Rosh Hashanah in Taipei with Rabbi Einhorn

•     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 13^th 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, then we took a taxi a short distance to the American Club. 

American Club, scene of Rabbi Einhorn's Rosh Hashanah  Buffet

     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. 

Menachem Mendel Schneerson
whom Chabad Jews call "The Messiah"

     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 clockwork; regular. I have no masters or rulers, by choice. 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 or class 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 cheesy street fair, any day, rain or shine.      But the choices for a Jew in Taiwan, as anywhere, are the same as in the U.S.; the Israeli mafia, the European intellectual working class, the orthodox cloistered in mystical history, or the secular all-encompassing belief that everything we do is Gxd's will; argue all you want. No divine comedy placing arrogance  above Gxd in atheist denial will do anyone any good. You may as well build a golden bull and ride down Wall Street. 

      I will not be going to Yom Kippur service because I don't want to travel to Taipei again during the week; if it were in Taichung, i might go. However, Einhorn is too old to travel and Shlomi prefers to hold services up north in his comfort zone.
     On this Yom Kippur, no one has asked me yet for a second chance. To be fair, no one has mortally injured me to expect from them a second chance for me. Last month, I offered a second chance, on Facebook, five people. All but one accepted my 'friendship' after I had blocked or unfriended them for various reasons. I offered friendship to other locals in Taichung but they stood me up; they know my number if they feel like calling. 
     In the other way, I have not turned anybody down. Surely I have sinned and require forgiveness, but only from Gxd and not from anyone I know; Gxd knows what I've done wrong. I try to do the right thing every day. To cloister myself with Jewish tradition or rely on other Jews for sincerity and friendship, more than goyum, is not in the cards; I'm not supporting Israeli hegemony or liking Jews who do.