Yiddish-Japanese Dictionary/Yidish-Yapanish Verterbukh/Idisshu-go jiten Compiled and edited by Kazuo Ueda, with the aid of Holger Nath and Boris Kotlerman Daigakusyorin, 1302 pages, ¥60,000 Rabbi Marvin Tokayer of Great Neck, N.Y., knows from Japan. “In 1969, I was living in Tokyo and I got a telephone call at my house from a guy who was Japanese…
It was 70 years ago, on December 7, 1941, that Japanese warplanes staged their infamous surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, thrusting America headlong into the cataclysm of World War II. Seventy years is a long time. The sages of the Talmud cited the 70th year as the point where life’s…
When a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Eastern Japan earlier this year, the staff at Fuji Youchien kindergarten in the small town of Yamamoto followed well-rehearsed regulations. They quickly took all the children outside to the parking lot. After a few minutes, with the ground still shaking and rain pouring down,…
My first trip to Japan, as a college student, had nothing to do with food — I was there to learn the language — but at the time, with a lifetime of the sort of picky eating that inspires Discovery Channel reality shows, I knew that something would have to give. Just about every movie,…
The new single and music video titled “The Japan Song,” released March 29 and featuring prominent Hasidic singers Avraham Fried and Shloimy Daskal, is not what you might expect. Although its purpose is fundraising for relief efforts, and the video includes some footage of the tsunami, it is not a fundraiser for Japan at all….
Homemade inari sushi, mandle bread, rice balls, spicy edamame, hamantaschen, and rice crispy treats. If there was anything incongruous about the offerings at the recent bake sales for Japan earthquake relief at Brandeis Hillel Day School, a pluralistic Jewish day school in San Francisco, no one seemed to notice. The mix of Jewish, Japanese and…
Geishas, the Japan Guide web site explains, “are professional entertainers who attend guests during meals, banquets and other occasions…. Their role is to make guests feel at ease with conversation, drinking games and dance performances.” And, according to a front-page story in this week’s Village Voice, they can also be Jewish. In her first-person account…
Shortly after a Japanese department store came under fire late last year for stocking a Nazi costume, The Guardian published a response suggesting the Land of the Rising Sun might be suffering from cultural amnesia. In other words, new generations of Japanese have somehow forgotten their ancestors fought alongside Hitler. Reinforcing the notion, another blunder…
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