Rabbi Einhorn’s Converts
How an Orthodox rabbi broke his own rules and helped create a community
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Rabbi Ephraim Einhorn with Jewish community member and convert Zoy Chang. Courtesy Zoy Chang.
By age 40, Zoy Chang had a lot of questions for God, but wasn’t getting any through her religion. She was raised a Christian — part of Taiwan’s small minority of only 4 to 6 percent of the population — and by adulthood, was beginning to question her religion. 
Rabbi Ephraim Einhorn with Jewish community member and convert Zoy Chang. Courtesy Zoy Chang.
Written by: Jordyn Haime
Note: This article was originally written in summer 2021 and intended for publication in The Forward. Given Dr. Einhorn’s deteriorating health condition and death in September, editors decided not to publish the story. An obituary, written by the same author and encorporating much research produced through this project, was published through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in September instead.
Note: This article was originally written in summer 2021 and intended for publication in The Forward. Given Dr. Einhorn’s deteriorating health condition and death in September, editors decided not to publish the story. An obituary, written by the same author and encorporating much research produced through this project, was published through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in September instead.
“I thought, I don’t know if maybe I’m stupid,” Chang, who works for Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior, said. “Or I didn’t pray hard enough. But I never got the answer.”
So Chang took matters into her own hands: she started learning Hebrew so that she could read the Bible in its original language, which eventually led her to a Jewish religious service at the Ritz Landis hotel.
That was the start of her 10-year journey to conversion, under the supervision of Rabbi Ephraim F. Einhorn, the only rabbi in Taiwan at the time. From there, Chang went to services every week and visited Einhorn every Tuesday to study Torah with him. “He didn’t know me well at that time. I was like a stranger. But he was always very trusting. He even gave me the key to the shul,” Chang remembers.
Though an observant Orthodox Jew in almost every other practice, Einhorn — who died last year at 103 years old — seemed to cave around the rules regarding conversion: in Orthodox Jewish law, one is only Jewish if their mother was a Jew, or if they undertake the long and strict process of conversion.
But Einhorn would skip the beit din, the theater of asking three times to convert, and the mikveh; instead, he’d lend out some books on Judaism, have in-person lessons and discussions, and offer the conversion ceremony before three Jewish witnesses: a very unorthodox process. And over time, those conversions have helped build the community from one largely made up of foreign residents to one that has become part of the diverse religious fabric of Taiwan.
Ben Schwall, president of the Taiwan Jewish Community, estimates that “about 85 percent” of married member couples are half-Taiwanese, though not all have converted. Many Jews like Schwall arrived in the 1990s and started families with partners they met in Taiwan, converting under Einhorn’s supervision. Today, many of the Jewish children growing up here speak English, Chinese, and a little Hebrew.
But not all have agreed with Einhorn’s progressive ways, including past community members, and Taiwan’s Chabad Rabbi Shlomi Tabib, who opened a Chabad house here in 2011. The disagreement has even caused tension between traditional and progressive community members, creating a rift back in the 1990s, and again today, as Taiwan continues to attract foreigners from different backgrounds.
“There’s one thing that I strongly disagree with, this whole conversion thing,” Tabib said about Einhorn. “Once he started, once he set a precedent for people, there’s no way back. I don’t know exactly what he did, but he made people Jewish. Of course, this is invalid anywhere else.”
For Yoram and Monica Aharony, a couple who has been part of the community for decades, Monica’s conversion under Einhorn has caused misunderstandings in their children’s lives. “I didn’t prepare my daughter” for potential rejection from Orthodox communities, Yoram said. Adds Monica, “We never told them that if they meet other Jews, they need to be a proper convert.”
For Monica, who is Taiwanese, despite her forty years of involvement with the Jewish community and conversion under Einhorn, she doesn’t consider herself a “proper Jew.” From a young age, her family was never religious, but she says she always believed in one God.
