Korean Job Discussion Forums

[teacherlisa]

Is there one in Korea? A synagogue in Seoul perhaps?

[bellum99]

I highly doubt it...there can't be that many permanent resident Jewish people in Korea.

[OiGirl]

It used to be possible to get an escort to take you on Yongsan base to attend services. Not sure if this is still possible.

After some discussion here last year, I'm thinking of doing a seder this year, but I'm way down south.

[lastat06513]

There are no synagogues in the Seoul area, or in NE asia for that matter....the closest one I know about was in Burma and I think they closed it down in 1992 as it were for the tiny community that settled there as refugees before, during and after WWII. And they just closed the only synagogue in Afghanistan 3 or so years ago after more than 200 years because most of the jewish community emmigrated to Israel.

Ironically, the only known synagogues that I know about are in Iran, which still has a tiny proportioned community there, though under constant persecution by the Ayatollah and the clerical leadership....

My suggestion would be to get a group together and conduct Saturday prayer in someone's home.

And religious escorts are not done by the chaplain onbase anymore.......it is up to the person to find someone who will escort them onbase......the best advice I can give for this is to get the number to any of the three multi-religious chaples and find out which one has jewish services and then speak to the chaplain and see if he can put you in contact with a person who can take you onbase for temple.....the number for the Yongsan operator is 02-7913-1110 and ask for the number for the Main Post Chaple and you can start your search from there......

[OiGirl]

Very active Jewish community in Tokyo, I think one also in Shanghai.

Edit: Links:

http://www.jccjapan.or.jp/
http://www.chabadjapan.org/indexe.htm
http://www.chinajewish.org/
http://www.chabadchina.org/

There seem to be a mixture of expatriate Jews and some rescued at the time of Shoah by Asian diplomats.

[Trevor]

The small but vibrant Jewish community in Iran has been living in remarkably good terms with their neighbors for hundreds, if not thousands of years. An occasional local rift does not merit your blanket condemnation. "Constant persecution" is flat out false and gratuitously misleading.

[lastat06513]

Yet, when you read articles about rallies in Tehran where the protesters yell "Death to America!" or Death to Israel", a person tends to get a point that they were generally speaking about the jewish influence in both governments toward foreign policy.......
And recently, the Iranian government is making non-muslims where an ideantification tag on their outer garments to mark them identifiable as being non-muslims.........to my knowledge, the only other country I know that did that was Germany around 1937 to 1945

A local rift?
I doubt a shop getting shookdown by the hezb'allah "moral police" because the owner is a non-muslim can be seen as a mere "rift". Or a person is stopped on the street and told to pay a fine because they didn't wear the tag that identifies them as a non-muslim, that also can't be seen a mere "rift" between locals........


I am not going to get into a theologically political debate here, I just came to give some advice to the OP about Jewish worship services and how he should go about finding info about Jewish worship services in the Seoul area, where applicable.............

Other than that......have a nice day

[jvalmer]

[Trevor]

Recently Israel bribed -- yes, bribed -- 200 Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel as a propaganda ploy.

Background here on the Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Jews

They were paid $10,000 each. A total of two million dollars in what amounted to be an embarassment from all the negative publicity the promo got.

Here is another article in which leaders of the Iranian Jewish community speak out against the Israeli government's blatant political hucksterism:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2125155,00.html


How absurd. As I mentioned before, Persian Jews get along fine in Iran --arguably better than any other moslem country, that is, when someone isn't pandering for their victimhood-status.

[lastat06513]

[OiGirl]

I thought the original post was much more interesting than this ego-fight over Jews in other parts of Asia.

Anyone else have any resources or ideas for Jewish worship in Korea?

[Trevor]

Lastat, it took you exactly three posts to turn into a tattooo--weilding holocaust rant after clearly being refuted point by point on your "constant persecution" propaganda.

Further, you mentioned that Jews in Iran "are forbade from holding senior offices in government..."

Odd, Iran has a Jewish MP. Last time I checked, MP was a senior office.

(BTW, you are on shaky ground if you want to start comparing human and political rights in Israel versus Moslem countries).

[Trevor]

Good point. He was also incorrect on their being no Jewish communities closer than Burma, as previous posters have shown. Conservatively, there is one as near as Japan. I would be surprised if someone doesn't post or PM you about a community in Seoul.

[kitekid]

gotta love dave's misinformed.

[contrarian]

I went to Auschwitz a few years ago. A very nasty place even now, so God knows what it was like when Jews were being gassed and cremated.

To me the place just felt . . . evil!