Listen, I already have a blog at viewfromiran.blogspot.com... but since I am a featured Jewcer today, maybe I can use this opportunity to see if anyone is interested in reading about my adventures writing a book. Why? Because I believe there are a lot of resources out there that I can tap into, and I am hoping fellow readers will help me find them.

For four years, I lived in one of the most polluted cities in the world: Tehran. Yep. Me, an American and a Jew living in the heart of the Islamic Republic right smack in the middle of some 65 million muslims...

Now, I am working on a book about my time there... Writing the book is as interesting as actually living in Tehran. In preparation for the book, I started an essay called "A Jew Among Muslims," which describes my affinity for the Iranian culture I discovered and how painfully familiar it was for me. Here's a paragraph from the article:

What I found in Iran were people who, like the Jews who made up the
core of my social education in America, expressed a love for the
principles of secular society combine with a love for ceremony and
ritual. I found people who knew how to revel in a good complaint, whine
like professionals, and make jokes like Jewish comedians. I found
people who were mistrustful of their leaders and essentially
disobedient. I found families built around strong traditions,
charismatic women, and adoring fathers. I found argumentative and
opinionated friends, an embrace of both celebration and mourning, and a
hunger for contact. I found teenagers who could quote from the Koran
obsessed with the shape of their noses, the length of their hair, and
the latest fashions. I found matriarchs who echoed my grandmother’s
mantra “Eat…eat…” while they doted on their grandchildren and bragged
about their children.

Sound familiar? Well, after writing this, I read the amazing book by Vali Nasr: Shia Revival . In my next post, I will talk about some of the things I learned about the Shia from reading his book.