LOS ANGELES – In early January, Mahnaz and her family (her name has been changed at her request) were gathered for their weekly Shabbat dinner at her home in West Hills, Los Angeles.
The company of her beloved children and grandchildren, as well as the warm, savory Persian food Mahnaz had lovingly prepared, provided comfort to her and her guests, who were somber as they contemplated the devastating fires ravaging Los Angeles. Parts of their city of refuge after escaping post-revolutionary Iran were burning, but they believed they were miles away from the epicenters of the fires. Most importantly, they were together.
Suddenly, the family heard the doorbell. Police officers arrived to inform Mahnaz and her husband Firouz (also not his real name) of a forced evacuation due to the Kenneth Fire that had broken out in the area. Guests needed to leave immediately, and the shocked couple was told they only had a few minutes to pack a suitcase and evacuate their home.
Mahnaz, a grandmother of five, struggled to respond to the evacuation order. She believed the home she had shared with her husband for three decades was a safe distance from the Los Angeles area fires that would ultimately result in one of the most destructive disasters in California history. Mahnaz and Firouz’s modest home was safe, until a wildfire wreaked havoc on her neighborhood, including a family of Iranian American Jews who had gathered for Shabbat dinner.
Her children acted quickly, retrieving old suitcases and asking where their parents stored their medicine, phone chargers, clean clothes, cash, and warm jackets. And where was the beloved family poodle?
But Mahnaz stood at the entrance to the main bedroom, seemingly paralyzed. This felt familiar. She had lived through a moment like this before.
FORTY-TWO years ago, Mahnaz, Firouz, and their then-small children had escaped the fanatic violence and persecution of Iran in the middle of the night. The dreaded paramilitary police who roamed the streets of Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution had received a tip that Firouz was an alleged spy on behalf of Israel and was also funneling funds to the “Zionist regime” through support of various Israeli charities.
Though he had often sent funds to Israeli charities that helped orphans and blind children before the revolution, the allegation of espionage was nonsense, and Firouz had reason to suspect that an affronted Shi’ite colleague who resented his comfortable lifestyle had made that life-changing phone call to the police.
Thankfully, a sympathetic colleague had quietly warned Firouz hours before police arrived to arrest him. The family understood that it immediately needed to escape post-revolutionary Iran, where Zionism was and remains a capital offense punishable by death.
Three years earlier, in May 1979, the regime had committed the unthinkable and executed the most prominent Jew in Iran, a legendary titan of industry and philanthropy named Habib Elghanian, accusing him of supporting Israel and engaging in “friendship with the enemies of God.” Elghanian was the first Jew to be executed by the regime, as well as the first businessman. He endured a sham trial that lasted less than 20 minutes and was killed by firing squad. The regime seized all property belonging to his family, and the guard who delivered his body from the morgue demanded to be compensated for each bullet.
The once-unimaginable assassination sent a horrific shock wave across Iran’s ancient Jewish community, which, at the time, stood at roughly 100,000. Today, that number is 5,000-8,000 Jews.
Mahnaz and Firouz had only two hours to pack away their once-stable lives in Iran and prepare themselves and their young children for escape. As Jews, the family belonged to a community that dated back 2,700 years to ancient Persia. How does one pack 2,700 years’ worth of history and identity into one suitcase?
That night in Iran, Mahnaz packed a few essentials. But she also packed sentimental objects, including photo albums and small possessions belonging to her mother and father, whom she never saw again after fleeing Iran.
THIS JANUARY, while her children were frantically packing items such as clean undergarments and medicine for her and her husband, Mahnaz’s mind was elsewhere, in anxious contemplation over the cherished possessions that she had hurriedly taken out of Iran with her over four decades ago.
Still contemplating the wildfire evacuation order, she entered her closet, opened a cloth-lined box and removed a fraying lace veil with remnants of gold thread weaved throughout, in the shape of flowers and large and small Stars of David. The veil belonged to her late mother, who had worn it at her own wedding in Iran in the 1920s. Back then, most Jews in Iran lived modest, even impoverished lives. Her late mother and father were married beneath a simple, tallit-covered chuppah (wedding canopy); the young bride held a bouquet made up of tulips that were collected from a local park.
