Nisan Anav, also in the photo, will not underwrite publication of the Orot Succot Machzor, but in response to an appeal in the summer of 2001, gladly donates several of the copies in the bookcase not far to the left of the photo.. He has arrived in Osaka in the World Expo year of 1970 to sell Persian carpets. Yearning to live again in Eretz Yisroel, he passes up an opportunity to buy a house being vacated by one of the Ohel Shelomoh founders, preferring to rent a flat five minutes' walk from Beit Knesset. The house collapses in the Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 17, 1995; Nisan, wife Puri (dealer in antiques and accomplished musician on the santur), and daughter Dalia (a translator between Japanese and Farsi sometimes employed in local courts) sweep up their breakage, move the dislodged furniture back where it was. Soon thereafter Nisan begins to host kiddush and full Shabbat meals after Arvit on Friday evenings in what on Shabbat is a sixth-floor walkup; lining the wall are futon offering a welcome, quiet night's sleep naturally followed by helping make the Shacharit minyan, after which kiddush and the meal will be partaken of in the Beit Knesset itself, as it has been since the mid-1980s. Inside a Succot Machzor it will say "Donated by Nisan ben Meir, in Japan 1970-2001." To be with his esteemed, beloved father Meir and mother Mazal, both near 90, he has shown in print that this IS the year he leaves the Galut (the diaspora) and goes home.

Victor Kelly, in the Kobe area since 1935, got his surname, an Anglicization of Kedourie ("green"), upon being issued a British passport in colonial India. In the early 1990s he will bury his younger wife, Monica Yoshiko [need to check; wish to show she was Japanese], in the newer Jewish section of the foreign cemetery in the hills above Kobe, and in 1995 the earthquake will nearly bury him, but he will get up, dress carefully, take refuge with friends for a while, rebuild and return, and live to be 86.

The blonde Elaine Abrams, who has already endured long, harrowing months of separation from the man she loves when he tries to return to his native country and for a while is politically barred from getting out again, is driven into the wintry street by the quake. To her, to them, bereft of home and possessions, it is the end of the world, and they flee Japan. Her employer, a Japanese university, while it will later suffer from declining enrollment, will not be swallowed into the earth.

The Baghdad-born Kohen, Eliahu Zilkha, will continue to serve as Community President and to lead the singing which makes Yom Kippur in Kobe so stirringly, even joyously, solemn, but in later years he and ........... (name?) will prefer to be near their son, a sushi chef in Greater New York.

The Levi, Gershon ben Morari, better known as the New Zealander Bruce Murray Benson, has originally come to Japan to train in judo but has found that Japanese in university circles are impressed by his command of Shakespeare, and so stays to teach and to mightily help govern the Community. This gentle, large, outspoken, asthmatic athlete and proficient cook, beer expert and donor, and shofar blower will work tirelessly until his vision of a year-round resident rabbi bears fruit, and then, in the Nara cold in early 2001, will succumb at age 51 to respiratory failure.

One of those who will help perform the mitzvah of Tahara for Bruce, one who in life worked closely with him both to teach English and to keep this Community afloat, nurses a wife gravely ill of cancer. Shortly after her passing, in 2003, he himself, 58 years old, is diagnosed with abdominal cancer. His devotion to Ohel Shelomoh cannot be eaten away; his nourishing ways inspire others to do right by the Community: participation, tsedaka, and more.

Two young yet mature Israeli gentlemen are loved by Japanese who find themselves drawn also to the Jewish faith, to ha-Shem and the mitzvot, and who as Jewish women in their own right marry them. Both families are blessed with healthy, winsome children. In one, the couple have a shared international business background and, while they yearn to be able to raise their children in a Jewish environment, they are counseled by his rabbi, ba'Aretz,to remain in Japan rather than jeopardize parnasa, livelihood, by going "home" to Israel. The other couple, lacking such economic "roots" in Japan, choose not to delay aliya. "Life is not easy [in Israel] but the children are happy."

A young Midwestern American man, unsure of his heritage in that only one grandmother appears to be Jewish, is drawn to regular attendance at Ohel Shelomoh while teaching English in Kobe in the early 1990s. Judaism as practiced week to week at this synagogue begins to take hold, and when he leaves after a couple of years, it is to enter a yeshiva in Israel, convert formally, and help oversee Talmudic studies in a southern-USA city.

A frail, white-haired Jewish gentleman and his tall, robust Japanese mate arrive from Kobe by overnight sleeper in an attractive city in distant northeastern Japan. Meeting their train are their friends, a very heavy-set 71-year-old and his second wife, a Japanese who grew up locally; they relocated here a few years ago from Kobe, where he had been a pearl trader and restaurateur ("the Arab customers at Salaam won7t be able to tell from the cuisine that the owner/chef is Jewish"), an accomplished cook who had helped train a number of Japanese, including his tall guest, to do the cooking for the Community. Tiz'keru, you shall remember, and Victor Navarsky well remembers, and will no longer hesitate to recount, that in wartime Poland, between the ages of 8 and 11, cold, ragged, and hungry, he had to forage for whatever he could to keep his mother and sister alive and hidden from the Nazis. The home cooking and delicious local produce are enjoyed, the seaside photographs taken, and the visitors depart content on their long journey home, but within ten weeks cancer claims Victor's life and with his Holland-born Israeli son, the widow makes the sad journey to see V laid to rest near Haifa.

A middle-aged university professor professes not to mind the isolation which appears to be part of his job, as he is not interfered with in his efforts to further the cause of justice for wrongfully arrested criminal suspects in this country, where law enforcement authorities are used to a near-perfect conviction rate, fed into by the urge to confess. Is what moves him a "Jewish conscience"? What does it mean to a local-area Jewish resident to have a synagogue standing and a Community functioning, to come to or not, to support or not? What does it mean to an Israeli, not long ago discharged from obligatory active military service, doing the east Asian "grand tour", studying the local language and culture, possibly at work selling "accessories" on the street, far away from　ｔhe Land of Milk and Honey, perhaps grown fond of Japanese ways, fond of attractive Japanese eyes......?

From the U.K., the U.S.A., Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Russia, and elsewhere come our visitors, both of long standing and for the first or second time. As our practice is Orthodox, any Jewish person can worship. Numerous folk unsure of their Jewishness have been touched by our welcoming ways, have been drawn to approach or reapproach the faith, the teachings, the week-to-week davening, the various mitzvot. In line with the traditions transplanted from such erstwhile lively Jewish locales as Aleppo, Syria, our tradition is Sephardic but you will hear quite a range of melodies, quite a variation in vowels pronounced.

For historical sources, the reader is directed to:

http://www.ushmm.org/frexhibit/history.htm -- "Flight and Rescue"
http://xenon.stanford.edu/~tamar/Kobe/Kobe.html "The Jews of Kobe" by Tamar Engel, 1995
"From God We Trust" by Mike Palls, Kansai Time Out, July 1990

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&Moduled=10005283

Polish Jews in Lithuania: Escape to Japan.

Jack L. Yohay

February 4, 2005/25 Shevat 5765