Mahane Yehuda
You don’t like smoking in other cities. You take pleasure in buying Friday morning figs from the same spot your tongue first met the lips of someone you would later love, your bodies pressed against graffiti on the shuttered market door in the night.
Letter from the Editors — One Year
This week marks one year since ZAMAN’s launch in February 2019. In that time, we have published forty articles, essays, poems, paintings, drawings, photographs, videos and other projects that have given a contemporary voice to Mizrahi stories.
Sarchal: The Forgotten History of Tehran’s Jewish Ghetto
In Iranian cities with high Jewish populations like Esfahan, Kashan, Tehran, and Hamedan, Jews were segregated into designated ghettos (mahaleh).
Protected Religious Minorities under Iran’s Islamic Regime: an analysis of ideology and policy
In spite of a rhetoric based on freedom and equality, the Islamic Republic of Iran tends to connect the presence of religious minorities to heresy, corruption of Islam, rebellion against the regime, and inhibition of the ever-continuous Revolution.
Hamdam / همدم
Hamdam, meaning “of the same breath.” The triptych of screenprints pays tribute to a deep sisterhood. Two figures stand side by side in black gowns, twin expressions on their faces. Their overlapping hands are linked and joined as if belonging to only one person. Likewise, the figures’ heads and bodies merge as one, reflecting the depth of their bond. In the center panel, a rose makes reference to the Persian funerary rites of dousing graves in rosewater.
Two Summer Poems
We proceed to enjoy what is small and warm, / What is spotted and sweet / What is ripe and spoiled; / What is and was, what was and is no longer.
Chloé Pourmorady on “finding meaning” in her heritage as a Persian Jewish musician
Chloé Poumorady’s music is a symphonic blend of traditional Persian and Sephardic Jewish harmonies, tinged with the lightness of folk melodies from across the globe. Now leading a six-musician ensemble, the classically-trained violinist and vocalist counts Medieval Ladino poetry, the Book of Genesis, and Béla Bartok among her influences.
Self-Portrait
Set against the backdrop of his college dorm room, the painting examines the gaps that exist between how he perceives himself and how others perceive him, illuminating how one’s heritage can simultaneously serve as a catalyst for self-understanding and external misinterpretation.
Nationalist Mythologies and the False Friendship of Nostalgia
Postcolonial mythologies are often manifestations of an emotionally-tinged hunger for a life that does not ache of colonialism— but mythology can have a vital role in legitimizing the modern ethnonationalist states and their respective languages, cultures, and propaganda systems.
Jerusalem of Sefarad
Sefarad, Safed, Saphah, / Saphon, Saphon, / Toledo - I will write your name with my left hand / For there’s a chance I’ve already forgotten you.