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FOUR LIFE IN LOS ANGELES This chapter explores what life is like for second-generation Iranian Jewish women in Los Angeles, including how immigration forced many women to start working and contributing to the family income. Some of the women reveled in being working women, while others felt a great deal of animosity and embarrassment for having to work. This chapter also examines the qualities these women are expected to possess, such as being active in dorehs (social get-togethers), giving and attending parties, and being on top of the social hierarchy. With their immigration to Los Angeles, many women found a new level of Jewish observance. Some became a part of the Reform or Conservative movements, enjoying and supporting the egalitarian roles that these movements give to women. Others found a spiritual home in the Orthodox movement, which not only gave them a newfound religiosity but also allows them to separate themselves from the Iranian Jewish community—a community that, according to many of the Orthodox women, has become too absorbed in wealth and materialism. Finally, the chapter looks at the role of secrecy in these women’s lives and how women are pursuing a life outside of the home. Nayareh wrote that when Iranians immigrated to Los Angeles, there were both costs and benefits for women. Some of the positive experiences included the sense of freedom, new opportunities and options, increased access to education and gainful employment, and a move toward egalitarian conjugal roles in many Iranian families. On the negative side, there was grief over the loss of the homeland and loved ones and the social and emotional support of the kinship network. Many women felt marginalized and experienced a decline in their own socioeconomic status or that of their husbands.1 In regard to Iranian Jewish women, some aspects of Tohidi’s analysis are applicable, while others are not. For example, even though many Jewish women began to work in Los Angeles, they did not experience egalitarian 87 88 FROM THE SHAHS TO LOS ANGELES conjugal roles. Most did experience grief over leaving Iran, but believed that the religious freedom they experienced in Los Angeles would make them never want to return to a country in which they had to hide their Jewish identity. And while many Muslim women left a lot of family behind in Iran, none of the Iranian women interviewed had any family or acquaintances left in Iran. Their family and kin also lived in Los Angeles, often only blocks away. WOMEN CONTRIBUTING TO THE FAMILY INCOME Most women who escaped the 1979 Iranian Revolution moved to West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, or the San Fernando Valley. The women interviewed for this study had full social lives that revolved around their immediate families, in-laws, and friends, along with social and religious gatherings. For some women, their immigration to Los Angeles had allowed them to continue to maintain a leisurely life, while other women and their husbands found themselves having to start all over again economically. Thus, for the first time, many Jewish women had to work in order to help support their families. For some women, working outside the home provided them with a better self-image, and they gradually gained power within the home. Other women felt embittered that they had to work, and others said that having a career had not given them any equality within the home. Firoozeh, a fifty-six-year-old businesswoman, recalled, “During the first couple of years in Los Angeles, I would get in the car with my husband and kids, drop them off at school, and then we would head off to the garment district of downtown Los Angeles. We came here with nothing, and I had to help my husband build our life. I couldn’t just sit around and be a housewife; he needed my help, and I had to meet his expectations.” Today, Firoozeh still works with her husband, and they have built a very successful business. She has the luxury to retire, yet she chooses to work, believing that she would be bored if she did not go to work every day. She admitted that even though she works side by side with her husband, she must always make sure that he never feels emasculated or threatened by her. Moujghan, a fifty-seven-year-old Tehrani woman, also started a business with her husband when they moved to Los Angeles. She described the difficulties of being a working woman in...

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