Unlikely Scholar

In a quiet Dutch town better known for canals than Jews, a retired police officer spends his days immersed in Torah learning from the more than 3,000 seforim in his library. A mezuzah hangs on his door,
and kashrus is kept to standard. Yet there’s one off-tune detail: My new friend Hidzer Johan Postma isn’t Jewish

Leeuwarden, Holland — When I recently popped into the local Jewish bookstore in Antwerp, where I live, I couldn’t help noticing a middle-aged man with a yarmulke loading books into his cart. I know most of the people around there who would be buying seforim in such quantities, but here was someone I’d never met before, and my curiosity was piqued.

I introduced myself, struck up a conversation, asked him a few general questions, and the more we spoke, the more I realized that I needed to visit this man on his home turf. I learned that his name is Hidzer Johan Postma, and that he lives in Leeuwarden in north Holland, about a three-hour drive from Antwerp. That he studies Torah diligently for hours every day and has what is likely the largest private Torah library in all of Holland. That his home is kosher, there is a mezuzah on his door, his wife lights Shabbos candles, and his married daughter bakes challah every week.

And, that neither he nor his wife are Jewish.