While the typical bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah is a 13-year-old boy or girl, middle-age adults are jumping on the bandwagon at synagogues around the East Bay. Shifting cultural roles, a deepening sense of religious identity, or a new-found self-awareness—whatever the reason, these grown-ups (many with teenagers of their own), are going back to Hebrew school, learning to chant, and reading aloud from the Torah.

Oakland’s Uptown district is booming, drawing new residents, arts lovers, foodies, and fun-seekers as the once downtrodden area undergoes a fast renaissance. Recently, Uptown has welcomed the reopened Fox Theater—now home to the Oakland School for the Arts—the UpTown Apartments, Piedmont Piano Company’s new digs, and hot restaurants like Flora, Luka’s Taproom, Hibiscus, and Bakesale Betty’s. Despite Oakland’s grim reputation—which many locals think is undeserved—this could be the revival the city has long awaited.

Despite news of strife and civic unrest in Iran regularly making headlines, local Iranians—once a relatively obscure group in the wildly diverse East Bay—are enjoying, paradoxically, something of a moment in the sun. Through vibrant public celebrations of holidays, outreach by language and cultural programs like Berkeley’s Golestan Kids, the passionate promotion of traditional Persian cuisine, and more, local Iranian-Americans are keeping the culture alive. But like young people everywhere, children of Iranian ancestry struggle to make sense of their heritage.