In praise of Wang Druss
Broward County, Florida, is the eighth-largest Jewish community in the US, with about 185,000 people. It has the largest number of Jews of any county in Florida. Some of its elderly population lived through the Holocaust during the Nazi reign of terror against Jews during World War II.
An important part of this Jewish community is the Orloff Central Agency for Jewish Education, which develops and provides educational programs for its community. The president of the Orloff Central Agency for Jewish Education, Wandy Wang Druss, was born in Chiayi.
As an 11-year-old student living in Taipei, Wang Druss attended Penglai Elementary School, where she won a citywide essay and calligraphy contest. Her father, Wang Chan-hsiung, moved the family to the Dominican Republic when he took a position there as an irrigation engineer. Wang Druss was 12 years old at the time. Two years later, she moved to the US. She still speaks to her parents in Taiwanese, uses Mandarin when necessary and is cherished by the local Jewish community in Florida.
Wang Druss is married to an attorney and has two children, both recent college graduates: one from Dartmouth College and the other from Brandeis University. She has two master’s degrees and works as the director of continuing education for health sciences at Broward College.
A few years ago, a family friend, who is a judge in the Broward County court and Jewish, was talking to Wang Druss about Kosher rules — the religious practice of only eating foods that are permissible and avoiding those that are not according to a set of Jewish laws.
This friend knows Wang Druss’ personal history and background and knows that her Taiwanese-born parents are not Jewish. Nevertheless, she asked if Wang Druss’ parents kept a Kosher home when she was growing up. After saying this, they both paused and burst out laughing.
Wang Druss, although looking as Chinese as any other Chinese woman, so easily fits in that people no longer see her physical appearance, but instead see her inner character.
Wang Druss feels as comfortable eating Shabbat dinner at a Hasidic rabbi’s house (an Orthodox rabbi identified by having a long beard and wearing a wide-brimmed black hat with a long black coat) as she does buying something from a pushcart vendor in Taipei. She has an enthusiasm and passion for kindness that draws people to her and energizes them, regardless of their ethnicity. She understands and relates to the essence of the Jewish soul and Jews embrace her as one of their own.
The Jewish population of Broward County and the people of Taiwan have someone they can both be proud of.
Lewis Druss
Plantation, Florida
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS