(Jewish Group) Can a New Shul Unite Taiwan's Jews?

Jeffrey Schwartz, 70, likes to say he is more Chinese than American. Raised a Conservative Jew in Cleveland, his Mandarin is perfect, but his Hebrew could use some work. His children, who are half-Taiwanese, are proud of their Jewish roots. For the past 50 years, he has made his home in Taiwan, where he made his fortune distributing retail products to American superstores through the Fourstar Group, a merchandising and product development company he founded in 1975. But he also wanted to be remembered as more than just another businessman. He wanted to give back to his community.

The result is the Jeffrey D. Schwartz Jewish Community Center, set to open in Taipei at the end of December. Funded with millions of his own dollars and supported through his own nonprofit organization, the Jeffrey D. Schwartz & Na Tang Jewish Taiwan Cultural Association, Schwartz hopes to be Taiwan’s Sassoon or Kadoorie, another “Rothschild of the East.” What he wants is a Jewish legacy in Taiwan, he told me, “something that I’ll be proud to bring the president of the country over to.”

The $16 million complex will serve a community of fewer than 1,000 Jews on an island of over 20 million people. The building, which will feature a 300-person banquet hall and a synagogue, was designed with influences from the Middle East. Classes will be held and kosher meals will be served in elegant spaces filled with Schwartz’s vast personal collection of Judaica. The center’s mikvah has gold-plated ceilings, its walls adorned with prayers in Hebrew, Chinese and English and a mosaic mural of Moses splitting the seas.

But beyond the initial excitement, Schwartz’s project has intensified a familiar Jewish conflict. A group within Taipei’s tiny Jewish community says it refuses to be part of the community Schwartz is hoping to create; they believe it will become “the hub of Jewish life,” as the website bills it, only for a select group of people, because of the new synagogue’s Orthodox nature. Schwartz chose Chabad Rabbi Shlomi Tabib, who moved to Taiwan with his family in 2011, to lead the new center’s religious activities. Rabbi Tabib insists on strict adherence to Chabad’s Orthodox rules, including those concerning mixed marriages, conversions and b’nei mitzvah.


Digital rendering of the new Jewish Community CenterCOURTESY JEFFREY D. SCHWARTZ JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER

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