Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Japan: In the half-century since it was founded, the Jewish Community Center of Japan has always prided itself on being able to accommodate any request for a minyan, even at short notice. Community members say that many visiting Jews, who may not be religiously observant at home, suddenly seem to yearn for a connection with their brethren in an exotic land.

The overwhelming majority of Tokyo´s Jews prefer services that do not make ritualistic distinction between men and women. A smaller group of the center´s members hold Orthodox services.

The first known minyan in Japan took place in 1889 and the first synagogue was established in the 1890s in Nagasaki. Prior to World War II, the majority of Jews in Japan lived in Kobe and Yokohama. The Jewish cemetery in Yokohama has tombstones dating back to 1869.

The Jewish Community of Japan, in Tokyo, was established March 21, 1953, founded by merchant Jews primarily from the Chinese cities of Harbin and Shanghai.

"The criteria to be a member was to be able to speak Russian, play poker and drink vodka," remembers former community president Ernie Salomon, a Tokyo resident since 1950.

Shortly after its inception, the community center was raided by police during a "Monte Carlo Night." Police believed that the Jews were reopening an illegal casino, which had been shuttered not long before in another part of the neighborhood. Two board members were among those arrested.

The founder of Tokyo´s organized Jewish community was a Russian textile businessman, Anatole Ponve, who established the Kobe synagogue in 1937.

During the early 1940s, Ponve was among those who mobilized a massive effort to take care of Jewish refugees from Europe.

After the war, Ponve, the community´s first president, personally guaranteed a loan from Chase Manhattan Bank for the purchase of the land for the community center from a Japanese family in the upscale Hiroo District.

The Jewish Community of Japan, which serves 150 families, is foremost a religious institution with a synagogue known as Beth David, named for the father of one the community´s early leaders and benefactors, Shoul Eisenberg, who later became a leading industrialist in Israel.

In the early years, the dining room at the center was not kosher — beef stroganoff was a favorite dish — but that changed when a new rabbi threatened to quit if the kitchen was not made kosher. In recent decades, the center´s kitchen has been under rabbinical supervision.

posted by William @ 12/08/2003 08:58:39 AM