 everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's event. My name is Ilana Tahan and I'm the Lycuretor of Hebrew and Christian Orient at the British Library. In association with our partners, Jewish Book Week, we are presenting today a panel conversation exploring the Jewish presence around the world. This is one from a program of events supporting our exhibition, Hebrew manuscripts journeys of the written word. The exhibition provides a snapshot of the range and richness of Hebrew manuscripts in the British Library's collection and reveals the power of the written word to bring people together. Just a little housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions during the event, you can submit them using the question box below. A selection of questions will be presented to the panel towards the end of the event. Use the menu above to provide us with feedback about the event and also to donate to the British Library. The British Library is a charity. Your support helps us open a world of knowledge and inspiration for everyone. You'll find social media links below this video. In case you want to continue the conversation on other platforms, you can also find out more about this event and read short biographies of our speakers. Today's panel features Dr. Sara Menasse, Dr. Joanna Newman, and Dr. Drew Schoen, and it is shared by Rachel Shaby. Rachel is an award-winning journalist, author, and broadcaster. Now, without further ado, we'll turn the time over to Rachel. Hello. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this event. It's my absolute pleasure to be chairing this and to be with you this evening. This is one of a series of events online with the British Library and also a Jewish Book Week designed to get us through lockdown. And I have to say, while I, like everyone else, am much looking forward to doing all this in real life, there is something to be said for being able to chair this incredible panel with such wonderful panellists without even leaving my house. So without further ado, let me please tell you a little bit about our panellists this evening. First of all, we have Dr. Sara Menasse. She is an ethnomusicologist and performer of music in the Iraqi Jewish tradition. She founded the music group Rivers of Babylon, and her publications include Shbehov, Songs of Praise in the Babylonian Jewish tradition. Next, we have Joanna Newman, who is the chief executive and secretary general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. Her new book, Nearly the New World, tells the story of Jewish refugees who overcame persecution and sought safety in the West Indies from the 1930s through to the end of the war. That book, by the way, has a special 25% discount on it if you click on the tab above the video on your screen. And finally, we also have Dr. Jo Shun, is a reader in history at the University of Essex, and she has in the past 20 years been living across London, Jerusalem, Beijing, and Hong Kong. She's among Europe's leading historians specializing on modern China, and she is also the author of a number of books, including Chinese Perceptions of the Jew and Judaism. Now, these are all but tiny snapshots of the biographies of these three incredible panellists. Please do check out more information online, because I really haven't done credit to their vast and extensive portfolios. But without further ado, I do want to hand over to our panellists, beginning with Dr. Sara Manasse and a short presentation from her. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you to Jonah Albert and the British Library for inviting me to participate in this event, which is linked, as Ilana Tahan said, to the Hebrew manuscripts exhibition. I dedicate my presentation from Baghdad to Bombay Beautiful to my parents, the late Albert Manasse and Rachel Manasse, and to the memory of my brother, the late Rabbi Jacob Manasse of the Midrash-Benish High in New York. He passed away earlier this year, following complications of COVID-19. Okay, so my mother's book, Backdating Jews of Bombay, Their Life and Achievements, a Personal and Historical Account, is published by Midrash and forms the basis of this presentation. India has indeed provided a safe home for Jewish people fleeing persecution. I grew up in the Iraqi-Jewish community of Bombay, the focus of this short presentation. Arabic-speaking Jews from cities in Mesopotamia, such as Baghdad and Basra, and from Syria and Aden, had settled earlier in Surat, which is north of Bombay, that's today's Mumbai. From about the end of the 18th century, they began to move to other cities in India, to Bombay on the west, Calcutta on the east, and later to Pune, which is south of Bombay. They're variously known as Baghdadian, or Bardadi, or Babylonian, or Iraqi Jews, and were later joined by Persian-speaking Jews fleeing from Mashhad, and by Central Asian Jews from Russia, Bukhara, and Afghanistan. They all followed the Baghdadian-Jewish religious right, the Minhar Babli, the Babylonian custom, and were part of the Iraqi-Jewish community in Bombay, which included a small number of Jews from Cochin. Bombay, originally a group of islands, is surrounded by the sea, which provides a constant backdrop to the city. It was by sea that settlers came to India on a journey, often perilous, particularly during the