With her eyes on a bedside alarm clock, Mahnaz carefully removed the fraying veil and placed it in a small suitcase. Then, she retrieved an old book of Persian poetry that belonged to her late father. The inscriptions were still there. Like the veil, the book had been carried from Iran to a refugee resettlement town in Italy, to a suburban area adjacent to Los Angeles, where fellow Iranian Jews finally had found a semblance of peace and security after being expelled from the Middle East after nearly three millennia.
Los Angeles is home to the largest community of Iranian Jews in the US; the city offered refuge to so many Iranians of various faiths after the 1979 revolution that, in some circles, it is called “Tehrangeles.” There is even a street sign near Westwood Boulevard that is labeled, “Persian Square.”
Mahnaz had grown accustomed to life in America, and particularly to life in Los Angeles. As she searched her closet, she anticipated reproach from her children for taking away precious time to pack her sentimental possessions. True, she needed her blood pressure medicine more than her father’s beloved book of poetry. But she also knew that while the medication would enable her to live a longer life, her father’s book and her mother’s veil would infuse that life with more meaning.
Mahnaz and Firouz eventually left their home and prayed that it would remain intact. During our interview, she repeated the same shaky words she had spoken the day after the evacuation: “How many homes do I have to escape from in my life?” she asked. “How many times can I pack a suitcase and start over from nothing?”
Layers of trauma
January’s historic Southern California wildfires have burned over 57,000 acres, or 233 square kilometers (89 square miles). To appreciate the magnitude of this devastation, that is almost four times the size of Manhattan, almost as big as Brooklyn, and larger than Jerusalem and Tel Aviv combined.
At least 29 people have been killed, including those with disabilities who were unable to leave their homes as fires erupted; over 200,000 people were forced to evacuate, and over 16,000 structures were destroyed or damaged. The economic toll from the fires is estimated at over $250 billion. According to initial survey data collected from local synagogues by Jewish Federation Los Angeles, approximately 1,000 Jewish families have lost their homes, or they are uninhabitable due to fire damage.
In some areas, such as the Pacific Palisades, entire neighborhoods are gone, including homes, schools, libraries, markets, coffee shops and houses of worship. The Eaton Fire in Altadena and the Palisades Fire are the second and third most destructive fires, respectively, in the history of California, also known as “The Golden State,” where millions of people have sought refuge for over 150 years.
NAVA GHANOUNI, a Los Angeles-based Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), works closely with local Iranian American Jews, who comprise a community known for its vibrancy, general success, and traditionalism. Prior to her work as a therapist, Ghanouni worked with Dara Abaei, a well-known community leader whose organization, JUN (Jewish Unity Network) has helped thousands of Iranian Jewish refugees and immigrants in Los Angeles manage crises ranging from drug abuse to untreated mental illness and unwanted pregnancy.
Two years ago, Ghanouni founded a community counseling center in LA with fellow Iranian Jewish therapists Rodney Rabbani and Joanna Zioni called Revive Wellness Counseling Center to better serve the community. She estimates that nearly 90% of her clients are Iranian American Jewish families. In many ways, she has seen it all.
But in the past few months, Ghanouni has observed a large spike in anxiety and re-triggered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among Iranian Jews who were affected by the wildfires, especially those who lost their homes, though even clients who were a safe distance from the fires have told her that they now feel anxious and insecure about their physical and financial stability, as a result of past trauma.
Ghanouni and her family escaped post-revolutionary Iran in October 2001 when she was 17 years old, several years after her father was harassed and imprisoned “for being Jewish,” she said. They arrived in the US almost three weeks after September 11, 2001, after requesting passports to temporarily leave Iran to attend a cousin’s purported wedding in Austria.
The wedding, of course, was fake. Ghanouni’s family even printed a fake wedding invitation and bought two-way tickets as proof for government officials. They were allowed to leave the country for five days, and Ghanouni, still a teenager, quickly packed her most precious belongings into one suitcase, as more suitcases would have tipped off airport personnel.
