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Adis Lodge, Singapore, Singapore

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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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5]

Following the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869, Jews from various communities worldwide moved to Singapore, diversifying the community.[6] 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.[7] 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.[8] Rich Jews lived in mansions around the island and distanced themselves from their indigent brethren.[9] While Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews prayed together at the Maghain Aboth synagogue, they tended not to socialize with each other.[10]

The rifts in the Jewish community continued to grow until shattered by World War II.[11] Singaporeans initially felt the British would protect them, but Japan conquered the island on February 15, 1942.[12] Many Jewish women and children left right before the Japanese occupied, and those who stayed spent the war under Japanese occupation.[13] 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.[14] 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.[15] However, although several Jews were randomly arrested, tortured, and killed during the occupation, they were not murdered en masse like their Chinese neighbors.[16] 

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.[17] The Japanese surrendered to the Allies on August 15, 1945, and the British reoccupation began on September 5, 1945.[18] The British colonial government was unable to house Singaporean residents or provide medical supplies after the war, and overcrowding, homelessness, and disease were prevalent.[19] 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.[20]

In the aftermath of the war, poverty and destruction were rampant.[21] 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.[22]

By the 1960s, Singapore's Jewish population numbered about 500 individuals.[23] 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.[24] 

There were seven hundred Jews in Singapore after WWII, but only about 250 individuals remained by the mid-1980s.[25] 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.[26]

Adis Lodge History

Nassim Nassim Adis was born in 1857 to a Calcutta merchant in Howrah, India.[27] He was a trained barrister who, after failed attempts at running a stockbroking business in Calcutta and Hong Kong, became a successful businessman in Singapore.[28] After arriving in Singapore in 1893, he and his firm, Adis and Ezekiel, made “a fortune trading stocks and selling real estate.”[29] Adis was also a Freemason, and the first Jew to be made “Master of the Lodge of St. Andrew’s in the Far East,” a Freemason lodge in Singapore.[30]

With his wealth, he built a family home, Adis Lodge, atop Mount Sophia.[31] This was part of a pattern at the turn of the century: wealthy Jews bought or built homes inspired by British public buildings.[32] These were normally built outside of Singapore’s city center, as the wealthy Jews separated themselves from Jews of lower classes and instead lived among wealthy Singaporeans and the British.[33] 

Adis Lodge stood out, even among the other elaborate Singaporean mansions of the time.[34] It was called “one of the most magnificent mansions east of Suez.”[35] It had six bedrooms, each with a bath and dressing room with hot and cold water.[36] Adis’s initials, NNA, adorned the iron railings and marble floors of the mansions for guests to admire.[37] Adis and his wife hosted many parties there, but only five years after building the Lodge, they decided to sell it to Eu Tong Sen, the millionaire “King of Tin.”[38][39] Eu demolished it and built his own mansion, Eu Villa, on the same site in 1915.[40] The road leading to the site of Adis Lodge is called Adis Road today.[41]

Adis went on to buy the British Neoclassical style[42] Grand Hotel de L’Europe in 1905, and reopened it after completing renovations in 1907.[43] The hotel was famous for its food and was known as one of the best hotels in Asia.[44] In 1910, the Grand Hotel de l’Europe, Limited was registered as a company, and by 1913 the hotel had been taken over by Europe Hotel Limited and remained owned by the company until the hotel encountered financial difficulties and closed in 1932.[45] It was demolished in 1934 to build service flats, but the land was bought by the British colonial government in 1935, which built a Supreme Court building on the land in 1939.[46] The new Singapore Supreme Court building, opened in 2006, now stands behind where the original hotel stood.[47]

Contributions by Alana Bregman (alana@shanelani.com)

Singapore, Singapore

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