monsoon season. My mother's family arrived in the early 20th century. Her father, Ruben Eliyahu Arni, arrived in 1911, and his wife, to be Gurdjiji Jutta, arrived along with both families in 1919, traveling from Baghdad to Basra, where they boarded an English ship, and the whole happy company sailed down the Persian Gulf to Bombay to a wedding there in 1919. Life then moved at a gentler pace, and as my mother writes, for years my father owned a carriage and horse, and the coachman would drive us children, three sisters, and two younger brothers, with our two ires to the bandstand in the evening when we were small. It was not until World War II that my father bought a car and be motored into the 20th century. Now my own father's family in Bombay goes back still further to 1832, when David Sassoon arrived in Bombay. He had escaped from Baghdad via Basra to Bushir, fleeing persecution from the Turkish Wali Daud Pasha in 1830. David Sassoon settled in Bombay with his wife and young family, joining the cosmopolitan mix of people there. He was soon the acknowledged head of the Arabic speaking Jewish community in Bombay, winning the respect of all communities. The influence of the Sassoon family was far-reaching. They had been called the Rothschilds of the East. They provided work for their co-religionists in their firms and mills. They built schools, and at the David Sassoon Benevolent Institution, children were taught to sing God Save the Queen in three languages, English, Hebrew, and Arabic. They also built beautiful synagogues, the Marin David Synagogue in Bicolor, the Ohel David Synagogue in Puna, known locally as Lal Devo, which means Red Temple, and his grandson, Sir Jacob Sassoon, built the Knesset Eliyahu Synagogue. Last year, the beautifully renovated synagogue received a UNESCO award. The Sassoon family also made generous endowments to public institutions in Bombay and Puna, including the David Sassoon Library and Reading Room in Bombay in the 1860s. David Sassoon was further honored in 1994, when Hope Street, adjoining the library, was renamed David Sassoon Library Mark. Mark means Hindi in Hindi or Marathi way. My mother was invited as a chief guest. In Puna, David Sassoon also contributed to the infirm asylum and the Sassoon General Hospital. What we see here is another landmark, the full-length marble statue of Vince Albert at the Victorian Albert Museum, now known as the Dr. Paul Darjilad Museum. On the plinth, there are inscriptions in Hebrew and English. David Sassoon's son Albert Sassoon constructed the Sassoon Docks, the first dock in Bombay, and his grandson, Sir Jacob Sassoon, contributed liberally towards the Gateway of India at Bombay Harbour. Now moving from Sassoon monuments to the Sassoon family, Aziza Sassoon, the granddaughter of David Sassoon and my great-grandmother, married Ezekiel Abraham Gabai in 1853. They had a number of children. One of their younger daughters was my grandmother, Sarah. This is the invitation to her marriage to Mnesi Yalpo Mnesi, who had come from Baghdad, and is written in Hebrew and also handwritten Rashi characters in the Eastern script, and it's mainly in Julio Arabic, which continued to be spoken in India among Iraqi Jews. Their son, Albert Mnesi, married Rachel Arnie. So this is the ceremony of my parents at the Knessif Eliyahu synagogue. The synagogue choir in Baikala was founded in 1934, and the British influence is very evident in their dress, mortar boards, and gowns. They performed every Shabbath and for life cycle events. Their repertoire maintained the Iraqi Jewish tradition, as did customs, such as placing amulets on a baby's cradle or clothes when they were born. In 1935, my father, Albert Mnesi, together with his friend Solomon Ezra, introduced the youth organization Habonim, which is Hebrew for the builders in Bombay, later expanding it. For example, in 1938 to Calcutta, and followed by centres in Cochin and Puna. They had a lively cultural programme, which included folk dancing and songs in Hebrew. Annual camps at hill stations, such as Matheran, were a highlight. And in this song session, on the steps of the large bungalow, I'm one of the leaders standing on the right, and my brother is the little boy sitting quite near me in the third row on the extreme right. My family left in the mid-1960s, but my father, as life president, life president of the Sassoon Charity Trusts, visited regularly, attending to needs of the synagogue and community. At the entrance to the Knesseteliah, the synagogue are three plaques, and the one on the right pays tribute to my father, Albert Mnesi, Albert Abdulla Mnesi, who served as head and spiritual leader of the community for over 50 years. The synagogues continue to function, and for the past 10 years, my late brother, Rabbi Mnesi, visited regularly in his capacity as spiritual leader. The re-enoperation ceremony at the Knesseteliah synagogue was attended by dignitaries, members of Mumbai's Jewish and Indian communities, and visitors from abroad. The opening address was given by Solomon F. Sofer, chairman and managing trustee of the Sir Jacob Sassoon and Allied Trusts. Sitting on the left are my brother, Rabbi Yako Menashe with black hat. The Israeli consul general, Yako Finkelstein in the center, and Judge Abraham Sofer from the United States, revisiting his boy, the synagogue. In this slide, the congregation stands while Rabbi Menashe recites a blessing. To conclude, and to return to the theme of this evening, the Jewish diaspora in search of safety. India has always offered a safe haven to its people. The word anti-Semitism was one that I had never encountered while growing up in Bombay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah Menashe. That was absolutely fascinating. I loved the family story and also some of the imagery there from Bombay. That was brilliant. Can I now move to our next panelist, Joanna Newman. