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Maghain Aboth Synagogue, Singapore, Singapore

Description

Maghain Aboth Synagogue is one of two main synagogues in Singapore, and the oldest surviving synagogue in Southeast Asia.[1] It is situated on Waterloo Street, less than 500 meters from the mahallah[2] around Middle Road. It was built in 1878 for the growing Singaporean Jewish community and is still in use to this day.[3]

A Brief History of Jews in Singapore

The first Jews arrived in Singapore, a British colony and free port since 1819, in the early 1800s via Calcutta.[4] They were part of the Baghdadi Trade Diaspora, a group consisting mainly of  Baghdadi Jewish merchants who migrated from Ottoman Iraq eastward toward British Colonial India and beyond to escape Ottoman persecution and pursue economic opportunities.[5] Although they stood out in Singapore in their Iraqi garb and spoke Judeo-Arabic, they became very successful, trading freely with the Malay and Chinese majorities and other groups.[6]

Following the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869, Jews from various communities worldwide moved to Singapore, diversifying the community.[7] The majority were poor Baghdadi Jews, but wealthy Baghdadi Jews, Egyptian Jews, Ashkenazi businessmen working for European companies importing luxury goods, and Russian and Eastern European Jewish refugees fleeing antisemitism also arrived.[8] Singapore’s Jews became stratified along class lines, with the majority, poor Baghdadi Jews, living in a tightly knit community they called the mahallah, or enclave, around Middle Road in south central Singapore.[9] Rich Jews lived in mansions around the island and distanced themselves from their indigent brethren.[10] While Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews prayed together at the Maghain Aboth synagogue, they tended not to socialize with each other.[11]

The rifts in the Jewish community continued to grow until shattered by World War II.[12] Singaporeans initially felt the British would protect them, but Japan conquered the island on February 15, 1942.[13] Many Jewish women and children left right before the Japanese occupied, and those who stayed spent the war under Japanese occupation.[14] However, Jews were allowed to practice their faith, and Jewish residents in Singapore were declared “neutral,” meaning they were neither considered enemies nor allies of Japan.[15] Then, in April 1943, one hundred Jewish men were declared “enemy subjects” and interned, and the rest of the  Jewish community- an additional 472 people - was interned with them from March 1945 until the end of the war in Singapore in August 1945.[16] However, although several Jews were randomly arrested, tortured, and killed during the occupation, they were not murdered en masse like their Chinese neighbors.[17] 

Life in Changi prison, where a hundred Jewish men were interned along with many other Singaporeans, broke down social barriers as all Singaporeans waited out the war together in captivity.[18] The Japanese surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945, and the British reoccupation began on September 5, 1945.[19] The British colonial government was unable to house Singaporean residents or provide medical supplies after the war, and overcrowding, homelessness, and disease were prevalent.[20] Many middle class Jewish families who had left during the war chose not to return, and the Jewish population continued to decline over the next forty years.[21]

In the aftermath of the war, poverty and destruction were rampant.[22] The Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) was founded by about half a dozen community members on June 27, 1946 to help the poor, and also aided those who wished to make Aliyah, or immigrate to Israel, but couldn’t afford it.[23]

By the 1960s, Singapore's Jewish population numbered about 500 individuals.[24] Some Jews who had escaped to India before the Japanese Occupation had returned, some Jews left, and the Jews that stayed were playing new and important roles in various fields, including in Singapore’s politics before and after its independence in 1965.[25] 

There were seven hundred Jews in Singapore after WWII, but only about 250 individuals remained by the mid-1980s.[26] As Singapore grew into a prosperous nation, however, more Jews began to arrive, and as of 2024, there are about 2,500 Jews residing there.[27]

Maghain Aboth History

In the 1870s, Singapore’s Jewish population was rapidly increasing with a new wave of immigration following the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal.[28] By this time, many of the founding Baghdadi Jewish merchant families in the community had made enough money to move away from Singapore’s commercial center.[29] 

The first synagogue in Singapore, a small shop-house like building that would have likely been at least two stories, had been built in Boat Quay in the commercial center where the merchants used to live, but as the founding families moved away it became underutilized.[30] Since two of the original synagogue’s Trustees had died and one had moved away, two individuals, the first community patriarch, Abraham Solomon[31], and the successful opium trader, Joshua Rafael Joshua, joined forces to build a new, proper synagogue for the growing community.[32] Along with Joshua’s nephew Manasseh Meyer,[33] who had just moved to Singapore, they received permission in 1873 from Singapore’s Attorney General Thomas Braddell to sell the old synagogue and buy land for a new one.[34] Meyer was the one who approached Braddell for permission–his first recorded act of leadership in the community he would help lead for the rest of his life.[35]

