By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif—Amir Shenhav, a successful microbiologist who also commercially grows avocados on his 2-acre property in Fallbrook,  looked across a swimming pool at a friend's barbecue that had been fired up for a typical American 4th of July get-together.  

If his parents hadn't decided to leave Iran when he was a boy, he speculated, instead of the happy life he lives today, "I believe I would have been a simple man, hardly making a living, and these days, under the present leadership of Iran, I think I probably would have been very miserable—if I were still alive."

A grim assessment, perhaps, but not many memories of the Teheran that he left as a 10 year-old for Israel were warm ones for Shenhav.  The sense of being discriminated against as a Jew started almost from birth. When he was born 48 years ago, his parents gave him the name of Shimon.  But when he reached his first birthday, and it was time for his name to be registered, the Iranian government rejected "Shimon" as too Jewish and insisted that his parents give him a more Iranian name.

They picked Amir, which means "leader" in Farsi, because it also has a meaning in Hebrew, relating to the blossoms on a tree.

He went to Jewish school in Teheran, and "I didn't have many interactions with Muslims over there, but the little I had wasn't fun," Shenhav recalled as he watched his wife Noreen and daughter Hilla swimming in the pool with other guests at a typical backyard American Independence Day celebration.

"I remember they'd call you 'Jude, Jude, Jude,' which means "Jewish' and we were separated and discriminated against. During their holidays, they would march in the streets and we had to hide in our houses.  We had big locks on the doors, but sometimes they would climb the walls—in Teheran the houses had walls separating them from other houses, not like here, where the property lines are open.  They would climb on the walls and make derogatory remarks..."

This was what life was like during the regime of the Shah of Iran, who had good relations with the State of Israel.  Now, under the Islamic regime, whose president denies the Holocaust ever existed and has called for Israel to be eliminated from the map of the Middle East, life for Jews in Iran is even more difficult.

Since his own departure from that country, "things changed dramatically for the worse; there is more discrimination," said Shenhav. "I heard that  Jewish  schools in Teheran and other cities were closed: that only one or two remain that might have a majority of Jewish students, but the principals have to be Muslim, and that there are all kinds of restrictions."

Iranian Jews "are not allowed to have interactions with Israeli relatives, Jewish relatives, or American relatives," Shenhav said. For Iranian Jews to have such contact, he said, leads to accusations that they are spies. "The government made it illegal to interact with Israelis, Zionists or whatever  they call us." Travel by Jews out of Iran is severely restricted.  If a Jew is permitted to travel, one member of his or her family is held hostage; so "then you have to come back, otherwise your relatives you left behind would suffer very badly."

The situation Shenhav described greatly contrasted with  the one in which he was then participating—a multi-national, multi-religious gathering of friends for swimming and dinner before the evening's firework displays.

Shenhav came from a poor family.  His mother cared for seven children and his father scratched out a living by manufacturing lipstick, fingernail polish and other beauty products at their home.  

In 1968, the family decided that a move to Israel "would be a good solution for us in many ways.  We could go and join other Jewish people in our own country and we could avoid the discrimination existing in Iran."  Because there were then official relations between Iran and Israel, the family was able to board an El Al jet for Tel Aviv.

They settled in Ranana where an uncle had lived since shortly after Israel had become independent in 1948.  The large family was settled in an apartment house, and tutors were sent to help the children with their studies.  Within a year, they were able to converse in Hebrew. Nevertheless, the transition was difficult for young Shenhav; he fell behind in school, and often frustrated about his progresss, got into school yard fights.  He was sent to a trade school to learn to become a metal worker.

When he was 17 he went to the Israel Defense Forces, which played a positive role in his life. Physically fit and able to win competitions in physical endurance and in assembling and reassembling his rifle,  Shenhav went onto an Army career as a basic training instructor—equivalent to a drill sergeant in the U.S. Army.  He even became an instructor of instructors before completing his three year tour of duty in 1978.

The IDF paid for him to earn a high school equivalency degree, and eventually he was able to win admission to Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied applied biology as an undergraduate, and went on to get a master's degree in microbiology and immunology.   He also met his first wife, an American citizen and an optometrist, with whom he moved to New York in 1986, and on to San Diego in 1990.  Besides Hilla, the couple who divorced in 1994, had an older son, Giora.

In San Diego, Shenhav took a job with Biosite Diagnostics. Then a start-up company, Shenhav was "Employee Number 29," and is still with the company a decade and a half later.  The company has developed devices that can detect drugs in urine, as well as cardiac markers.  "We are working on stroke markers," he said.

He met his second wife, Noreen Schiff, at a Chabad congregation in San Diego, and the couple has been affiliated with various congregations as they have moved from one area of the county to another. These congregations have included  Ner Tamid Synagogue in the Rancho Bernardo/ Poway area and Congregation Beth Am in the Carmel Valley area of San Diego.  Now living in Fallbrook, near the northern boundary of San Diego County, the Shenhavs are deciding on their next affiliation.  

On a table by the swimming pool was a huge bowl of guacamole, made from a recipe that Shenhav and his daughter Hilla have perfected;  beer and sodas were in coolers; chicken and fish were on the barbecue grill, and salads of several varieties awaited sampling.  The weather was San Diego perfect, the conversation was lively, and,  most importantly, America was celebrating its 230th year as a country in which freedom is its most cherished value.