Rabbi Marvin Tokayer's book engages the lay reader in the fascinating, overlooked, and potentially forgotten stories of dozens of Jews and Asians, who made a significant impact on the lives of many. Tokayer has diligently chronicled his many rich relationships, encounters, and explorations, to leave us in awe of how little we know. This is a treasure map for the modern Jewish explorer in Asia, full of marvelous references, and paths to follow. Tokayer is instantly forgiven for the sometimes sketchy and jumpy narratives, and missing segues, as he has packed this book full of people that we may all wish we had been so lucky to meet. But then, perhaps the biggest gift of all is if we might in our own lives experience the kind of curiosity about the people we encounter... and inquire of them too about their lives... and discover and chronicle just a few of the impacts they too have made...his is an eye-opening book chock full of stories that I had never heard or read before. For those whose notion of Jewish history is rooted in Europe or even the Sephardic world, this book presents many different facets of Jews and Jewish life in the Far East - some going back to pre-Maccabean times (the Jews of Bene Israel in India), some deriving from Sephardic or Mizrahi roots who ended up in the Far East, some who passed through or stayed in the Far East as refugees from the Holocaust, and some, particularly Americans, who were involved in the Far East as a result of World War II. The stories are captivating, and, indeed, are told as if one were listening to Rabbi Tokayer, the story-teller. The fact that he has been able to collect and recall so many stories is amazing; and the fact that Ellen Rodman was able to work with him to put them into writing is wonderful. Highly recommended.
Rabbi Marvin Tokayer began his rabbinic career in 1962 as a US Air Force chaplain stationed in southern Japan. In 1968, he returned to serve as rabbi of the thousand-member Jewish community of Japan, a post he held until 1976; he remains Lifetime Honorary Rabbi of the community. He also served on the Federation of Jewish Communities of Southeast Asia and the Far East and as Founding Board Member of the Sino-Judaic Institute. He contributed seven articles on rabbinics and the Orient for the Encyclopedia Judaica, authored twenty books in Japanese on Judaica and Japan, and coauthored (with Mary Swartz) The Fugu Plan The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II.
Ellen Rodman is a writer, producer, and the president of LN Productions LLC, a production and media consulting company based in New York. Prior to founding her own company, Dr. Rodman served as an executive at NBC, where she launched the first missing children's campaign in connection with the broadcast of the made-for-television movie Adam, and at Group W where she accepted a DuPont Columbia Award for Whispering Hope, the company's outreach program on Alzheimer's disease. The former family entertainment reviewer for the New York Times, Dr. Rodman is also the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles on subjects ranging from culture and media to education and health.
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