The new Trustees purchased a site on Waterloo Street near St. Andrew’s Cathedral for the new synagogue, likely because it was near the mahallah, around Middle Road, where many poor, religious Baghdadi Jews lived.[36] The new synagogue was completed on March 29, 1878.[37] It was named Maghain Aboth, which translates to “Guardian of Patriarchs,” or “Shield of Our Fathers.”[38] While the old synagogue could only hold between thirty to forty men, Maghain Aboth was built to hold a hundred, more than half the Jewish population in Singapore at the time.[39]

As it was completed, the Government of the Straits Settlements[40] enacted the Jewish Synagogue Ordinance, “acknowledging the new synagogue’s Trustees and stipulating that the building be used solely for ‘divine worship according to the Jewish form.’”[41] Maghain Aboth was consecrated six days later, on April 4, 1878.[42] It was only one story tall, with a covered carriage entrance.[43] Its perimeter was protected by railings and gate posts presented by Leon Katz, owner of the German Jewish firm Katz Brothers, which had operated in Singapore since the 1860s.[44] Joan Bieder, author of The Jews of Singapore, notes that:

“Like all synagogues in the East, Maghain Aboth’s front doors faced west towards Jerusalem. Inside the synagogue, the central bimah, the raised platform where the Torah is read, was made of solid teak, as was the Ark that holds the Torahs located at the West end of the building. The Torahs within the Ark came from Baghdad.”[45] 

In addition to the Torahs from Baghdad, Baghdadi hazans chanted the prayers.[46]

Although the ceiling of Maghain Aboth was quite high, there were initially no plans to build a women’s balcony section, and for more than a decade, only men sat on the wood and cane benches of the synagogue.[47] In 1893, however, “architectural plans for a three-sided gallery [on the second floor] were drawn up.”[48] Manasseh Meyer is credited with funding the construction of the women’s section; however, women rarely attended synagogue in the early days.[49] 

By 1901, the Jewish population had more than doubled since 1878, from 172 to 462 individuals.[50] Maghain Aboth was becoming crowded, especially on holidays, and disputes arose between community members over the best way to manage it.[51] Manasseh Meyer had become very wealthy by then, and decided to build a personal synagogue, which he named Chesed-El.[52] Since Chesed-El was far from the mahallah, poorer Jews living there did not often attend services, and over time it became known as the “synagogue of the rich” while Maghain Aboth remained the “synagogue of the ordinary people.”[53]

In 1922, community leaders renovated everything in Maghain Aboth except for the teak bimah and Ark, adding marble floors and turning the synagogue into “a spacious, high-ceilinged two-storey building with tall windows that held 300 people. From then until World War II, the synagogue was often filled to capacity.”[54]

Amid the terror and hardship of the Japanese occupation, Maghain Aboth 

“…served as a sanctuary for the Jewish community, a place to meet, exchange gossip, comfort each other and recapture some sense of security. They drew together there regularly to pray for the safety of their loved ones in India and beyond, exchange news and raise money to support the poorest community members.”[55]

Although the Japanese later stored ammunition and pig iron in Maghain Aboth, it escaped the occupation “relatively unscathed.”[56] Most of its cane benches had gone missing, but the Torahs remained untouched.[57] On October 21, 1945, twenty seven men held the first post-war meeting of the Jewish community at Maghain Aboth.[58] The three wealthy synagogue trustees who normally ran community affairs were absent, as two had left Singapore before the occupation and not yet returned and one had died as a prisoner in the Sime Road Camp.[59] Therefore, “...for the first time, ordinary middle class community members had the chance to take charge and show what they could do.”[60]

By the end of the meeting, officers had been elected and community members assigned to various tasks, including overseeing community finances, meeting the immediate needs of Maghain Aboth, and maintaining the cemetery.[61] Even before the war had ended, Fred Isaacs[62] and several others had formed a committee planning for post-war recovery, but when the war ended, all the men but Isaacs had left Singapore. Isaacs helped the community recover, and  worked with E. B Solomon[63] and another man to employ caretakers for the synagogue.[64]

In the poverty and destruction of the post-war period, the Jewish Welfare Association (later Jewish Welfare Board (JWB)) was founded by about half a dozen community members on June 27, 1946 to help the poor, and also aided those who wished to make Aliyah, or immigrate to Israel, but couldn’t afford it.[65] The JWB’s responsibilities grew over time to include:

