today presents – maybe with exception of the Philippines and partly Thailand – the only active Jewish community in Southeast Asia.
The presented contribution will introduce certain facts about the history of the Jews in Singapore and point out few desiderata and question available re-sources of research about Jews in Singapore. The final focus will be on the varieties of the denominations within the small but respectful Jewish community and the presence of Jewish personalities in the cultural-religious and political life of Singapore.
Jews in Southeast Asia in a connection to their home-communities and re-spective ties with their origins, which was the case for other so-called port Jews, as networkers in the maritime trade. He reflects the definition of “port Jews”
initiated by David Sorkin and Lois C. Dubin in the 1990s, who placed Sephardi merchants in ports and colonies as harbingers of modernity, while remaining detached from the European Haskalah (cf. Goldstein 2007a: 1 – 19; Cesarani 2002). Baghdadi Jews, also called Jews of the Levante, are not to be confused with Sephardi Jews per definition, as there are not only differences in religious rites and cultural background, but also in the historical origins. Next to that, the cultural function of the “port Jews”, especially as a pendant to “court Jews”, has been argued since then by C. S. Monaco (Monaco 2009: 137 – 166) – most of the aspects of the “port Jews”, as used by David Sorkin, could be applied to the Jews of Singapore.
The fact is that except for the short monograph of Eze Nathan, which is a rich resource of valuable memoirs and a collection of missed documents and records and a historical reflection (Nathan 1986), and quite a recent journalistic work of Joan Bieder (Bieder 2007), we are still missing an extended and historically critical analysis about Jews in Singapore, not only for the period of the growing importance of the ports in the Straits of Malacca in the 18thand 19thcenturies, but also for the entire time of their existence there.
However, according to the mentioned actual research – except few traders visiting the Straits in the 18thcentury – the first concrete mentioning of Jews settling down in Singapore is found during the enterprise of Stamford Raffles at the beginning of the 19thcentury. Most sources mention Jews of Baghdadi origin:
mainly traders from India, especially from Calcutta, who came to Singapore after 1819, when the Sultan of Johor permitted the British businessman Sir Stamford Raffles and the East Indian Company to establish a trading post there.
The position in the Straits of Malacca as the main water route between the Indian Ocean and the Chinese Sea brought an extensive trade business to Singapore.
Around 1840, the Jewish community was able to collect enough funds to build a 40-person-synagogue in Synagogue Street, today a small isle in the busy fi-nancial district. The official census of 1830 recorded the presence of only nine traders of the Jewish faith in Singapore. The later records give different and partly unreliable numbers and the research imposes the economic and com-mercial importance of the few Jewish families as an opposition to their numbers.
The evaluation of the statistics must indeed consider that the entire population of Singapore was very low – for the year 1846, Nathan mentions among “46 merchant houses recorded, [there are] twenty British, six Jewish, five Chinese, five Arab and two Armenian” (cf. Nathan 1986: 1, 187).
