New Jersey Jewish News
Central New Jersey Feature Story
Japanese cooking for the kosher kitchen
I met Steve Weinstein, who would become 
my husband, right after college in Japan, where he had taught English for a year and a half after a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Micronesia. We left Japan together in April 1972, taking a small Russian vessel from Yokohama to Nalchodka, where we boarded an Aeroflot plane to fly over Siberia to Moscow. We parted in Moscow; Steve headed to Israel, and I to London. Two months later, I joined him in Israel.
For the next seven years we lived in Israel, first volunteering and learning Hebrew on a kibbutz for two months. Steve then worked on his PhD in modern Jewish thought at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I was an archivist and a reporter covering Asian visitors at The Jerusalem Post and wrote about Israel for Tokyo Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper.
Jerusalem in the 1970s was a fascinating place to live. There were many different people and ideas and everyone had a unique attachment to the city. We were able to visit everywhere in Jerusalem and vicinity, including Hebron. We used to go bargain hunting for handcrafts in the Arab sections of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Steve and I lived at Ir Ganim, located in a valley between Kiryat Hayovel and Kiryat Menahem. The town’s individual houses, each with its garden, were inhabited mostly by Polish immigrants. We used to enjoy taking our meals under the shade of the grape vines outside our small and simple house. Our son was born at Hadassah Hospital, and I experienced Israel’s wonderful healthcare and childcare systems.
As a Japanese married to an Ashkenazi American Jew, writing articles for Japanese newspapers and The Jerusalem Post, I had the opportunity to talk with many people in Jerusalem and was overwhelmed by the diversity of Jerusalem’s population — Jews, Christians, Muslims and, within the same ethnic group, people with widely different customs and ideas.
Haim Shapiro, an editor at The Jerusalem Post, wrote a weekly culinary arts column for the paper. When he was called for his army reserve duty, he asked me to fill his column with a Japanese recipe or two. It was easy to make Japanese recipes kosher, since we don’t use many dairy products in Japanese cooking. I was delighted to have the opportunity and shared a few recipes with the readers.
I received positive feedback from friends who tried the recipes, and Alex Berlyne, an editor and layout artist, told me his book publisher was interested in putting out a kosher Japanese cookbook if I could provide a sufficient number of recipes. Mariko Tsujita, a good cook and a PhD candidate in the Hebrew University’s political science department, and I worked together to create 168 recipes. Far Eastern Cook Book was published in Hebrew in 1980 by Edanim of Jerusalem.
Now, decades later, I am hoping to publish A Kosher Japanese Cookbook with Ingredients in your Refrigerator, revising the recipes, adapting them to our local ingredients. I hope you enjoy these few samples.
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