An Immigrant’s Christmas Eve, 1979

Tali Farhadian Weinstein is the general counsel of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. She teaches criminal justice reform at New York University School of Law. 

Weinstein in  commentary in the New York Times tells her family story of coming to the United States on Christmas Eve 1979, having left Iran and fears of persecution:

“the home we left behind was Iran, then in the grip of the Islamic Revolution. My parents and grandparents had watched, from the windows of the house we shared, as Tehran University was overrun by protesters. Rumors swirled that anyone who had a connection to Israel — where both my parents had gone to college — could be charged with Zionism, apparently a crime. As Jews, my parents and grandparents became afraid to go to work and even to leave the house. One day our next-door neighbors disappeared.”

As Weinstein recalls it, “ We could have been turned away at the border. But a law enforcement officer granted my family a few days of freedom.”

KJ