Stories about Judaism in Taiwan featured in international newspapers and magazines.
Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi visits Taiwan in milestone moment for the country’s Jewish community
in JTA, March 1, 2023In what is likely a first, an Israeli chief rabbi visited Taiwan last week, marking a milestone both for the island nation and the Jewish community there. Last week, the Jeffrey D. Schwartz Jewish Community Center in Taipei welcomed Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau on a three-day visit which included a dedication ceremony for the community center, a regional summit of rabbis and a meeting with Israeli and Taiwanese officials...
in Tablet, Dec. 13, 2021
Jeffrey Schwartz, 70, likes to say he is more Chinese than American. Raised a Conservative Jew in Cleveland, his Mandarin is perfect, but his Hebrew could use some work. His children, who are half-Taiwanese, are proud of their Jewish roots. For the past 50 years, he has made his home in Taiwan, where he made his fortune distributing retail products to American superstores through the Fourstar Group, a merchandising and product development company he founded in 1975. But he also wanted to be remembered as more than just another businessman...
in Haaretz, October 20, 2021
The rooms that house Pastor Alex Cho’s collection of Holocaust artifacts, Judaica and photographs are stuffy in the September heat. With the museum closed to the general public due to the coronavirus pandemic, there is no need to keep the air conditioning running during the day. Inside the Taiwan Holocaust Peace Memorial – Cho calls it the “smallest Holocaust museum in the world” – which sits on the second floor of the stunning, white Che Lu Chien...
The rooms that house Pastor Alex Cho’s collection of Holocaust artifacts, Judaica and photographs are stuffy in the September heat. With the museum closed to the general public due to the coronavirus pandemic, there is no need to keep the air conditioning running during the day. Inside the Taiwan Holocaust Peace Memorial – Cho calls it the “smallest Holocaust museum in the world” – which sits on the second floor of the stunning, white Che Lu Chien...
The Origins of Taiwan’s Jewish Community
in the News Lens, October 5, 2021Talk to any Jewish person who has spent any time in Taiwan and they’ll probably tell you how easy it is to be Jewish here. Not only is Taiwan an easy place to live, the locals kind and welcoming, but without Europe and the United States’s tradition of antisemitism, Taiwan feels safer than most places to be a Jew, though fewer than a thousand of us live here. Today, Taiwan’s Jews are becoming spoiled for choice when it comes to Jewish life. Taipei has a conservative synagogue...
in JTA, September 15, 2021
Ephraim Einhorn, a rabbi and businessman who helmed Taiwan’s fledgling Jewish community after a career that included clandestine missions on behalf of oppressed Jews, has died. Einhorn’s death on Wednesday morning in Taipei, just hours before the beginning of Yom Kippur, came after...
Ephraim Einhorn, a rabbi and businessman who helmed Taiwan’s fledgling Jewish community after a career that included clandestine missions on behalf of oppressed Jews, has died. Einhorn’s death on Wednesday morning in Taipei, just hours before the beginning of Yom Kippur, came after...
in South China Morning Post Magazine, August 29, 2021
At a board meeting of the newly formed Taiwan Jewish Community in 1981, then-president Yaacov Liberman brought a matter to the table: a friend from his days back in Shanghai was down on his luck. He was in his mid-70s, didn’t have much money and his health was deteriorating. He needed meals and a safe place to stay. His name was Nathan Rabinovitch, alias Rabin, but sometimes he just used the name “Nat”. The community was able to house Rabin and give him meals at the Jewish centre in Taipei for a few days before finding him a room with the Little Sisters of the Poor...
At a board meeting of the newly formed Taiwan Jewish Community in 1981, then-president Yaacov Liberman brought a matter to the table: a friend from his days back in Shanghai was down on his luck. He was in his mid-70s, didn’t have much money and his health was deteriorating. He needed meals and a safe place to stay. His name was Nathan Rabinovitch, alias Rabin, but sometimes he just used the name “Nat”. The community was able to house Rabin and give him meals at the Jewish centre in Taipei for a few days before finding him a room with the Little Sisters of the Poor...
Welcome to Taiwan’s Talmud Business Hotel
in Haaretz newspaper, August 24, 2021TAICHUNG, Taiwan – If you’re coming to the coastal city of Taichung on business, what better place to rest your head than at a hotel built on the ancient wisdom of the wealthiest and most successful people in the world? This is the idea behind Taiwan’s Talmud Business Hotel, whose founder was apparently inspired by the rabbinic text (he declined to be interviewed for this article, citing religion as too sensitive an issue). Its flagship location in Taichung’s central district...
on the blog
Morris Abraham “Two-Gun” Cohen (Ma Kun 馬坤 in Chinese) was a Polish-born Jew with an early career of crime, selling fake gold rings and watches when he settled in Winnipeg, Canada, “the Chicago of the North.” After six months in jail for involvement with an underage girl, he became involved with a Chinese gambling joint at a Chinese restaurant, and grew close with the immigrant community. When Sun Yatsen began opening Chinese Nationalist...
Morris Abraham “Two-Gun” Cohen (Ma Kun 馬坤 in Chinese) was a Polish-born Jew with an early career of crime, selling fake gold rings and watches when he settled in Winnipeg, Canada, “the Chicago of the North.” After six months in jail for involvement with an underage girl, he became involved with a Chinese gambling joint at a Chinese restaurant, and grew close with the immigrant community. When Sun Yatsen began opening Chinese Nationalist...
In this island nation, Christians fight to win hearts and minds for Israel
in Haaretz newspaper, June 16, 2021TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan – Just around the corner from Taipei’s iconic 101 building, the father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, stares down passersby. It’s a strange sight in a city thousands of miles from Israel, but it marks Zionism’s leap from Taiwan’s religious fringes to a wider audience.
It’s actually a mural at Wave, a restaurant, bar and event...
In Taiwan market, an Israeli hawks ‘exotic’ falafel balls
in Times of Israel, May 7, 2021KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — Bustling and chaotic, Taiwan’s Ruifeng night market is the go-to spot for browsing endless aisles of food, clothing, and carnival games in the southern city of Kaohsiung, far from the capital city of Taipei.
As the sun goes down, the market fills with high schoolers flooding in from across the street, crowded together...
Rabbi Einhorn’s Converts
published on the blog, May 2022By 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...
Three Seders: Why Judaism Survives in Taiwan
in the New Hampshire Jewish Reporter May-June issueWhile many at home in the states said “next year in person” for the second year in a row, I found myself surrounded by people—Jews from all over the world, non-Jewish friends who wanted to experience a Seder, even a table of Taiwanese Christians likely driven by messianic prophecy—at a Passover Seder in Taipei, Taiwan....