RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 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. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 161 I have barely scratched the surface in this overview, but it gives the reader an idea of the vibrant state of the Jewish Community in Shanghai at its peak. Jewish Vestiges in Shanghai in the 1980s There were still some physical remains of the Jewish heritage in Shanghai visible during the 1980s. The Cathay Hotel, also known as Sassoon House, at the junction of the Bund and Nanking Road, built by the Sassoon interests, still exists today (October 1991) as a hotel, but has been renamed the Peace Hotel. Its ballroom, venue of many elegant tea dances in the hotel's heyday, is now a restaurant serving Western food. The Ohel Moshe Synagogue in Hongkew is now the isolation ward of the Shanghai Mental Hospital. A photograph taken in 1984 of the Beth Aharon Synagogue shows the dome of the house of worship intact but the Star of David covered by a coat of paint. The US government was asked to intercede to have this synagogue building preserved, but an article by Sam and Mona Kaplan in the Vancouver Bulletin reports that the building has been razed by a bulldozer.28 The Jewish Cemetery was demolished during the Cultural Revolution, but its chapel, as of September 1983, still stood, but as a tea house. Hardoon's Aili Garden became the Shanghai Agricultural Exhibition Hall. Kadoorie's Marble Hall has been transformed into the Children's Palace. NOTES 2 New York Yeshiva University Press, 1976 On a recent trip to Shanghai in September 1991 Mr Bramsen found that his grandfather's home had been razed only the year before There are still a number of former Jewish residents of Shanghai outside China, including Hong Kong. They are generous in sharing their memories, but they are advancing in years and more than a few of them are getting tired of being asked to recite the same things over and again. A PBS radio programme in Los Angeles featured a number of former residents of Shanghai recalling their life, but these were mostly German Jews who were there from the late 1930s to the early 1950s Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians Elites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong Hong Kong, Oxford, New York Oxford University Press. 1985 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 205 Kendall, Elizabeth Kimball, A Wayfarer in China, Boston New York Houghton Mifflin, 1913 Kerby, Philip, Beyond the Bund, New York Payson Clarke, 1927 Knox, Thomas Wallace (1835-1896), Overland Through Asia. Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life, Chicago FS gilman, etc, 1871 The Boy Travellers in the Far East Part just. Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Japan and China etc, New York and London Harper, 1898 Kranzler, David H, Japanese, Nazis and Jews. 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Oxford University Press) Levy, Howard Seymour, Chinese Foot Binding, London Neville Spearman, 1970 Lewisohn, William, China's Wild West A Road Trip of 5,000 Miles in a Motor Car, Shanghai North China Daily News and Herald, 1937 Leys, Simon, Chinese Shadows, London Penguin, 1974 Li, Anthony C, The History of Privately Controlled Higher Education in the Republic of China, Washington DC Catholic University of America Press, 1954, Westport, Conn Greenwood Press reprint, 1977 Liddell, T Hodgson (B1860), China Its Marvel and Mystery, London Allen, 1909 Lin-ch'ung (1791-1846), A Wild Swan's Frank the Havels of a Mandarin, translated by TC Lai, Hong Kong, 1978 Lau, Alicia Helen Neva (Bewicke) (d. 1926), My Diary in a Chinese Farm, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh, 1892 74pp - The Land of Blue Gown, London Unwin, 1902 + AMAMT 11 41 DL/ ================================================================================