149
A PEEK BACKWARDS INTO
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF SHANGHAI*
(This paper is dedicated to the memory of the late Mr Hans Diestel)
WEI PEH TI
Introduction
Jewish traders were among the first foreigners to come to work and live in Shanghai when the port was first opened to foreign trade in November 1843. Despite the important role a number of these Jewish residents played in Shanghai as well as in international commerce at that time and for a century to follow, scholars are just beginning to focus their attention on this community. David Kranzler's dissertation at Yeshiva University in New York on the Jewish refugees from Europe who arrived at Shanghai after 1938, Japanese, Nazis and Jews: the Jewish Refugee Community at Shanghai, is the only generally known work that has been published in English.1 Vilhelm Meyer was a Danish Jew who started a small trading house in Shanghai importing goods from his native Denmark at the beginning of the century, and who eventually sold the company, by then a commercial and industrial conglomerate of 1,800 employees, to General Electric in 1935. His life and work is being researched by his grandson, Christopher Bo Bramsen.2 Bramsen, however, is writing a personal biography of his grandfather, emphasizing his work in Shanghai as a Dane, not a treatise on a Jewish individual in Shanghai. On the other hand, two doctoral dissertations on the Sephardic community are being undertaken at this time, one at the London School of Economics, and one at the University of London.
*The suggestion for a paper on the Jewish community in Shanghai was first made in 1987 by Dr Jewish Diestel and Mrs Paula Sandfelder when the Jewish Historical Society and the Jewish Recreation Club of Hong Kong invited me to give the first Ezekiel Abraham Memorial Lecture. Subsequently, I have given similar talks to the student body of the Chapin School and at Temple Emmanuel in New York City, as well as to Jewish groups on Long Island. I am grateful to my many friends for showing interest in the subject, and am especially flattered to be consulted by otherwise intelligent scholars who wish to work on the subject of the Shanghai Jews seriously. I would like to thank the Jewish Library in Hong Kong for letting me consult their collections; my appreciation also goes to the Rev Carl Smith for generously sharing his numerous index cards and his encyclopaedic knowledge.
149
A PEEK BACKWARDS INTO
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF SHANGHAI*
(This paper is dedicated to the memory of the late Mr Hans Diestel)
WEI PEH TI
Introduction
Jewish traders were among the first foreigners to come to work and live in Shanghai when the port was first opened to foreign trade in November 1843. Despite the important role a number of these Jewish residents played in Shanghai as well as in international commerce at that time and for a century to follow, scholars are just begining to focus their attention on this community. David Kranzler's dissertation at Yeshiva University in New York on the Jewish refugees from Europe who arrived at Shanghai after 1938, Japanese, Nazis and Jews: the Jewish Refugee Community at Shanghai, is the only generally known work that has been published in English.' Vilhelm Meyer was a Danish Jew who started a small trading house in Shanghai importing goods from his native Denmark at the beginning of the century, and who eventually sold the company, by then a commercial and industrial conglomerate of 1,800 employees, to General Electric in 1935. His life and work is being researched by his grandson, Christopher Bo Bramsen.2 Bramsen, however, is writing a personal biography of his grandfather, emphasizing his work in Shanghai as a Dane, not a treatise on a Jewish individual in Shanghai. On the other hand, two doctoral dissertations on the Sephardic community are being undertaken at this time, one at the London School of Economics, and one at the University of London.
*The suggestion for a paper on the Jewish community in Shanghai was first made m 1987 by Dr Jewish Diestel and Mrs Paula Sandfelder when the Jewish Historical Society and the Jewish Recreation Club of Hong Kong invited me to give the first Ezekiel Abraham Memorial Lecture. Subsequently, I have given similar talks to the student body of the Chapin School and at Temple Emmanuel in New York City, as well as to Jewish groups on Long Island. I am grateful to my many friends for showing interest in the subject, and am especially flattered to be consulted by otherwise intelligent scholars who wish to work on the subject of the Shanghai Jews seriously I would like to thank the Jewish Library in Hong Kong for letting me consult their collections my appreciation also goes to the Rev Carl Smith for generously sharing his numerous index cards and his encyclopaedic knowledge
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