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Original Synagogue, Singapore, Singapore

Description

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 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.[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]

The Original Synagogue

On June 4, 1841, six Baghdadi Jewish merchants from Calcutta who had decided to reside in Singapore permanently submitted an official letter to the Governor of the Straits Settlements,[28] Honourable George Bonham, petitioning the colonial government for permission to lease two plots of land.[29] One of these would be used for a synagogue, the other for a cemetery.[30] These men had likely been trading in Singapore for a while and may have been part of the nine Jews recorded on Singapore’s 1830 census.[31] The petition marks the official beginning of the Jewish community in Singapore.[32] 

On September 1, 1841, less than three months later, the colonial government passed the Jewish Synagogue Act.[33] This allowed the men to lease property for the synagogue at “a nominal rent described as ‘peppercorn rent.’”[34] The act also named three of the Jewish community’s founding fathers - Joseph Dwek Cohen, Nassim Joseph Ezra, and Ezra Ezekiel - or their successors as trustees of the synagogue, with the only proviso that the land be returned to the government if used for any other purpose than “divine worship.”[35]

The synagogue was built in Boat Quay, which Joan Bieder, author of The Jews of Singapore, describes as

"…a commercial district filled with godowns - warehouses - that served as both homes and businesses to the early Jewish traders as well as to Chinese merchants. The synagogue, which a Jewish visitor described in 1854 simply as ‘just a shop house that they use’ was located on the small downtown road in Singapore that is still called Synagogue Street."[36]

In 1841, the Jewish community in Singapore was just large enough to hold a minyan.[37] The 1841 Singapore census showed that 22 Jews–eighteen men and four women–lived in the colony.[38] The synagogue could hold between thirty and forty men, but did not have a women’s section for women to pray.[39] There was also no mikvah.[40] This may have been because it was not expected that many Baghdadi Jewish women from India or Iraq would join the community in Singapore in its early days.[41] 

The land for the cemetery was acquired on October 9, 1841, on a ninety-nine year lease.[42]

As the Jewish traders in Singapore flourished, more shochets (kosher butchers), teachers, and women moved to join them.[43] They also inspired other Jewish traders to seek success in Singapore, and the Jewish community grew steadily.[44] By 1849, the community numbered fifty-seven people: thirty men and twenty-seven women.[45] With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Jewish immigration to Singapore intensified.[46]

As business prospered in the 1870s, many of the original Jewish merchants became wealthy enough to move away from Boat Quay and the commercial center in town.[47] Additionally, two of the original Trustees had died, and one had moved away.[48] The synagogue was not being utilized like before.[49] Two individuals, the first community patriarch, Abraham Solomon,[50] and a successful opium trader, Joshua Rafael Joshua, decided to build a new, proper synagogue for the growing community.[51]   Along with Joshua’s nephew Manasseh Meyer, who had just moved to Singapore, they received permission from Singapore’s Attorney General Thomas Braddell to sell the old synagogue and buy land for a new one.[52]  This new synagogue was named Maghain Aboth, and was completed on March 29, 1878.[53] 

Today the original “shophouse” synagogue no longer exists, but the road on which it once stood, in the bustling Central Business District (CBD) is named Synagogue Street in its memory.[54]

Contributions by Alana Bregman (alana@shanelani.com)
 

Singapore, Singapore

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