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Belle Vue, 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]

Following the Suez Canal’s opening in 1869, Jews from various communities worldwide moved to Singapore, diversifying the community.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] Rich Jews lived in mansions around the island and distanced themselves from their indigent brethren.[8] While Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews prayed together at the Maghain Aboth synagogue, they tended not to socialize with each other.[9]

The rifts in the Jewish community continued to grow until shattered by World War II.[10] Singaporeans initially felt the British would protect them, but Japan conquered the island on February 15, 1942.[11] Many Jewish women and children left right before the Japanese occupied, and those who stayed spent the war under Japanese occupation.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14] However, although several Jews were randomly arrested, tortured, and killed during the occupation, they were not murdered en masse like their Chinese neighbors.[15] 

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

In the aftermath of the war, poverty and destruction were rampant.[20] 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.[21]

By the 1960s, Singapore's Jewish population numbered about 500 individuals.[22] 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.[23] 

There were seven hundred Jews in Singapore after WWII, but only about 250 individuals remained by the mid-1980s.[24] 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.[25]

 

A Brief Biography of Sir Manasseh Meyer

 

Sir Manasseh Meyer was born in Baghdad in 1843 and was raised in Calcutta.[26] He attended St. Joseph’s Institution, a Catholic boys’ school,[27] in Singapore from the age of fifteen[28], where he stayed with his uncle Joshua Rafael Joshua, a successful opium trader and trustee of the original synagogue of Singapore.[29] Meyer returned to Calcutta, where his uncle had business connections, after graduating from St. Joseph’s in 1864 to study Hebrew and learn his uncle’s business.[30] 

After spending some years working in business among the Baghdadi Jewish community in Rangoon, Meyer returned to Singapore at the age of thirty.[31] He established Meyer Brothers, a “diversified import and export firm that grew into the most successful Singapore-based Jewish company involved in the opium or ‘India’ trade.”[32] His brother Reuben joined the firm in Singapore, while his brother Elias headed the Calcutta branch.[33]

Meyer used his “spectacular profits” to buy real estate and build “magnificent” buildings,[34] and would become known as the “richest Jew in the Far East.”[35] He also grew into a community patriarch, dominating and shaping the identity of Singapore’s Jewish community for sixty years.[36] He is estimated to have owned more properties in Singapore than any other single person, perhaps even owning more than half the island’s real estate.[37] He bought most of his properties between 1885 and 1892.[38] His personal residences were the “crown jewels” of his real estate holdings.[39] 

Meyer maintained his Baghdadi Jewish identity in many ways. He financed publications of the most renowned Baghdadi hakham, or rabbi, of his time, Yosef Hayyim, to be distributed to Baghdadi Jewish communities throughout the Baghdadi Jewish Diaspora, and he maintained a personal relationship with him.[40] 

Visitors on fundraising missions for the Jewish communities of Ottoman and later Mandatory Palestine were always welcomed and received “generous contributions” from Meyer, who eventually helped found and became the president of the Singapore Zionist Society in the early 1920s.[41] Meyer also took on the responsibility of providing Jewish education to boys whose families could not afford it by building the Talmud Torah Hebrew School, situated behind Maghain Aboth Synagogue, and ensuring its continuation by generously funding the Sir Manasseh Meyer Talmud Torah Trust.[42]

His philanthropy was not limited to Jewish causes.[43] He donated generously to his former school, St. Joseph’s Institution, and was one of the four largest contributors to Raffles College, built in the neighborhood of Bukit Timah in 1919 to celebrate the British colony’s centennial.[44] He contributed 150,000 Singapore dollars[45] to Raffles College, which was used to build the Manasseh Meyer Science School.[46] The building still stands today and is a designated national monument on the Bukit Timah campus of the National University of Singapore (NUS).[47] Meyer was knighted in 1929 for his public service by King George V (r. 1910-1936).[48]

 

Belle Vue History

 

