I contacted Amy to see if
she was available to go to a Rosh Hashanah service with Rabbi Einhorn with whom
she celebrated Passover this year; Rabbi Shlomi neglected to tell me if Einhorn
was coming to his shindig though I asked. I would prefer to go to a service
with Rabbi Einhorn in Taipei than Shlomi. Einhorn is 97! I e-mailed Rabbi
Einhorn (Amy gave me his address)
September
13th we went to Taipei for Rosh Hashanah first night service and dinner
afterwards in Rabbi Einhorn's shul in the hotel. As it was so shall it remain
with the Israeli/Lubavitcher team aside as they were in Tianmu.
Rabbi Shlomi
replied, too, complimenting me and inquiring as such if I would be attending
Rosh Hashanah ceremony and dinner with him. I told him I would visit Rabbi
Einhorn. Shlomi reminded me Rabbi Einhorn was 97 years old, not 93 as I
remembered from an article obviously written four years ago. Jeff Goldschmidt's
half-sister, who joined Einhorn for Passover, won't be attending the pricey
after-service dinner but I think Leona and I will visit her family while we are
in Taipei two weekends from now.
Too bad Amy won't go
to Rabbi Einhorn's Rosh Hashanah service and dinner but we will see her for a
few hours before we go. I can only surmise the 1300 NT price tag for dinner is
too high for their income. Since she is related to Jeff, my
former colleague at FDR, and because she is an ESL teacher
living in Taipei, we have something in common. That she is Jewish, married to a
Taiwanese man, and has a lovely toddler daughter makes me warm to her.
Today
Leona and I are going to Taipei for the first night service of Rosh Hashanah
with Rabbi Einhorn. In the afternoon, we will meet and have lunch with Amy and
her family.
We met Amy’s family in an underground food court near Taipei
Terminal. We left at 3:30 and took the subway from there to the Grand Hotel
station, and then we took a taxi a short distance to the American Club.
I spoke with Rabbi
Einhorn and thanked him for helping me in 1986 but he didn’t recall; an amazing
man for 97. He did an abbreviated service complete with his historical
anecdotes about Hebrew being the mother tongue of all languages and the
Christian cross being the symbol for death. His “and so on and so on” phrases
lent detail for too much to say. But he had no glasses, ate well at the buffet,
and seemed to enjoy himself. His 62 year old Taiwanese wife was there. Leona
and I chatted with the folk around us, a Taiwanese attorney and Americans, and
Leona had a good time. We were both pleasantly pleased at the variety of foods
in the buffet (fish though no meat) and agreed that it was better than the food
Rabbi Shlomi offered at this year’s Passover get-together.
At 9:30 pm, we bid farewell and took a taxi
back to the subway and back to the HSR, and Taichung railroad to Leona’s
scooter which she had parked near the station. We got home at 11:30 pm.
I first met Rabbi Einhorn In Taipei
1985. At the time I had some strange notion that if my wife converted
to Judaism, it would be better for our family. We already had a daughter
born in America and a son was on his way. Believing the Conservative Jewish
ideals I was blended into growing up, a son had to have a bris (a ceremony that
entails the removal of the foreskin of the penis) but to have a bris, the mother
and father had to be Jewish, and had to have a Jewish wedding. I am Jewish by
birth, not by religious involvement but my Taiwanese wife was not. That is
where Rabbi Einhorn came into the picture. I saw in the China Post that Sabbath
services were held by this rabbi and I went to the service to meet him.
I felt close to
Rabbi Einhorn; he was friendly and funny and flexible belying his orthodox
training. I felt he was a mench from fringe of Borough Park Brooklyn, the
hotbed of American Jewry and orthodoxy. I was from the fringe. I
asked him to convert my wife. He said it was her choice, not mine, to be
converted. With lackluster, my ex-wife went with me to meet the Rabbi. Out of
respect, she took the dozen or so pages from the Old Testament, in English, that
Rabbi Einhorn said she would need to study for her conversion. I was to
translate and explain it to her. Somehow, her conviction met the Rabbi's
approval and so she was given the name, Sarah, and was converted in
the slimmest of fashion. Within a week, my pregnant Jewish wife and I
had a Jewish wedding to make it all kosher. It seemed like a Las Vegas wedding
but what of it. Not long after, our son was born. Rabbi Einhorn was there
walking me through the procedure
Einhorn arrived in Taiwan in January 1975 from Kuwait and
started administering Jewish prayer services five years later. Einhorn now
operates one of Taiwan's of 2 Synagogues in room 577 of the Sheraton Taipei
Hotel
The other synagogue, which caters mainly to the younger crowd and
the overseas guests, is at the new Taipei Jewish Center. Along with
religious duties, Einhorn has helped achieve and promote diplomatic relations
between the Taiwanese government with the Eastern and Central Europe. Also, he
is also the chairman of the Republicans Abroad Taiwan.
Because the state of Israel has full diplomatic relations with
mainland China, it cannot fully recognize the government of Taiwan, which China
considers separatist. Nevertheless, Israel maintains the Israel Economic and
Cultural Office in Taipei (ISECO). In 2006, there was $1.3 billion worth of
bilateral trade between Israel and Taiwan.
Rabbi Shlomi Tabib arrived in Taipei in 2011. He doesn't call his
gig Chabad House, but it is. In general, religious practice is far
removed from the overwhelming majority of Taiwan Jews, especially because many
of them, including Israelis, are married to Taiwanese women who have not
converted to Judaism.
Contrast the secular Jew with the idolaters, atheists, and Mormon
Christian missionaries in Taiwan. I have no mission. I am a Jew, being here
now, not wanting to convince anyone to be a Jew like me or to not be a
Buddhism-Taoism idolater There is no need for me to interface with Gxd through
an intermediary or lose my faith.
The universe is clockwise; regular. I have no masters or rulers, by
choice, except for Gxd. I am a wage slave, a retired slave, but a slave
nevertheless. No government will get me to abandon my belief that we are all
born with equal rights. I will not adhere to some caste system set down by
someone else’s power scheme. Indeed, the worst religion junkies are capitalist
materialists who would destroy the world with pollution from unsustainable
gadgets. I would rather walk through a park than through a cheese street fair,
any day, rain or shine.
But the choices for a Jew in Taiwan, as anywhere, are the same as in the
United States; the Israeli Mafia, the European intellectual bourgeois class,
the orthodoxy cloistered in historical mysticism, or the secular, working class
Jew, all encompassing, all accepting, with a belief that everything we do is
Gxd’s will, however it is done. Non-believers and agnostics can argue all they
want. There is no divine comedy placing arrogance above Gxd in atheist denial
that will do anyone any good. You may as will build a golden bull and ride it
down Wall Street.
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