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rachel, and it was fascinating and a treat to see that history. It reminded me of the original invitation to do a British Library event pre-COVID in the British Library itself. The discussion I had with the British Library about how I would present my talk, because in some ways they wanted me to show how interwoven the history of Jewish immigration to the Caribbean is. In fact, I found out about Jewish immigration in the 1930s refugee immigration, because I had been researching the Jewish community of Barbados in the 17th and 18th centuries. I had found the minute books of the Jewish community of Barbados, which was a fascinating study, really, of a community that came to Barbados because they had been expelled from Spain and Portugal as a result of the Catholic Inquisition and became very skilled in sugar production in Bahia in Brazil. Eventually, some of them went to plantations and slave economies in the Caribbean, as the Caribbean changed from small plantations to slave economies. While researching this history, I was in the Tate and Lyle archive in Sugar Wharf in London looking at papers of the history of sugar industry there, which is a fascinating and toxic history, and came across lots of papers that were being thrown away because they were partly in German and they were related to the 1930s about the internment of a Jewish chemist called Edward Schoenbeck. Edward Schoenbeck turned out to be the first refugee I met in New York and interviewed for my book, who had gone to Jamaica as a chemist, worked for the West India sugar company, but during the war he came interned and so I became really intrigued by this story of really unlikely refuge. Why was the West Indies not the place one would think of as a traditional refugee involved in this refugee story in the tragedy of the 1930s and then the 1940s in the Holocaust? And what I found out is, of course, it's a story of exclusion. I mean, it's a very sad story, about 5,000 refugees in total we think reached different West Indian colonies owned by, at the time, and colonised by the Dutch and British governments because they were not overtaken by the Nazis, but they were very much the last resort and they were the last resort because most countries wouldn't allow them in and so and most countries wouldn't allow them in because there are two currents going through this story. The first is that actually the numbers of refugees leaving Nazi Germany was in the whole not massive and could have been assimilated probably by the United States and Britain and other allied countries before occupation. But there was this phantom of mass emigration from Eastern Europe where the majority of the Jewish population indeed lived and most of the research I've done which uncovered British attitudes to immigration and to refugee policy uncovers the fact that even when it was possible to allow refugees from Nazi Germany into colonial dependencies, the argument mainly went from the colonial authorities that they were not going to do so because if they did the hordes of Eastern Europe might come and I document this in my book. And what's ironic about that is that the first person I met in Barbados who had come to the West Indies, he came from Lublin in Poland, he was a young electrician who in the late 1920s got on a boat to Venezuela, there was anti-Semitism, there was rising unemployment and poverty and decided to make a new life for himself in South America which many people did from Eastern Europe at the time. The boat stopped in Barbados, he liked it and he stayed there and when I met him in the early 90s he had been influential in fact seminal in restoring the ancient Sephardic synagogue that existed in Barbados and so you know when Henry Altman and others arrived in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Curacao and Jamaica still had Jewish communities from that period but Barbados didn't any longer and so it was this Eastern European community that renewed the Jewish tradition there and restored the synagogue. And what's interesting about Henry Altman and many like him is that hundreds of Eastern Europeans actually emigrated to the West Indies during this period completely under the British radar so while all the legislation and discussion about refugees is being governed by a fear of Eastern European immigration, actually Eastern European immigrants fit in really well, they are small scale traders, they trade in dry goods, they extend credit, they go across the islands providing a new type of credit to poor families. Arthur Intz who was a Guardian correspondent for the Trinidad Guardian told me that he remembers very well a Jewish peddler who extended credit to his mother and enabled him to