Tablet Magazine

The Deep Roots of Nowruz

How a Zoroastrian celebration of the Persian New Year grew into a broad symbol of cultural resilience and political resistance

On March 19 at exactly 11:06 p.m., spring will begin. Along with over 300 million people around the world, Iranian Americans will count down to this precise moment, which marks the start of Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Thirteen days of visiting friends and exchanging gifts will commence to celebrate the vernal equinox, when the Earth is exactly halfway around the sun. Celebrants will set a table with seven items, in accordance with tradition. While every family’s table, called a “haft seen,” is different, the unifying theme is words beginning with the letter “S,” or “seen” in the Persian alphabet—a sweet pudding, garlic, a piece of fruit, sumac, olives, and vinegar. The seventh item, “sabzeh,” or lentil sprouts, are taken on the final day of Nowruz to the nearest running body of water. Young and old alike commend them to the stream with wishes for the year to come. “Nowruz is like Christmas,” said Mitra Marvasti-Sitterly, who shared her Connecticut-based family’s Nowruz traditions with me in a phone interview. She explained that like Christmas, it has religious roots, but it is widely celebrated as a secular cultural holiday. For example, during Nowruz, a book of wisdom is also placed on the haft seen alongside the food. Sometimes it is a religious book—a Quran or even a Torah, for Persian Jews who also celebrate Nowruz—but not always. For Marvasti-Sitterly’s nonreligious family, it will be a book of poetry by the revered Persian poet Hafez. More than a year into a sustained protest movement against Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime, Iran is once again making headlines as Iranian-backed militias target U.S. military assets. This year in particular, Nowruz serves as a powerful emblem of the ancient cultural history that both inspires Persian Americans (“Persian” and “Iranian” may be used interchangeably), and links them to the resistance movement in their country of origin. Although prevalent throughout the Islamic world, and especially closely associated with Iran, Nowruz is not a Muslim holiday. It likely began as a pagan observance, commemorating the mythical Persian King Jamshid, a sort of Persian Prometheus who was said to have ascended to heaven on a brilliant, bejeweled throne. But Nowruz also has origins in the contemporary religious faith of Zoroastrianism, a pre-Islamic Persian faith that now constitutes a minority within its native Iran, having maybe only 125,000 adherents worldwide, according to some estimates. ...

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A Purim Party to Celebrate ‘The Terrifying Realm of the Possible,’ a New Book by Brett Gelman

Tuesday, March 19, 7 p.m., NYC’s Chinatown, location with RSVP. Music by Samantha Ronson.

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Encyclopedia

Zionism (and anti-Zionism)

[ˈzaɪ-əˌn-ɪz-əm] noun

Zionism is the political movement to establish Jewish self-rule in the historic Jewish homeland, Israel. The Jewish religious and cultural a...

Tablet talks about Judaism a lot, but sometimes we like to change the subject. Maggie Phillips covers religious communities across the U.S.—from Christians to Muslims, Hindus to Baha’i, Jehovah’s Witnesses to pagans—to find out what they’re talking about.

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Unorthodox

Irrefutably Jewish

Ep. 403: Phil Rosenthal on writing a children’s book with his daughter Lily; a classical Jewish school in New York City; Oscar meshugas; and more

March 14, 2024

Zionism: The Tablet Guide

The definitive guide to the past, present, and future of modern Judaism’s most fantastical and magnetic idea—and the West’s most explosive political label.

Read more, and click here to order the book.


On Abortion

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Roundtables on the state of the American Jewish community, bringing together people from a shared demographic or background—everyday people with personal opinions, not experts who earn their salaries discussing these issues.

Photographic illustration by Barry Downard/Debut; portait of Black: Nechama Jacobson; original photo of Bob Dylan © Barry Feinstein Photography, Inc. Used with permission from The Estate of Barry Feinstein
Photographic illustration by Barry Downard/Debut; portait of Black: Nechama Jacobson; original photo of Bob Dylan © Barry Feinstein Photography, Inc. Used with permission from The Estate of Barry Feinstein
The New Jews

A montage of iconic moments from the Jewish past points the way to a Jewish future—one driven by a generation of new voices

At least Ruth didn’t have to fret about social media. The only thing this Moabite woman, arguably the world’s first convert to Judaism—and ancestor of one King David—had to do was hold on to her mother-in-law and promise to go whither the older woman went. She wasn’t expected to share photos of her challah rising on Instagram, defend Israel on Twitter, bare her soul on Substack, or cultivate small communities of followers on Facebook. Her journey was decidedly private, intimate, all but forgotten if it weren’t for the Bible’s author peeking in and recording the grandeur of her experience for posterity. Today, we have a new class of Ruths, only this time many of them are trying to negotiate some of the most profound and pressing questions facing Jews—about identity and belonging, about money and politics, about making friends and losing faith—along with public or semipublic profiles. They are new Jews, but—if we are lucky—they will be among the most important Jews in the coming years. To illustrate the role we believe Jews-by-choice are increasingly playing in the American Jewish future, we matched each of our interviewees with an iconic image from the recent American past. Because every religious evolution is a conversion—every day brings with it the possibility of changing in ways until now unexpected—the stories these men and women tell us are particularly meaningful, and their wisdom so keenly appreciated. There are, to be sure, many more who share their trajectory, but here, in their own words, are some thoughts from these visible and inspiring people making their journey back home to Judaism. ...

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An ‘Unorthodox’ Celebration of Conversion

Listen to five years of deeply moving personal stories, audio diaries, and reported segments about Jews by choice around the world

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National Jewish Book Awards

Congratulations to the winners of the National Jewish Book Awards! Tablet profiled author Julia Watts Belser, who took home this year’s prize for contemporary Jewish life and practice for her book Loving Our Own Bones. And author Elizabeth Graver, who took home the prize for Sephardic culture for her book Kantika, was featured in a Tablet piece about her writing.

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