Angella Nazarian: From Revolutionary Tehran to Beverly Hills

Originally published June 10, 2013

Angella Nazarian is the author of two books, Life as a Visitor and Pioneers of the Possible. A professor of psychology, author, and public speaker, she explores themes of women's personal development, identity, travel, and fulfillment. She has also contributed to The Huffington Post, Maria Shriver's Open Field Network, and More.com. Angella was interviewed for JIMENA's Oral History Project in October 2012. The following are highlights from her testimony.

Angella Nazarian was born in Tehran, Iran, in the late 1960s. Her father, a trader and importer who worked in Tehran's bazaar, was born in Rasht, a city in northern Iran near the Caspian Sea. Angella remembers growing up in a family that blended tradition with modernity.

Her maternal grandmother embraced traditional roles for women and wore a chador, a garment traditionally worn by Persian women. Although she had received little formal education as a girl, she demonstrated a lifelong commitment to learning. At age 78, after moving to Los Angeles, she hired a private tutor to teach her English and Hebrew.

Angella's paternal grandmother embodied a different expression of independence and modernity. Widowed at a young age, she raised Angella's father on her own, enjoyed wearing Western clothing, and was known for expressing her opinions with confidence and candor.

Angella spent the first 11 years of her life in Iran under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a period during which antisemitism was less overt and Jews enjoyed greater legal equality and participation in mainstream Iranian society. The Shah's Western-oriented modernization policies created new educational and economic opportunities for many Iranian Jews.

By the 1960s, Angella recalls, many Jewish families had become well-educated and financially successful, traveling abroad and pursuing university studies in Europe and the United States.

Her childhood was filled with happy memories of family trips to the Caspian Sea, playing outdoors beneath the stars, watching American television sitcoms, and participating in the tradition of visiting friends and relatives during Purim.

Angella attended an international school, where some of her closest friends were Zoroastrian, Baha'i, and Muslim. Although she enjoyed friendships across religious and cultural backgrounds, she also noticed differences in how minority communities were treated. For example, while Jewish students like Angella were excused from Islamic studies classes, Baha'i students were not afforded the same exemption.

Despite the relative freedoms enjoyed by Iranian Jews under the Shah, antisemitic attitudes and discriminatory practices persisted beneath the surface.

To protect himself from anti-Jewish discrimination, Angella's father changed the family surname from Yacobzadeh to Maddahi. Some customers in the bazaar refused to purchase his merchandise or shake his hand because they considered Jews najas, or ritually unclean.

Angella also remembers that at the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan, Muslim visitors could enter through the main entrance, while Jewish visitors were required to use a separate rear entrance.

These experiences reflected a longer history of restrictions imposed on Iranian Jews. Angella grew up hearing stories about earlier generations, when Jews faced limitations on where they could walk, how they could dress, and even what colors they could paint their homes. They were prohibited from riding horses and, under certain interpretations of Shi'a religious law, were forbidden from touching food intended for Muslims because they were considered ritually impure.

From an early age, Angella also heard her father recount being beaten on his way to school simply because he was Jewish.

Although Angella remembers much of her childhood in Iran with affection, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought renewed uncertainty and fear for the country's Jewish community.

When the revolution began, Angella had just entered sixth grade at Ettefagh, a prominent Jewish school near the University of Tehran. The university was a center of political demonstrations against the Shah, and Angella remembers hearing explosions and clashes between protesters and police while riding home on the school bus.

As the revolution unfolded, growing instability and fears about the future prompted many Iranian Jews to leave the country.

In 1979, Angella departed Iran with her mother and sister for Beverly Hills, California, where a large Iranian Jewish community was beginning to take shape. Her family told her they were going on a short vacation to visit her older brother and would return in a few weeks.

She never returned to Iran.

Although Angella had escaped the political upheaval of her homeland, her arrival in the United States brought new challenges. In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and during the Iran hostage crisis, anti-Iranian sentiment became increasingly visible in American society.

At her public school, Angella encountered bathroom graffiti declaring, “Iranians go home.” She struggled with the injustice of being associated with the Islamic Republic and the hostage crisis, despite the fact that her family had fled the very revolution that had brought the new regime to power.

Angella and other Iranian refugees were themselves victims of the upheaval, yet they often faced hostility because of their national origins.

Although she strongly identified as American, she became increasingly aware that others viewed her as foreign and different. These experiences shaped her understanding of identity, belonging, and the challenges of building a new life in an unfamiliar country.

The family's separation became even more painful when Angella's mother returned to Iran the following year to liquidate their remaining assets. Shortly afterward, the Iran-Iraq War broke out, leaving both of Angella's parents trapped in Iran for the next five years.

In 1985, her parents were finally smuggled out of Iran into Pakistan, where the Jewish Federation assisted them in reaching the United States and reuniting with their family.

Angella's story reflects the complexities of Iranian Jewish identity, the contrast between cherished childhood memories and experiences of discrimination, and the profound disruption caused by revolution and displacement. Her testimony also illustrates the challenges of resettlement, as refugees navigate new forms of prejudice while rebuilding their lives and identities in a new country.