Finding Myself

I’m not going to lie. There are many reasons I decided to live in Japan. And yes, the cliché applies. I am hoping to “find myself” here. Or, at least discover a little more about who I really am. I spend a lot of time turning over dreams, hopes, and thoughts in my mind. I do this mostly before bed or between stations on the train.

But, sometimes you find things you didn’t even know were lost. Sometimes you find these things in the most unexpected places. For me, it was a small, missing link to my identity and it was in Hong Kong.

At the end of October, I had the chance to travel to Hong Kong and meet my parents for a brief adventure in a fascinating city before we all headed back to Japan. Just a few blocks from our Hong Kong hotel was the Ohel Leah Synagogue. On the Sunday morning, we decided to go and check it out.

Once past the security, we found our way to a building that was fascinating both in terms of architecture and history. An Iraqi family, the Sassoons, built this Hong Kong Synagogue at the turn of the twentieth century. It was fascinating inside. The metal work was traditional Iraqi motives and the parokhet was adorned with evil eye designs.

The idea that a Sephardic, Iraqi family could be so influential in a mixed Jewish community was inspiring. I have heard so many stories from my family about being second-class citizens in Israel, about discrimination and racism. Israel has never had a Sephardic Prime Minister. There are reasons for that. And yet here was a story about an Iraqi family having the influence and means to build a beautiful synagogue in Hong Kong.

More inspiring was the idea that Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews could form a community together that viewed diversity as its strength, and worked to accommodate various traditions without competing stories of oppression. Persecution sometimes is used as rationale for trying to preserve one set of traditions over another, and at great expense. But here, it felt as if there was a value placed on preserving the unique aspects of the various members of the congregation.

There was something even more inspiring. A reassuring realization, perhaps. The Sassoon family was originally from Iraq. They lived in India for some time and settled in Hong Kong. And yet, they were Babylonian Jews. In fact, it seems that the Jewish people from Iraq had a reputation for traveling and living in other parts of the world. Maybe, they didn’t maintain their identity in spite of their dispersal. Maybe, the Diaspora is integral to the identity of the Iraqi Jew along with the change and adaptation that goes along with that.

I spend a lot of time contemplating the preservation of my identity as a Babylonian Jewish woman. Trying to figure out how to hang on to that unique history, knowing that if there are any Jews left in Iraq now you could probably count them on one hand. I acknowledge that I am part Ashkenazi. But I always feel a strong pull to identify with my mother’s side of the family because I feel as if it is a community and a history that is disappearing so quickly. Maybe even a sense of urgency is attached to this.

But maybe, this is something I shouldn’t worry about. Maybe this is the designed fate of the Babylonian Jew; to move on and grow in new and unexpected ways. And so maybe, nothing has been lost, but only changed. Maybe.