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…
Moment Magazine traces the history of the latke and its competition, the sufganiya. Spicing up traditional Hannukah fare: Mexican food takes on the miracle of the oil with spicy zucchini latkes and brisket tacos. Joy of Kosher talks with a rock-star winemaker in California that has just gone kosher. The Jerusalem Post argues that kosher…
Although Japanese society has been afflicted by the phenomenon known as “antisemitism without Jews,” as detailed in David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa’s thoughtful study, “Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype” (Lexington, 2000), remarkable cases of philosemitism also exist. Of the latter, few are more surprising than the…
Books that purport to chronicle world Jewry’s plot to rule the world are flying off shelves in China and Japan. Such conspiracy theories are also prevalent in Malaysia, the Philippines and, to some extent, throughout Asia, according to a recently published essay by the Anglo-Dutch writer Ian Buruma. But unlike standard-issue Western antisemitism — accusations…
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