[
    {
        "id": 212863,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 172,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "157\n\nsurviving members of the Ezra family still enjoy a favoured position in the Jewish community in Hong Kong.\n\nNevertheless, individual members of the family (or families, since there were several separate groups of Ezras in Shanghai) attracted notoriety from time to time. In 1918, criminal proceedings were instituted against Joseph Ezra and Ellis Isaac Ezra for using the launch owned by the Standard Oil Company without authorization. The same year, Joseph Ezra was summoned to court for assaulting a Mr Gordious Nielson, a Dane, who was the proprietor of the Shanghai Gazette, which had printed something that Joseph Ezra did not like. The South China Morning Post recorded a 1933 case whereby two men named Ezra, Judah and Isaac, were brought to court in San Francisco for smuggling narcotics. By 1933, the International Convention against opium had long since been signed.\n\n16\n\nNissim Ezra Benjamin Ezra, better known as N.E.B. Ezra, founded and edited the Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper, Israel's Messenger from 1909 to 1935. This paper became the official organ of the Shanghai Zionist Association, taking issue with Sir Victor Sassoon and other Sephardic Jews in Shanghai over the issue of Zionism. The paper supported the Jewish National Fund in China. In 1921 the fund received a donation of 21,000 pounds sterling from a single donor in Shanghai. Since it was pro-Japanese, Chinese sources speculated that the Japanese had succeeded in buying the paper's editorial policy to favour Japanese imperial ambitions in Asia.\n\nSilas Hardoon\n\nSilas Hardoon alone among the Shanghai Jewry was not spoken of as a family. To the Chinese he was the most interesting Jew in Shanghai. There is so much information on him that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Hardoon was a colourful as well as important personality. He was also very, very wealthy. He was elected to the Municipal Council of the International Settlement as well as the Conseil Municipal of the French Concession. Chinese tradition has it that the British made this Jewish parvenu pay for the honour of being a municipal councillor by shouldering the expenses of paving Nanking Road. Hardoon married a Chinese woman reputed to be of brothel origin, by Jewish and Buddhist rites. They adopted a number of Chinese and Eurasian children, rumoured to be from a dozen to twenty. The Chinese",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212865,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 174,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "159\n\nfor instance, he organized the Shanghai Jewish Youth Association School, or the Kadoorie School, in Hongkew for refugee children. Horace Kadoorie is also active in youth affairs.\n\nReligious Life\n\nIn the 1920s there were two synagogues in Shanghai: Ohel Rachel and Beth Aharon.\n\nOhel Rachel was successor to Beth El, built by Sir Jacob Sassoon. The congregation Beth El had been in existence since 2 August, 1878, although they had used rented space for worship until 1917. Rabbi W Hirsch did not sign up for a second term reputedly because he did not like the wealthy. No other rabbi was appointed. The principal of the Shanghai Jewish School, Mendel Brown, served as rabbi unofficially.\n\n24\n\nIn 1900, a group which thought that Beth El was too relaxed about observation of orthodox traditions left Beth El and organized Sheerith Israel. The new congregation included some of the most illustrious names in Shanghai Abraham, A.E. Moses, and M.J. Isaac, for instance. It built the Beth Aharon Synagogue on Seymour Road, and which was later moved to Museum Road downtown, with funds contributed mostly by Hardoon. The synagogue included space for a Hebrew school (Talmud Torah) as well as a ritualarium (mikveh). 25\n\nA third congregation came into being when Shanghai was inundated by Jewish refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe during the late 1930s. This was Ohel Moshe in Hongkew, built in 1941, architecturally a twin of the Jewish synagogue in Hong Kong. It boasted a capacity for 1,000 worshippers at a time.\n\nThe Jewish cemetery built in 1862 on Mohawk Road was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution a century later.\n\nEducational, Social, and Charitable Institutions\n\nNewspapers\n\nA bibliography of the Jewish Press in China gives six Jewish publications in Shanghai. One of these newspapers, Israel's Messenger,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
        "rank": 0
    }
]