It's called the Iranian Jewish Club, but the university-wide organization, which hosts dinners, film screenings and other cultural events, represents Jews from all around the globe.
"There [are members] from Libya, Morocco, Egypt, even Cuba," said Steinhardt junior Jennifer Kohanim, the group's vice president.
The club was founded in 2003 by Pedram Tabibi, an NYU alumnus and second-year student at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.
Kohanim said Tabibi was active with NYU's Persian Culture Society before breaking away to lead the IJC. "He liked the people he was working with, but Iranian Jews have a distinct culture," she said.
The group eventually expanded to include Jewish students from other cultures.
The 375 students on the IJC listserv make up a small but active chunk of NYU's Jewish population known as Sephardim, a cultural branch within Judaism.
They've had strong ties to the greater New York community since a Manhattan-wide branch of the Iranian Jewish Club opened in 2004, encompassing over 700 students from Hofstra, NYU and Yeshiva University.
In light of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denials and aggressive stance toward Israel, "everyone is intrigued by the notion that there are Jews in Iran," said Kohanim, whose parents grew up in Iran.
CAS sophomore Alex Babazadeh, an IJC member who got involved with the group through older friends, said he has "come across people who didn't even know Persian Jews exist."
The majority of club events focus on Sephardic culture, especially food.
"Any Persian person you meet - they'll say we eat rice, we eat choresh [a meat and vegetable stew]," Kohanim said. "It's an easy way of explaining to people about our culture."
Last year, the club served Persian dishes at a Sephardic Shabbat. "We tried getting creative with it," Kohanim said. "We took a map of the Middle East, outlined the countries, wrote down where [IJC members' families were from]," and hung it from a wall.
The group hosted a similar event earlier this month, featuring food from Colbeh, a local Persian restaurant, and a skit about modern Iranian-Jewish life. A number of Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, Jews attended.
"There are many other kinds of Jews," Kohanim said. "It wouldn't be fair to have events just about Persian culture."
Liana Grey is a staff writer. E-mail her at news@nyunews.com.
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