From Babylon to Beverly Hills: The Exodus of Iran's Jews

Directed by Tanaz Eshaghian

In 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran brought a twenty-five-hundred-year-old history to a close for the Jews who left their homeland for America. Uncertain about their safety and fearing religious persecution in Khomeini's Islamic Theocracy, an estimated 80,000 of Iran's 100,000 Jews fled the country. This documentary tells the story of those Jews who reestablished a tight knit community in Los Angeles. Iranian Jewish families talk about their past in Iran - how the increasingly hostile circumstances forced them to flee their own country in order to secure a better future for their children. They voice their fears about their children growing up in an alien society, adopting a culture that is far removed from their own. Young Iranian adults, on the other hand, talk about the pressures of confirming to parental expectations, of remaining true to their Iranian Jewish heritage even as they try and carve their own individual identities in modern day American society.