Once a refugee from Iran, a Jewish state senator ascends in New York politics

WASHINGTON — Forty years ago, Anna Kaplan was separated from her family as a 13-year-old girl. But the circumstances were quite different from the stories from the US-Mexico border peppering world headlines. She was detached from her family of her parents’ own volition.

It was in the middle of the Iranian revolution in 1979 Tehran, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei overthrew the shah. Kaplan was part of a small but vibrant community that was suddenly intensely vulnerable: Iran’s Jews. Keep reading at: The Times of Israel.