Thamar E. Gindin, at The Blogs

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Mar 20, 2016, 6:47 AM

Esther, Mordecai and anti-Semitic propaganda in Iran

Jews in Iran enjoy freedom of worship and trade, are represented in parliament, and generally live in peace with their non-Jewish neighbors. However, every year around Purim, anti-Semitic elements spread a distorted version of the story of Esther on...

Oct 4, 2015, 8:02 PM

Let the numbers speak: 10, 13, 40.

On the occasion of the last Tishrei holiday (salvation is near!) — here's the last article in my New Year trilogy. Now that we've realized we're basically celebrating the same holiday over and over again and the myths and customs are different...

Oct 2, 2015, 7:24 PM

Book Report: Felestin (Palestine) by Seyyed Ali Khamenei

To justify my title as Iran specialist, I guess I must address Netanyahu's UN speech. Bibi's prop for this year's speech was Khamenei's book "Palestine". He did some major PR for the book, but he had a few mistakes: it's not...

Oct 1, 2015, 10:11 AM

This month, 2537 years ago

On the 10th of Tishrei 522 BCE, Darius the Achaemenid – later to be known as Darius the Great – killed the impostor king Gaumata/Bardiya/Smerdis and ascended to the throne. We know the basics of the story from Darius'...

Sep 30, 2015, 1:21 AM

All Holidays Are High

On the "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat" paradigm of Jewish holidays. This is the second part of a trilogy. The first part, It's all About Rosh Hashana! was published in my personal blog. The last paragraph was...

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About Me

Thamar E. Gindin holds a Ph.D. in Iranian Linguistics. She is a lecturer, teacher and researcher, and author of The good, the Bad and the World, a Journey to Pre-Islamic Iran (Hebrew), and The Book of Esther Unmasked (Hebrew, soon English and Persian). Photo: Tom Langford