Our synagogue hosted its first-ever No Ruz celebration last week. An extraordinary evening of live piano performances and dancing by youth and readings of Hafez poetry.

I felt it  resonant on many levels for me as an individual, for my family, and for the large gathering in our sanctuary as a kehilah kedoshah, a sacred community.

Gratitude to the amazing lay leaders (who are among some of my dearest friends) for bringing this night to fruition, and our Rabbi and Hazzan for sanctifying the integration of Persian Judaism and wholeness to our congregation. It was cause for a Shehechiayanoo, a time to pause and reflect with gratitude for our time in 2025: There is literally no place else where this could have taken place! Girls dancing, youth of two genders playing difficult classical Farsi piano compositions, women reciting Hafez, together, in a synagogue. In Iran we’d be arrested, maybe killed.
Although I had personally been in attendance and involved in planning No Ruz events with other organizations many times in previous years, this year felt especially poignant.

Exactly one year ago, I had just returned from a life-altering Solidarity Mission to Israel. Ours had been an intrepid group: 19 Persian Jewish women, one Persian man, and one Ashkenazi woman. I was the only one of three American-born in the group. I have not been to Iran yet.

Given my families of origin, I am more steeped in Persian culture, Judaism, and Israel than a full tin of loose leaves of aromatic cardamom earl grey and jasmine teas: I am a co-founder of a Persian Culture Committee, officer of a  Sephardic Heritage Alliance, a former officer of my synagogue, involved in local civic organizations, and schools and have been to Israel many times before, including for life cycle events, BH.

Our synagogue community had begun as Ashkenazi. It is slowly adapting to Ashkefardi, a mashup of both, ceding the Ashkenormative presumptions of the years when I had served as the first Persian Jewish female officer over a decade ago.

Back then, when I addressed the congregation in English, I was sometimes accusedn-to my face!-  of speaking in dog whistles, as though I had spoken in Farsi. As though I were inviting only Persians, or excluding Ashkenazim, or vice versa. Merely for speaking, for being.

For many years, raising my now-grown children, we stretched and tried mightily to be in both worlds for their sake. We learned both Ashkenazi trop and Sephardi trop. We learned piyyutim and brought prayer leaders,  such as Maureen Nehedar, Yahalah........

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