by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

January 22, 2009

Her bat mitzva instructor likens Mei Ming Cornue-Hollander to Moses, the prophet who at last found where he belonged after being raised away from his family’s home.

Mei Ming’s father, Ron Hollander of Nutley, and his former wife, Virginia Cornue of Montclair, adopted Mei Ming in Wuhan, China, when she was five months old. Hollander was at the time teaching graduate journalism on a Fulbright Fellowship in Beijing. 

Now, a week before her Jan. 24 bat mitzva at Newark’s historic Ahavas Sholom synagogue, Mei Ming put on a tallit and a kipa and began to chant in fluent Hebrew, as her tutor Diane Yermack looked on.

It was Mei Ming’s final lesson before her bat mitzva service at the 102-year-old Conservative synagogue, which she has been attending since the age of one. On Saturday, she will become the first Jew by choice and the first person of Chinese descent to become bar or bat mitzva there.

Her father, a professor of journalism at Montclair State University, is a long-standing member of Ahavas Sholom.

His daughter, he said, has always felt comfortable in the synagogue. “Almost within a few weeks after we returned to New Jersey in 1996, she came with me and was passed around the shul,” he said. “She used to run around with another kid and play under the chairs.”

“For me, it is a place to belong,” Mei Ming declared firmly. She is planning to tell the congregation in her speech, “This day is huge.”

Preparations for the huge day have taken some 18 months; her crash course with Yermack also included training for her conversion.

Mei Ming officially became Jewish on Dec. 1 after appearing before a beit din in West Orange.

Her father recalled that one of the panel’s three rabbis asked her a tough question.

“He said, ‘You live in Montclair, a very diverse and accepting community. But when you go out of Montclair, people are going to look at you and say, “You’re Chinese. Why do you want to be Jewish?”’”

Hollander said his daughter responded: “You’re dealing with stereotypes, and I’d tell them if they have problems with it, it is their problem.”

Touching on the highlights of the speech she plans to deliver from the bima, Mei Ming said she chose her new religion during a bicycle ride.

“My dad and I were biking through a cemetery, and he was showing me the religious signs on different tombstones. So I asked, ‘Well, where would I be?’ And he answered, ‘There are places for people with no religions.’ But I wanted to belong somewhere.

“At first I was happy with no religion,” she said. “No Sunday school. No temple except on the High Holy Days. But I wanted somewhere to belong.”

She opted for private lessons at the dining room table in Yermack’s Montclair home.

‘Over the moon’

“Working with Mei Ming has been a total delight,” said Yermack, a former advanced student of Jewish studies. “It was a lot for a kid of her age to take on. We didn’t bypass any piece. We didn’t skip anything. She had to learn to study Torah, she had to learn the blessings, and she had to learn the synagogue skills.

“The challenge was not just to study for bat mitzva,” said Yermack. “She had to learn to be a Jew.”

“I picked up Hebrew pretty quickly,” Mei Ming said, noting that she found it easier to learn than the Spanish she studies at Renaissance Middle School in Montclair, where she is in eighth grade.

Mei Ming’s father said he hopes that as she continues her Jewish education, “she integrates her Chinese culture.” But for Mei Ming, this is a touchy subject.

She has visited China three times since coming to America, but, she said “I don’t like going there. I guess it’s nice to have another heritage, but I don’t want to go deep into that. It makes me feel kind of uncomfortable, because I was given up. When I was really young, I tried to learn Chinese, but no. It didn’t work.”

Mei Ming is pleased that her ceremony will take place in a setting that speaks of Newark’s rich urban history rather than suburban opulence.

“Whenever friends take me to their temples, we are bored out of our minds,” she said. “But at Ahavas Sholom, it’s incredibly different. They have this ark and stained-glass windows that are very old, and they have a whole lot more character than those places in the suburbs.

“When you go to Ahavas Sholom, everybody knows your name. It is a place where people from different races and cultures can come together and celebrate one thing.”

Her father, who said he was “just thrilled” and “over the moon” about the bat mitzva, said he views the event as a logistical challenge as well.

“At another synagogue I’d be meeting with the caterer and making the guest lists and deciding whether to have roast beef or chicken,” he said. “Of course, I’m doing those things, too. But, at Ahavas Sholom you also have to replace the fluorescent lights and make sure you have enough paper towels in the bathroom.”

“It doesn’t really matter what the place looks like, up to a point,” said his daughter. “I’ll have my friends and family around me, and that’s what really matters.

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