More Than Four Questions

On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday of redemption and freedom, I cannot think of a time that I have felt more like I am in exile. The last few days have witnessed some—how shall I say this—struggles with my job that have leaked over and become struggles with my Jewish identity.

Now that most of you are presumably thoroughly confused, let me take a few moments and explain. On Wednesday afternoon of last week, I sent an email to my faculty manager asking him if I could take off on this Tuesday to attend a Passover Seder. I explained to him that it was an important Jewish holiday, but I already knew him to be a seriously observant Christian who has many times expressed his delight with my Jewishness, so I didn’t expect to run into any trouble. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I got, in the form of a sternly-worded email that, in no uncertain terms, questioned my commitment to the company and my dedication to my students. I would be allowed to take Tuesday off, but in exchange, I would be forfeiting my right to the seven days of unpaid professional development (read: vacation) I had for the year of my contract.

To say that I was caught off guard would be an understatement. Granted, I did take a day off from work when my family was here visiting me in December, and I have missed three days because of illness, including one earlier this week. Having said that, I have taken my job very seriously and, at least in my opinion, have been doing pretty solid work as a teacher for the last 7 months. I know that the company I work for has extremely rigid policies, especially when it comes to taking days off, but I thought that I wouldn’t have trouble with a religious holiday.

I know that it probably wasn’t my boss’s personal choice to dock my vacation, and his explanation that “Korean companies aren’t like American companies” rings true— despite my limited experience with either, I have learned in the time I’ve been here that in a lot of ways, things just don’t operate the same way. It was one of those frustrating moments when I felt really powerless and pretty unappreciated, but I know that I can’t let that bring me down or affect my work or personal life.

In any case, I did my best to deal with the frustration over the weekend, and started to think about the coming week and the holiday. I’d been talking about Judaism a lot to Rira in the last few weeks, trying to explain my upbringing, the people and place I come from. I’ve also been telling her all about Passover, and invited her to come to the Seder with me to get her first Jewish experience, up-close and personal. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything Jewish (again, read: Rosh Hashanah), and the idea of participating in a Seder in Korea with a Korean was getting me pretty stoked.

I RSVP’d to Chabad earlier in the week that I would be joining them for the second night of the holiday and bringing a friend with me. Everything sounds good, right? Wrong. I got an email over the weekend from the Chabad Rabbi that he was excited to have me and my friend, as long as “he is Jewish.” Of course, I didn’t specify in my first email that the person I was bringing was a woman, not to mention the fact that she was my Korean non-Jewish girlfriend (I had a feeling those details were extraneous and would be better left unwritten).

Now I was in a pickle; I had a couple of options, none of which seemed particularly attractive. I could not respond to the email and just show up on Tuesday night with Rira in tow. I doubted they would turn us away at the door, but I didn’t want to expose her to the potential awkwardness of being the only non-Jew (and let’s face it, she doesn’t really look very Jewish—which is of course fine by me) there. My other option was to reply to the Rabbi and basically, well, lie. A number of elaborate stories were running through my head. I could say that her grandfather was an American GI and she had just recently found out that he was Jewish. I could claim that she descended from a long-hidden sect of Korean Jews, something like the lost tribe of the East.

In the end, I decided to tell the truth—well, at least not to lie; making Rira pretend to be someone she’s not for a room full of inquisitive Jews just didn’t seem fair. I emailed the Rabbi back and told him that my friend had “Jewish roots” (the vagueness of that term was entirely intentional) and was very interested in learning more about Judaism and the holiday.

The email I got back was as blunt as it was unpleasant: “if her mother is Jewish, she is Jewish. If her father is Jewish, she is not.”

I know halacha (Jewish law). I understand that Chabad is an orthodox organization, and respect their right to believe what they want to believe. But this email just did not sit right with me. The fact that they would turn away a person interested in learning more about Judaism on the most celebrated holiday of the Jewish calendar, a holiday built around asking questions and exploring identity, honestly made me sick to my stomach. Forget that Rira isn’t Jewish, or that she is Korean. What if she were American, had been practicing as a Jew her whole life, but had only a Jewish father? Does it even matter if her father is Jewish? What if she was Caucasian instead of Korean? What does it say that she’d be able to “pass” as Jewish in that case, but not the way she is now?