The family’s relief during their temporary stay as protected refugees in Vienna was marred with “a sense of being in limbo,” the family therapist shared. “Obviously, the goal was to leave Iran, so we were all very excited to be safe. But being in limbo in Vienna for five months, we couldn’t even enjoy being tourists because every day, we had the anxiety of getting that call for the interview with the Consulate.”
MAHNAZ’S DESCRIPTION of being forced to stay with her oldest son and his family in their home during the fire evacuation held a sad resemblance to Ghanouni’s memories of her time in transit as a refugee in Austria. “Every day, we waited for a call to tell us if we still had our home or if it burned down,” Mahnaz recalled.
“We watched the news. The children checked the internet for stories. We didn’t know where to go or what to do,” she said. “It felt like we were still [refugees] in Italy after we left Iran, when we were waiting to get the call that we could go to America. And a few months ago, after the fires, I waited for a call to tell me whether or not I still had a home.”
Ghanouni believes that the recent wildfires have been viscerally triggering for Iranian Jews, including those who were young children during the chaos of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).
“Many of us grew up with vivid memories of sudden danger, whether it was the sound of bombs falling, hurried escapes from home, or witnessing the distress of our parents as they tried to shield us from fear,” she said. “The fires reignite that deep sense of vulnerability and loss. Watching a home burn, or even fearing that possibility, mirrors the feelings of displacement we experienced as children.”
For many families, trauma from leaving Iran was initially re-triggered due to mandatory evacuation orders during the fires. Ghanouni says she has seen “a profound impact of secondary trauma in a lot of individuals, families, and the community” due to the wildfires. She defines secondary trauma, or vicarious trauma, as occurring when someone is indirectly affected by another person’s pain or suffering.
The family therapist believes that the “layers of trauma” only serve to compound a deep sense of loss, grief, and insecurity that is adding an extra dimension to how Iranian Jews are struggling to heal. “Secondary trauma doesn’t just affect individuals,” she noted. “It has a ripple effect through families and communities, shaping how we perceive safety and resilience.
“For those who left Iran, a home wasn’t just a physical space – it symbolized stability, safety, and connection to our identity,” she said. “Losing that once again, or fearing its loss, can open old wounds.”
For many Iranian Jews, there is an added layer: the burden of repression and silence over painful events and trauma. “Many of us grew up with parents who, understandably, rarely spoke of their pain directly,” explained Ghanouni. “We absorbed their trauma in silence, often feeling responsible for helping them heal while learning to adapt to a new life and a new culture. The fires remind us not just of our own fragility, but also of the struggles our families endured to rebuild after leaving everything behind.”
‘I have guilt for what I didn’t think to take for them’
On January 8, Michaela – who requested to use her Hebrew name rather than her Persian one due to privacy concerns – learned that she and her family had lost their home in Pacific Palisades, and that her elderly parents had lost their home as well.
Michaela and her husband, Avi, who is also an Iranian American Jew, owned a condo in a multi-unit building that was destroyed by the fires. Her elderly parents owned a condo in the same building, three doors away. The headquarters of Michaela and Avi’s business was also located in the building.
“We invested nearly everything in our condos – both my parents and I,” said Michaela, who added that her mother and father are working extremely hard “to be able to afford it since they are still paying a mortgage on their condo and were severely underinsured.”
Michaela moved to Pacific Palisades at age 14 and is a graduate of Palisades High School, which sustained serious fire damage in January. The Palisades are close to her heart: It was there that she met her husband of 23 years, raised children, and built a family business.
Upon receiving an evacuation order on January 7, Michaela left her condo with several vital items. She also entered her parents’ condo and removed a few possessions, as her 71-year-old mother and 80-year-old father were not home during the evacuations.
Born in Los Angeles in 1980, Michaela was raised with strong ties to American and Iranian culture. Her mother and father left Iran before the revolution. Her father was born in Iran, then moved to Israel without his family at age 13 and lived on a kibbutz. In 1977, at age 33, he moved back to Iran to marry Michaela’s mother. That same year, soon after the couple’s wedding, the de-facto Israeli embassy in Tehran contacted her father and warned him to leave the country, before it would be unsafe to escape.
