The Rebbe: Don’t Abandon the Japanese Jewish Community

B"H


Don't Abandon the Japanese Jewish Community
One man's experience as the only rabbi for Japan and the Far East
As told by Marvin Tokayer
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After I graduated from rabbinical school I served as a chaplain in the United States Air Force in Japan. Upon returning to the United States in 1967, I took a position as junior rabbi at a synagogue in Great Neck, New York.

The overseer of the kosher kitchen, mashgiach, was Rabbi Elya Gross, a Chabad-Lubavitch disciple. When my fiancée and I announced our engagement, he suggested, "Perhaps send a wedding invitation to the Rebbe?" I understood that traditionally the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of saintly memory, did not attend weddings, but the Rebbe would often invite the young couple to see him and receive a blessing.

I mailed the invitation and soon received a call from the Rebbe's secretariat, who said that the Rebbe would like to invite me and my fiancée to a private audience. The meeting was set for 1:00am several weeks later. Work With the Living

We entered the Rebbe's study with no agenda and no requests. We simply wanted his good wishes and blessing for our marriage. The Rebbe spoke in the Yiddish language and I translated the conversation for my wife, who only spoke Hebrew. The first thing the Rebbe said was, "Moshe [my Hebrew name], I haven't seen you for a long time! You've disappeared. It is enough that you were working with the dead, now you need to work with the living!"

I was not in the funeral business, I was not an undertaker. I didn't work with the living and I didn't work with the dead, so I replied, "Rebbe, I don't understand."

But the Rebbe repeated, "Enough working with the dead, now you need to work with the living."

I answered, "Excuse me but I do not understand the entire reference. I do not work with the dead or with the living."

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