Out of 50 million inhabitants, there must be all of 300 Jews in the Land of the Morning Calm. And yet more than 2,000 versions of the Talmud are on offer in its bookshops, and every South Korean family keeps its own copy preciously. But come to think of it… which Talmud are we talking about?
Johnny Kim wears no kippa, does not eat kosher, and never goes to synagogue. In any case, synagogues are hardly thick on the ground in Seoul. And besides, there is no reason Johnny Kim should impose all that on himself! As elegant and as inspired by British fashion as his compatriots crossed paths with in the rich and trendy district of Hannam-Dong — the very one where Chabad set up its quarters in 2008, a stone’s throw from the luxurious residence of the Samsung magnate — this tall, fortyish Asian man has never had anything Jewish about him. But on television, in the courses and lectures he gives in the country’s schools and businesses, through his publications, which, like others, sell like hot cakes, here Jung Wan Kim — alias Johnny Kim — is a Mister Talmud.
Most South Koreans have never seen a Jew in their lives. Even if a few have slipped in among the 30,000 soldiers of the enormous American military base at Yongsan-Gu. Even if one runs into more and more Israeli businessmen, scientists, and students in the streets of Seoul. But never mind: in this country renowned for its barbecue, its suicide rate, and its high CO2 emissions — this corner of Asia as Christian as it is Buddhist, where half the population calls itself atheist — people are open to anything, especially to whatever may be perceived as a giant step toward success. So why not the Talmud?
“Koreans are obsessed with education and excellence,” recounts David Lévy, the new Consul of Israel in Montreal, who was posted in Seoul from 2012 to 2016. “Competition is enormous there, the men work 24/7, and families spend a fortune on education. On the education of their child, who is, moreover, often an only child.” As soon as they become mothers, Korean women leave their jobs and devote themselves full-time to making their little one perform. On top of public school, most children attend the hagwons in the afternoon — the highly lucrative world of private schools, where they are crammed with still more knowledge. “The Korean government had to legislate to limit study hours. In the Seoul metro, it is not rare to come across, late in the evening, eight- and nine-year-old children, exhausted, under pressure, on their way home… where they go on studying until midnight.”
It was in this mad race toward excellence that the solution was found, all ready-made, some forty years ago. The equation: despite the persecutions, the Jews are still here and succeed at everything; they control the world’s biggest companies; in no time at all, they conjured up a dream country, a start-up nation. South Korea, for its part, may invest billions in its education system, but it has never had a Nobel Prize (except one for peace, in 2000), whereas the Jews carry off 25% of them (and there are already 12 for little Israel alone). Their secret? It is neither Voltaire’s fault nor Rousseau’s, but thanks to the “Jewish method” and to a stocky, complex book, 1,500 years old: the Talmud!
And a bit like Obelix, who fell into it as a child, little Koreans plunge to their hearts’ content into this magic cauldron to acquire for life the power, the wisdom, the art of success, and the intelligence of the Jews. In 2013, anxious precisely to stimulate initiative and entrepreneurship, the president of the time, Park Geun-hye, had even chosen as deputy minister of the Economy the professor who translated into Korean Start-up Nation, the book that recounts the creativity of the Israeli economy and gives pride of place to the Talmud to explain it. “She too belonged to that generation marked by the laudatory accounts of the seventies about Israel,” says Consul Lévy. “One of all those Koreans who today hold high office, who are convinced that there is much to learn from the Jewish people, and for whom the words Talmud, kibbutz, or even chutzpah hold no secrets!”