“My parents always felt blessed to have been able to leave when they did, but it was also one of the most difficult things they had to do,” recalled Michaela. The young couple did not have many possessions, but their sense of loss and trauma ran deep as they exchanged goodbyes with family members, began a new life from virtually nothing, and attempted to earn livelihoods in a foreign country.
“I did my best to evacuate for them, taking what I could think to take in a very stressful situation,” Michaela described solemnly as she recalled having to gather some of her parents’ belongings from their home in their absence on January 7.
In addition to the unimaginable pain of losing their home, her mother and father also endured “the pain of not having had a choice in what belongings were removed during the evacuation,” she reflected. “I have guilt for what I didn’t think to take for them. I brought out some of their [heirloom] jewelry, but not all. I left behind some beloved pieces of my own jewelry that I had received at significant moments in my life and had been planning to pass down to my children, but now no longer can.”
PERHAPS THE most precious item that the fires consumed in her parents’ home was a wedding album from Iran. None of the photos had been digitized. Today, one photo remains of her parents’ wedding, courtesy of a friend who had it in his home and who offered it to the family after the fires. Michaela’s mother and father recently marked their 48th wedding anniversary; the family enlarged the one remaining wedding photo as a gift to the couple.
Michaela and Avi also lost their own wedding album. “Even though our wedding was just 23 years ago, none of those images were stored digitally, either,” she lamented. The couple also lost their prized Persian rugs, given to them by beloved family members. “As proud Persians, we also lament the loss of our Persian rugs. My husband wishes that he had taken them with him, since they were wedding gifts from his grandparents,” said Michaela. “I think the feeling of loss is about more than the beautiful rugs, but also because of our connection to our family who gave them to us.”
As an Iranian Jewish family therapist, Ghanouni understands why the Persian rugs that perished in the fires held so much value for Michaela and her family: “The pain of displacement, alongside the pain of uncertainty of what was lost, left an emotional impact on those who left and their future generations,” she observed. “We Persians do hang on to our culture and our stories. We repeat those stories over and over, especially to those born in the US. For those who lost their homes again – this time, during the wildfires – those wounds are reopened.”
THIS IS not the first time that Avi, who escaped Iran as a little boy, has had to start his life all over again. “But rather than that experience making this one more painful for him, it’s made him realize his own resilience, and he’s had incredible strength and faith that we will build our lives again,” his wife said.
After Avi left Iran with his mother and older sister, they stayed in the US with his maternal grandparents. When the family evacuated their home on January 7, Avi’s mother opened the doors of her West LA home to them. “She’s now supporting us and her grandchildren the same way her parents once did for her and her children,” reflected Michaela. After losing their home, her mother and father stayed with friends for two months and recently rented their own apartment.
Michaela and Avi have no plans to return to the Pacific Palisades. “Rebuilding our home and also the entire community will take years, and we really need to get our lives started again sooner than that,” she said. “For our own emotional stability and for the sake of our children, we want to join a new community and establish a new foundation, without looking back and [without] always hoping to return to how it was.”
The wildfires not only burned down her home, but also affected “an entire Jewish community in the Palisades,” she said, contributing to what can only be described as a doubling of grief: “We’ve been grieving our personal losses, and also grieving for the community,” she described sadly.
If a silver lining could be found among the charred remains of Michaela’s former life in the Palisades, it would lead “to an extraordinary Iranian and Jewish community.” She was touched by the many individuals and nonprofit organizations that immediately reached out to her and her family, including her daughter’s Jewish high school. “The community made it clear that we’re part of a much larger tribe than we had realized.”
The uncertainty of return
In the weeks after October 7, Los Angeles-based life coach and community activist Rona Ram Lalezary quickly observed how the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was taking a toll on her own Jewish community.
She founded a nonprofit called Mental Health IsReal (MHI) to offer mental health resources, including many in-person events, to Jewish communities who were suffering physically and emotionally in the aftermath of October 7. With the surge in antisemitism across the US after the January wildfires, Lalezary expanded this mission to support all Angelenos, regardless of faith, who were impacted by the fires.
To help fire victims, the organization works with the same volunteers and trauma specialists who helped Jewish Americans heal after October 7.
