By Arlene Plevin, Special to JTNews
Observing Rosh Hashanah in Taipei, Taiwan reminded me of what I’d forgotten: all over the world, in places other than Baltimore, Tel Aviv, London, New York, and even Seattle, the Jewish people gather to observe and share. The flavor of a place, its customs and troubles, the conundrums and constraints, all seep into the Jewish community.
For me, on my journey to Taiwan on a Fulbright Scholarship, Rosh Hashanah arrived along with Typhoon Sinlaku. The usually jammed streets around the Landis Hotel in downtown Taipei swirled with heavy rain and wind. Inside this elegant site of fifteen years of Jewish services, twenty-seven people joined Rabbi E. F. Einhorn in bringing in the Jewish New Year.
Freshly baked challah and kosher wine helped welcome everyone in from the empty streets. The typhoon — named for the Micronesian god of breadfruit — proved a lot of hot air and more than the usual wind. However, those attending could not have known it would be so. Warned to stay inside, they’d ventured out instead, choosing to begin 5763 in the company of friends old and new. Says Jonathan Kaufman, a Fulbright Junior Scholar who had just flown in from New York, “I went because even though I was looking to experience a new country and a new culture, I always feel that a Jewish community is my community.”
And Jonathan found it in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, where the story of the Jewish community here echoes much of the Jewish Diaspora throughout the world. Here on the small island of Taiwan, where there are 22 million Taiwanese and perhaps a hundred Jews, weekly services at the Landis Hotel and bi-monthly brunches and other gatherings at the Jewish Community Center in Tienmu, a part of Taipei, make up the Jewish community.
At a rented home in Tienmu — property values here makes Seattle land look amazingly inexpensive — 40 or so Israelis, Americans, and Canadians gather to celebrate Sukkot, educate their children, and just talk Hebrew and English. It’s a small community, down from the 200 or so families that represented their heyday, but they’ve inherited, so to speak, May Chuw, who at seventyish — she’s shy about sharing her age — may well be the only Chinese cook who makes award-winning latkes. May has been cooking for the community for fifteen years and her dishes represent the best recipes people have shared. Come for her eggplant Parmesan, but stay for tender, crisp latkes that make you feel as if the best Jewish delicatessen has evolved in, of all places, Taiwan.
The Taipei Jewish community was formally established in 1975. Although a community had formed there earlier, it hadn’t registered with the government. Don Shapiro, president of the JCC, notes that the “Jewish community had its origins in the ‘50s, after the American military presence began here.”
As Shapiro explains, “There was a chapel used for Christian services on Sunday, but there were enough Jews in the military and in business to form a small congregation.”
Shapiro, who came to Taiwan in October 1969, wasn’t, in his words, “too active in the community.” However, when his daughters wanted some exposure to Judaism, the director of publications for the American Chamber in Taipei became more involved.
President for ten years now, Shapiro explains, “It’s a constant struggle to both maintain a large enough core of membership and raise finances to keep going.”
Shapiro, along with treasurer Yoram Ahrony organizes the JCC activities, feels a sense of obligation to keep this underway. The JCC runs a Sunday school and works hard to keep a community for long term Taiwan residents and newcomers alike.
Initially, explains Shapiro, the community grew from trade shows held during the holiday season. Buyers would come from all over the world and attend services. However, as some of these shows moved to China, says Shapiro, “the transient community made it more difficult in recent years.” For Shapiro and Rabbi Einhorn, therefore, satisfaction is in continued outreach and availability.
Rabbi Einhorn, who arrived in Taiwan in1975, was President of American Jewish Congress for eleven Western States from 1958–1961. For fifteen years, he has held services at the Landis Hotel in room 419, acknowledging “I’m probably the only rabbi in world who is the rabbi, president, treasurer, and who performs all the functions, sexton, reader of Torah, Hazan, maintaining this location.”
He adds, “Everything, including the Torah, is from me.”
Having studied in Fiume, Italy (now a part of Croatia), London, Belgium, and Israel, Rabbi Einhorn has served in London and Detroit, among other locations. Born in 1918 in Vienna, he strives “to maintain regular religious services in Taiwan, to anyone who wants, to maintain a religious presence.” That’s achieved in part by his large library housed in the hotel numbering more than 600 books.
“Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t borrow a book. If they stay in the hotel, they take them to their room,” he says.
For books, food, and occasional community, I’ve found in my four months here that those who attend services and go to the JCC offer an opportunity to continue the intriguing mix of culture and practice. It provides another way to know a place — and the Jewish people. Among dumpling vendors, family sweet-and-sour soup restaurants, stinky tofu sellers and, indeed, a surprising number of Starbucks outlets, this access to Judaism is, as both Don Shapiro and Rabbi Einhorn practice, crucial.
“We can see that it’s made a big impact to have this, and we feel it’s important to keep it going,” Shapiro says.
He gestures around the room, filled with menorahs and energetic children. “It’s quite remarkable to have just in this room the world represented, quite a sense of joy.”