Counting The Jews In Thailand

[Jingthing]

Wiki says there are only 199 Jews in Thailand.

I wonder how they got this number? Clearly, they aren't counting Israeli backpackers, but do long term farang Jewish expats count as Jews in Thailand?

The same article says there is only ONE Jew in Afghanistan. Now that is a Jew with an interesting story to tell!

Are there really Thai Jews anyway? Tom yam kung made with matzo balls instead of shrimp? Inquiring minds want to know. (Sounds like a really funny idea for a sitcom.)

Apparantly, in the entire world only 2 tenths of one percent of the population are Jews. So Thailand is still a bit behind the curve. Probably explains the lack of decent bagels.

Shalom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population

Edited February 15, 2007 by Jingthing

[jasreeve17]

Strange link - how do they know?

0 in Libya (no Mosad?)

1 in Eritrea (OK, but no mention of Cambodia, Laos or Myanmar?)

100 in Algeria, that's gotta be dangerous. Aren't the algerians a little bit partial to killing Jews?

& how many do you reckon live in Outer Mongolia?

Strange link, though.

[Upcountry]

Who cares, Jews, or any "minority"?

What's important is that people from any background learn to live/work together in an understanding and productive way.

I'm disgusted by walls, physical or otherwise, anywhere!

[guardian]

Only 1 Jew each in Afghanistan and Eritrea ?

[skipvice]

Who cares, Jews, or any "minority"?

And why would anybody want to know

[Jingthing]

Who cares, Jews, or any "minority"?

What's important is that people from any background learn to live/work together in an understanding and productive way.

I'm disgusted by walls, physical or otherwise, anywhere!

We should be talking about walls? You sound farklempt. Have a coffee.

[bina]

my father sent me this email two days ago:

Yiddish with an accent

Ran Ezer

Thai students who have successfully completed an advanced German course will be offered the opportunity to learn Ashkenazi language at the institute, which is situated beside the German Embassy in Bangkok.

Net Perra, a student at Ramkhamhaeng University in Bankok, has shown interest in the new course.

"Jews are a wise people," Perra said, "You have to learn their language and their culture in order to understand them." {we are still trying to understand ourselves... wise? well, gotta argue the point....bina}

In addition to learning Yiddish, Perra and the other students enrolled in the course will also learn basic concepts of Jewish history and culture. Trips to local kosher restaurants and a visit to the Chabad center in Bangkok are part of the program's curriculum. {chassidic missionaries... anyone see the utube video of some famous comic thai group singing havanagila??? its on the israeli embassy site... absolutely hilarious btw... bina}

Peter Adowalt, an instructor at the institute, assembled the curriculum after completing his research on Jewish communities in Bangkok, Berlin , and Munich in collaboration with a Muslim instructor at the institute's Cairo branch.

"Yiddish is very close to German," Adowalt said, "I chose it to demonstrate to students how a people with no nation for generations developed a language of its own."

Israel's ambassador to Thailand Yael Rubinstein and Rabbi Nechemya Wilhelm of the Chabad center in Bangkok supported the institute's endeavor. Rabbi Wilhelm is even expected to give lectures, in Yiddish, to Thai students on Judaism.

Surprisingly, some locals already speak a sufficient amount of Yiddish to keep them, and their businesses, popular with the haredi crowd visiting the city.

Pi Tuk, 47, has been a Tuk-Tuk driver (Thai taxi driver) for 15 years, and has acquired much experience with the language thanks to his haredi clientele.

"If a bearded Jew wearing black and white arrives, I yell out 'Vos vilstu? Ich ken layder nor a bisel Yiddish' (What do you want? I can only speak a little Yiddish)," Tuk said with a think Thai accent.

"When they hear that, they take me to work the entire day," he said."

ROTFLMAO HYSTERICALL............GOTTA LOVE IT......

so when i move to korat i'll make the 200th jew???

bina

israel

[Jingthing]

Very funny Bina, I wonder if expats count.

Maybe they are talking about that lost tribe of Thai Jews in Hebrewthaya.

[roamer]

"The same article says there is only ONE Jew in Afghanistan. Now that is a Jew with an interesting story to tell!"

You have no idea how interesting, you see until very recently there were TWO of them ! And you thought Israeli backpackers were argumentative ??? Nah, babes in arms, these guys wrote the book....

"

Arts & Culture

The last Jew in Kabul

Michael Flexer

Published 20 November 2006

* Print version

* Listen

The strange story of the last remaining Jewish men to live in Kabul

I was researching for a play I still haven't written about conspiracy theories, when I came across the story which forms the basis of My Brother's Keeper. A Reuters journalist had discovered the last two Jews of Afghanistan in late November 2001, hiding out in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul.

They claimed to be all that remained in the country of a Jewish community dating back to the Babylonian exile, and had survived the terrors of the Russian invasion, the civil war and the Taliban regime. But, most interesting of all, they hated each other.

On the surface it looked like the ultimate in anti-Semitic hoaxes. A Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the globalised, online age: "Two Jews. In a state torn apart by war and pinned together by sharia law. And they hate each other. Oh, those Jews!"

It seemed a spiteful version of the joke about the Jewish desert island castaway who builds two synagogues. When quizzed about them by his rescuers, he points at one and says: "That one, I don't go to." So I dug a little deeper, and the impossible story turned out to be . . . well, kosher. Yitzhak Levy and Zebulon Simanto were the world's tiniest minority, practically imprisoned in the small building that served as their home, their synagogue, their separate but conjoined universe.

They were chalk and cheese, or rather milk and meat. Yitzhak was long and wiry, with an equally long and wiry beard; thoroughly Afghan and as old as the mountains. Zebulon was short, fat and clean-shaven; distinctly European in cardigans and spectacles and only in his early forties. And did they hate each other? Hate is too small a word. They held separate services. They kept bemused neighbours awake at night with slanging matches. They denounced each other to the Taliban as Mossad spies, each earning the other a beating from the largely apathetic authorities. When Yitzhak was found dead in the synagogue in January 2005, there was no posthumous reconciliation. At the time, Zebulon remarked that he was glad because his old rival and sole companion was a "very bad man".

By the time I interviewed him this summer, he had mellowed slightly. He sighed: "All the Jews of the world know that he was a madman." This from a man who expects to rebuild Afghan Jewry singlehandedly. And without even an Eve to play opposite his post-apocalyptic Adam.

There seemed something very universal in the tale of two drowning men expending their last reserves of energy on trying to strangle the other. No story better illustrates the maxim: united we stand, divided we fall. And now Zebulon is the last man standing. His life is an utter anomaly; his existence a daily act of defiance. Is he not lonely? Would he not rather be with his estranged wife and children in Israel? When I asked him how it felt to be the last Jew of Afghanistan, he replied with heroic egocentricity: "It doesn't matter. I'm very brave."

Michael J Flexer's My Brother's Keeper will be at the Pleasance theatre, London N7 (020 7609 1800) until 3 December "

[bina]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0RtRTx7NMA

http://bangkok.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/mis...ssionID=64&

go to the left of the page, november 2006 in the scrolling area and u will find the utube video link by pong lang sa on........ my (israeli ) kids thought it was hysterically funny; anon didnt quite catch the cultural reference ... his israeli'ness only includes humous in pita and meat cooked in coconut sauce in pita... wait til we get to passover in an other month or so..... fortunately, most of us go bt sephardic rules so we can still eat rice (ashkenazis get stuck with potatoes for eight constipated days)... we will introduce him to the wonders of matza, kneidalach, thank god for coconut maroons...

i think we will plan a thai pesach again this year (last year did it with tom goong, bbq chicken, thai style basil and beef, som tam)

[suegha]

The version of the desert island story I heard is 'Two jews living on a desert island build three synagogues, one that one of them goes to, one that the other goes to, and the third that neither will set foot in!'

[Nignoy]

bissle meschuge

my father sent me this email two days ago:

Yiddish with an accent

Ran Ezer

Thai students who have successfully completed an advanced German course will be offered the opportunity to learn Ashkenazi language at the institute, which is situated beside the German Embassy in Bangkok.

Net Perra, a student at Ramkhamhaeng University in Bankok, has shown interest in the new course.

"Jews are a wise people," Perra said, "You have to learn their language and their culture in order to understand them." {we are still trying to understand ourselves... wise? well, gotta argue the point....bina}

In addition to learning Yiddish, Perra and the other students enrolled in the course will also learn basic concepts of Jewish history and culture. Trips to local kosher restaurants and a visit to the Chabad center in Bangkok are part of the program's curriculum. {chassidic missionaries... anyone see the utube video of some famous comic thai group singing havanagila??? its on the israeli embassy site... absolutely hilarious btw... bina}

Peter Adowalt, an instructor at the institute, assembled the curriculum after completing his research on Jewish communities in Bangkok, Berlin , and Munich in collaboration with a Muslim instructor at the institute's Cairo branch.

"Yiddish is very close to German," Adowalt said, "I chose it to demonstrate to students how a people with no nation for generations developed a language of its own."

Israel's ambassador to Thailand Yael Rubinstein and Rabbi Nechemya Wilhelm of the Chabad center in Bangkok supported the institute's endeavor. Rabbi Wilhelm is even expected to give lectures, in Yiddish, to Thai students on Judaism.