“My wish is to go to Jerusalem and study to be a proper convert. Not just to be a convert, but because I want to know more. I’m already 68. If God gives me life ‘till 80, this is my wish.”
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Longtime members of the Jewish community in Taiwan remember Einhorn as authoritative, but incredibly kind. “It was his way or the highway,” is a line that goes around a lot, along with “you either loved him or hated him.”
‘Rabbi’ was only one of Einhorn’s many titles. He would greet new congregants by handing them some of his many business cards: chairman of Republicans Overseas in Taiwan; senior vice president of the World Trade Center, Warsaw; president of the World Patent Trading Company. Having served as an intermediary and helped maintain informal relations between Taiwan and several eastern European states, Einhorn loved Taiwan, and Taiwan loved him back.
Tabib is far less likely to offer conversion services than Einhorn and is strict about abiding by halacha. That separation between Chabad and Einhorn’s community represents a debate prominent among Jewish communities across the world: should Judaism play by the rules in order to preserve its traditions, or should Judaism itself change and adapt to the modernizing world that surrounds it? The proposed answers have sparked a divide in Jewish communities and have had real-life consequences in Israel, where Jewish identity determines one’s eligibility as a citizen.
“When somebody wants to join us, it's a very serious and difficult process, because it's meant to be very serious and difficult,” Tabib said. “Today, you can eat whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. When you become Jewish it won’t be like that. Why would you want to put yourself under those restrictions? And then if somebody is really serious and sincere, they would say, well, I still want it.”
Einhorn operated under similar requirements; he didn’t just grant anyone access to the Jewish identity. “If and when someone wanted to convert, my response would be, why? Are you sure you know everything about the faith you were raised in before you want to change?” Einhorn says in a 2010 video interview with religious scholar Paul Farrelly.
When asked by Jonathan Goldstein, a scholar who has written extensively about Jews in Asia, if his conversions were recognized in Israel, Einhorn responded, “nobody ever told me there was a problem.” While some described Einhorn as abiding by the “blackest Orthodoxy,” according to one 1991 research report, others have said he’s not nearly Orthodox enough. Even the origins of his rabbinic title are murky; some accounts claim that Einhorn was never fully ordained as a rabbi, though he studied in several rabbinical schools in Europe.
“For god’s sake, he married my son to a woman who didn't convert. He was not strict at all,” said Rina Segal, a former community member.
Alexander Pevzner, a senior researcher with the risk assessment firm Strategy Risks, moved to Taiwan in 2002 as a student and later worked here as a journalist. He met his wife while living in Taiwan, who eventually converted to Orthodoxy. Pevzner says Einhorn’s open-door policy was what made his services special. At times, members recall, about half — or more — of the people attending Einhorn’s Shabbat services were Taiwanese Christians.
“Dr. Einhorn is a very unique person...very few people like Dr. Einhorn exist in the world,” Pevzner said. “It’s not every Jewish community, anywhere in the world, that would welcome someone off the street.”
Two other Orthodox converts interviewed both went to Einhorn’s services and studied with him as the first step on their journey — at the time, Einhorn’s was the only Jewish service on the island — before undergoing an Orthodox conversion elsewhere. Having the full experience with a beit din was important to them, as was citizenship to Israel where they had in-laws or planned to live in the future.
For Chang, her 10 years studying under Einhorn and close relationship with the community were enough to solidify her own identity as a Jew. With no intentions to move her life to Israel, her conversion doesn’t present any legal complications. She always had a lingering feeling that her roots were Jewish. Her family had come from Henan province in China, whose capital Kaifeng was once home to a community of Chinese Jews; over the years, most Kaifeng Jews assimilated with the greater Chinese population or became Muslims.
“I converted, this is a commitment,” Chang says. “I give my friends an example. I say, ‘if the second Hitler came and said, if you are a Jew, come and we will send you to the concentration camp, I will stand up, and I will go.’ That’s my commitment.”