Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly calls for the destruction of Israel, but evidentially some of his countrymen harbor a very different sentiment.

While the repercussions for publicly expressing anything less than hostility toward the Jewish state can bring Iranians dire consequences, that hasn't stopped many from contacting Rita, Israel's biggest pop star, in response to her latest album. Singing in Farsi and Hebrew on "Ha'Smachot Shellanu" (My Joys), she delivers a program of classic Persian songs set to an international array of rhythms reflecting Israel's cultural melange.

In her first Bay Area appearance in five years, and her only Bay Area date, Rita performs Saturday at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium in a concert presented by the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center, Hillel at Stanford, and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University.

"You wouldn't believe what amazing emails I get from Iranians," says Rita, born Rita Yahan-Farouz in Tehran in 1962, during a phone call from her home in Tel Aviv. "They write they love it and appreciate that I'm showing the world their true culture and not the bombs and the crazy times now going on.

"They say thank you, we love you and love Israel. One man wrote that he wants to see the show so much, even though he knows the punishment would be 70 lashes and three years of jail."

Rita isn't focusing exclusively on the Farsi material on this seven-city North Advertisement American tour. She's also performing some of the Hebrew songs that have made her Israel's biggest selling pop star. But the band she's traveling with features a fascinating array of Israeli artists, including Dagestan-born Mark Eliyahu on kamancheh (Persian spike fiddle), and three members of the Alaev Family, who hail from the Bukharan Jews of Tajikistan, part of the ancient Persian Empire.

"Mark Eliyahu looks like Genghis Khan, and he's a genius on the kamancheh," Rita says. "The others are from Bukhara. It's an amazing celebration with a lot of very special instruments. But I'm singing from all of my repertoire."

Despite intermittent waves of persecution, Iran's Jewish population is the largest left in the Middle East outside of Israel. With origins dating back to biblical times (detailed in the books of Esther, Ezra, Isaiah and Daniel), the community embodies the continuity of Persian culture in the face of invasions, upheaval and revolution.

But after her family fled Iran in 1970, fearing the rise of politicized Islam, Rita had little awareness of the cultural riches she left behind. Growing up in Israel she absorbed a new culture with little patience for old-country nostalgia.

"The focus is always on the future, on building the nation," Rita says.

"Israel is a very new country, only 60 years old, and you don't have time to be looking back."

It wasn't until a few years ago, while collaborating with Moroccan-Israeli rockers The Mind Church (Knesiyat Hasekhel), that she started to delve into her roots. The band asked her to sing a song in Moroccan Arabic, and she shared a Persian song from her childhood. The band encouraged her to explore other Persian material, and The Mind Church's Ami Rice and Ran Almaliah ended up producing "My Joys."

"I started really going into this, reading and asking question," Rita says. "I started to realize this is an amazing culture, and I was ignorant.

"But I did remember all these songs. My mother has an amazing voice and used to sing the whole day in the house. The lyrics and the warmth of those words is something you get even if you don't really understand it."

Among the songs she interprets are "Dar in Donya," a song she often sang with an uncle who stayed behind in Iran, and "Shah Doomad," a celebratory wedding standard that can only be performed in Iran behind closed doors due to the suggestive lyrics.

With a background in pop and musical theater (she starred in Israeli productions of "My Fair Lady" and "Chicago"), Rita doesn't possess Persian classical training. She doesn't attempt to interpret the songs in a traditional style; rather, she channels her childhood memories through her experience in one of the world's most diverse countries.

"This is a fusion of what I bring from my roots and what happened all these years in Israel," Rita says. "On this record I'm the only Persian-born musician who participated. What happens is that Hebrew and Persian are combined and they go very nicely together.

"It shows that music can do magic."

rita

When: 8 p.m. Saturday Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University Tickets: $60 ($10 Stanford students), 650-223-8692, www.paloaltojcc.org