This year, International Women’s Day coincided with Purim. Thanks to that lucky confluence, I was able to spend Purim morning listening to modern Iranian women discuss the the struggle for women’s rights there, which are significantly improved from the time of Vashti and Esther but still have a long way to go.
Listening to Roya Hakakian, Solmaz Sharif, and Arash Abadpour, at the Iran 180 event, spurred some of my own reflections on what Jews struggling with Zionism, diaspora, and identity, might personally and culturally share with Iranians despite the tremendous political gulf between Israel and Iran.