“...maintaining the cemetery, running the synagogue, housing the 70 or 80 poorest Jewish citizens, maintaining their medical expenses and giving them $15-$20 a month to live on. The Board had to do all this with money from three poorly funded trusts - the Maghain Aboth Synagogue Trust, consisting of random small donations (traditionally $15-$20 a month) from community members; the tiny Cemetery Trust Fund, and the Jewish Properties Trust Fund, consisting of the $9,000 in rent collected each year on properties owned by the Jewish community.”[66]

 This was not enough to hire a rabbi or to meet the community’s needs.[67]

With the exodus of many Jews after the war, Maghain Aboth would have struggled without the Habonim, a youth group founded in South Africa and England that taught Hebrew, Jewish history and observance, and had scouting activities as well as singing, dancing, and games.[68] The movement was brought to Singapore by Olga Sayers, who had spent the war in Bombay, where she met and fell in love with Eddie Simon, a Habonim leader.[69] In Singapore, about eighty young people joined the movement, coming mostly from poor families.[70] They were 

“…almost the only people who faithfully attended Shabbat services after the war. In 1952, a rabbi visiting Maghain Aboth Saturday morning services said that without habonim members, the turnout would have been ‘pitiful.’”[71]

By April 1949, Singapore had been without a Jewish spiritual leader for eight years.[72] The last hazan, Baghdad-born Eliyahu Shalome, had died in 1941 before the war.[73] Immediately after the war, the community had struggled in vain to search for a rabbi for the poor and shrinking community.[74] Community members conducted services, but they had no one trained to prepare boys for their bar mitzvahs, perform marriages or circumcisions, or ritually slaughter animals.[75] The community received their first fully trained rabbi, Rabbi Jacob Shababo, in 1949.[76] Rabbi Shababo was from Egypt, where he had led a “difficult and tumultuous” life and had been arrested and tortured for being a Zionist, although he was non-political.[77] He was delighted when meeting with a visiting Jewish Welfare Board member traveling in Egypt to find out that “Singapore was a safe haven where he could do good work.”[78]

Rabbi Shababo arrived in Singapore in 1949, and would serve the community faithfully for the next twenty-four years until his death in 1973.[79] Every Shabbat, he traveled by rickshaw to Maghain Aboth, which was allowed by local custom, wearing his “white and gold rabbinical robes and a hat trimmed with gold thread.”[80] He was also the president of the Inter-Religious Association, which was composed of all the religious leaders of Singapore.[81] He was buried in the Thompson Road Cemetery, and when the cemetery was moved, his daughter arranged to have his remains reinterred in Israel.[82]

In 1965, Fred Isaacs was elected Jewish Welfare Board President.[83] He established a monthly fee for synagogue members and sold valuable property purchased in the community’s name by trustees in the 1890s and early 1900s next to the Thomson Road Cemetery for three million dollars.[84][85]  He directed money from the sale to the Jewish Properties Trust Fund, which allowed (162) the Jewish Welfare Board to combine the trusts to create the Singapore Jewish Charities Trust Fund and achieve stable finances for the community.[86] However, by the time this was achieved, the Jewish population had already drastically declined.[87] There were seven hundred Jews in Singapore after WWII, but only 250 individuals remained by the mid-1980s.[88] By 1990, there were only 180 members.[89]

As Singapore grew into a prosperous nation, however, more Jews began to migrate there.[90] Many were Reform or Conservative Ashkenazi Jews who wanted an alternative service to the Orthodox Sephardic ones at Maghain Aboth. Jacob Ballas[91] and Frank Benjamin[92], who became President and Vice President respectively of the JWB in 1989, worked to attract these immigrants to Singapore’s Jewish community by providing a “lively community center; social events; kosher food; a strong synagogue with an enthusiastic well-trained rabbi, hazan and youth leader, and innovative schools for the children that appealed to expatriates and permanent residents alike.”[93]  

In 1993, the JWB set out to search for a Sephardic Orthodox rabbi who could “also appeal to younger, less traditional and Ashkenazi expatriates.”[94] They found Rabbi Mordechai Abergel, the son of a Sephardic Chabad rabbi.[95] Abergel was born in Paris, raised in Brussels, and trained in the Chabad movement in the United States.[96] He was only twenty-six, and his wife Simcha was twenty-two.[97] They worked to both preserve and continue the community’s Orthodox Baghdadi tradition while welcoming religious Jews of other backgrounds.[98]

As of 2024, there are about 2,500 Jews living in Singapore.[99] Fewer than 200 are descendants of the original Baghdadi community[100], who still run the trusts and are heavily involved in community management. The rest are expats and immigrants.[101] Many attend Maghain Aboth services and are involved in Singapore’s Jewish community. 

