Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia: Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Harbin, Shanghai, Rangoon, and Surabaya

256 Pages·2015·3.029 MB·English

by  Jonathan Goldstein

Jonathan Goldstein
Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia
New Perspectives on
Modern Jewish History
Edited by Cornelia Wilhelm
Volume 6
Jonathan Goldstein
Jewish Identities
in East and
Southeast Asia
Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Harbin, Shanghai,
Rangoon, and Surabaya
ISBN 978-3-11-035069-2
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-035150-7
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039546-4
ISSN 2192-9645
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A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Typesetting: Dr. Rainer Ostermann, München
Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck
♾ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
I dedicate this book to Taiwan’s Jewish community and to my colleagues
at Academia Sinica (中央研究院), who provided generous hospitality and
unrivalled scholarly resources during my 2013 sabbatical in Taipei.

Acknowledgments
For research assistance, the author would like to thank Rabbi Mordechai Abergel,
Frank Benjamin, Felice Isaacs, Jean Gray Marshall, Saul Mashaal, and Victor
Sassoon, all of Singapore; Rabbi Eliyahu Azaria and Jewish community adminis-
trators John Kater and Lee Blumenthal, all of Manila; Rabbi Shlomo Tabib, Prof.
Thomas Benda of National Yang Ming University, Representative Simona Halp-
erin, Donald H. Shapiro, and Anna Shen, all of Taipei; Rabbi Ezekiel Musleah of
Philadelphia, formerly of Calcutta; Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, Great Neck, New York;
Former Israeli Prime Minister and Mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert and his broth-
ers Amram and Yosef; Baroness Ruth Deech, Robert Chard, Catherine Hartley,
Jonathan Katz, Anne Mullen, Derek Penslar, David Smith, and Sally Speirs, of St.
Anne’s College, Rana Mitter of St. Cross College, Trevor M. Langrish of the Bodle-
ian Chinese Studies Library, and Todd Endelman of the Centre for Hebrew and
Jewish Studies, all of Oxford University; Prof. Arthur S. Abramson, Emeritus of
the University of Connecticut, Charles Berlin, Lee M. Friedman Bibliographer in
Judaica & Head, Judaica Division, Harvard College Library; Chiang Su-ling, sec-
retary of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei; Prof. Dan Ben-
Canaan, Heilongjiang University, Harbin; the late Prof. Peter (“Zaika”) Berton,
emeritus of the University of Southern California; the late Prof. Boris Bressler,
emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley and archivist of the Igud Yotzei
Sin, Tel Aviv; Bernardita Churchill, University of the Philippines (ret.) and Presi-
dent, Philippine National Historical Society; Malcolm Churchill, U.S. Department
of State (ret.); Prof. Jacob Citrin, University of California at Berkeley; Prof. Parkes
Coble, University of Nebraska; Ferdinand Pantas Flores, Third Secretary and Vice
Consul, Philippine Embassy, Tel Aviv; University System of Georgia colleagues
Prof. John Garver, Rolanda Farmer, Laurence Rose, and Walter Todd; Prof. Tom
Grunfeld, Empire State College, New York City; the late Leonfried (“Freddy”)
Heymann, Israel Railways, Haifa; Librarian Mel Johnson and computer tech-
nicians Andrei Strukov and Nate Swan, all of the University of Maine; the late
Teddy Kaufman of the Igud Yotzei Sin (Association of Former Jewish Residents
of China/Israel-China Friendship Association), Tel Aviv; Isi J. Leibler, Jerusalem,
formerly of Melbourne, Australia; Prof. Steven I. Levine, University of Montana;
Dennis A. Leventhal of Chestertown, Maryland, formerly of Hong Kong; Yana
(also Ya’acov, Yaacov, and Jack) Liberman, San Diego, Calif., formerly of Harbin,
Pyongyang, Shanghai, Israel, Tokyo, and Taipei; Dr. Raymond Lum, emeritus of
the Harvard-Yenching Institute Library; Prof. Maruyama Naoki, emeritus of Meiji
