Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

September 21, 2023

How the First Yom Kippur in Japan Put an 800-Year-Old Debate to the Test

In the midst of World War II, a group of exiled yeshiva students posed an urgent question.

In September 1941, the students of Poland’s Mir yeshiva found themselves in the Japanese city of Kobe, having fled Hitler’s advancing forces via Siberia. As the Jewish new year approached, they found themselves confronted with an urgent dilemma: on what day should they observe Yom Kippur? Nobody had yet clarified where Jewish law places the international dateline—a question first raised in the 12th century—and it was possible that they were to its east. Baruch Sterman and Judy Taubes Sterman explain:

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