Rosh HaShanah-in-a-Box

For Yoshi Silverstein, the Hebrew word for doo-doo ignited his passion for learning about Judaism.

He grew up in Spokane, Washington, where his Ashkenazi, Eastern European Jewish father, and (now Jewish) Chinese mother gave him and his sister a choice to attend Hebrew school. First, Yoshi declined, just like his older sister. But when a Jewish friend in the fourth grade told him they learned about the Hebrew word for doo-doo at Hebrew school, everything changed.  

Yoshi shared, “So I literally went home that night, and I was like, Mom, you’ve got to sign me up for Hebrew school!”  Thus began a much higher level of engagement with the synagogue for Yoshi and his parents as well.  

Yoshi found his childhood synagogue radically welcoming, and he felt an immense connection to the community. “Maybe because there are so few of us Jews in Spokane, the community couldn’t afford to be excluding anybody. I think there was a far stronger interest in what brings us together,” he said.

The synagogue was not always super present in his family’s life, and earlier on, they existed more on the periphery of the Jewish community.

In his younger years, Yoshi’s family saw their dual lineage as primarily separate identities and didn’t generally try to integrate his father’s Jewish ties with his mother’s Chinese heritage. His father’s family is from Eastern Europe. His mother’s lineage is from the Canton province of mainland China, along with Chinese-Caribbean cultural heritage from his grandmother, who was born and raised in British Guyana. While viewed as separate identities, his parents nonetheless taught him to value each identity equally.

The family celebrated the Chinese New Year with his mom’s side of the family to celebrate his Chinese heritage, enjoyed delicious Chinese recipes like Roasted Chinese Duck, and visited family weekly for a traditional Chinese meal.

To honor their Jewish heritage, his family primarily connected with other Jewish families at large holiday gatherings. It was only later — after the Hebrew doo-doo incident and starting Hebrew school — that Yoshi fostered a niche for himself within Jewish camps and youth groups.  

Yoshi’s connection to Judaism eventually brought him to work at Camp Wise, where he met his wife. Yoshi found a way to incorporate his Chinese heritage into his Jewish wedding by using the Chinese moon gate (a circular gateway that symbolizes transition, often found in traditional Chinese gardens) into his wedding chuppah (a canopy beneath which Jewish marriage ceremonies are performed).

Yoshi and his wife married at Temple Emanu-El in Cleveland, where his wife grew up.  Throughout the wedding planning process, they began to look at Cleveland as a place where they eventually wanted to settle as husband and wife.  They found that even though it’s a relatively big city and a large Jewish community, they liked the small-town feel.

In 2019, after five years living in Brooklyn, NY, and working in Manhattan, they decided it was time to lay down some roots. Here in Cleveland, Yoshi founded and is the Executive Director of Mitsui Collective. The organization is focused on building a resilient community through embodied Jewish practice and somatic antiracism.

He is also enjoying being a family of three. Yoshi and his wife work to ensure that they give their daughter access to her heritage and find meaningful opportunities to integrate their varied cultures. “We’re in this moment where so many of our assumptions of what Judaism is are getting really tested or even challenged, and when we open ourselves up to that, we open ourselves up to just a far, far richer community, a far richer realm of possibilities.”