March 29, 2024

Please follow & like us :)

Twitter
Facebook
RSS

Musings on hearing a Persian wedding song

http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2018/08/musings-on-hearing-persian-wedding-song.html

 Jews and non-Jews from the Persian city of Shiraz recite a wedding song unknown to other Iranians. It set Tabby Refael thinking about how age-old cultural traditions still survive in contemporary America. But for how much longer? Article in the Jewish Journal of LA:

I am intermarried. 

That is to say, I am a Jew from Tehran who married a Jew from Shiraz, Iran. 
In the United States, that’s usually about as far as intermarriage goes for Persian Jews. For now, anyway. 

Some are beginning to marry non-Persian Jews, and their Ashkenazi spouses appear ecstatic to finally be able to eat rice during Passover — and only slightly less important, finally to have found love.

At a recent ketubah-signing for my sister-in-law (a Shirazi) and her fiance (a Tehrani), the sound of the non-Persian rabbi’s voice as he spoke about the obligations of marriage was drowned out by the melodic unity of Shirazi mothers pouring their hearts out singing “Vasoonak Shirazi,” the wedding song whose melody all Iranians in Iran know, regardless of faith. I knew that song before I could walk, talk or grill my own meat by the age of 3.

Beyond its soulful poets, famous gardens and, before the revolution, its winemaking legacy, the southern city of Shiraz also has produced one of the greatest Persian songs of all time, whose words, sadly, few in my generation of 30-somethings know (much less 20-somethings and younger folks). At least the original song has been commercialized — some will recognize it as “Mobarak Baad,” which has a few of the original couplets.

Read article in full

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*