have new clothes and go to school. Remember at the time the West Indies was suffering huge poverty and inequality, they were large-scale labour rights and massive desire for change following the participation particularly in the First World War. So there are journeys by Eastern Europeans to the Caribbean which are kind of unnoticed and go under the radar and then what happens is in the 1930s a refugee crisis is launched as Nazi Germany increases its antisemitic laws and its persecution and its legal persecution as well and the sort of the famous point really of no return is always pointed to the Evian Conference in 1938 when under the invitation of President Roosevelt countries get together to discuss the refugee crisis and what they might do and Nazi Germany exploits the fact that no country wants to take in refugees as a result of the Evian Conference and in fact only a few years ago the High Commissioner for Refugees referred back to the language used at the Evian Conference as a chilling reminder of the language being used today when discussing both people and the plight that refugees have currently in trying to leave where they are and reach safety. So my grandmother who was born in Berlin gave me a book called the Philolexicon and the Philolexicon was a book published in 1934 and 35 by Jewish organisations and it printed places in the world that didn't require visas. Now in 1934 and 35 most Jews in Nazi Germany or that's your compared Europe but later on probably weren't that conscious about Trinidad being a destination they were thinking much more about bordering European countries perhaps the United States but as persecution increased and as the avenues for escape narrowed and the windows closed on any kind of escape places like Trinidad became incredibly important so Trinidad Shanghai anywhere that didn't require a visa and refugee agencies found out at the same time and started chartering ships putting refugees on the ships and paying the entry deposits to allow refugees in by 1939 mid 1939 Trinidad has about 600 Jews crowded in Port of Spain with local Jewish organisations helping them to settle and helping them to find places to live. I feature in my book and I think I'll close in a moment here I feature in my book the stories of many of these refugees and they're just to give you a few Hans Stetscher came from Vienna as a 14 year old boy for him it was a massive adventure and he talks about the colours and the the exoticism of landing in a tropical island like Trinidad and it reminded him of the Ernst May adventure stories he'd read as a boy but he also remembers when he was interned a few years later how an old man hung himself and the despair that older refugees found so that's another theme that I explore in the book is about the difference uh in tenacity and resilience if you're a young person who manages to flee or you're caught up in it as an older person and of course many refugees from Nazi Germany were not young fit people who could go and work in colonies which was of course some of the ideas muted for refugee settlements at the time they were doctors and dentists and bakers and diamond cutters and they didn't they weren't in the point where they could easily adapt to a new life. I also wanted to talk about Melka and Manfred Goldfish you feature a lot in my book because I've met their daughter Manfred's daughter Sue Goldfish she's actually written a film about her search for her father and they left Hamburg in 1939 and went to Trinidad and when they left Hamburg and waved goodbye to their parents it was the last time they saw them because in 1942 Manfred's parents were deported to Theresienstadt where they died and in fact most refugees who did manage to escape left families behind in Europe and would not see them again um and and that's sort of that that's the the next point I suppose in along the story is that as the refugee crisis gets worse refugee agencies are the unsung heroes of my book and they are the unsung heroes of the 1930s and the 1940s and there should be more attention on the Cecilia Rizovsky's and the other tireless workers who were posted in in in European cities and throughout the Americas helping refugees and just wanted to draw your attention to something which has so much resonance for today's refugee crisis when in most people might have heard of the St Louis which is a famous ship which was bound for Cuba with refugees on board it was refused entrance and it went from pillar to post across the Americas and eventually ended up back in the UK in my book I have many voyages like this there are many other St Louis and at the time the joint which was one of the leading agencies had a telegram to other agencies saying we're in a quandary because there is a continual similar dumping of shiploads of refugees and we have no alternative but to refuse financial help important question in principle to be canvas with other organisations to determine decision to these passengers in the future now the British and others said maybe it's kinder to return them to Germany but of course these refugee agencies wouldn't do that and just as the refugee agencies today are faced with illegal trafficking of refugees and people being dumped in boats the joint's report was the journeys to nowhere and talks explicitly about boatloads of