Surprisingly, some locals already speak a sufficient amount of Yiddish to keep them, and their businesses, popular with the haredi crowd visiting the city.

Pi Tuk, 47, has been a Tuk-Tuk driver (Thai taxi driver) for 15 years, and has acquired much experience with the language thanks to his haredi clientele.

"If a bearded Jew wearing black and white arrives, I yell out 'Vos vilstu? Ich ken layder nor a bisel Yiddish' (What do you want? I can only speak a little Yiddish)," Tuk said with a think Thai accent.

"When they hear that, they take me to work the entire day," he said."

ROTFLMAO HYSTERICALL............GOTTA LOVE IT......

so when i move to korat i'll make the 200th jew???

bina

israel

Bissle Meschugge was(little bit Crazy) Nignoy

[bendix]

Wikipedia is a joke, and taking the stuff there as 'factual' is very dangerous.

Wikipedia? Written by people with too much time on their hands, for people with too little.

[Jingthing]

Wikipedia is a joke, and taking the stuff there as 'factual' is very dangerous.

Wikipedia? Written by people with too much time on their hands, for people with too little.

I think that is an extreme generalization. The quality of their info varies alot from topic to topic. As far as the number of Jews in Thailand, of course nobody knows (and maybe nobody cares) because how would you count them anyway, even if people agreed on the definition of what a Jew in Thailand really is? Started the thread just to talk about the subject is all. Wiki was a good start.

Edited February 16, 2007 by Jingthing

[rogerinthai]

I wonder if expats count.

Probably not, there are several hundrends Israeli expats in Thailand.

[helicoptor]

Would fit in well in LOS - obsessed with making money

now flame me .........

[Jingthing]

Would fit in well in LOS - obsessed with making money

now flame me .........

Why bother?

You just flamed yourself.

[helicoptor]

BTW the Jazz Singer is one of my favourite films......

[bina]

anon is learning to cook kosher on most days that my kids are home to eat (their father -my kibbutznik ex-is finding his jewish roots with his yemenite girlfriend so the kids are slightly influenced now by the whole kosher thing, mostly not eating shrimp/pork etc. ) so shrimp and pork cant enter the house those days that they eat with me.

I tried really hard to explain the meat/milk/cant eat shrimp etc kosher thing.... does anyone, anywhere, have info in thai about this...???? i'm not joking!!! and no, didnt want to ask the habadniks since then they'll try to 'return me' too!!

since ya'll mentioned it, just thought i'd ask.

dont really deal with the israelis w/thai wives scene since they mostly arent my 'cup of tea' so to speak (just because they are israeli w/thai wives doesnt mean i have to like them)... and not too many israeli women with thai husbands, found one or two but thats it...

and why cant u count israeli expats as jews in thailand? (they are israeli jews for the most part although there is a thai -miss thailand i think she was even- who married in to the rich arab village of abu gosh. so rumour has it. hasnt tried to contact me anyhow and i live a skip and a jump from her. probably dont run in the same rich circles -- we are poor.)

and do u count the thai wives who converted?? i know quite a number of them and they do the 'back and forth to thailand every year' thing.

unlike jews living in china i dont think the jews who've moved to thailand are actually a community that has developed like it did in china ; i think its probably either the habad group (jewish missionaries try to save our souls from the mysteriuos orient) or business men/women who have come to live for short periods of time due to company transfers etc.

so far, anon doesnt like gefilte fish but did like matza with humous. i dont think he'll learn yiddish as he ahsnt learned much hebrew either and my friends would really like to communicate with him at all the kibbutz social events. as of now, only my arab worker has learned thai as have my kids... and i'm not sure anon is circumcised cause i cant remember how it looks with or without and my son is too old to check with him.

thats my jewish take on it....

bina

Edited February 16, 2007 by bina

[Thai-Spy]

The Even Chen Synagogue near Saphan Taksin is quiet even during holy days.

Handful of expats and visitors, mostly gem traders.

[MiG16]

a question for Bina.......

that language lesson....its open only to those who already speak german?

can someone who doesnt know german apply for the course?

would be very interested to find out more.........

Edited February 16, 2007 by MiG16

[chonabot]

Having recently completed a year long study of World Religions I learnt many things about Jews/Muslims/Christians/Buddhists/Sikhs/Hindus.

Since then I listen to general opinions about these different 'Life systems' by and large from people that have no faith themselves.

One of the most common misled opinions is that Christians and Jews are very similar, but Muslims are not.

A lot of people believe that Islam is one of the oldest religions, and they often drag up qutes such as the

' Sword of Islam' and other easy targets for misinterpretation. I learnt one main thing, 'Doing' religion, being aware of religion, and being ignorant to religion are not so different. It is down to the individual to take their own nuggets of knowledge from each religion, just as it is in every other aspect of lifestyle.