MHI runs an Emergency Crisis Initiative that offers “a comprehensive mental health response” to the fires, according to Lalezary, including a mobile mental support clinic, free online counseling sessions, trauma-informed group workshops, and a wellness resource hub. It has hosted pop-up events with therapists at fire evacuation sites, including churches, and collaborates with local organizations to effectively distribute resources, create outreach, and build resilience among those who need it most.
“We work to ensure that no survivor is left without the support they need to heal and rebuild,” she said. Those survivors include Iranian American Jews who, overnight, lost their homes and nearly all of their belongings during the wildfires.
Having been born in post-revolutionary Iran, Lalezary is no stranger to their trauma. She and her family fled the Islamic Republic when she was three years old and resettled as refugees in Austria, before arriving in the US.
Though young when she left Iran, Lalezary still remembers the “deep sense of uncertainty about what our futures held. My parents did an incredible job shielding us from the full extent of their fears, yet their determination to secure a better life was evident in everything they did. At a certain point, they realized that returning to Iran was not an option, but they never gave up hope.”
SINCE THE outbreak of the fires, Lalezary has spoken with many Iranian Jews who are battling mental health challenges from losing homes, some, for the second time in their lives.
“Within our community, there are many triggers from trauma. Many who evacuated due to the fires described experiencing flashbacks from Iran of hurriedly gathering their belongings, making heavy, game-time decisions about what was absolutely necessary for the next phase of their lives,” she observed. “The process of assessing what matters most – choosing between irreplaceable keepsakes and items that could eventually be rebuilt – has transported many back to that pivotal moment of their escape from Iran.”
For Iranian Jews who have sought help from Lalezary and MHI, the most alarming aspect of their experience focused on an overwhelming uncertainty as to whether the fire evacuations would be temporary or permanent. “This closely mirrors the sentiment many had when they initially fled Iran, believing the upheaval would be short-lived and that they would eventually return home,” she said. “For some, the fires have resurfaced the emotional weight of that displacement, bringing forth anxiety and distress that had long been buried.”
A humbling reminder
An honest examination of the impact of the January wildfires on Iranian American Jews in Southern California must acknowledge the role that socioeconomics plays in the lives of this community. By and large, Iranian Jews in LA are known to be affluent, educated, and successful, though the community is hardly a monolith. Just ask any Iranian Jewish family that lives month-to-month and raises children in cramped apartments in the area known as the “slums of Beverly Hills,” so that they may benefit from the city’s award-winning public school district and safe streets.
There are Iranian American Jews who, like my family, enjoyed tremendous economic stability back in Iran, but who arrived in the US as protected refugees with virtually nothing in terms of savings or guaranteed livelihoods.
There were also those who arrived with more funds and who, over the course of several decades, managed to expand their wealth; and then, there were those who escaped Iran and bought homes in LA over 40 years ago, particularly in Pacific Palisades, when those properties cost a small fraction of their current value and constituted charming fixer-uppers. Michaela’s mother and father had lived in their condo for over 30 years before losing it to the fires.
While it is true that some Iranian Jewish families who were affected by the fires enjoyed upper-class status and lost expensive possessions, many of these victims had arrived in the US as struggling refugees and had, for decades, worked their way toward financial stability and success. They may have lost their homes and all of their belongings this year while they belonged to a segment of a wealthier class, but they began their lives many decades ago in America with virtually nothing. That has made the loss of their homes and possessions even more unbearable.
“Everything was in those homes that they lost; they don’t have a cushion to do it again,” said Sara Raoof Jacobs, founder and director of Maman Nonprofit in Los Angeles. “These Jewish families moved into those homes 40 years ago, when it was first affordable. Those homes were everything they had.”
SINCE JANUARY, Maman (which means mother in Persian) has spearheaded efforts to help these families replace some of their lost possessions. Raoof Jacobs founded the nonprofit in 2022, years after losing her beloved mother to cancer and seeing firsthand how struggling Jewish families needed support and resources.
