Meet Taiwan’s ‘hassidishe progressive’ rabbi from Kentucky

On May 18, about 1,500 people gathered in Daan Forest Park in Taiwan to show their support for Israel, peace, democracy, and human rights. 

Sponsored by the grassroots Friends of Israel Alliance in Taiwan, the event featured a variety of performance artists, including an aboriginal choir. A panel of speakers discussed why Taiwanese people should feel solidarity with Israel (both are democracies under threat from neighbors) and why the countries should invest in each other. 

And there were words of Torah from Rabbi Dr. Cody Bahir, the island’s first full-time, non-Orthodox rabbi.

Bahir, a 45-year-old native of Kentucky, retold the midrash about how Adam and Eve were fashioned from dust from all parts of the Earth to signify that we’re all one big family. He recounted the legend of God chastising the angels for rejoicing when the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea. 

“I told them about Judaism’s emphasis on life, that we never celebrate the suffering of others,” he said.

Bahir’s wife, Sonia, probably the first and only aboriginal rebbetzin, sang “Acheinu” on stage, dedicating the song to the hostages in Gaza.

“In general, I have found that Taiwanese people are pro-Israel. They recognize the Jewish people’s plight, their long exile, and their return to the land. They recognize the horrors of Oct. 7,” said Bahir. 

You can’t make this stuff up

How Bahir ended up leading the Taiwan Jewish Community (TJC), a synagogue officially registered with the government since 1977, is the kind of story which proves that truth is stranger than fiction.

“I wasn’t raised Jewish,” he said. “I am the product of a mixed marriage – my father’s family were alter Galitzianers [Galacian Jews] who came [to the US] before the war [World War II], and my mother’s family were white Southerners from before the American Civil War. I was raised in a religious Christian home.”

However, by the time he was seven, he was questioning Christian theology and didn’t receive satisfactory answers. The following year, his father started exploring his Jewish roots. When he took Cody to the local traditional Conservative synagogue one Shabbat, the child immediately felt he’d found the real truth. 

“In my childlike mind, this was what Jesus’ religion had been. It was the original, and what I had been exposed to before that was just a spin-off. So from that Shabbat, I adopted Judaism as my religion. I clearly had no idea what that meant at the time, but I seem to have intellectually been drawn to pure monotheism even at that age.”

He went through a Conservative conversion at age nine. As a young teen, he saw The Chosen and was drawn to the movie’s hassidic character. Then his rabbi gave him Elie Wiesel’s book Souls on Fire. 

“It really lit a fire in my soul; it was the kind of religious expression that resonated with me, so I converted again at age 14 through Chabad and went off to an Orthodox high school in Skokie, Illinois. Leaving home to become hassidish caused a lot of family rifts, but eventually they healed.”

Later, he would change his last name (which he prefers to keep private) to Bahir. “I wanted something to connect me deeper to my Jewish roots. I specifically chose bahir, as it means ‘bright/illumination,’ and it is [the title of] one of the first books published on Kabbalah.”

From age 14 to 17, he bounced around to yeshivot in different states and even in Safed – Breslov, Sanz, Bobov – picking up Yiddish but losing his passion.

“A lot of ba’alei teshuva [returnees to faith] and converts have an idealized vision of what the haredi world will be. Once you’re in yeshiva with people your age, you see that people anywhere have the same problems, faults, and weaknesses. And I found that in the hassidic world, there’s too much emphasis on outward appearance and not on inward devotion. It left me kind of lost,” he said.

He cut off his sidelocks, and then, in a dramatic break with ultra-Orthodoxy, threw his black hat from the window of a Greyhound bus crossing the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York Harbor. 

“I went back to Kentucky. I got my GED [high school equivalency diploma], went to the University of Louisville, and then became a sort of hippie, traveling around the country trying to find myself,” he recounted.

He got his BA at the University of Judaism (now called American Jewish University) in Los Angeles. He earned a master’s degree at Hebrew Union College in LA and opened its seminary’s first beit midrash program, where he taught Reform rabbinical students how to study Talmud.

Journey to Asia

In his college courses, he’d encountered Buddhism and Taoism, which reignited a flame from his youth.

“My father had lived in Singapore in the 1960s and instilled in me a full appreciation of Asian culture, particularly Chinese culture,” he said.

Bahir went to Taiwan in 2011, conducting doctoral fieldwork at Buddhist monasteries for six years. 

“When I was doing observational participation for my PhD, I’d go to services with Chinese Buddhists, and I would shokel [sway back and forth] because that’s what a Yid does when he prays. They’d say, ‘No, you have to sit still.’ I knew that in my kishkes [guts] I was not a Jew-Bu – I was a Jew who studies Buddhism.”

During that time he met Sonia, the daughter of Paiwanese (indigenous) parents. Although she did not convert until several years after their marriage in 2014, she had always been drawn to Judaism.

“She’d go to shul in Taiwan, and I wouldn’t. I wasn’t frum [religious] anymore,” said Bahir. “She is one of the main reasons I got back into Judaism.”

After receiving his PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Bahir went back to America in 2017 as the Sheng-Yen Postdoctoral Scholar of Chinese Buddhism at the University of California, Berkeley, for two years. 

