Saba Soomekh Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles County, California, United States

My portfolio at AJC includes: interreligious and intercommunity outreach, dialogue, and partnerships; international diplomacy; and I am the scholar in resident at AJC.My courses at UCLA covered religious studies, Middle Eastern history, sociology, and gender studies. My courses at the Academy of Jewish Religion covers Religious Studies and Middle Eastern History.

Northridge, Ca; Los Angeles Ca

I am currently the Associate Director of Research at UCLA's Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. I teach and write extensively on World Religions, Women and Religion, and the geo-politics of Israel and Iran. I teach courses on World Religions, Judaism, Women and Religion and the History of The Middle East. I am the author of the book "From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women between Religion and Culture” which was published by SUNY Press, 2012. My book was awarded the Gold Medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Award in the Religion category. I was the Exhibition Coordinator of the exhibition at the Fowler Museum at UCLA entitled: Light and Shadows: The Story of Iranian Jews. I was a consultant and participant for PBS’ documentary “Iranian Americans,” which aired on PBS on Dec. 18, 2012 and also featured in an NPR story on Iranian Jews in America (http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/01/26/260779898/for-persian-jews-america-means-religious-pluralism-at-its-best), which aired on January, 2014. Finally, the Times of Israel wrote a piece on her entitled “Iranian Scholar Breaks Stereotypes While Studying Them” in their February 4, 2014 issue (http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-jewish-scholar-breaks-stereotypes-while-studying-them/).

Since 2005, I have been a Visiting Professor at LMU. I teach courses on World Religions, The Western Religious Traditions, Women and Religion, Judaism, History and Politics of Israel and the History and Politics of Iran. In Spring 2012, I was the Interim Director of the Jewish Studies Program at LMU. As Interim Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Loyola Marymount University in the spring of 2012, I had the privilege of bringing the Saraval Manuscripts, medieval manuscripts that were confiscated by the Nazis in Poland and found in the mid-1980s in the Czech Republic, to Loyola Marymount University. We were the first North American institution to host this display of a fascinating and rare collection of Hebrew manuscripts. I assisted with the planning of our academic conference “Myth of Silence: Holocaust Memory in the United States and Poland” featuring scholars Dr. Hasia Diner and Ron Schmidt, S.J.

Ph.D, 2008 Religious Studies

Field Examination: History of Religions and Jewish Studies (Richard Hecht) Feminist Anthropology (Mary Hancock) Iranian Jewish History.

Master In Theological Studies, Religion, Politics And History

Berkeley B.A, Religious Studies