Menu
This compelling and insightful memoir reads like a classic love story full of trials and tribulations. Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi’s spiritual journey in Japan from secular to orthodox Judaism is a reflection on transformation, relationships, family values, finding happiness, and being true to oneself.
Liane Wakabayashi is a Jewish artist and journalist who has lived in Japan for 30 years. While living in Japan with her Japanese husband and two children, she learned about her customs and religious concepts, and also explored her own Judaism. Twenty years ago she founded the ” Genesis Art Intuitive Academy ” and now teaches Israel how to express their inner thoughts in art, called the “Genesis way”.
Ironically, her neshamah was brought to the surface in Tokyo By Devorie Kreiman.
“The Wagamama Bride” is, on the surface, a memoir about a non-Japanese woman’s resoluteness—her wagamama, or ‘selfishness’—to survive in an unfamiliar world. Ultimately, the book reveals the immense sacrifice required to truly live between two cultures, and the ways in which ideals and identity can both foster growth and nearly destroy a family.
A memoir about navigating one’s faith and cultural identity within the parameters of a marriage.
The Wagamama Bride is about the life of a young, secular, Jewish New Yorker who finds herself in Japan, both literally and figuratively. In Tokyo she meets a charming…
You sure do pick your moments to make a point, dear. Is fasting on Yom Kippur not good enough for you?…
Whether it was learning Torah or helping prepare for Shabbat at the Chabad House in Tokyo, the rebbetzin’s kitchen was her mission control. We would stand side by side, preparing the challah dough. The rebbetzin would measure out flour from a huge sack…
I just couldn’t appreciate what it must have been like for my mother to grow up in a city where you are the micro-minority—that is, until I moved to Tokyo…
On the appointed evening, the Rebbetzin turned up in front of my house with the rabbi idling the van in the driver’s seat…
The table was crowded with people I wouldn’t expect to see at a Chassidic gathering…
It has been common for several decades for Westerners in Japan to seek enlightenment and spiritual comfort in Buddhism and other Asian religions. It’s a well-traveled road, but Liane Wakabayashi’s path to spirituality in Japan, as depicted in this book, is unique.
From New York City, the ink barely dry on a master’s degree in arts administration, I’d come to Tokyo to try my luck as an arts writer. My self-assigned beat became the top floor art galleries of Tokyo department stores, purveyors of some of the finest nihonga paintings in the nation.
The bar mitzvah became a magazine’s cover story circulated to synagogues throughout Israel, and my son’s fame became legendary—literally.
“My Zeidy called it ‘der heiliker Shabbos’ (the holy Shabbos); my father called it ‘the Sabbath,’ my children call it ‘Saturday’, and my grandchildren call it ‘the day before Super Bowl Sunday’.”
Liane Grunberg Wakabayashi’s return to her Jewish roots began in earnest at a Chabad House in Tokyo, the city she had moved to as a young journalist and called home for more than 20 years. Ironically, it was at another Chabad House, at a weekly women’s Torah class, that I met Liane – in Jerusalem, where we both live…
One would imagine that the most difficult part of writing a memoir is deciding what to put in and what to leave out, bearing in mind who of one’s living relatives and friends might be insulted either way. Some memoir writers can just dive in and swim in a flow of consciousness, completing their memoir in the space of a week…
A household of perfectly matching teak furniture — and a solitary refuge, a teak island of a desk — couldn’t save my parents’ increasingly unhappy marriage…
For my Japanese mother-in-law, my moving to Israel was a disaster — and not just because I was tearing the family apart…
Aki worked for Akahigedo, a traditional Eastern medicine clinic that based its work ethic on the old Edo practice of training staff to surpass acupuncture and shiatsu technique. To become a master, you had to become acquainted with your own soul…
This is the account of my journey in-progress toward becoming Shabbos- observant in Tokyo. I have been married for 22 years to Akihiko Wakabayashi…
When Binyomin Edery, the chief rabbi of Japan, was a child growing up in the farming village of Kfar Chabad in Israel, the nine-pronged menorah could be seen everywhere during the winter Hanukkah festival. So when he arrived in Japan during Hanukkah 18 years ago,…
A mother’s candid firsthand account of her bipolar daughter’s stay – and her own battle to cope…
Willy Foerster saved Jews fleeing the Nazis by employing them in his Tokyo factory but was framed as a collaborator after the war and has remained largely unknown…
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. I was born in Montreal, raised and educated in the New York City area (Queens and Great Neck), graduated with a BA in…
Live interviews with authors, book events and book promotions
Coming Home Far From Home,
