did a surprise attack and it’s like, yo, I trust in Israel and I trust in the US and I know that they looked at intelligence and they saw that these people were building up nukes anyways. And what I’ve been even saying to people is,
Maybe, maybe the US fibbed. Maybe they weren’t as close as they could have been. Maybe, yeah, in a few months they couldn’t have nukes to blow us up. Maybe it was in a year or in three years, but this was kicking the can down the road. This is going to eventually happen. Israel saw that they were all gathering together, 40 of them, and it was the perfect time to strike. And you guys keep telling us not to have meaningless civilian casualties. Well, this was the perfect opportunity.
But no, we need to believe Iran because they say what they will do, right? We trust them. They weren’t doing anything bad.
Noam (20:57)
I want to be theological with you for a moment. Could we be theological? Could we put on our theology hats? What do you make of this moment right now that, you know, this command to blot out Amalek and Amalek representing in Jewish history and tradition the group of people or type of people that wants to eradicate the Jewish community, Jewish people, and ⁓ that’s what it symbolizes. And on that very day, Chameini
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (21:01)
What? Yes.
Noam (21:26)
who has been speaking about eradicating the Jewish people time and again, he was killed. And then on top of that, do you view, I’m just thinking theologically for a second, 2,500 years ago, Cyrus liberated the Jewish people. And I was thinking about this ultimate v’nahafochu moment of the reverse happening of like the Jewish leadership, Israel, liberating the Persian people and returning the favor 2,500 years later.
Mijal (21:49)
Israel. ⁓
Noam (21:55)
How do you, what do you think about those two theological moments and how do you reflect on it today?
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (22:02)
It’s really beautiful. mean, I would say that, I think the reason that the Persians are different than some of the other Arab countries, you know, is just, we really, really do feel like Iranian people. mean, I’m not going to speak on behalf of Moroccans or Syrians or Iraqis that left, but there’s like a very different kind of Persian pride in our blood. And I think it comes from Cyrus the great that there is possibility that we could live amongst non-Jews and live in harmony and not have one eyebrow up. Like we can’t really trust you. mean, I’m telling you.
Half of my mom’s friends are not Jewish and because she grew up with them and they come over for Thanksgiving they help they come over for Shabbat, know, so I Don’t have the kind of relationship of a Jewish minority growing up in a Muslim majority the way that I hear some of my other Middle Eastern Mizrahi friends really talk about you know, I’m not saying it was perfect I mean, there was a lot of anti-semitic rhetoric in our world, too, but it wasn’t the same theology
I mean, God doesn’t appear in the Purim story. So I think about that a lot right now, not that we’re God, but that God is working in mysterious ways, right? And Esther has to voice what she has to do. And we got to, you know, hang out with King Ahashverosh, whether that’s Trump or not, according to some of the memes going around and whether Uncle Mordechai is BB, I don’t know, but this is what we’re doing. know, Shabbat Z’chor is about, you know, it’s about something Israelis once taught me. It was like, hey, they come at us from all sides, you know?
Mijal (23:17)
You
Noam (23:17)
Hehehe.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (23:27)
We’re not going to say, we’re going to wait for them to kill us. Somebody’s trying to kill you, you kill them first. And I think that’s the story of Amalek. They came from behind at our most vulnerable time, just coming out of slaves in Egypt where God knows doing what. Maybe we had mana, maybe we didn’t yet. I don’t know what’s going on in the story at this point. And then out of nowhere, Amalek comes and attacks us. These ain’t good people. So we stroke them first.
when somebody tells you they’re gonna do something, you believe them, damn it. Like, why should I not believe them?
Mijal (23:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, this is ⁓ the story of pouring the story of so many things in Jewish history. And we’re so grateful to our land for you just sharing with us your passion, also just teaching us about Persian Jewish history and customs ⁓ and sharing some theology as well. want to just offer some prayers before we conclude. Just God willing, ⁓ for the safety ⁓ of.
both the US Army personnel, the soldiers who are fighting for the IDF soldiers, who are fighting for all of the Iranian people, who don’t have a government to protect them right now when they are under fire. May they be safe and may they have their freedom, God willing, very soon. I’m also praying for my Israeli brothers and sisters, literally, ⁓ who minutes ago were texting me from the safe room, their mamad, ⁓ and praying that God willing, this should
This should be something difficult, but that leads to a better Middle East, more peace, more freedom. ⁓ And kind of like the Benaafo, who that Noah mentioned before in the Purim story, that we have darkness, but we can go to tremendous light. So thank you.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (25:09)
Amen. Yeah.
Noam (25:10)
Amen. Amen, amen, amen.
Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Tarlin, for joining Wandering Jews. And ⁓ we’ll continue the conversation.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh (25:14)
All right.
Thank you for having me.
Mijal
Great. We’re also going to, of course, include some of your handles, Tarlan. So if folks want to, we want to encourage everybody to follow you and your voice and learn from you. And we know that you both share spiritual wisdom and also the best news sources to really understand what’s going on right now. So thank you so much and God willing, we should only have Bezerot to vote better news.
Rabbi Tarlan Rabizadeh
Amen. Thank you so much.