"Iranian President's Surprising Message To Jews" [View all]

[applegrove]

Iranian President's Surprising Message To Jews

By Daniel Burke and Mitra Mobasherat, CNN

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/04/iranian-presidents-surprising-message-to-jews/?hpt=hp_t2

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(CNN) - Marking a sharp shift from his Holocaust-denying predecessor, new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday wished "all Jews" a "blessed Rosh Hashanah" on his English-language Twitter account.

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Rosh Hashanah, of course, is the Jewish celebration of the new year. As Rouhani mentions, it begins Wednesday at sundown. The image in the tweet is reportedly taken from a synagogue in Tehran.

Rouhani, a Shiite Muslim cleric, was elected president in June. He is widely seen as more moderate than Ahmadinejad, though his goodwill gesture on Wednesday stunned even veteran Iran watchers.

“Not even under the monarchy do we remember such a message,” Haleh Esfandiari, a native Iranian and director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, told Al-Monitor.


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