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In Jewish communities everywhere, they say, 鈥榃ell, there鈥檚 nobody with a disability in our community that we need to consider,鈥 but I subscribe to the model of 鈥業f you build it, they will come.鈥
I think the music I write is a reflection of my story. A lot of it is about my conscious analysis of what it is to be Black and Jewish. It's my commentary on that experience. Hillel has provided that support system for me, and it has also influenced the actual art itself.
I don't see that my Persian identity ever has to stop for my Jewish identity to start. Iranian Jews have been in Iran since 586 BCE, so the Iranian and Iraqi diaspora are the most historic diaspora of the Jews. My family has been in Iran longer than we've been in Israel and longer than we've been in the U.S.
I think the best part of that whole conversation was they were so grateful that we educated them because they didn鈥檛 know something that we were able to teach them about. They weren鈥檛 apologizing profusely. They were sorry, but they weren鈥檛 like 鈥楻eally? You have to make our lives more difficult?鈥 They were so willing to make this change happen with us.
Following the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, student leadership at our Hillel had a discussion to figure out how we could move forward and support the movement.
Last year, we had a bunch of hate crimes on campus that targeted international students, black students, and Jewish students. There were some swastikas and Jewish professors received nasty emails. What resulted from that was a list of needs that we issued from the Jewish community to the administration.
Coming from a tight-knit Modern Orthodox community, I was worried about maintaining my customs when I first got to college.
There鈥檚 this perception, largely accurate, that college kids are not particularly observant. I was really concerned about finding a synagogue that could be a home for me and some type of observant community at school. I was worried I was going to be left out or stuck on my own on Shabbos.
鈥淚 got involved in Hillel during my freshman year, and through Hillel I signed up for a Pesach-themed Zoom event called 鈥淟et My People Flow,鈥 which was a yoga class led by Evan Joblin."
In Judaism and theater, I feel a constant need to improve; to know that each event or moment in time can be better than the one that came before it.
