07-04-2025
This Matzo Ball Soup Drifts Toward Tokyo
Miso soup with matzo balls? Lotus root tempura with matzo cake meal? Japanese sweet potato kugel? These exciting dishes aren't the work of chefs, but rather came from the resourcefulness of 1,000 or so Jews in Tokyo, a city of 28 million.
One of Japan's tiniest minorities, they're creatively adapting traditional recipes for Passover, the ancient eight-day spring holiday, which begins Saturday.
Recipe: Miso Matzo Ball Soup
Many bring back kosher for Passover-approved ingredients like matzo cake meal from their travels, and, of course, substitutions are prevalent. Chinese horseradish or wasabi root, for example, steps in for the traditional maror (the bitter herbs on the Passover Seder plate), and miso forms the base for many soups, including matzo ball, with OK Kosher sending someone twice a year to supervise the facilities that make kosher fermented soybean paste.
In fact, said Andrew Scheer, 38, the enthusiastic rabbi of the Jewish Community Center of Japan, founded 70 years ago: 'You'd be just as likely to find miso soup as matzo ball soup on our Friday night dinner table.'
The center alternates between traditional Jewish cuisine preferred by its members and the kosher Japanese dishes tourists want to try. 'That way,' Rabbi Scheer said, 'everyone's happy.'
On a recent Friday night, the center served up chicken soup with matzo balls and roast chicken, with a kosher bird ordered from abroad. There was challah, too, made by Toyoko Izaki San, a Japanese woman who has been twisting the loaves for the center for at least 40 years.
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