Patrick Comerford
During my 36-hour visit to Singapore last week, I took time to search for the synagogues of Singapore – and the cathedrals, churches, mosques, shrines, pagodas and temples.
Today there are two synagogues in Singapore – the Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street and Chesed-El Synagogue on Oxley Road. The Maghain Aboth Synagogue (‘Shield of our Fathers’) is the oldest synagogue in Singapore and in South-East Asia. It was built in 1878, but its history dates back over 200 years to the early 19th century.
When the British East India Company established Singapore as a trading post in 1819, the trading communities that began to arrive and settle on the island included the Jewish community.
The first Jewish immigrants to Singapore were Jewish merchants of Baghdadi origin, who were trading between the then-British ports of Calcutta and Singapore. The migration of Baghdadi Jews began in the 18th and 19th centuries and was at its peak in 1817 due to the rule of the Ottoman Governor of Baghdad, Dawud Pasha, who persecuted Jews during his 15-year rule.
The first Baghdadi Jews in Singapore were Mizrahi or Sephardic merchants and traders, mainly from present-day Iraq and Iran. They spoke Arabic and after arriving in Singapore they adopted the Malay language, then the main language in Singapore.
At first there was only a handful of Jews in Singapore. The early Jewish settlers first lived at Boat Quay, and moved later to North Bridge Road, Dhoby Ghaut, Mount Sophia and the Rochor vicinity. These early Jews also built their own cemetery in Singapore in the mid-19th century, the Old Cemetery behind the Fort Canning.
The British colonial government gave three Jews – Joseph Dwek Cohen, Nassim Joseph Ezra and Ezra Ezekiel – a lease in 1841 to build a synagogue in a small, two-storey shophouse near Boat Quay. The synagogue gave its name to Synagogue Street.
Synagogue Street was in the first Jewish quarter in Singapore, bordered by Wilkie Road, Mount Sophia Road, Bras Basah Road and Middle Road, which the Jewish community called mahallah, meaning ‘place’ in Arabic.
It was the gathering place of worship for the Jewish community in Singapore, who had a minhag that allowed for travelling to synagogue on Shabbat via rickshaws.
The first synagogue in a shophouse on Synagogue Street housed a congregation of 40. By 1858, the Jewish population of Singapore had grown to almost 20 families. Most of these Sephardi or Oriental Jews were born in India and traced their ancestries back to Baghdad.
Another group of Jews – the Ashkenazi Jews – arrived much later from Germany and other parts of Europe. They largely too engaged in trading and mercantile activities, but associated primarily with the Europeans and often distanced themselves from the Sephardi Jews in Singapore.
The synagogue on Synagogue Street continued to serve the Jewish community in Singapore until the 1870s. But its capacity was limited and the fast-growing Jewish community needed a larger building.
Jewish community leaders sold off the old synagogue to the government, and in 1870, one of the synagogue's new trustees, Joseph Joshua, negotiated to buy a plot of land owned by the Raffles Institution at Bras Basah for $4,000 to build a new synagogue. However, not enough funds were raised within the agreed three-year period to build a new synagogue.
Sir Manasseh Meyer (1846-1930) returned to Singapore in 1873 to find the synagogue on Synagogue Street in a deplorable state. He set about planning a new synagogue, and he bought a site on Waterloo Street, then called Church Street because of nearby Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church.
The Maghain Aboth synagogue (מגן אבות, ‘Guardian of Patriarchs’ or 'Shield of our Fathers’) was built in the neo-classical style and completed in 1878. It is the oldest and the largest Jewish synagogue in South-East Asia and the second largest synagogue in Asia outside Israel.
The Jewish community soon began moving into the surrounding areas of Dhoby Ghaut, Waterloo Street, Prinsep Street, Selegie Road and Wilkie Road. Several Jewish buildings still exist in the area today.
Meyer became increasingly bothered by the differences, especially in matters of the ritual and liturgy, between the local Jews of Asian and European backgrounds, and in 1905 he also built the Chesed-El synagogue (‘bountiful mercy and goodness of God’) on Oxley Road, initially as a private synagogue.
About 180 descendants of the first Jews in Singapore still live there and the Rabbi of Singapore, Rabbi Mordechai Abergel, has described them as the only remaining indigenous Jews of Asia.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