A hundred questions swirled through my head, all of them circling around the absurdity of this rule. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had some pretty serious changes in religious perspective over the last couple of years, leading me to question a lot of the laws of the religion I grew up in and still call my own. But this one, perhaps more than all the others, offends me on a deep level. To judge a person’s spiritual and religious identity on nothing but their blood brings to mind one terrible historical example, one that I generally hate when people make references or comparisons to (I think we all know what I’m referring to). I just don’t know how else to see it.

I returned the Rabbi’s email with one of my own, explaining in the best and most respectful way that I could what I felt of his policy, and informing him that if Rira was not welcomed at his Seder, then I would consider myself unwelcomed as well. He replied, explaining that there are a limited number of spots at the table and that he wanted to insure that all Jews have a place to go for the holiday. I get that, and it made me feel a little better. But it doesn’t change the way I feel about his policy in general. I was embarrassed to explain the situation to Rira, and told her that I hoped this wouldn’t shade her view of Jewish people as a whole. But honestly, how could it not?

People wonder why Jews have a less-than-positive reputation in some places around the world, and an incident like this takes a serious toll on my own relationship with the organized religion, even if Chabad isn’t a group that I would normally associate myself with.

So here I am, spending the first night of Passover in Korea with a serious philosophical dilemma on my hands. I am going to go to the Seder tomorrow night because I respect the Rabbi’s limitations and feel like it’s important to me to do something for the holiday. I imagined that this would be a chance for me to reconnect as a Jew, while at the same time sharing an important part of myself with someone that I care about and whose opinion matters to me. Now, our shared Passover experience will be relegated to letting her taste some matza that I bring home. I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I am sitting at the table. Probably a lot more like my ancestors than I have at any other Seders in the past. Apparently, I’m more in galut than I ever knew I was.

A Weekend Away

Hello my faithful readers. I know it’s been a little while since I’ve written last, and for that, I apologize. The last couple weeks have gone by in a blur, but have been some of my best so far in Korea, on account of a number of things, but especially the beginning of some (or really one in particular) new relationship in my life. Anyone who is friends with me on Facebook probably knows what I am referring to, and yes, I do realize that it’s a bit bold. But hey; I’m a happy man right now, so figure that I should share that with the digital world, as well.

In any case, my recent adventures were highlighted by a trip I took last weekend with Rira to the southern coast of the country. The only other place I’ve been outside of the greater Seoul area is Busan, so I was very excited to get some more legitimate travelling under my belt. I let Rira do all of the planning and organizing for the trip, first of all because she is really good at that sort of thing, but also because the fact that she is Korean (and can read and speak the language fluently) made figuring out logistics a lot easier for her than it would have been for me. In fact, I kept telling her over the weekend that I don’t think I would have been able to manage the trip we took without her expertise and travel-savvy, so I was very happy to have her with me (for that, among other reasons).

We left very early Saturday morning from Anyang to the bus terminal in Seoul, where we caught a 7:50 a.m. bus to Tongyeong-Si, a small port city on the southern coast of the country. While I was expecting the kind of tour bus typical in America—with narrow, stiff seats and no legroom for a big guy like me—I was thrilled to find that the bus was really nice, with big, wide leather seats that had plenty of legroom and reclined for easy sleeping.

Like I mentioned, Rira had made a detailed two-day schedule for us to see as much as we could in the area, but when we got off the bus, we found out that the places we had planned to go were shut down because of heavy winds in the area. Our plans shot, we headed for the ferry terminal and bought tickets to the one boat that was still in operation despite the wind.

The ferry ride to Hansan-do (Island) lasted about 45 minutes or so and took us along the coast. It was a beautiful day, but windy on the boat, so after taking some pictures we spent the rest of the ride in the indoor compartment, lying on the heated wooden floor, surrounded by a dozen or so ajumas who were giving us some funny looks, probably because I was white and we were both under the age of 60.

