Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Kobe, Japan

By Katherine Bruce

We lurked outside the synagogue, then approached the iron gates and peeked into the front doors. There was a dim light warmly illuminating the interior.

A woman noticed us. She was dressed in modest, Orthodox-style clothing, but happened to be Japanese. I wanted to greet her, but wasn’t sure which language to use.

“Shalom”? “Konbanwa” (“good evening” in Japanese)? Instinct pulled me towards “Shalom,” to show that I had a good reason to be standing outside a Jewish community center. She replied with her own “Shalom,” and then asked us in English what we wanted. I explained that we were Jews living in the area and just wanted to check out the synagogue.

Inside, there were Israelis standing around, and they all looked at me and my friend with interest. The rabbi greeted us and began talking to my friend Lev, who was visiting me from the States. After five months of living in Japan, I was still in culture shock, still walking around with my eyes wide and a smile plastered dumbly to my face. Japan seemed alienating and foreign, but here, in this synagogue, I was suddenly transplanted into a place filled with the type of people I had known my whole life and never imagined I’d see in Kobe.

I noticed the bima in this small, traditionally Sephardic synagogue. Japanese and Israeli flags hung side by side on the walls. I felt an overwhelming sense of returning home, being in the presence of a religion—my religion— that many people living in Japan know nothing about. From around 1930 to1940, Kobe was a processing center for Jewish refugees arriving from China, Russia, and the Middle East. Although it was mainly a transit point for most Jews en route to North America, several families stayed and made Kobe their permanent home. Japan was seen as a neutral territory where they could freely practice Judaism without persecution.

As a Jew living in Japan, I feel like a needle in a haystack. Because Japan is such a homogeneous, insular society, foreigners are lumped together in one group; knowledge and understanding of Jews as a specific group with a unique culture and belief system is almost non-existent. Hebrew might as well be Arabic, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might as well be just another skirmish in some distant part of the world. As a Jew and advocate of Israel, I often wonder if a society disengaged from the situation is a better environment for open dialogue and debate than one that is agitated and often misinformed.

On a day-to-day basis, my Jewish identity is somewhat dormant, although I admit that my Jewish life here is not much of a change from my life back in the States. As a Reform Jew, the Orthodox synagogue we stumbled into that night was something culturally new for me on two levels – both because it was a synagogue in Japan (!) and because of its Orthodox nature. Still, the energy from the rabbi and from the light that created a welcoming glow around the bima reached out to me more than any formal bow or greeting from the Japanese. There was a real sense of happiness on the rabbi’s face when another Jewish man coincidentally stumbled into the synagogue just at the time when they needed a 10th man for their minyan.

As a woman attending the service, I sat in a sectioned-off area behind a curtain, scrambling to follow in a Hebrew-Japanese-English prayer book. But I still felt comforted by my surroundings. It wasn’t the religion that brought the sense of connection, but the people who keep that religion alive. The Jewish community stays strong because we intrinsically stick together. We forage, we fight, and we create a home of our own wherever we are and however far we may be from our promised land.

Tags: Area Codes

Posted by Sarah, Thursday, November 19th, 2009, 2:57 pm, Area Codes.

2 Responses to “Kobe, Japan”

1. Eli Raber says:

   November 20, 2009 at 2:48 pm

   Kath,

   Very nice piece. I appreciated in your post the duality of feeling at home and comfortable finding a Shul/Jews in Japan and feeling part of a greater whole, while at the same time trying to find your place as a Reform Jew in an Orthodox setting.

   I especially liked your last line of creating a home, a community, wherever we go.

   I look forward to reading more of your posts.

   Eli
2. Mimi says:

   November 21, 2009 at 8:18 am

   Katherine,

   I love this story! I am pleased that you sensed a true alive feeling among your people as a stranger in a strange land.

   The rabbi must have been truly delighted by fulfilling the minyan knowing it was divine intervention on Shabbos. Lev is a mensch!

   Mom