Arutz Sheva-Israel National News and the Gesher Leadership Institute, in collaboration with the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Ami, teamed up to create a video series titled "Jewish-Share," an initiative aimed at helping Israelis connect with their fellow Jews in the Diaspora.
In this episode, Rabbi Dr. Danny Tropper, the founder of Gesher, is joined by Rabbi Yosef Kantor, the Chief Rabbi of Thailand.
Rabbi Kantor begins by talking about his community. "The Jewish community of Thailand is unique in this part of the world inasmuch as it is not a very old well well-grounded community as, for example, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, where you had the colonization by the British and the Iraqis being part of the British colony. You had an Iraqi Jewish community that established itself in each of these places and in places that today there is no longer a Jewish community, like Malaysia [and] Burma."
"The Jewish Association of Thailand, which I'm the rabbi of, started only in the 40s and the community didn't grow very much necessarily till quite recently where because .. the world has changed, Israel has changed and in terms of people growing numbers looking for relocation, it's got its challenges. We definitely as a Jewish community do not encourage - the code of Jewish law does not encourage - anybody to leave Israel and settle in the diaspora. If you live in Israel, you have you need a good reason to be able to leave. But the reality is that we've seen over the last few years growing numbers of Israelis relocating," he says.
Rabbi Tropper was asked what is important to him for Israelis to understand about the challenges of Diaspora Jews. "I think the issue that Israelis are handling today is the dual identity. They're Israelis and they're Jewish. Now, Israeli identity is 80% Jewish but not 100% Jewish. For example, there are many Arab citizens who are Israeli as well. And so the question is how we express our Jewish identity and Israeli identity. Or let me phrase it differently: How do I express my Jewish identity within the framework of an Israeli community?"
He elaborates: "It's quite different than the issue in a place like Thailand. Thailand is a transient Jewish community. People coming in, coming and going. There's probably a core that you live with, but it's basically a transient community. Here, I say what's transient is the classical Jewish identity is kind of transient. We're going through a change in Israel as Israeli [identity] becomes part of Jewishness. And so, there's something exciting about it. There's something challenging about it. And I can only say that part of identity has to be feeling a connection with Jews all over the world. I mean if we're Israelis turned out only Israelis, but the Jewish part of us means that I have a deep concern about brothers abroad. brothers in every country of the world may be America where I have five million Jews or Thailand where I don't know if it's 300, 2,000, transient, permanent, it doesn't matter. And I think the challenge of of a modern situation where people are moving so much from one country to another is how do we establish this kind of universal Jewish community of feeling that all of us are part of the same [community] even though all of us have second identities with it and I think this is one of the exciting things about our generation."
In his opinion, the meetings between Jews from Israel and the Diaspora make Israelis understand how important the connection with their brothers abroad is. "What we've discovered is that Israelis are so comfortable here in Israel that the Jewish brethren abroad are very marginal in their concern. What we've succeeded in doing is when we bring these people abroad and we've been taking hundreds and hundreds of leaders, people in leadership positions in all areas in communicate communication in business in the army etc. bringing them abroad. . The experience is is amazing when they meet Jewish community abroad. Suddenly, a feeling of connection and and they come back feeling we have to feel this deep connection with Jewish people abroad."
"It's interesting secularists that won't get anywhere near touching Judaism in this country come back feeling very close to Jewishness when they return. They want to be part of a Jewish community. And we find that with most of these people, it lasts for many, many years. We have some people that went on trips with us five, six years ago that are still very active at everything that we do that we're trying to arrange. Some of them are proactive in activities and it's helping develop what what we lost in Israel. We basically became so involved with our own Israeli development and we had our own problems. May they be security, may they be economic, etc. that we kind of lost sight. We lost sight of the margins. Suddenly, the margins are coming alive. And certainly now with antisemitism rising all over the world. The reality that we're not only Israelis, we're also Jews, is becoming very, very serious to Israelis," he adds.
On the question of Jewish identity, Rabbi Kantor states that "what unites us around the world and no matter our our level of observance [is that] when you talk about observance about the actual mitzvot about the actual rituals that's something that totally unites us because it's the same acts the same rituals and I find that the Israelis here very much search for that Jewish identity."