Young Iranian Jews Now Pushing Beyond Old Boundaries

New Persian blood: New York board members of the group 30 Years After, including Shannon and Lauren Hedvat, third and fourth from left, at their launch event in September 2008.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Arranged meticulously across a wooden dining table was a Shabbat meal that could have served 30 — fluffy gondhi, “Persian Meatballs,” still steaming from their broth, Middle Eastern salads and ghormeh sabzi, a green vegetable stew. A Shabbat candle hovered between a spread of tahdig, a crispy rice dish, and shirini polo, a sweet rice blended with almond slivers, orange peels and pistachios.

For the Hedvat siblings — Lauren, Shannon and Brandon — this was just another routine Shabbat meal in Lauren’s Manhattan apartment. It was winter break from Penn Law School for Shannon and Penn Engineering for Brandon, and they decided to cook up a traditional Persian Shabbat dinner for their friends, both Persian and not, many of whom have become frequent guests at the trio’s events.

“Growing up we became accustomed to our parents’ way of entertaining even though they have assimilated too much into the American culture. The warm hospitality of the culture is ingrained in us,” said Shannon Hedvat, 24, the middle of the three. “No matter who was coming over for whatever reason, my parents always had a huge bowl of fresh fruit, nuts and sweets on the table along with tea and coffee.”

Even as they hew to their Iranian heritage and their parents’ culture of hospitality, the Hedvats and other 20- and 30-something Persians, the first to be born in America, are transforming the famously insular Iranian community here in unexpected ways. Thirty years after the Iranian Revolution brought tens of thousands of Persian Jews to Great Neck, the gilded ghetto on Long Island’s Gold Coast, and to Los Angeles, a new generation is pushing beyond its parents’ tight-knit world.

Influenced by the cultural pluralism and openness of America, its  members are entering into mixed marriages with Ashkenazim, something that would have been unheard of a generation ago. They have taken up leadership positions in large Ashkenazi shuls in Great Neck. And they are thrusting themselves into philanthropic and political causes in America, in Israel and worldwide.

“In general, Persians have an attitude of doing their own thing and feeling like other outside factors don’t affect them,” said Bobby Shamsian, 28, a vice president at renewable energy hedge fund TerraVerde Capital Management.  Continue reading…

JTA picked up my Jewish Week article from last week, which looked at the relative happiness of Orthodox marriages in comparison to secular unions. And it’s currently on their homepage!

Orthodox marriages are happier but still have stresses, study reports

By Sharon Udasin · January 25, 2010

NEW YORK (New York Jewish Week) — Orthodox marriages may be happier than their secular counterparts, but religious unions are rocky enough to concern a team of researchers and rabbis who presented the results of their recent study on marital satisfaction at the Orthodox Union.

“Traditional family values and religious values tend to overlap,” Eliezer Schnall, an assistant professor of psychology at Yeshiva University who was responsible for analyzing the data, said here last week. “But there are also those in this community who are not as happy with their marriages.”  Continue reading…

The State Of The Union

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Orthodox marriages may be happier than their secular counterparts. But religious unions are rocky enough to concern a team of researchers and rabbis who presented the results of their recent study on marital satisfaction at the Orthodox Union here last week.

“Traditional family values and religious values tend to overlap,” said Eliezer Schnall, an assistant professor of psychology at Yeshiva University, who was responsible for analyzing the data. “But there are also those in this community who are not as happy with their marriages.”

Results showed that 72 percent of men surveyed and 74 percent of women rated their marriages as “very good” or “excellent,” whereas, the overall U.S. population has a much lower satisfaction rate of 63 and 60 percent respectively, according to a 2009 General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion. Only 13 percent of Orthodox couples rated their marriages as “fair” or “poor.”

Aside from a few subjects from the United Kingdom and Israel, the 3,670 respondents were predominantly North Americans, who had been recruited through Internet promotions and outreach efforts in New York and Los Angeles synagogues.

Among the most divisive issues for unhappy respondents were infertility, at-risk youth, children with disabilities and use of birth control, according to Deborah Fox, the study’s pioneer and program director of the Aleinu Family Resource Center at Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles.  Continue reading…

‘Sex And The City,’ Beijing Style

Often wearing her “gefilte fish” t-shirt and sipping He’brew beer, Anna Sophie Lowenberg turns her encounters with Beijing men into 10-minute webisodes.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In a bright pink button-up dress, white knee-highs and dangly earrings, a daringly confident Su Fei saunters into a swanky Beijing boutique hotel for an evening of speed-dating, where she’ll sit down with 21 eligible bachelors — like Hai, Wukejia and Richard.

But for Su Fei, a curly-haired Carrie Bradshaw look-alike whose real name is Anna Sophie Loewenberg, finding a boyfriend in Beijing isn’t easy.

“If you had kids with a Jewish girl, they’d be Jewish,” she tells Richard. “Would you be okay with that?” Because, well, whether he likes it or not, “they just are.”

Loewenberg, 35, is the producer, writer and star of the online television show “Sexy Beijing,” which chronicles the wanderings of a Jewish American journalist looking for love in China’s capital city. Roaming the streets of Beijing, the Los Angeles native interviews university students, hardhat workers and elderly couples about their love lives — asking very personal questions and usually getting answers. The 10-minute episodes range from a foray in traditional Chinese matchmaking, to a study of Valentine’s Day, to a visit with the local Chabad Lubavitch community. Meanwhile, Loewenberg goes by the more pronounceable Chinese name of “Su Fei,” despite its double meaning as a brand of Chinese maxi-pads. Her shtick — with nearly 3.6 million YouTube hits — has landed her in English-language Chinese papers, on the Today Show and even in a Q&A on The New Yorker’s Web site.

“I think of Su Fei as an alter ego, but I think there’s a kernel of truth in everything — there’s nothing that I would say about a relationship or I’d say about my experiences that doesn’t have some truth in it,” she told The Jewish Week in a phone interview. “As we’ve been doing the show over the years, I’ve given myself more and more space to create the character of Su Fei and make it less about my own life.” Continue reading…

Israeli Culture, From N.Y. To L.A.

Dor Chadash and the Israeli Leadership Council celebrate the official announcement at the recent ILC Gala in Los Angeles, an event attended by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Walking the streets of Manhattan, it’s not uncommon to hear snippets of Hebrew conversation every few blocks or so — a young dad pointing out the “kelev gadol” [big dog] to his toddling son — or to witness an Israeli waitress serving hummus to pay for her university studies.

A similar influx of young Israelis has emerged in Los Angeles, but unlike 20- and 30-something Israeli New Yorkers, the L.A. group lacks a sense of community and remains largely isolated from local Jewish organizations, local experts say.

This is where Dor Chadash, which has brought together 30,000 Israeli and American Jewish New Yorkers in the past six years, comes into play.

 “The vision is to create a national community that shares a passion for Israel,” said Tzameret Fuerst, a founding member and chairwoman emeritus of Dor Chadash, who conceived the idea of expanding the organization beyond New York. “It was clear that Los Angeles was an important target.” Continue reading…