Allan Appel Photo
Brother and sister Ramin and Raheleh Sohrab joined a feast in New Haven with fellow members of the Baha’i faith — storing up in anticipation of an annual fast.
The occasion was Baha’i feast of ayyam-i-ha, a festive day leading up to and preparing for a 19-day sunset-to-sunrise fast from March 2 to March 20. The fast culminates in the Baha’i new year celebration, Naw/ruz.
About 60 Baha’is live in the Greater New Haven area, with maybe a half dozen at Yale. Organizers said they hope the well-attended feast at Yale’s African-American Cultural Center Saturday will become an annual event.
The Baha’i faith originated in Persia in the mid-19th century. Its universalist embrace of all faiths and insistence on the equality of genders and races, among other doctrines, immediately put it at odds with the Muslim Shi’a government that prevailed then, and now.
The Sohrab siblings, along with their parents ‚immigrated to Branford from Shiraz, Iran, in 2006 after spending a year in Turkey. They were sponsored by a sister, Roya, who had immigrated with her husband Farzad Mahboubi in 2001.
“After the 1979 [Islamic] revolution, lots of Baha’i were fired, and executed,” said Ramin, who works in a factory and is studying to be a dental assistant.
His father lost his car and his job, and then the family home.
Raheleh said there is no safety for Iranian Baha’is, no opportunity for young people of this faith to go to university or to have a decent job or a future. That was why they came to America.
Ramin said there were 300,000 Baha’is left in Iran, most hiding their identity. Because the central Baha’i place of pilgrimage is the House of Justice in Haifa, Iranian Baha’is are routinely viewed as spies for Israel or the U.S., said the Sohrabs’ brother-in-law Farzad Mahboubi.
At a nearby table a very different kind of Baha’i family was also celebrating ayyam-i-ha.
When Alice Kroll was a little girl she asked her Episcopalian mom if people in India, of clearly a different religion, would also go to heaven. Her mom assured her they would.
So from an early age, Kroll said, she knew that a faith whose prophets equally included Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, and then the Baha’i figures Bab and Baha’u’ll’ah was right for her.
“God sends a messenger to renew his teaching” in each generation, she said. The values, such as love, remain the same, although the social teachings vary from epoch to epoch, she explained.
Kroll is the grandmother of the youngest Baha’i at Saturday’s ceremony, 1‑year-old Samantha Erdman. Samantha loved the little red car she received. Gift-giving and receiving is part of the pre-fast feast day.
Kroll, who still lives in Oxford, Connecticut, on land King Charles gave her family in the 17th century, said there are about 500 Baha’is in the entire state. They stay in touch through email and listserves, which is how Saturday’s celebration came together.
“I had a feeling when I was a little girl that God loved the whole world, not just Episcopalians,” she said.
As the meal wound down, there would be a prayer and then other festivities, Mahboubi said. “[We] Baha’i people [here] are now so free, but in Iran it’s impossible. Anything you write about Baha’is [is good] because Americans don’t know.”
He grew pensive. “But we celebrate tonight,” he said, “and dancing.”