For over the decades, the Talmud enjoyed the freedom of the city in South Korean public schools and left its mark on people’s minds. The former Olympic speed-skating champion Lee Kyou-Hyuk (an idol in his country, the flag-bearer at the 2014 Olympics) has confided that he plunged into the Talmud whenever he was going through a difficult patch. And, invited onto an Israeli program in 2011, the South Korean ambassador of the time even brandished a copy in Korean before millions of dumbfounded viewers: “Back home, every family has at least one copy of the Talmud. Koreans want to crack the secret of the Jews”…
But today it is above all in the hagwons, the afternoon private schools, that it is taught: the magic word there is havruta [paired Talmudic study] — which has very little to do with our tradition — and on its own it guarantees a jackpot…
Which of the 63 tractates, then, do South Koreans favor? Is it the Mishna or its commentary, the Gemara? Do they systematically approach the Talmud in pairs, master and disciple endlessly tossing the ball back and forth to enrich their study? For the bulk of readers, all this is… Greek to them. The books published by the shovelful in Korea bear little relation to the original text, but all parents love to read them to their children. Most of the time, they are tales and little stories with an inspirational bent, how-to books with a philosophical flavor, epic accounts of the life of Rabbi Akiba or Rabbi ben Zakkaï. Moralizing, abundantly illustrated works that sit on the shelves alongside Aesop’s fables or the Analects of Confucius. Like Harlequin romances, the Korean Talmuds are everywhere, even in the train stations. Last February, in Seoul, there were 2,258 titles in circulation. And of course, pregnant women are not left out: some works explain to them how to carry intelligent babies.
This staggering craze began a long time ago at the instigation of two men. On my left, Yu Theo, a brilliant student whom the Korean government had sent to do his PhD in Israel in the sixties: he loved it and, back home, he said so, wrote about it, and spoke abundantly on television about that distant, strong, and modern country. “He is the messenger who made Koreans discover Israel,” says Consul Lévy, “the one who introduced the idea that the Jews succeed thanks to the Talmud, which stimulates critical thinking, questioning, learning through havruta…” On my right, Marvin Tokayer, a rabbi sent to Japan at the end of the sixties by the Rebbe Menachem Schneerson to take care of a growing American community there, drawn by the country’s growth. In 1971, he published there 5,000 Years of Jewish Wisdom: The Secrets of the Talmud — a collection of rabbis’ biographies, of proverbs, parables, tales, and fables steeped in Jewish ethics — which quickly became a hit. It sold 500,000 copies in Japan and, by the unfathomable ways of piracy, the best-seller surfaced in Korea.
“And Koreans love tales,” lets slip Johnny Kim, a touch mocking. As for him, of the Talmud — the real one — he first heard tell as a young student in the United States, in the courses on Jewish history and culture given by Yong Soo Hyun, a close friend… of Rabbi Marvin Tokayer. Born Christian in a country deeply marked by Confucianism — a philosophical school largely based on order and discipline, which guarantees success through merit and work — he was fascinated by the continent of freedom he discovered: “In Korea, we have always been used to listening to what we are told and memorizing it. Full stop. We have no culture of questioning, we have not mastered the art of debate, of interactive learning; our system leaves no room for it, and it is a catastrophe. That is what is changing, and what we have learned from the Jews.”
Today, if, like so many others over there, he insists in his courses on the virtues of contradiction and dialectic, Johnny Kim also tries to instill in his audiences all that richness he has perceived in the Torah and the Talmud, which he studied every Sunday for three years at the Chabad of Seoul, with Rabbi Osher Litzman. He is certainly not yet at the point of contemplating his conversion to Judaism, but he has the 63 tractates of the Talmud tucked away safely at home, and he dreams of translating them one day into Korean.
“I too, at the beginning,” he confides between two sips of tea, “wanted to try to crack the secret of the Jews’ success, and I was persuaded it was tied to their education system. But the further I advanced in my study, the more it was their whole spirituality that won me over. I discovered all the love that hides behind the 613 commandments. And I know that even the richest people need to give meaning to their lives, to find a spiritual happiness. The Jews have found it — there is the real secret of their success. Their key! But we, we are a very materialistic people: it is not study, nor wisdom, nor the love of God that draws the majority of Koreans toward the Talmud. It is the key!”
If it is only a matter of a key… It is then surely no accident that Rabbi Osher Litsman, who created the Jewish Embassy of Seoul in 2008, threw the doors of his Chabad wide open to us, but did not come to the appointment we had set with him, Johnny Kim and I. How could he have endorsed, while chatting about the Korean Talmud, so libertine an approach to a founding text of Judaism? For the study — slow, arduous, terribly difficult — of the real Talmud is explicitly reserved for Jews. Otherwise one desacralizes it. It pertains intensely to the neshama, the Jewish soul; it is to her that it speaks, and to her alone.
Do South Koreans have a neshama?