The organization, which is composed of volunteers, is the largest female-led nonprofit in LA, with a combined 1,000 volunteers in the US and Israel. Maman works mainly behind the scenes, and since October 7, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Israeli victims of the massacre, secured vital equipment and gear for the IDF, and ensured that traumatized children who survived the devastation are able to visit LA and enjoy experiences such a day trip to Disneyland or tickets to a Lakers game.
In the aftermath of the January fires, Maman volunteers sprang into action, raising $15,000 in collaboration with an American-born, IDF lone soldier named Eli Wininger who lives in LA and has also helped first responders; $5,000 in fulfilled Amazon wish lists for fire victim families; and $60,000 worth of in-kind donations to a one-of-a-kind, high-end boutique that Maman operated until March 30 inside a local synagogue, but has since donated as inventory to its partner, LA Strong, an initiative of the City of Los Angeles to support wildfire relief efforts.
The boutique, which offered fire victims (mostly Iranian Jews) a private experience similar to shopping at a real store (only everything was free), was held at Eretz Cultural Center, one of the first synagogues founded by Iranian Jews who resettled in America after the revolution. Raoof Jacobs’ grandfather, Khaleg Ghiam, was one of its founding members; today, “Eretz,” as it is known among locals, is run by her uncle, Nader Ghiam. “It feels full circle because our community has grown up in this space,” said Raoof Jacobs.
Everything, from the Amazon wish lists to the in-person boutique, was handled confidentially, she said. Families emailed Maman Nonprofit a list of items they needed from Amazon; parents (mostly mothers) would visit the boutique by appointment, entering through a back entrance to preserve their “dignity and honor.”
WHEN HELPING fire victims, “it’s all about dignity,” said Raoof Jacobs. “This wasn’t just about giving them ‘stuff’ – it was about preserving their sense of self and showing them the utmost respect. When someone has lost everything, you don’t want to make them feel like a charity case. You want to restore their sense of normalcy.
“That’s why we made sure the boutique had high-end, familiar brands” that were “displayed beautifully – not just basic necessities – so they could replace their lost items with things they actually love and use.”
Iranian culture is rife with the concept of aberoo, or saving face, in front of others. “Many Persians are hesitant to accept help, so we made sure it felt more like a shopping experience rather than a handout.” For those who were still hesitant to “shop” at the free boutique, Maman volunteers prepared care packages. The personalized gift bags seemed like loving gifts, rather than charity.
Maman Nonprofit received in-kind donations for the boutique from brands such as Charlotte Tilbury, Ilia, and La Croix, as well as high-end children’s clothing and bedding. The goal was not to accommodate affluence, but to access normalcy. “These were all brands familiar to and used by many in the Persian community, allowing victims to replace lost items with quality products they recognized and valued,” its founder said.
Born in Shiraz in 1981, Raoof Jacobs left Iran with her family as a 15-month-old infant. She described a sense of “devastating loss” among Iranian Jewish fire victims. Her own family history is a testament to the unimaginable difficulty of starting over.
In Iran, her mother and father met at the prestigious Pahlavi University, known after the revolution as Shiraz University. When the family fled Iran, her father was in a residency program and her mother was a nurse. In America, they were both forced to start over: her mother repeated nursing school and her father repeated his medical residency.
“There’s something powerful about having our community, because we share an understanding of our culture – when one of us hurts, we all hurt,” she said. “We are one body, one family, always looking out for each other.”
Raoof Jacobs observed that for a community which is often associated with financial stability, the losses sustained by Iranian American Jewish fire victims has served as “a humbling reminder” of the fragility of material possessions, regardless of their value.
“The Persian community has always valued wealth and security, but this has been a wake-up call,” the Maman founder said. “The heirlooms, jewelry, and collectibles – things we cherish so much – can disappear in an instant. The only thing that lasts is the love and support we give each other.”
‘Descent for the sake of ascent’
In late January, Mahnaz, who had packed her late mother’s wedding veil and her father’s book of Persian poetry during the mandatory fire evacuation, finally received permission to re-enter her home. Thankfully, the house was spared by the ravaging flames, though the smoke and toxic particles in the air have destroyed most of her small, beloved garden, which she had tended for over 30 years.