Getting off the boat at the island, we went to the ranger’s station and found, to our very pleasant surprise, that we could sign out bikes for free to use to tour around the island. So off we went, helmets on heads (though just barely for me, on account of my American –sized noggin) with our economical modes of transportation, ready to explore the island.

We spent the next couple of hours riding along the tiny two-lane road, heaving our way up hills and coasting our way along Hansan-do. The island was beautiful; very sparsely inhabited, with sporadic clusters of worn down buildings separated by large expanses of farms, bogs, and open fields. Because of my less-than-ideal work schedule, I haven’t really had the chance to get out and see the Korean countryside that I’ve heard so much about, but this was exactly that kind of a rural environment. The scenery, combined with the really temperate weather, made it a fantastically enjoyable bike ride. Even my standard amount of sweating didn’t deter us from having fun.

By the time we reached the other side of the island, we were both pretty tired, and as it turned out, we got very lucky with our timing—even though the normal ferry schedule told us that the last boat to leave the island was at 6:30, the company moved that three hours earlier on account of the windy weather. We happened to run into some friendly park rangers who informed Rira of this information and were nice enough to throw our bicycles into the trunk of their truck and return them for us, while we caught the last bus that would get us back to the ferry in time to make it off the island! We kept joking that we were going to get stuck there, but this place was pretty remote, so it’s definitely a good thing we managed to get out (especially considering Rira had already paid for the hotel room that night). The bus ride to the ferry took us through some treacherously narrow roads, too, so we were basically just happy to still be in one piece by the end.

When the ferry deposited us back on shore in Tongyeong, we were both incredibly hungry, having not eaten anything since a couple of Dunkin Donuts bagels (which aren’t quite as good here, if you ask me) back at the bus station in Seoul, so we asked a policeman in the ferry terminal to point us in the direction of a good seafood restaurant, which is the pride of coastal cities like this. We found a street lined with restaurants, so we picked one that looked good and went in to eat.

Our early dinner was a seafood feast extravaganza, the kind that legends are made of. We were served probably 25 different small dishes, each of which boasted a unique brand of seafood, from fried fish to squid, octopus, shrimp, and a dozen other creatures that I couldn’t tell you the names of. Being the brave and easy-to-please eater that I am, I tried everything on the table, to the delight and surprise of Rira (I guess she’s used to those foreigners who only eat white rice and pizza). After all the side dishes were served, they brought out the main course of sashimi, followed by a steaming soup made from the leftovers of the diced fishes. The food just kept coming and coming, and though the meal was a bit pricey, we certainly got what we paid for; I left the restaurant about as full as I’ve been in a long time.

After dinner, we took a bus back to the main terminal, then caught another bus and a long cab ride that eventually got us to Geoje-do, an island right off the coast, where we stayed for the night at a pension overlooking the ocean.

On Sunday morning, we left the pension and, after a bit of directional confusion, caught a bus to Dojangpo, one Geoje-do’s ports. It was a beautiful day again, and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of ramyun and onion rings, then walked down to Sinsundae, or “Wind Hill,” and took some awesome pictures with a backdrop of sharp rock cliffs and clear, blue water.

In the afternoon, we got on a little boat that took us around a bunch of the smaller islands right off the coast, large rocks rising from the ocean almost like the heads of giant sea creatures. The boat guided us past Haegeumgang (“Beautiful Rock Mountain,” as Rira kindly translated for me) and into this crevasse in one of the islands that gave the impression of travelling into an ocean cave, before landing at Oedo, another island that happens to be owned by one particular person who clearly invested a fair amount of money beautifying the place’s landscape in the mold of the Baha’i Gardens. The tour gave us an hour and a half to peruse the island, taking in the well-kept gardens and admiring the views of the ocean and surrounding islands. Oedo, with its sculpted bushes and miniature models of famous Greek and Roman statues, seemed a little out of place on a tour of Korea, but it was nonetheless a gorgeous and relaxing afternoon.