In its beginnings, the settlement of Singapore only took place around the southern seaside of the island near the port and shipping yard and the Singapore
Jews in Singapore: Tradition and Transformation 55
River. The Jewish settlers also had houses in the Boat Quay Area (near the Singapore River and off South Canal Road) and later in the 19thcentury, an entire Jewish quarter developed – as a loose social and cultural living area amongst other immigrants from Asia. TheMahallahor “the Place” was located off today’s Orchard Road, around Dhoby Ghaut, Waterloo Street, Prinsep Street, and Selegie Road. Despite the enormous architectural changes in Singapore, there are houses withMagen Davidas a sign of their Jewish inheritance on the facade left till today. Because of no existing dwelling restriction, and despite of only few financial restrictions by the governing Sultan and later the British authorities, Jews could settle down almost everywhere, unlike in most parts of Europe at that time. At present, few houses of the wealthier Jewish merchants can still be found, sometimes converted or integrated into bigger estates – like the National Uni-versity of Singapore at the Bukit Timah Road. With few exceptions, the origins of these dwellings are almost unknown in the Singaporean public.2
In 1873, the Jewish community bought a piece of land from the government in Waterloo Street and built their main synagogue – theMaghain Aboth(Shield of our Fathers). The census of 1871 stated that the Jewish community had 172 members, in the year 1930 it stated 877 (Nathan 1986: 187). Nathan also presents a collection of names from the both no longer existing Jewish cemeteries at the lower Orchard Road and Thomson Road (Novena) which gives information about the community. Already for that time, most of the publications mention Ashkenasi Jews settling in Singapore before the Suez Canal was built in 1869 (and increasingly afterwards), but impose their separation from the Baghdadi Jews while continuing their family bonds in Europe and joining mostly European communities. In fact – and despite of extensive hints in Nathan’s memoirs – there has been no comprehensive study about the Baghdadi and Ashkenasi Jews relationship in Singapore in the past. It seems that there had been almost no intermarriages between these two groups, which (on the other hand) may not have strictly religious, but also social and, eventually, economic reasons – maybe similar to the Jewish community in Amsterdam. The impact of the Ashkenasi Jewish entrepreneurship in Singapore especially before World War II is recorded by Nathan (Nathan 1986: 57) and finally in the wider aspect of the “Jewish”
companies and entrepreneurship in the Straits in the detailed ethnographic study by Kamsma (Kamsma 2010). The reasons for a lack of wider records about the presence of the Ashkenasi Jews in Singapore may vary – the often assumed assimilation and their integration in the general society and the society of the countries of their origins respectively may be only one of them.
2 Cf. an interactive map comparing 1872, 1963 and present maps with historical pictures in http://www.sgmaps.blogspot.de/p/historical-maps.html, and the awarded blog of Jerome Lim 2010.
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Nevertheless, the buildings and street names in Singapore reveal the high participation of the Baghdadi Jews in the business and economy of the country.
Following the successful merchant from Baghdad Salomon or Seliman Abraham (1798 – 1884), the probably most famous was Sir Menasseh Meyer (1846 – 1927), who arrived at the age of 15 and – as often imposed, very poor – from Calcutta and became one of the biggest owners of accessible property in Singapore and represented the Jewish community in Singapore. Already in 1900 he understood the political and economic changes and after the international opium trade was declared illegal, he invested in the property and land in Singapore, among other wealthy merchants, like the Arab family Alkaff. Meyer was the founder of the only other synagogue, Chesed El, at Oxley Rise (also near Orchard Road) which was built in 1905 after an argument with members of the Jewish community.
Since then, Chesed El served as a private synagogue for Meyer’s family and is nowadays the community synagogue serving the mostly orthodox Jewish public.
Meyer was also the one who was approached by Albert Einstein on his Zionist-missionary travel through Asia in 1922 and collecting funds for the establish-ment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Meyer and later his daughter Mozelle Nissim were active supporters and benefactors of the first Zionist set-tlements in Palestine (Bieder 2000 – 2001; Goldstein 2007b: 3). With Meyer’s wide influence on the British authorities a guess about his influence on the Balfour Declaration comes up, despite his inclination to religious and not po-litical Zionism. Although till now, there is no historical evidence on that. It is an open question if we can expect more information in the Zionist Archive in Jerusalem than revealed in the comprehensive book about Jews in Singapore by Joan Bieder (Bieder 2007).
Despite the records in the censuses, the numbers of Jewish inhabitants in Singapore often vary depending on the sources published. There may be mul-tiple reasons: the international identity, the lack of interest for permanent set-tlement while having family living abroad, and several others like animosities or religious inclinations. There were supposed to be about 1,000 – 1,200 Jews in Singapore in 1939 before World War II. After the British authorities surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, many of the Jews were interned and treated as British;
few could flee and many tried to send at least parts of their families abroad, some successfully; some of the Singaporean Ashkenasi Jews were considered citizens of the Axis depending on the country of their origin. After the war, a large number subsequently emigrated to Australia, England, the United States, and later to Israel and there were only about 200 members of the Jewish community left (Nathan 1986: 99 – 100).
Jews in Singapore: Tradition and Transformation 57