Restoring A Lost Jewish Heritage

WALK THE STREETS OF SHANGHAI and the Jewish legacy appears from unexpected corners. The majestic lines of the Peace Hotel, built by the powerful Sassoon family, grace the waterfront Bund. The Ezra House, formerly a resplendent private home on Avenue Joffre, is now a police station with armed guards. In the former Jewish ghetto of Hongkou, the partial word DELIKATESSE is still legible down the street from where the kosher butcher once stood.

And may stand again. The powerful merchants and traders fled during the early days of Mao's revolutionary regime. But now that Shanghai is regaining its old commercial prowess, a new generation of Jews is returning. Today's young lawyers and investment bankers may not be as committed to the city as their forebears--but they nonetheless are eager to dust off their heritage. Jewish charitable groups have financed centers for senior citizens and disabled children in Hongkou. Ahead of a visit by Hillary Clinton in June, Shanghai officials restored Ohel Rachel, a synagogue-turned-warehouse, to its original state. The renovation was praised by the First Lady as a ""good example of respect for religious differences.''

There is still a lot of work to do. Of seven synagogues that once graced the city, five have been torn down in the recent wave of real-estate development. A sixth was turned into a bookstore. Shanghai's Jews still must hold discreet religious services in hotels and private homes with visiting rabbis. They hope eventually to be allowed to worship in Ohel Rachel, though national leaders remain wary of adding Judaism to the roster of legal religions (Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam). ""There are new minorities'' to consider, says a Shanghai academic specializing in Jewish studies. ""If you say OK, Judaism is a new recognized religion, what about the Sikhs?''

The Jewish experience in Shanghai has always been complicated. In the 1800s Sephardic Jews arrived as traders via Baghdad and Bombay. Some amassed fortunes selling opium and, later, real estate, establishing their fame throughout Asia--the Kadoories, the Sassoons, the Hardoons. Russian Jews fleeing the pogroms arrived around the turn of the century. When the Nazi threat intensified in Germany during the late 1930s, Jews tried to flee but found doors shut in the United States, South America, even Cuba. So 25,000 European Jews ran instead to Shanghai.

Back then, no one asked for a passport, much less a visa, in China's biggest treaty port. ""You just stepped ashore,'' remembers former U.S. Treasury secretary Michael Blumenthal, who came to Shanghai as a teenager with his parents. The Blumenthals fled from Germany to Naples, where they boarded a Japanese ship called the Haruna Maru with other refugees. When the ship finally docked in Shanghai, Blumenthal entered a city steeped in chaos and corruption. Prostitutes roamed the streets, while boys and girls were offered up for sale by their destitute parents. Gambling was the vice of choice, with dog racing in the French Concession, horse racing in what is now People's Park and jai alai and mah-jongg elsewhere. Gangsters plagued the city, as did cholera, typhoid and smallpox. In all the turmoil, Jewish refugees went largely undisturbed. ""The Chinese weren't particularly in love with us, but we had no problems with them either,'' says Blumenthal, who is now director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

The Japanese, who first occupied parts of Shanghai in 1937, were another matter. When the Pacific war broke out in 1941, they allowed Russian Jews to continue working. But they confined the Sephardic Jews, mostly British nationals, as prisoners of war. The ""stateless'' European refugees were herded into a ghetto in Hongkou. ""We Chinese could endure poverty,'' says Wang Faliang, 78, who has lived in Hongkou his entire life. ""But before they came here, many of the refugees were rich. They suffered a lot.''