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FIVE JEWISH AMERICAN AND PERSIAN A large house in Beverly Hills has turned into a nightclub, celebrating a graduation, an anniversary, a birthday, or no specific event at all. There is a large bar serving alcoholic drinks. The bartender is busy serving whiskey, vodka, tequila, and the latest “it” drink—one year it was apple martinis, the next year cosmopolitans were in vogue, now it is mojitos or caparinhas. There is a sushi chef at one corner making all the popular rolls and sashimi, while on the other side beef and chicken kabobs are being grilled and served with numerous rice dishes. The DJ is spinning hip-hop and Persian, Arabic, and Latin music, while young Iranians are dancing and flirting on the dance floor. The majority of guests in attendance are Iranian Jews, with a couple of token “white” people. All the guests have grown up with each other in the same community, and if they have not, then they know each other from the numerous parties similar to this. The girls are all dressed in the latest fashions—tight jeans, expensive jewelry, very high heels, a sexy top—and carrying the latest Gucci, Dior, or Prada bag. They size each other up; they are looking at each other’s clothes and accessories and watching who is dancing seductively, who is drunk, and who is secretly dating. If you are a married woman, you are coming to these parties with your husband to dress up, have fun, and get away from the kids. If you are single, this is the place to see and be seen. This is the place to flirt, dance, and socialize in hopes of finding your husband.1 The previous paragraph describes a typical party, which takes place almost every weekend somewhere in Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles, or the San Fernando Valley. A large community of Iranian Jews has been living in Los Angeles for more than twenty-five years, and while the community has maintained its insularity, the children of Iranian Jewish immigrants were born or have grown up in Los Angeles. Thus, unlike their parents, a majority of the children have only known life in America, and most only know Iran through the romanticized stories of their parents and elder family members. 113 114 FROM THE SHAHS TO LOS ANGELES They do not live in the same physical space or the same sociocultural landscape of their parents’ youth, and few of them are able to read and write Persian. Therefore, it would not be correct to say that their identity is characterized by symbolic ethnicity2 because, unlike their parents, they do not have a nostalgic allegiance to the old country.3 Yet, the Iranian Jewish culture is a major aspect of their lives. Given these sometimes-competing cultural forces, the first generation Iranian Jews who are growing up in America have learned how to balance having multiple identities—that of being an American, a Jew, and an Iranian. This chapter explores how young Iranian Jewish women establish and juggle their multiple identities, how notions of womanhood and Judaism, as well as the rules and expectations placed on them by their families and the community, fit into their lives as young Americans. The chapter examines the changing meanings of najeeb and how these young women have reclaimed and redefined the word in order to empower their lives. Because a mother holds great significance and influence in a Middle-Eastern household, the chapter examines the relationship of these young women with their mothers and what aspects of their mothers’ lives they choose to emulate and what they choose to reinterpret in order to fit into what they see as a more modernized American society. Finally, it discusses how these women have embraced American society without compromising their Iranian Jewish traditions and beliefs. This chapter explores how demographic change and modernization have affected the first-generation Iranian Jewish women in America in regard to three interrelated topics: being najeeb, pressures placed on women, and mother-daughter relationships. ETHNIC INCORPORATION Ethnic incorporation into American social life has been historically defined between two modes of thinking. One mode believes that assimilation is inevitable, and cultures will eventually be absorbed into mainstream white society, with ethnic identities eventually fading into a “twilight of ethnicity.”4 The other mode believes that regardless of the level of acculturation or socioeconomic attainment, ethnic groups will resist blending into the majority and instead experience persistently high social distances in intergroup relations and...

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