Sunday, December 28, 2025

A Korean Jewish Rabbi?! 세계 가장 큰 유대교 회당 랍비가 한국계?!


Diaspora Film Production 디아스포라 필름
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35,272 views  Apr 15, 2020  #Arirang #Diaspora #Rabbi
Angela Warnick Buchdahl is an American rabbi. She is the first female and Asian-American to be ordained as both a rabbi and cantor anywhere in the world. She was born in South Korea under Korean mother and Jewish father.
She is a Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City, one of the largest Jewish synagogues in the World.

엔젤라 워닉 북달 랍비는 뉴욕 센트럴 시나고그 (회당)의 수석 랍비로 여성으로서, 그리고 아시안계로서 랍비와 선창자 (칸토르)로 임명된 세계 첫 사례이다. 그녀는 한국 어머니와 유대인 아버지 사이에서 태어난 한국 출생자이다.
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영상제작자: 이 영상을 만든 이유는 유대인으로, 또 한인으로 그녀가 갖고 있는 정체성에 대해 탐구하기 위해서이다. 과연 유대인 디아스포라의 정체성이 무엇인지, 한인 디아스포라의 정체성이 무엇인지, 그것을 확립하고 보존해야하는 당위성이 무엇인지, 그녀의 입을 통해 들어보고 싶었다.

#KoreanDiaspora #JewishDiaspora #Rabbi #Arirang #Identity #Diaspora
#DiasporaFilmProduction
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Transcript


