Personal Stories

Last night, I attended a speech given by Tabby Davoodi, an Iranian Jew whose family escaped from the Islamic Republic in 1988 and who was invited to speak at the University of Illinois about the Iranian regime and her experiences growing up there before she and her family fled to America.

Summertime discovery about my Mizrahi heritage.I’ve had only one real epiphany in my life. I was on spring break during high school, reclining in the passenger seat and humming to Idan Raichel’s “Im Tachpetza” as my friends and I drove home from a day at the beach.

“I will never forget when I first saw his body — they shot him with one bullet at point-blank range in his heart,” my father, George Melamed, shared with me a few weeks ago, reflecting on his friend — and brother-in-law’s brother — Ebrahim (Ebi) Berookhim, who was executed in an Iranian prison on July 31, 1980, at the age of 30.

“Some of the Jews in Iran (under the Shah) were like the Jews in Germany,” says Laudie Freed. “After all the oil money had poured in to the country in the 70’s and the country was prosperous, they didn’t think anything could happen to them.”