Dear Friend,
We hope this note finds you and your loved ones well.
We are very pleased to share a special edition of the JTCA Newsletter with a roundup of the excellent news coverage we received this past week in the global Jewish press.
While the new Jewish Community Center is still under construction, we thought now would be an opportune moment to start reaching out to the rest of the world to announce our plans.
Part of our mission is, after all, about connecting with the global Jewish community, and we intend to finally put Taiwan “on the map,” so to speak. We may not be a very large community if you just count the number of Jewish souls who live here on this gorgeous island we call home, but we are certainly just as proud and energetic as any of the more numerous communities you’ll find in the big centers of global Jewry.
Three in-depth feature articles were published, and that’s what we’d like to summarize briefly here while giving you the links so you can read the entire stories on their websites.
First up: The venerable and widely respected Jewish Telegraphic Agency, or JTA as it’s known. JTA has been covering all of the major and minor happenings in the Jewish world since 1917. They’re like the Associated Press of the Jewish community, with their articles syndicated across hundreds of websites and print publications around the world.
Their article, “A gold mikveh, a Judaica museum and a ballroom: Taiwan to get its Jewish community center,” gave a very detailed, frank, and “behind the scenes” look at some of the conversations and ideas that went into the conception and planning of our new Center. The article quotes me: “With all these years that I’ve devoted to Taiwan, I need to build a legacy for the Jews,” said Schwartz, who has lived in the island nation for nearly 50 years since graduating from college. “When next generations come out, they’re going to have a place that they can be proud of, that they can understand you can still be Jewish in Taiwan and still be part of the Taiwan community.”
In the Times of Israel, the Jewish world’s “digital paper of record,” published an article, “Taiwan to open its first-ever permanent Jewish community center.” The article ends with this quote: “The JTCA honors and respects all other Jewish groups in Taiwan, including non-Jewish groups that support the Jews and Israel…The more internally diverse and externally united we are, the stronger we will be.”
The Cleveland Jewish News, my own hometown paper, published a piece, “Former Clevelander prepares to open first JCC in Taiwan,” that takes a more local angle on the story, given the fact I was born and raised there before moving to Taiwan at the young age of 22 to put down my roots and build a family and a company here. I hope it made my dear mother Eleanor proud, a long-time reader of the CJN to this day, as she certainly deserves a very large share of the credit for any of this happening at all!
The article also gives due credit to Na Tang: “Of his wife, Na Tang, Schwartz said she encouraged him to ‘go after my dreams of building a legacy for the Jewish community of Taiwan as well as connect to the global Jewish community. She has been, from the beginning, my partner and to some extent, my mentor in this project,’ he said.”
All three articles feature slideshows containing several images of what the Center will actually look like once it’s opened, as well as some photos we took recently of the Center under construction.
What has been fascinating to watch is how widely (and quickly) these articles have been syndicated across the Jewish media world. The JTA and Times of Israel articles were republished in whole or as excerpts in numerous publications, including in Haaretz and i24 News in Israel, the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, Algemeiner, Mosaic Magazine, and the Jewish News Syndicate, to name just a few.
JTA featured their article at the very top of its home page, and was included prominently in 3 of its major email newsletters sent out to their tens of thousands of subscribers.
The articles were even translated into French and Spanish and appeared on websites serving the Jewish communities of Mexico and Paris, to name just a few examples. Perhaps the articles have appeared in other languages, we just don’t know. Who would have guessed our small community would make such big headlines around the Jewish media world?
I thought these reporters, all young professional Jewish journalists working in Jerusalem, New York, and Cleveland, did a fine job of taking the messages we shared with them and piecing them all together into a series of thoughtful, easy-to-read stories.
We were also very pleased to see the publication in The Times of Israel of an interview conducted by Glenn Leibowitz, JTCA’s Director of Global Communications, with Shmulik Fried, Director of Friends of Israel at Keren Hayesod-United Israel Alliance.
The JTCA recently donated $50,000 to support Keren Hayesod’s efforts to protect Ethiopian immigrants (olim) to Israel during the recent wave of rocket attacks. Shmulik has been a long-time friend of mine, and has close ties to the Jewish and Christian communities in Taiwan. He said he looks forward to joining us for Shabbat once the new Center opens.
While the new Center has been a very tangible and real thing for me and Na Tang for the past three years now, reading about it through the lens of the journalists who wrote about our project gives us a slightly different perspective on it. It makes it even more real, in a sense.
It reinforced that feeling of “mishpacha” — “family” — that I often get when I see how we as a Jewish community can all come together, shoulder to shoulder, and do something that’s good for the entire community, for those of us fortunate to be living here in Taiwan, but also for the global community as well.
Shavua tov — have a wonderful week ahead.
With blessings,
Jeffrey and Na Tang
Co-Founders & Co-Chairpersons of the Jewish Taiwan Cultural Association
