Importance Score: 65 / 100 🔴
Passover in Tokyo: A Unique Culinary Fusion
In a city of millions, approximately one thousand Jewish individuals in Tokyo are celebrating Passover with remarkable culinary ingenuity. These residents are creatively adapting traditional Jewish cuisine, crafting dishes like miso soup with matzo balls and lotus root tempura with matzo cake meal for the eight-day spring festival.
Resourcefulness and Adaptation for Passover
As a small minority in Japan, this community demonstrates resourcefulness each year during Passover. Many members procure kosher for Passover ingredients, such as matzo cake meal, during trips abroad. Substitutions are common practice, showcasing their adaptability. For example, Chinese horseradish or wasabi root serves as a stand-in for the bitter herbs, maror, on the Passover Seder plate. Miso, a fermented soybean paste, becomes the foundation for various soups, including matzo ball soup. To ensure kosher standards, OK Kosher sends a supervisor biannually to oversee the production of kosher miso.
Miso Soup on the Friday Night Table
Rabbi Andrew Scheer, the enthusiastic leader of the Jewish Community Center of Japan, which was established seventy years ago, notes the integration of local flavors. “You’d be just as likely to find miso soup as matzo ball soup on our Friday night dinner table,” he stated.
Balancing Tradition and Local Tastes
The Jewish Community Center in Tokyo alternates its menu to accommodate both traditional Jewish fare and kosher Japanese dishes, catering to both members and visitors eager to experience local culinary adaptations. According to Rabbi Scheer, this approach ensures “everyone’s happy.”
A Typical Friday Night Meal
Recently, a Friday night meal at the center featured chicken soup with matzo balls and roast chicken, utilizing kosher poultry sourced internationally. Challah, a traditional braided bread, was also served, baked by Toyoko Izaki San, a Japanese woman who has been preparing challah for the center for at least four decades.
Reasons for Jewish Residency in Japan
The Jewish population in Japan, primarily located in Tokyo, is diverse. Residents are in the country for various reasons, including corporate assignments, marriages to Japanese nationals, or simply a fondness for the country leading to long-term stays.
Tempura and Miso Soup Seder
Todd Walzer, an American businessman residing in Tokyo with his wife, Rachel, has lived in Japan for 37 years. For Passover Seders, they prepare tempura using daikon radish, lotus root, and other vegetables, coated in matzo meal, a kosher product imported by the center. Miso soup with matzo balls is also a staple at their Seder table.
“Easy to Make” Adaptations
“It is so easy to make,” Mr. Walzer commented regarding their adapted recipes.
Historical Culinary Adaptation
Adapting to local ingredients is a long-standing tradition for Jewish cooks throughout history and across the globe.
A Kobe Community and Apple Charoset
In 1936, Victor Moche, representing an Iraqi textile firm, arrived in Kobe. As an observant Jew, he became a key figure in the local Jewish community and founded a synagogue for the influx of Middle Eastern Jews before, during, and after World War II.
He and his wife, Fadhila, traditionally made silan, an Iraqi date charoset. Charoset, a fruit paste, symbolizes both the mortar of enslaved Israelites and the sweetness of freedom. Due to the scarcity of dates in Japan, Mrs. Moche substituted with a jam made from locally sourced apples.
Childhood Seders in Kobe
Their son, David, now 74 and living in Manhattan, fondly recalls his childhood Passover Seders in Kobe and still prepares his mother’s apple jam charoset recipe.
Special Memories of Community and Tradition
“Preparing for the public Seder for about 100, where the synagogue was busy, concerned about the safe arrival of matzo and wine, with everyone contributing a dish, was truly special,” David Moche reminisced. He added that he and other children learned about Passover using the American military Haggadah.
“That was a special childhood,” he concluded.