Hmmmm I just realised that this has no relevance to the topic.

Hope my pontification can perhaps start another few tangents of sporadic debate.

[bina]

mig, i havent a clue actually. my dad saw the article and emailed it to me in israel (he is in america) but i'm sure i could ask someone. the reasoning behind it is that yiddish ahs a german base but its not a language that is used much daily except among orthodox jewish communities in israel america etc.

its a language with a lot of humour, great colourful curses, good jokes etc... i only know a few words as my parents used yiddish as the language to speak over the heads of their kids so we wouldnt understand them.

i will try to find out but u could try also if u are in bangkok. the institute is located near the german embassy which i dont know where that is, but someone could help u find it.

what on earth would a thai want to learn a sort of dead useless language, i havent a clue... but more power to them that do....

didnt know there was a synagogue in thailand besides the chabad house... havent been to one in years actually.

bina

[MiG16]

chonabot...

would be interesting to hear more about your research. was it specifically aimed at comparative analysis of the different religions you mentioned? or is it also linked to how it is applied in other areas of life, and particularly in the political sphere...democracy/governance

cheers

and yes...seems to be getting off-topic...but if its ok...would like to hear more on it..so perhaps if you will PM me? thankyou

[MiG16]

bina..thanks for the info. and yes you are right I should try and find that out...yes should be easier being in thailand and all

german embassy is on sathorn road. there's also Goethe institute (german cultural education centre kinda thing) thats somewhere in the vicinity.

german is a difficult language for me...in terms of the pronunciation..so Im guessing yiddish (and hebrew?) will be too?? but since the culture intrigues me, I thought by an attempt to learn the language might expose me to more jewish people or those with knowledge of it in bangkok....

just another possibility to learn more from those in the know I was hoping but reading many of your posts Bina...has also given me a bit more of a clue (not a lot though.......still dont understand many things you mention about your live there:) but on the whole I find it all very fascinating

i quite follow your posts with a lot of interest actually so thankyou

[IvanLaw]

Who cares, Jews, or any "minority"?

What's important is that people from any background learn to live/work together in an understanding and productive way.

I'm disgusted by walls, physical or otherwise, anywhere!

I am intrigued, Placing your disgust to one side,

How do you support your house/ synagogue roof??

[Nignoy]

bina..thanks for the info. and yes you are right I should try and find that out...yes should be easier being in thailand and all

german embassy is on sathorn road. there's also Goethe institute (german cultural education centre kinda thing) thats somewhere in the vicinity.

german is a difficult language for me...in terms of the pronunciation..so Im guessing yiddish (and hebrew?) will be too?? but since the culture intrigues me, I thought by an attempt to learn the language might expose me to more jewish people or those with knowledge of it in bangkok....

just another possibility to learn more from those in the know I was hoping but reading many of your posts Bina...has also given me a bit more of a clue (not a lot though.......still dont understand many things you mention about your live there:) but on the whole I find it all very fascinating

i quite follow your posts with a lot of interest actually so thankyou

German is not really a difficult language after all 1000,s of german children speak it But joking aside compared to thai its a piece of cake , if I can help in any way pm me Nignoy

[phibunmike]

Tom yam kung made with matzo balls instead of shrimp? Inquiring minds want to know. (Sounds like a really funny idea for a sitcom.)

I think you have been watching too much Thai TV ! Try to get out more....

Cheers,

Mike

[Pakboong]

Are we talking about ethnic Jews or those who practice Judaism? There is a distinct difference. Also, 1 out of 5 Israelis are not Jews and a larger percentage do not practice Judaism.

The number 199 for expats who are ethnic Jews sounds about right.

[h90]

bina..thanks for the info. and yes you are right I should try and find that out...yes should be easier being in thailand and all

german embassy is on sathorn road. there's also Goethe institute (german cultural education centre kinda thing) thats somewhere in the vicinity.

german is a difficult language for me...in terms of the pronunciation..so Im guessing yiddish (and hebrew?) will be too?? but since the culture intrigues me, I thought by an attempt to learn the language might expose me to more jewish people or those with knowledge of it in bangkok....

just another possibility to learn more from those in the know I was hoping but reading many of your posts Bina...has also given me a bit more of a clue (not a lot though.......still dont understand many things you mention about your live there:) but on the whole I find it all very fascinating

i quite follow your posts with a lot of interest actually so thankyou

German is not really a difficult language after all 1000,s of german children speak it But joking aside compared to thai its a piece of cake , if I can help in any way pm me Nignoy

German it depends, for an english its not difficult to learn, but for a Thai person it is much more difficult than english, with the hard toning and all the k, Z, Rs..