Reaching for Freedom

by Kendra Walz

In a little over a week, the Jewish holiday of Purim will arrive; a holiday about Jews and Persians, self-expression in identity, and survival. As Purim approaches, I cannot help but reflect on a film premiere I attended recently at the Israeli Film Festival held at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. The film was Reading Lolita in Tehran, based on a best-selling memoir I had picked up in a used bookstore last year. I was excited to meet the Israeli director of this film adaptation and hear about his experiences with the author.

The book is about a woman who returned to her birthplace of Tehran, Iran in 1979 to be a literature professor at the University of Tehran. Due to the Islamic revolution, she was eventually forced out of teaching, but secretly gathered in her home with several young female students to read books that had been banned in Iran.

Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, writes in her book of the Islamic regime: “Whoever we were – and it was not really important what religion we belonged to, whether we wished to wear the veil or not, whether we observed religious norms or not – we had become the figment of someone else’s dreams.” In the story of Esther, we also see a woman become a figment of someone else’s dreams – regardless of her true identity or what she wanted, an authoritarian ruler forcefully fitted her into his dream.

I was lucky to be able to have dinner with the director prior to the film screening. He told me that when he first called Nafisi about the idea of adapting her memoir into a film, he asked if it was “right” for an Israeli director to be telling a Persian woman’s story. The creation of the film was done with Iranian actors and actresses, with Nafisi being consulted throughout and even making a cameo appearance in the film. Much of the film was spoken in Farsi, a language the director did not know. If Jews and Persians were to decide not to work together on such a project, not to create art or media together, would we be acting out a character assigned to us in someone else’s dream? Perhaps the decision to create the film was an act of true self-expression for both Israelis and Iranians.

If Jews and Persians were to decide not to work together on such a project …
would we be acting out a character assigned to us in someone else’s dream?

During Purim, we wear costumes and masks. At first glance, one may wear a costume to disguise themselves, like the way Esther had to hide her true identity. But on the other hand, we often choose costumes that are an expression of ourselves, like when we see young children dressing up as their favorite princesses or superheroes. The Torah commands us not to misrepresent ourselves, and oftentimes throughout the year, we may find ourselves playing a role someone else has written that we may not truly believe in. There may be a time for hiding, for concealing our true selves, because it is the safest thing to do. But the story of Purim shows us that the end goal should always be reaching for the freedom to express ourselves, stay true to what we believe in, and not lose ourselves in someone else’s story, no matter how scary that may feel.

Kendra Walz is Chai Mitzvah’s Administrative Services Manager. She will graduate with an MBA in International Business from the University of Hartford in 2026.