Jewish Communities in Orient Disintegrating; Enjoy Economic Security

Rabbi Edward T. Sandrow, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, today called upon all trends of American religious Jewry to unite in saving the pockets of Jewish survival in the Orient which are “going through a slow disintegrating process.” Returning from a seven-week visit to Jewish servicemen and communities in the Pacific area, he declared: “It could have great meaning if the Jewish religious groupings in America pooled their resources and supplied these specks of community life with direction and hope.” The Rabbinical Assembly is the international association of Conservative rabbis.

“Jews in the Orient are economically secure, but spiritually they are gasping for breath,” Rabbi Sandrow reported. “There are no teachers, no rabbis, no organized Jewish activities except on a social basis and what is contributed extra-curricularly by American chaplains.” He said he failed to find in Tokyo “those Japanese who are clamoring for conversion to Judaism,” as reported recently in dispatches from that country. He reported that there is a Jewish Community Center in Tokyo with a membership of about 160 families. Jewish spiritual life, however, “is weak,” he said.

“In Hong Kong, there is a small Jewish community with a synagogue built some 60-odd years ago. Here, too, Judaism is primarily a building which shelters Jews who huddle together for psychological protection,” he stated. “There is a handful of Jews in Bangkok, some of them military and State Department personnel. Judaism is almost non-existent in this land of Buddhist shrines and ersatz beauty. India has a fairly large Jewish community, but Indian Jewry, the Bene Israel, is scattered, craves leadership and is an infinitesimal enclave in a large, over-populated continent.”