A Jewish Tapestry Book Group Selection for our times and our community
“This is the story of an unlikely rabbi. A story that could only happen in America. A journey that only became possible when I entered the world in the seventies, thanks to its pioneers and revolutions. A story of loving parents who didn’t let their wildly dissimilar families stand in the way of building their own, of mentors who told me to ignore the naysayers, of lucky breaks, stubborn determination and more than a touch of the Divine Hand,” explains Rabbi Angela Buchdahl in the introduction to her book, The Heart of a Stranger, an Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity and Belonging.
“Rabbi Buchdahl’s story exemplifies all that our book group celebrates,” says Veronica Andersen, chair of PJTC’s Jewish Tapestry Book Group that is open to all. The narrative is rich with history, while telling the story both of being the other and including the other. Each chapter ends, poignantly with a Drash, as if punctuating the story with the Divine.
From Seoul, Korea to Tacoma, Washington
Rabbi Buchdahl, born in Seoul of a Korean Buddhist mother and an Ashkenazi American father, moved with her parents and sister to Tacoma, Washington at age five. Her parents chose to raise their daughters in the small tight-knit Tacoma Jewish community. “They wanted us to have a faith and a religious identity. I got the best of my mother’s curiosity and worldview combined with my father’s Jewish vocabulary.” Growing up, she and her sister were the only people with Asian appearances in Hebrew school and at Jewish Summer camp. Yet she found the blessing of belonging to the Korean and Jewish peoples as “the gift of knowing the heart of a stranger” as both an insider and an outsider.
Searching for Belonging
By age sixteen she felt a strong desire to become a Rabbi despite periods of self-doubt that a mixed-race immigrant would ever be accepted as a Rabbi. She couldn’t imagine herself as a Rabbi because once she left Tacoma she was often questioned about her authenticity in Jewish spaces. She went from feeling, in some challenging life situations, an outcast, to becoming one of the most admired religious leaders in the world.
Her story of both the challenges and joys of being a part of the Korean and Jewish culture offers a kind of comfort to the reader in understanding how the search for belonging without forsaking any part of one’s identity is not only possible but healing.
The book is a memoir with short narrative chapters. Each chapter pairs with a D’var Torah (literally a word of Torah, also called a Drash) connecting the reader to aspects of Jewish tradition such as Shabbat, kindness, humility, tikkun (repair, as in the teaching to “repair the world”), and patience. In the chapter on “chosenness”, she notes that this may be an uncomfortable concept for Jews in our age of multiculturalism, diversity and mixed faith families. She admits that “being chosen” will sound excluding and arrogant to some unless we ask: “chosen for what?”
Her answer, in part, is that Jews were not chosen to be better, but to make things better. Jews, she explains, are called upon to harness our challenges as our greatest source of strength, and to remember to protect and welcome the stranger.
Radical Compassion and Our Community
Threaded throughout the book is the concept of radical compassion, with the recognition that feeling empathy is a sacred obligation to see the humanity in each of us.
If you are reading this, chances are that you live in or near Los Angeles County, one of the most diverse counties in the nation, including 1.5 million Asian Americans who call the area home.
Learning about cultures around and within the Jewish community is a focus of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center’s Jewish Tapestry Book group. The group will be discussing The Heart of a Stranger, Sunday, April 26 at 10:30 am.
To RSVP for this free event and for the location, email noni@alumni.ucla.edu. Come for the book review and stay for the scrumptious Korean and Romanian snacks (representing food served in Rabbi Buchdahl’s home.) And, as always, come as you are.
Diane Burr is the founder, and co-chair with Carey McIntosh of the Jewish Equity Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) committee at Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center and a contributing writer to JLIFE. To learn about PJTC’s JEDI committee, please email JEDI@pjtc.net, or call 626 798-1161.