After catching the ferry back to Geoje-do, we headed for the main bus terminal and caught a ride back to Seoul that got us in just in time to catch the subway home. Though a short trip, I felt like I got to see and experience a lot of new things, from beautiful scenery to shellfish that I couldn’t tell you the names of if I tried. The people we met along our travelling were also particularly friendly and excited to see a foreigner—I got more than the usual number of greetings and gawks from random Korean children eager to show off their extensive English vocabularies of “hello.” Overall, it was a weekend to remember, for sure.

A little slice of the American Dream

For the last seven months or so, I have been living and working in South Korea. Doing that has led me to numerous interesting experiences and exciting events, many of which I’ve documented in this blog. There is one thing, however, that I’ve been dying to do basically since I landed in Asia: eat a deli sandwich.

This might seem like a rather mundane and altogether ordinary experience for those of you in the good ol’ U S of A, where the SUVS are built big and the deli meat flows like water after a pleasant spring rainfall. Here in Korea, though, the word “deli” does not exist. The closest thing I’ve eaten to a solid sandwich has come from Subway, and while I’m no enemy of Jared’s, after a while the three slices of meat you get there just don’t really cut it for me.

When my family came to visit me in December, they did so bearing with them bountiful amounts of dried dates and figs, all of which I was more than happy to take. But the one thing that I really wanted was a double-stuffed pastrami and tongue sandwich from Rubin’s, and unfortunately they didn’t think it would travel well on the 15 hour flight over here.

You might think I’m joking or exaggerating, but I have literally spent hours day-dreaming of reubens and coleslaw. This is serious business, people.

Last night I was out with some friends and ended up crashing on their couch, which I’ve been known to do on a rather regular basis. In the morning, I was about to head back to Pyeongchon when I heard an altogether unfamiliar and exciting word uttered in the apartment.

“Costco?” my friend asked. “Anyone feel like making a Costco run?”

Since coming here, I’d heard rumors from friends and acquaintances of the existence of the American mega-giant-super-store, but had never actually been myself. When my parents were here, they felt so bad for me and my American food deficiency that they offered to give up a day of sightseeing to take me there, but I felt too bad to let them do that. This was my first real opportunity to get access to a large variety of real American products in classic American-sized quantities.

“I’m down like Chinatown,” I said, probably a little too enthusiastically.

There are two Costco locations in the greater Seoul area, so we left for the one that is closest to my friends’ apartment—only a 6,000 won cab ride. As it turns out, there is actually a giant E-Mart right across the street, but apparently there are enough frugal-minded Korean shoppers to keep both in business.

Walking into Costco was kind of an eerie experience, almost like taking a step back into America, but not. In a lot of ways, the place resembled the Sam’s Club that I’m used to shopping at with my family back home in Worcester. A big, warehouse-style building with appliances and goods stacked dozens of feet to the ceiling. Greeters to welcome you into the establishment and check your receipts on the way out. Shopping wagons big enough to hold the grocery list for a small village.

At the same time, though, this Costco was very much Korean. To begin with, on a Sunday afternoon it was packed with Korean families doing their weekly, monthly, or yearly shopping (and I mean rush-hour-subway packed). If you thought it was hard to maneuver your way around a discount shopping center back home, try adding a few thousand people to the mix, all of whom seem to have very little sense for walking in any semblance of a straight line. Also, while the place was filled with many, many items that are almost impossible to find in any standard Korean supermarket (a 54-pack of rice crispy treats, for example), there were also plenty of Korean food staples in giant quantities as well—four pound packages of kimchi or giant containers of shelled oysters.

After grabbing a rather rushed lunch of giant pizza slices at the ridiculously crowded food court (a few Korean families stood hawk-eyed over us as we ate, waiting to snatch the table as soon as we were through, using their very hungry-looking children to guilt trip us into standing up quickly) we began our shopping spree. I made up my mind beforehand to only get those things I wouldn’t be able to find at my local E-Mart, and decided to go shopping cart-less to avoid any unnecessary purchases. In the end, my list of purchases was short but oh-so-sweet: a 3-lb. box of Honey Nut Cheerios, a 3-lb. bag of almonds, and the Holy Grail—an 8 oz. package of sliced turkey and a 2 lb. block of sharp cheddar cheese. Woooo! Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.