Jews in Iran and in the diaspora find respite in celebrating Nowruz amid war

Jews in Iran and in the diaspora find respite in celebrating Nowruz amid war

Anna Hakakian, a resident of Great Neck, New York, grew up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. At that time, Nowruz, the secular Persian New Year, offered a rare moment of respite from a conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. That war came in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Iran’s new leaders tried to ban Nowruz, seeing it as un-Islamic. But Iranians of all religions refused to let it go. This week, Hakakian is ce…