Word: setsuzau
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...RARE CONVERSION, A JAPANESE SCHOLAR BECOMES A JEW. Though there are virtually no Jews in Japan, and Judaism is traditionally opposed to proselytizing, Philologist Setsuzau Kotsuji took the Jewish faith-after trying Shinto, Buddhism and Christianity-was circumcized at the age of 60. See RELIGION...
...open doorway as an elderly man was wheeled into the second-floor operating room of Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox Shaare Zedek Hospital, where Mosaic law is observed so strictly that nurses are forbidden to write on patients' charts on the Sabbath. The sheet-draped patient: Abram Setsuzau Kotsuji, 60, a descendant of Shinto priests. The surgery: circumcision, as part of his conversion to Judaism. As the mohel (circumciser) lifted the knife, he repeated the ancient formula: "Blessed be the Lord our God who has sanctified us and commanded us to circumcise the convert...
Tortuous Road. For Setsuzau Kotsuji, the road to the Jewish faith was long and tortuous. As a child, in Kyoto, Japan's temple-filled ancient capital, he discovered the Bible in a secondhand bookshop. Kotsuji entered a Christian mission school, studied Hebrew, became a Presbyterian; he later studied philology at the University of California, earned a doctorate at Kyoto University. Acknowledged as Japan's top Hebraist. Kotsuji wrote a Hebrew grammar, tutored scholarly Prince Mikasa, youngest brother of Nippon's Emperor Hirohito...
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