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.

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Kalamazoo, MI (616)

By Emily Comisar

When I was five or six, my parents taught me to recite the blessings over the Hanukkah candles. My father transliterated the verses in his block print handwriting on green-ruled index cards that were small enough to fit in my little hands. For a week I walked around the house trying to wrap my brain around all of the new words with foreign pronunciations. It never occurred to me that six-year-olds all over town were not doing the same thing.

By “town,” I mean Pavilion Township, Michigan (just outside of Kalamazoo)–a place so small that the nearest post office was two “towns” over. We’re talking about a place where there was only one synagogue within reasonable driving distance, and it didn’t even have a rabbi. My being different from everyone else, though, only became clear around Christmas-time, when I was forced to present Hanukkah to all the other kids at school. They called it “cultural awareness;” I called it pressure. Imagine being responsible, at the age of eight, for thirty other people’s perceptions of the Jews. That’s power.

Needless to say, my family didn’t practice Judaism outside of the home. In fact, to fit in a little better, we celebrated the Christian holidays. I can safely say that I clung to my belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny just as hard as any other child at school. So, the time that my grandma came to visit for the holidays, my dad swore up and down that the evergreen in the living room was actually a Hanukkah bush.

The closest thing to anti-Semitism I ever experienced was that one day on the playground at recess when my best friend informed me that the only way to get to heaven was to accept Jesus into your heart. That night before bed I prayed harder than I ever had before, terrified that I was doomed to go to Hell because we never talked about Jesus at my house.  When I finally understood the role that Jesus plays in the distinction between Judaism and Christianity, I guiltily fumbled for a way to take those prayers back.

Moving to Texas changed everything. No longer did my peers rely on me to explain the Jewish holidays. Conversely, they all had formal Jewish educations and were able to explain them to me. It was strange to go from being so different from my peers to suddenly realizing that I belonged to something bigger. I transitioned from a high school that was 30% Jewish to a university that was 18% Jewish, and now I work for a Jewish non-profit (they might have made a movie about this sort of thing once). All I’m trying to say is that, with a little bit of happenstance, I found my way into something that I never knew I needed in the first place.

Photo by ashley_dryden, licensed under Creative Commons.

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St. Paul, MN (651)

By Sarah Pumroy

My mother visited me in New York a few weeks ago. She’s originally from Manhattan, and much of her side of the family is buried in a Jewish cemetery in New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge. On a sunny October afternoon, we rented a car and crossed state lines. My mother’s family – the “Jewish-sounding” Silvers, Shapiros and Bernsteins – grew up mostly on the east coast. Eventually, the Shapiros moved out to Salt Lake City (area code 801) in the early 1900s and founded Shapiro’s Leather Goods, which still exists.

I never met any of the Shapiros, but I wonder how their life in Salt Lake City – hardly known as a major center of Jewish life – compared to my experience growing up in St. Paul, MN (651). St. Paul has a small but vibrant Jewish community – three synagogues within a 10-minute drive of my house, and many more in Minneapolis and its surrounding suburbs – but I still felt like a minority. Yes, there were multiple synagogues within St. Paul city limits, but there were eight churches within blocks of my home. I currently work in New York City, and there’s a Judaica store next door to my office; back in St. Paul, we had to travel 40 minutes to pick out invitations for my bat mitzvah.

After the cemetery, my mom and I went out for a late lunch at a diner off the side of the highway. It was packed, oddly full for 3pm on a Sunday. I thought about why it might be so crowded, and said to my mom, “well, it couldn’t be the post-church rush, it’s 3 pm, too late for churches to be letting out.” This was common around noon in the Twin Cities – the restaurants were packed with families and old people who had recently gotten out of Sunday church service. My mom laughed at this notion. “I don’t think they have that out here,” she said. I realized she was probably right – this part of New Jersey was so Jewish that there wasn’t such a thing as a “post-church rush.”

Crowded restaurants on Sunday mornings wasn’t exactly a negative experience, but it was one of the many things about being Jewish that left me feeling like the odd one out. In fifth and sixth grade, I attended Saturday school in preparation for my bat mitzvah. I didn’t mind having to wake up incredibly early on Saturday to go to class, except for the fact that many of my friends, with church to go to on Sundays, always had Friday night sleepovers. Every once in a while, my mom let me go to those sleepovers and skip Hebrew school. Most of the time, though, I was allowed to go to the party but not stay overnight, which made me resentful towards Judaism.

Around Christmas-time, our neighborhood became decorated with beautiful light displays on every block. It was so charmingly Midwestern, and we often took a driving tour around the neighborhood to see them. It was the year before my bat mitzvah that I first begged my parents to put up lights on our house. They obviously refused, and I remember throwing a tantrum and begging for blue and white lights, “for Hanukkah.” I’m not sure why it was so important to me; I think I saw the rest of the community enjoying Christmas and wished I could take part.

In junior high and high school, the High Holidays became an issue. Teachers constantly held exams or set paper due dates on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I was a quiet, studious teenager and disliked missing school in general, especially if it meant having to make-up a test. Most teachers were understanding, but I regularly had to explain the significance of the holidays, which was embarrassing.

“Yahm Kipper? What’s that?,” some teachers would ask. I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something about the Jewish New Year, which seemed easier than explaining the tenants of atonement, repentance and fasting.

Now I live in the most Jewish-heavy area codes in the country (212/718), where almost everyone is at least familiar with Judaism. I work at a Jewish organization, and I can attend a Jewish event any night of the week if I want to. At the same time, St. Paul was a great place to grow up, and I wouldn’t trade my experience there, even for one where I didn’t feel like a minority. Having struggled with resentment and shame for being Jewish as a young person has made me a prouder and more active Jew as a young adult.

Photo by The U.S. National Archives, licensed under Creative Commons.

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02: Area Codes

This week we introduce Issue #2: Area Codes

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Area codes are more than numbers – they define us. Who can forget the classic Seinfeld episode where, because of the growth of the population of Manhattan, Elaine is forced to adapt to 646 from her beloved 212? Geography and corresponding area codes are steeped in Jewish identity. Members of the Tribe – well-represented in the New York City area codes of 212, 718, and 917 – can understand the sense of connection one develops to the code representing your particular part of the City. Tell a Brooklynite living in the 718 that he suddenly has to go by something totally different, and you are likely to have a reaction like the one Elaine had.

In this issue of Alef, we’ll explore Jewish identity through different area codes. And while many of us might have abundant 212, 718, 310, and 305 numbers in our contacts list, it’s probably more unusual for us to know people in the 616 of Kalamazoo, MI, or the 480 of Scottsdale, AZ. In the stories and accounts that follow, our writers share their experiences of being Jewish in the places served by these slightly less recognizable area codes and try to decipher what, if anything, it all means.

- Alef

Photo by Ballistik Coffee Boy, licensed under Creative Commons.

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Area Codes Posts:

St. Paul, MN (651)
Kalamazoo, MI (616)
Kobe, Japan
Scottsdale, AZ (480)
Chatsworth, CA (818)
Oh, Pioneers: Urban Kibbutzniks Cultivate Community in Brooklyn

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