That includes a large, fragrant, Persian jasmine shrub that Mahnaz purchased when it was still a seedling during a visit to Israel in the early 2000s, and that she brought back with her to the US. “Even if it hadn’t been destroyed, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the scent of it,” she lamented. “My children make me wear a mask anytime I want to leave the house, even to enter the backyard.”
As for the precious poetry book and delicate wedding veil, they now sit in their permanent home: a safety deposit box that one of Mahnaz and Firouz’s sons purchased for the couple upon their return home. “Heaven knew that I couldn’t live through losing an entire life and home again,” said Mahnaz. “One displacement was enough.”
Nava Ghanouni, the marriage and family therapist who escaped Iran at age 17 by claiming to attend a cousin’s wedding in Europe and promising to return after five days, still thinks about a pair of black sandals that she left behind because her suitcase was filled to the brim with the cherished possessions of a desperate teenager. “I still tell my kids about those sandals,” she reflected. “They’re still a part of our family story.”
IN AMERICA, Rona Ram Lalezary’s father re-started his medical career at age 50, an age when some doctors often begin to contemplate retirement. Her mother sacrificed her own ambitions to support her father’s journey to become a doctor in Los Angeles.
In her work addressing the mental health needs of Jews after October 7 – and now, Angelenos after the January wildfires – she has seen how victims yearn deeply for resilience and fortitude. She also suspects that 38 years after arriving in America, her mother and father still hope to return to Iran.
“Many conversations we have had since that time centered around how they left so much behind and how they always maintained the hope that one day, everything would turn around for the best, and we would make our way back to Iran,” she said. “I still believe many [former Iranian citizens], my parents included, still hold on to this eternal optimism.”
Maman Nonprofit founder and director Sara Raoof Jacobs has never had more clarity on her purpose, waking up each day with a sense of meaning that is derived from tangible giving, such as placing a care package directly into the hands of a fire victim.
“The most powerful lesson I have learned in the past 18 months is that God gives to people through other people,” she said. “The way our community stepped up – the donors, the volunteers, the brands that gave so generously – has shown me that our strength is in our unity.”
For Avi and Michaela, who lost their home in Pacific Palisades, their unwavering Jewish faith has proved resolutely comforting. According to Michaela, Judaism has taught her family that “there is descent for the sake of ascent, so we have faith that while we’re going through a significant challenge, we will come out of this better than we were before. We have the strongest force in the universe within us – Hashem – so we know we are stronger than this challenge we are facing. We’ve had to put all of these concepts to the test in this experience.”
THE IRANIAN Jewish experience has been tested for millennia, through one of the earliest Jewish Diasporas in the world and an extraordinary community that has endured virtually everything: from the challenges of exile that were documented by prophets such as Ezra and Daniel, to narrowly escaping genocide soon after being brought to the Persian Empire as former Babylonian captives (as documented in the ancient Purim Megillah), to the historic Muslim conquest of Persia in the seventh century that forever changed the region.
Later, there was the ghettoization of Iranian Jews as a result of being deemed ritually impure (najes) by Shi’ite Muslims; massacres and more mass conversions of entire Jewish populations in various cities (such as the brutal, forced conversions of the Jews of Mashhad in 1839, who began living secret lives as crypto Jews); eras of success, including the “Golden Age” during Shah Mohammad Pahlavi’s Westernization of Iran in the mid-twentieth century; and most recently, a devastating Islamic revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979 and ushered in the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s biggest state sponsor of terror.
Despite nearly three millennia of trauma, Iranian Jews, including those in America, have worked tirelessly toward education; a traditional, family-based embrace of Judaism and unabashed Zionism; and successful rebuilding of lives, dreams, and we hope for many in Los Angeles, homes.
By and large, the community is imbued with humanity, resilience, and above all, perseverance, as embodied in a story that Michaela shared about her husband, Avi.
On January 8, just hours after learning that his home and the headquarters of his business had burned down, Avi still served as the keynote speaker for a motivational seminar planned for that evening. “Given the challenges that we were facing at that very moment, we decided it was even more meaningful to go forward with it,” said Michaela. Planned long before the fires, the seminar was dedicated to helping attendees access inner peace and serenity, regardless of any challenge.
