Taipai, Taiwan
May 5, 2007
If it weren’t for the presence of three native Taiwanese fellow worshippers and the Chinese writing on the door, I could have been in any synagogue in the western world. But this one was on the fifth floor of the Sheraton International Hotel in this densely populated, colorful and exciting capital city.
I had been invited to worship with the small – as in only seven people – group by Rabbi Ephraim F. Einhorn, a true character if there ever were one. (About 80 people turned out a few weeks earlier for a kosher Passover seder. There are by estimates only about 100 to 150 Jews on the island of 23 million people, and they’re all either Israelis or Americans connected with businesses. There are no native Jews here, other than a few that Rabbi Einhorn has converted in his 30 plus years on the island. If you’re heading there, check out http://www.haruth.com/JewsTaiwan.html.)
I was here for a few days courtesy the government’s impressive Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.epa.gov.tw/en/), which invited us to see how they are responding to the awesome challenges they face in the region (in no small part thanks to China’s recalcitrance on that and so many other issues). More on that in print and on-line in the coming weeks.
I had met with Rabbi Einhorn in his office a few days earlier. To say he has stories and has rubbed elbows with the Jewish famous is a bit like saying that Manischewitz cranks out a few boxes of matzah each Festival of Freedom.
AT 89, this native of Vienna, with an Orthodox rabbinical degree from an important seminary in London, has 10 business cards – ranging from honorary citizen of Montana, to chair of the Republicans of Taiwan (as in the GOP type), to founder of the country’s main Rotary clubs and much more. He speaks a host of languages (but not Chinese). He worked for the World Jewish Congress in resettling Holocaust refugees (his parents died in Auschwitz) and he has lived and worked in some dozen or so countries.
He arrived here – apparently his last stop in terms of addresses—in the mid-1970s as, get this, the head of a Kuwaiti business delegation. I asked, but he said, “It’s a story I’m not ready to tell” – which, probably by design, makes him even more interesting.
Back to Shabbat. The small room, which is the rabbi’s permanent synagogue, also houses the rabbi’s truly impression collection of rare Jewish books, dating from the late 1700s to present day, which he proudly showed off. The room also has a Torah and an ark, Sephardi and Ashkenazi prayerbooks (the former no longer used now that the Syrian Jews left for Hong Kong and India to follow business pursuits a few decades ago).
One Israeli businessman chanted the Torah reading. We stopped, discussed, argued the meaning and then went on. In other words, Jews gathering as across the globe to bring new life to our ancient texts. All along, the rabbi interjected his always interesting personal stories and cross references from his vast knowledge of the Jewish cannon.
At the end, there was Kiddush, Hamotzi and some more chatting. Then it was time for me to go and for the rabbi to rest. I could not make it back for Havdalah that night, but this coming week when I perform that ceremony at home with my kids, my thoughts will go East, Far East that is.
Subscribe to this blog