In 1890, Meyer bought Killiney House, one of the finest homes in Singapore, for use as his primary residence.[49] Situated on Oxley Rise, the mansion had previously been part of a 173-acre plantation that belonged to British pioneer and surgeon Dr. Thomas Oxley.[50] The plantation once had four thousand nutmeg trees that had died by blight.[51] Oxley left Singapore in 1857, and his estate was subdivided.[52]

 Killiney House was “perched atop a gently sloping hill that allowed unobstructed views of the city and the sea,” so Meyer renamed it “Belle Vue.”[53] Upon buying it, Meyer turned it into a “palatial white mansion, adding a second wing that featured marble floors, a ballroom, and reception rooms.”[54] Belle Vue also had stables and dovecotes, and tropical gardens filled with “all kinds of colourful flowers including purple, red, orange and yellow bougainvillea.”[55]

In 1905, Meyer built a private synagogue, Chesed-El, next to Belle Vue.[56] A narrow stone staircase led down from Belle Vue to the synagogue.[57] Meyer kept his own poultry yard and cowshed on the Belle Vue property and employed a shochet to slaughter the livestock according to Jewish law.[58] He also employed a Baghdadi chef who maintained a kosher kitchen.[59]

Meyer was a great host and philanthropist, and he entertained people often.[60] Belle Vue became a common place for community events.[61] Every year for Sukkot, he would decorate Belle Vue’s open pavilion with “palms and coconut leaves hung with fruits, flowers and twinkling lights.”[62] Whenever Jewish dignitaries from around the world visited Singapore, Meyer would welcome them at Belle Vue and invite community members and leaders of all religions to meet them.[63]

When Albert Einstein visited Singapore in November 1922 to raise money for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he was welcomed by Meyer and other wealthy members of the Jewish community.[64] Although Einstein stayed at the home of German Jew Alfred Montor rather than at Belle Vue, Meyer hosted a reception for him at Belle Vue, which was attended by two hundred people of “all races and creeds,” including Singapore’s Anglican Bishop.[65] Meyer alone donated 500 pounds to the Hebrew University - a large amount of money at the time.[66]

After Meyer died in July 1930, his daughter Moselle Nissim continued to live in Belle Vue.[67] All her life, Belle Vue was “always open to visitors,” and for Shabbat dinners she “routinely had 20 or 30 guests.”[68] In 1929, as the Great Depression was hitting Singapore, Nissim started the Jewish Women’s League, which provided food, shelter, and health care to poor Jews.[69] The League distributed “nourishing and high-energy foods'' to needy families, provided free medical service and rent, and even paid water and electricity bills for the poorest members of the community.[70] In addition to supporting her local community, Nissim donated to the Zionist cause while also supporting non-Jewish charities.[71]

The Belle Vue mansion and Chesed-El were later occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and were used as Buddhist temples.[72] After the war, “Nissim’s first job was to restore Belle Vue, which was dirty but not seriously damaged, and to repair the Chesed-El Synagogue.”[73] She also opened Belle Vue to Jewish servicemen in the British Army, Air Force, and Navy on Friday nights for Shabbat.[74] After restoring Belle Vue, Nissim once again opened her home to visiting fundraisers and for community celebrations and events.[75] She hosted Shabbat dinners, Passover seders, Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot open houses, and Purim parties which are all fondly remembered by community members.[76] When the community youth group, The Menorah Club, was founded in the early 1950s, Nissim let them use the grounds of Belle Vue for their parties and plays, and made sure to take part in almost all the major Jewish celebrations they sponsored.[77]

Moselle Nissim died in 1975 at the age of 92.[78] She was well loved by the community and her funeral was attended by hundreds.[79] Although she and her husband were childless, she ended up raising three orphans and loved children.[80] After her husband’s death, she pledged money in 1929 to build a school in his memory in British Mandatory Palestine.[81]

Belle Vue was demolished in the 1980s to make way for an apartment complex that bears its name, but the steep stone staircase that once led from the mansion down to the back of Chesed-El still existed as of 2007.[82]

 

Contributions by Alana Bregman (alana@shanelani.com)

Singapore, Singapore

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