I grew up Korean but I was Jewish but
all my and my mother was Buddhist but my
emos were Trisha so like it was like
I'd now like to invite rabbi Angela book
doll from Manhattan to lead us lessons
and candle lighting rabbi Thank You mr.
president I'm tremendously honored to be
here with you and with mrs. Obama I
would say that our founding fathers they
wanted an aspire to build a country that
was truly a place of religious freedom
and equal opportunity for all people but
I have to predict that they could not
have imagined that in 2014 that there
would be a female asian-american rabbi
lighting the menorah at the White House
for an african-american president
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
I check it Chandra me it's gone ha ha ha
[Music]
my mom would be very proud that I'm here
speaking as a hyung go set him so as you
heard I was born between two worlds in
an army base hospital in near Seoul and
I have this Korean Buddhist mother she
was actually born in Japan but moved to
Korea when she was about five and my
Jewish father my mom was an English
major at ey University and my father did
ROTC and was stationed in South Korea so
that's how they met and then eventually
got married I had my first four and a
half years I lived in Korea speaking
only Korean I lived with my hominid and
my parents and a lot of cousins but is
not very easy to be a half-breed in
Korea in the the Hermit Kingdom and not
only that there's a lot of prejudice in
particular for like American Korean
mixed children and and there was no
Jewish community at all so for all of
these reasons at five basically we moved
to Tacoma Washington which is where my
father's family was from the irony is
they moved to Tacoma which actually has
a bigger Korean population than Jewish
population that was very lucky for my
mom because she got very very deeply
involved in the Korean community there
my emos we brought over two of my emos
to America to Tacoma they all lived in
my house first you know how that goes
for Koreans you know I lived in my house
for six months and then they moved to
their own house like my emos when they
came they were all everyone was raised
Buddhists but they all got deeply
involved in the Korean church community
as a social outlet and then each of them
converted to Christianity one of them my
aunt became truly like born-again and
she became a Korean minister and so
she's still very active as a Korean
minister and had a small Korean church
so you can imagine what it was like for
me I grew up Korean but I was Jewish but
all my and my mother was Buddhist but my
emos were Christian so like it was like
it was like a I was a religious studies
major cuz it was a form of therapy for
me so like you know I had to learn like
what was going on now you can take my
mother out of Korea but you can't take
the Korean out of my mother she was a
tiger mom before that like term was
coined she made me take piano lessons at
the age of five
she had a very strong kind of almost
impossible work ethic she taught me to
live with a lot of respect and deference
for elders very important she like
drilled that into us that this was the
key to everything was education and
luckily Jewish and Korean values are
very similar especially around these
ideas around education and how we think
about our tradition and preserving
tradition and all of those things
sometimes there were times where I felt
like I didn't belong anywhere and
instead my mom you know kind of
encouraged me to think of the fact that
I could belong everywhere and I could
take the best of my Korean side and the
best of my Jewish side so I do think I
have a really strong sense of deference
and loyalty to my parents and a sense of
respect for elders and a part of me that
also probably what allowed me to say at
age 16 when someone told me I wasn't
Jewish when I was on an Israel trip it
was the first time I went to Israel was
the first time I met Jews who were much
more traditional than I were and they
said if you don't have a Jewish mother
that's how Jewish law traces your
identity so they said you're not
actually a Jew I mean I don't have a
Jewish name Angela I don't have a Jewish
face I said I could just stop being
Jewish right now like and no one would
even notice I think that the part of me
that was Jewish instead of sort of like
ascribing to that was like oh I'll show
you how to do a shame I'm gonna become a
rabbi and I came home from that trip and
I told my mom that I wanted to be a
rabbi and she knew how much pain I had
been through in my Israel trip like how
I felt rejected by fellow Jews on my
trip how I felt inauthentic as a Jew and
by the way that identity crisis like
lasted for quite a while I remember
telling my mom I wanted to be a rabbi
and she just she's not the kind of
person who cries but she teared up and
she just said why do you want to put
yourself through that like why do you
want to put yourself into a community
that's just gonna that has rejected me
like this and it wasn't until she sort
of challenged me that I realized that
being Jewish was is much who I was and I
could no sooner stop doing that than
stop being a woman or stop being Korean
or I'm stop being who I was so I'm just
gonna fast-forward and say that like
there's a long line between age 16 when
I wanted to be a rabbi
to New York where I came to central
synagogue but I will say that in 2014 I
took my place leading this congregation
which is now 2600 families with 7,000
people big it's the largest synagogue in
New York and one of the three largest
synagogues in the world and I'm the only
woman leading any synagogue that's this
big and I'm a Korean kind of crazy
[Music]
if he knew you
the key news soon
[Music]
Oh
[Music]
because Jews especially because we have
been ad I ask for people for 2,000 years
you can't pin us down into one ethnic
group or one race so the idea that
you're a race is almost always gonna be
used against you in some bad way and
it's not the identifiers and so for me I
had trouble though because I didn't look
Jewish in the kind of an American
mainstream white way and that would
always be you know a problem in terms of
people's kind of relationship with me
especially when I was younger and
probably my own sense of like fitting in
people say though if we're not a people
hood and if I don't really believe in
the religion then what binds us together
and that's a really key question like
you probably asked that as Koreans -
like okay so we're not living in Korea
anymore
is it just a bloodline is it just the
way I look is there something real that
like actually draws and binds us all
together and what is the substance of
that so on the one hand one of the
things we talk about all the time
there's this phrase from the Jewish
Talmud called that says every Jew is
responsible for one another meaning that
like we really do feel that we are one
community or one people that are spread
around the world but we are united and
we're responsible for one another and
we're connected in some way when I think
about it now I think you want to get to
something more substantive so part of
what I think about a lot is like how do
we make it more than just like you know
all we share is a Korean food or a
Jewish food or something that's very
surface how do you get to something
deeper like I feel like we really need
that Jewish idea right now and so one of
the things we talk about is like these
are these are qualities that you
recognize in Jews around the world like
countercultural it's iconoclastic it
reverses the the norms of structure and
hierarchy that is like built into the
culture so I think that those pieces
that's the kind of stuff that I think
you can build a connection on something
real that's worth preserving I think all
the time like I'm not here to preserve
Judaism just for its own sake I want to
preserve it because there's something
worth preserving like I think there's
something that Judaism brings to the
world that is powerful that I find so
meaningful that like I really want my
children and other people to learn it so
we have to think about that with Korean
culture as well there are things about
Korean culture and the go beyond that
the surface stuff that are deep and
power
well that's the stuff we want to
preserve that's what we want to share
that should be what connects me to
someone who's in Korea that that I think
is we want to get to that higher level
of like the deep values that bind us
together as a community we're gonna sing
a do die I'm super proud of being Korean
oh I'm gonna get all no
Morgan de bourree Gaga C Neiman
and she need or more gas or Bible and ah
A Korean Jewish Rabbi?! 세계 가장 큰 유대교 회당 랍비가 한국계?!


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