On November 24, 2004, Maghain Aboth celebrated its 125th anniversary.[102] The celebration was attended by Mr S. R. Nathan, the President of Singapore at the time, as well as dozens of other national and international dignitaries.[103] Rabbi Abergel addressed the crowd with the promise that “this celebration…bears testimony to the vitality and growth of our congregation, and can only bode well for the future.”[104] There were a hundred people at the celebration, including the Israeli and American ambassadors, the Chairman of Singapore’s National Heritage Board, Singapore’s Ambassador-at-Large, and Singapore’s Minister of National Development.[105] Members of the Inter-Religious Organization also attended.[106] Bieder writes that 

“In celebrating Maghain Aboth, which was declared a National Monument in 1997, they were honouring the foresight of Singapore’s original Baghdadi Jewish community in creating an enduring foundation for their growing community. In 1878, that relatively isolated group of Arab[ic]-speaking Jewish men, many of them dressed in the robes, turbans and gabardine vestments of the Orient, had stood in that same sanctuary and proudly consecrated their imposing new synagogue. They had no way of knowing that more than a century later, the aptly named “Shield of Our Fathers” they were founding would stand fast, providing an enduring home for a changing community.”[107]

After the ceremony, President Nathan unveiled a commemorative plaque at the entrance to the synagogue with the date, the President’s name, and a gold-outlined shofar and Torah scroll.[108] Next to it is the matching plaque from Maghain Aboth’s hundred year anniversary.[109]

Maghain Aboth Today

            Maghain Aboth stands next to a modern mall with a Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) train stop. The Maghain Aboth Compound, which is also home to the Jacob Ballas Centre and a tashlich pool between the two buildings, is surrounded by sturdy walls with a security team office where guards check everybody who enters. 

In 2021, a man planning to attack Jews leaving the Maghain Aboth Synagogue compound was arrested by Singapore’s Internal Security Department.[110] They discovered his plans to stab three Jewish men and leave for Gaza to join Hamas, and nabbed him before he could carry out the attack.[111] Singapore’s government has a blanket zero-tolerance approach towards hate crimes and is committed to having a harmonious community.

 After the onset of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, entry to the compound became limited to those accompanied by a member of the community or to those with an invitation. Nevertheless, tours of Maghain Aboth can be booked through the Jewish Welfare Board website.[112]

The synagogue itself is a beautiful cream and white building, with a large white Magen David, or Star of David, visible on the facade from the street. Inside, red carpets lead to the Ark and the bimah, which are made of beautiful teak wood. The Singapore National Library Board entry on Maghain Aboth writes: 

“The synagogue, with its palladian arcades and pedestals and arched doorways, is a simple, symmetrical building designed in the Neoclassical architectural style. Three blue Stars of David, together with a Hebrew inscription of the name Maghain Aboth on the façade of this two-storey cream-coloured building, set it apart from others in the vicinity… From the front porch, a wide flight of steps leads up to the three wide doors at the main entrance. There are two separate entrances for women. Inside, the prayer hall features a high triple-volume ceiling, traditional columns, and rusticated walls that do not bear any decorations or images (Judaism expressly prohibits icons of god or the prophets). In the centre of the hall lies the bimah, a raised pulpit where prayers by the rabbi and readings from the Torah (“scrolls of the law”) take place during services. … Hanging before the [ohel] is the eternal lamp, a symbol of the eternal flame that burned in what was once the Temple of Jerusalem. Sometimes a menorah or “seven-branched candle stand” would also be placed here, as a symbol of the state of Israel.

In the past, gas lighting and oil lamps provided illumination during services. The oil lamps, which were merely wicks placed in glass bowls filled with oil, still hang suspended from steel rods today, mainly in remembrance of those who died in the past year. Electric lamps attached to the ceiling and columns now provide the needed lighting.”[113]

Written on the backs of the seats in the men’s section downstairs and on the railings of the women’s section upstairs are the names of donors, many of them recognizable figures in Singapore's Jewish history. On the walls upstairs are two frames with gold plaques on which are written the names of those who have passed. 

Maghain Aboth still holds a full array of services every week[114], which are attended by many members of the community. Rabbi Mordechai Abergel still leads the services as Singapore’s Chief Rabbi, and the synagogue is overseen by the JWB.[115]

It is hard to believe that Maghain Aboth was once surrounded by the Jewish mahallah. Now, besides the occasional Star of David on a building, there are few signs that many Jews ever lived in the neighborhood. And yet, Singapore’s Jewish community lives on. 

Contributions by Alana Bregman (alana@shanelani.com)
 

Singapore, Singapore

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