Pacific Delight Tours has teamed with author Rabbi Marvin Tokayer to create what it calls kosher Jewish interest tours. These are not just tours where one can count on the menu to be kosher, though that is part of it. They are, rather, explorations of Jewish communities in places not usually thought of as homelands for Jews.
The new kosher tours view history "through Jewish eyes" and focus particularly on "remote diaspora communities" around the world.
Rabbi Tokayer is the founder of the Foundation for Remote Jewish Communities (FRJC), which, he said, was created "to help remote Jewish communities in China, India, which are off the radar, off the map."
Part of each traveler's fee goes to the foundation, to help people in remote Jewish communities. Tokayer's work with the remote communities is based on his career as a rabbi stationed in Asia.
"For some reason, I was the only English-speaking, university-trained rabbi from India to Japan," said Tokayer. "I covered all those Jewish communities in India, Singapore, Burma, Hong Kong, China, Japan, even Siberia. I lived there, my family was there for more than a decade."
When he returned to America, he continued his association with Jewish communities in Asia by leading tours.
"I have led Jewish-oriented trips," he said, "one to China and Japan for about 30 years; one to India, which I did for 25 years; one trip to Southeast Asia, which we also did for about 25 years, and a trip to Mongolia and Manchuria, in northern China."
Tokayer has also written a number of books, such as "The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II," and "Pepper, Silk and Ivory: Amazing Stories about Jews and the Far East."
The Foundation for Remote Jewish Communities helps people in some of the remote communities by providing aid to help them develop economically, improve their education levels and help them pull themselves out of poverty. Tokayer described his efforts to help the people of Birobidzhan, a Yiddish-speaking region of Siberia near the China border.
"There is a tiny Jewish community there, very poor," he said. "No one has a floor or water or a toilet in their house. No one has a bank account. They live way below the poverty level. Rather than teaching them Judaism, I said to myself, you can't teach too much on an empty stomach. So we gave each family a buffalo. Grass is free. They can sell the milk."
The people of the community are day laborers who make a little over a dollar a day when they work. Their children earn 60 cents a day when they work, so they don't go to school.
"I came up with a plan," said Tokayer. "Give every family a buffalo and let them sell the milk, but their children must go school. Otherwise, you perpetuate poverty. I gave them a bike to go to school."
Tokayer encountered similar circumstances in China.
"There are also Chinese Jews who have been living in China for a thousand years," said Tokayer. "They have intermarried and assimilated, but are certainly of Jewish origin and identified as being Jewish. They are also in poverty, living now in the boondocks.
"At one time it was the capital of China. Now there's not even a railroad station or an airport there. They have medical bills, which the insurance or government doesn't cover. If they want to go to college or school and get accepted to a school, I'll pay their tuition and this way they get out of poverty and put their family on their feet."
The first in the series is called "India My Second Home."
"In India, Jews have lived for 2,200 years without one second of anti-Semitism," said Tokayer. "That's an amazing statement to make. No one there, no Buddhist, no Hindu has a monopoly on the truth. He doesn't think I have all the truth and everybody else goes to hell. You have your way and I have my way and we can live together as good neighbors."
In those communities, said Tokayer, "We were the sugar in the tea. The sugar doesn't harm the tea. It doesn't attack the tea. It only enhances the tea. Wherever we have lived, we've been good to the country and they've been very good to us. We should learn that. We should know that. We didn't always live in Europe where we suffered."
The India tour will be led by Dr. Nathan Katz, a professor emeritus at Florida International University and an author and an authority on Jewish life in India.
The tour includes some of the essential sites and experiences of India, such as the Taj Mahal and the Elephanta Caves on an island near the city of Mumbai, as well as such things as a rickshaw ride through Old Delhi and attendance to music and dance performances.
Beyond that, it will focus on sites and activities of particular interest to people of the Jewish faith, such as Shabbat services and dinners in Mumbai and New Delhi, visits to historic synagogues and meetings with local members of the Jewish community in Kochi and Kolkata and an exploration by boat of rural Jewish settlements in Kerala.
According to Dr. Katz, "India is known for its antiquity and modern high-tech, its spirituality and Bollywood swagger, its bustling cities and pristine nature - a cultural kaleidoscope at the center of the world's largest democracy. But what's typically not known is India's long history as one of the most hospitable homes in the Jewish Diaspora."
The tour of India will be followed by more kosher tours throughout Asia.
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