He then taught world religions at a Jewish high school in Palo Alto, California, and soon became dean of Jewish studies. A local Chabad synagogue warmly welcomed this unusual couple – she a non-Jew, and he a lapsed Jew. Two years later he became director of Judaic studies at a day school in Tucson, Arizona. 

As Sonia completed a Reform conversion after several years of study, Bahir found himself slowly being pulled back into the fold, albeit on his own terms. 

He received rabbinic ordination in 2021 from Mesifta Adath Wolkowisk, a New York-based nondenominational institution catering to established Jewish professionals. “As I had all of the classical texts and Halacha, my studies there focused on pastoral counseling, American Jewish history, and Jewish philosophy, none of which I had learned in yeshiva.”

Yearning to “take all the beauty I see in the haredi world to the rest of the world somehow” in a rabbinic role, he checked the website jewishjobs.com and, incredibly, found an ad for a rabbi at the Taiwanese Jewish Community (TJC). He applied and got it. He and Sonia returned to Taiwan in July 2023.

Connecting people to Yiddishkeit

The TJC, he explained, has existed in various incarnations for almost 70 years. At first it served Jewish-American military personnel stationed in Taiwan after World War II and during the Vietnam War.

In 1975, Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Ferdinand Einhorn arrived as the first resident rabbi in Taiwan, leading the community until his death in 2021 at the age of 103. 

There is one other synagogue in Taiwan – a Chabad House opened in Taipei in 2011 by Rabbi Shlomi Tabib – now housed in the Jeffrey D. Schwartz Jewish Community Center of Taiwan, which also houses a Judaica museum, kosher restaurant, and mikveh.

In contrast, the TJC is, as Bahir described it, a nondenominational egalitarian shtiebel where services “resemble what one would experience in a typical Conservative or Reform synagogue in the United States.

“What makes me happiest is that people in mixed marriages who haven’t been to shul in years come to our shul and tell me they cried out of emotion during our Kabbalat Shabbat. The Taiwanese wife of an Israeli told me this recently,” he said. Weekly Friday night services typically draw 30 to 50 people for prayer and a communal meal.

He and Sonia started a bnei mitzvah program, a Hebrew school, and adult education courses.

“Our events always sell out, and we have to use a country club for our larger events because our own space is small,” said Bahir.

They had nearly 190 people for Rosh Hashanah services and for the Passover Seder. Sixty people signed up for a family Lag Ba’omer bonfire, barbecue, and sing-along at a waterside park.

“Connecting people to Yiddishkeit is the best part of my job, followed by spreading awareness about Israel. With only two rabbis in Taiwan, where most people haven’t been exposed to Judaism, there’s a lot of education for me to do on Jews and Jewish culture.

“Unfortunately, since Oct. 7 there’s a lot more internal and external work to do. It’s a heavy responsibility.”

He explained that his community is a hodgepodge of permanent expats from many countries, some of whom converted under the previous rabbi, as well as more transient students, businesspeople, engineers, scholars, and researchers. 

“With that diversity comes a diversity in how to process Oct. 7; as a rabbi, I help process the trauma our people has been through. There are many different depictions of the conflict in Israel, so I’m going to universities and museums with Sonia, giving lectures on the history of the Jewish people and our values, and on the conflict.”

Bahir guest-lectures on Judaism at Taiwanese universities and participates in interfaith initiatives. After a recent lecture at the Museum of World Religions, the Bahirs brought attendees back to the TJC. “I showed them Torah, gave them challah, made Kiddush, and showed them what Judaism is about, while Sonia provided further explanations. Several news outlets covered it,” he recounted. 

Most Taiwanese have little knowledge of Judaism but a healthy respect for Jews, Bahir said. There’s even a hotel in Taiwan called the Talmud Hotel. The owners believe that “the Talmud represents an ancient guide on how to be successful in business.”

For their first Sukkot in Taiwan, Bahir constructed a public sukkah against the backdrop of Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world. 

“During the opening ceremony, inspired by my wife, a few Christian organizations, a Christian art gallery, and our synagogue came together for an intercultural Sukkah of Peace festival, celebrating Chinese, Jewish, and aboriginal culture.” The meal included a dish of chickpeas, millet, and white rice to symbolize unity.

As for kosher food, “It’s easy to be pescatarian in Taiwan if you’re not strict. Buddhist restaurants are vegan, and in the Taiwanese version of Walmart there are many vegetarian options. For barbecues we get kosher chicken, and the JCC supplies kosher meat when we need it, but our shul is essentially milchig [dairy], with fish.” 

Though Bahir has no relatives in Taiwan and his parents have died, “Sonia’s parents have always been so welcoming to this American dude who is madly in love with their daughter. I call them Mom and Dad.”

He is committed to making the TJC a vibrant local resource. 

“There is such a hunger for Judaism here. We are getting new siddurim, we remodeled the shul, and we are building up the community. I created an Instagram account, taiwanrabbi, to give people a glimpse into me as a person, while simultaneously promoting this amazing synagogue,” he enthused.

Bahir said that Taiwan feels like home, and being the “hassidishe progressive” rabbi in Taiwan is the right fit for him. 

“I can’t think of any other position where all the pieces of my life could come together so perfectly.”  