Gakuin University, Tokyo; Prof. Irene Eber (emerita) and Dr. Meron Medzini of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Prof. Henrietta Mondry of the University of
Canterbury, New Zealand; Teddy Piatsunovitch, member of the Presidium of the
VIII   Acknowledgments
Igud Yotzei Sin, Tel Aviv; Prof. Murray (Moshe) Rosman, of Bar Ian University,
Ramat Gan, Israel; Prof. Suzanne Rutland of the University of Sydney, Australia;
Isaac Shapiro, Of Counsel to the New York City law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom; Prof. Yitzhak Shichor of Haifa University and of the Truman
Insititute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Amira Stern of the Jabotinsky Insti-
tute, Tel Aviv; Prof. Jean Gelman Taylor, emerita of the University of New South
Wales; Prof. Rivka Ulmer of Bucknell University; R. Stevenson Upton of Concord,
New Hampshire; Prof. Gerhard Weinberg, emeritus of the University of North Car-
olina; Max Weissler of Hod Hasharon, Israel, formerly of Berlin and Manila; Kath-
arina Wenzel-Teuber and Fr. Zbigniew Wesolowski of the China-Zentrum e.V. and
the Monumenta Serica Institute, both in Sankt Augustin, Germany; and Ambas-
sador Moshe Yegar, emeritus of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the
Truman Institute, Jerusalem. Final responsibility is, of course, the author’s alone.
Jonathan Goldstein
Taipei
March 20, 2013
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments   VII
List of Illustrations   XII
A Note on Romanization and Spelling   1
1 Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia: Common Denominators and
Dissimilarities   3
2 Setting a Standard for Jewish Identity in East and
Southeast Asia: Singapore’s Baghdadi Community
from 1795 to 2015   14
The Economic Foundation of Singapore’s Baghdadi
Community   17
Memory and Transnational Identity Across the Indian Ocean   20
Jews and the Japanese Occupation   26
Postwar Recovery and Rebuilding   30
3 Between Spain, the United States, Japan, and Israel: Manila’s Multicultural
“Bagel Boys” in Historical Perspective   45
Manila Jews’ Communal Origins and Commercial Activity   46
Jewish Institutional Stagnation in Manila   47
The Philippines’s Selective Embrace of Holocaust Refugees   49
Jewish Civilians under Japanese Occupation   56
Allied Military Personnel in the Philippines in World War II   69
The Philippine Jewish Community’s Embrace of Zionism and Assistance
to the State of Israel   74
Enter the Bagel Boys   76
Conclusion   80
4 Taipei: An Oasis of Tranquility for Americans, Europeans,
and Israelis   82
Taiwan in Historical Context   82
The Origins of Taiwan’s Transient Jewish Community   83
Enter Ephraim Einhorn, the “Maggid of Taipei”   91
How Taipei Copes with the Necessities of Jewish Life   97
Conclusion   101
X   Table of Contents
5 Between Russia, China, Japan, and Israel: The Transnational Identity of
Harbin’s Jews, 1899–2015, with Special Reference to the Ehud Olmert
Family   103
The Nature and Scale of the Harbin Jewish Community   104
The Olmert Family as a Case Study of Transnational Jewish Identity
in Harbin   113
Table of Contents
Conclusion: Harbin Jews’ Transnational Identity   123
6 Shanghai as Microcosm and Mosaic of Eurasian Jewish Identities,
1850–1960   129
Introduction   130
The Commercial Context   134
Baghdadi Jews and the Transfer of Commerce from Canton to Shanghai   137
Russian Jews   141
Shanghai as a Destination for Central European Jews   147
Central European Cultural Activity in Shanghai   155
Assimilation into Chinese Society: An Exception to the Norm   158
Clandestine Political Activity in Shanghai   160
Exodus to Germany, Austria, and the USSR   163
Shanghai’s Multiethnic Zionism and the Exodus to Israel   165
The Legacy of the Shanghai Jewish Experience   169
7 Empire, Nationalism, and Dissolution: Rangoon and Surabaya,
1752–2015   177
Rangoon (Yangon)   178
Surabaya   182
8 Enduring Jewish Identities and Legacies Across the Landscape of East
and Southeast Asia   194
Abbreviations and Definitions   200
Bibliography   206
Interviews   206
Archival Collections   208
Printed Works including Books and Articles   209
Websites   231
Films   231