From Kentucky Christian to Taiwanese rabbi

As a small democratic country threatened by its neighbours, Taiwan has an unusual affinity with Israel.

But no part of the community is more unusual than Rabbi Cody Bahir, the spiritual leader of the Taiwan Jewish Community (TJC).

“I wasn’t raised Jewish… I was raised in a religious Christian home,” he said. Bahir’s father’s family were Galician Jews who migrated to America before World War II, and his mother’s family were white Southerners.

By seven, Bahir questioned Christian theology. His father started exploring his Jewish roots and Bahir immediately felt connection, going through Conservative conversion to Judaism at age nine.

As a young teen, 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.”

Bahir bounced around to yeshivot in different states and Safed – picking up Yiddish but losing his passion. “In the hassidic world, there’s too much emphasis on outward appearance and not on inward devotion. It left me kind of lost.” 

He went to Taiwan in 2011, conducting doctoral fieldwork at Buddhist monasteries. During that time, he met Sonia. Although she did not convert until after their marriage in 2014, she had always been drawn to Judaism.

“She is one of the main reasons I got back into Judaism,” said Bahir.

He received rabbinic ordination in 2021 and yearning to “take all the beauty I see in the haredi world to the rest of the world somehow”, found an online ad for TJC, returning to Taiwan in July 2023.

“Connecting people to Yiddishkeit is the best part of my job, followed by spreading awareness about Israel.”

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Meet Taiwan’s ‘hassidishe progressive’ rabbi from Kentucky (Jerusalem Post)