dumped refugees and so the dilemmas I think that refugee agencies face today have very stark parallels with my story then of course the refugees settle in the Caribbean they many of them are interned and I talk about the internment experience in Jamaica a very different story very few before the war during the war special camp is built in 1940 to house 9000 Gibraltarians who are evacuated from Gibraltar most don't come by 1940 to Hertha Emerson the High Commissioner for Refugees says can we put some refugees in this camp by that time the British authorities resisted as much as they could nevertheless January 1942 numbers of refugees do end up in Gibraltar camp and actually go there all the way throughout the war and and despite the U-boat war and despite the lack of shipping they are actually taken from Spain and Portugal from Portugal from Lisbon and bought across across the water and stay there to lesser degrees of satisfaction as these are younger refugees who want to fight at the end of the war the majority of the refugees leave for many of them it was a spell before they could get to the new world that's why my books called nearly the new world it wasn't a place they wanted to settle in but for some it became a permanent refuge and actually if you look in the phone book in Trinidad you'll see Fagan Bams and you'll see Averbux and you'll see the presence in a way of this Jewish presence in the 1930s and I just wanted to finish with a quote from Henry Altman who told me what it felt like to settle in Barbados and he said when we first came to Barbados it happened that most of us had blue eyes and the original Jews had black eyes the ones who came from the Mediterranean Spanish and Portuguese and they were suspicious the Barbadians they they thought that we were Germans it is a fact and people called us Germans until war broke out then slowly they realized that we were not we are Polish Jews most of us are Polish Jews we always thought that we would leave the island and go somewhere else like to New York America Canada but somehow we loved it here and we are Barbadians wow thank you so much for that Joanne that is such I could listen to that for a lot longer there's so many strands woven into that presentation and you're right the the echoes with today are just so striking this evocation of you know the phantom of mass immigration and sort of scaremongering and fear about hordes is so so relevant to the kind of conversation we're having around immigration today thank you so much for that and now last but not least can I please introduce Dr Shunju thank you good evening okay I'm going to deal on this trip this journey and I'm going to take you a little bit further further from where Sarah went Sarah went as far as some Baghdad and then from Baghdad we're going to move to China um okay this gentleman his name is Marti Richie he was some Portuguese Jesuits missionary and he went to China and become he become quite signified and was quite controversial you know he tried to convert to Chinese but instead he become you know kind of Chinese was dressed in Chinese rope you can see okay so um in 1605 July 26th he wrote a letter to his superior and regarding and so in the letter he was very excited and he told that he had met a Jew from Kaifeng in central China and this letter become you know kind of available to the general reading public 10 years later and and so there's lots of people were excited and you know to hear about the Jews living in China and then there were other missionaries um Franciscans and Dominicans who also went to China they were not particularly they they all went to Kaifeng and they were not particularly interested in finding Jews they were more interested in the Jewish Bible and but they didn't come back with any Hebrew manuscripts until um 100 and you kind of 200 or 300 years later and you know kind of the um the story of the this Chinese Jews began to catch Western imagination again and um in 1840 and yeah 40 45 um there was some James Fang you probably the name rings and to some of you he and he was um and the British consul to Jerusalem and um he was some question missionary he was questioned he was so he was interested in Jews because you know he was trying to look he was looking for the lost tribe um you know and um so he it was um actually in the British Library he had read the um the Jesuits writings about some the Jews of Kaifeng and so um he wrote so he published this um quite comprehensive book the book is still available I think certainly in the British Library called the Jews of China um it was some much more detailed accounts or for this um a Jewish community um you know in China in Kaifeng um although interesting and then he subsequently published another one called the orphan colonies of Jews in China and um although the interesting thing is he's never been in China he just you know kind of um used um the material which is available to him and um you know kind of basically wrote this story and um and then but that was um so that revoke the interest in the Chinese the the Jews of China and after him after the publication of his works a number of Protestants missionaries went to Kaifeng and to look for the Chinese Jews and um they apparently found the the Kaifeng Jews so they they took some pictures and um these are you know kind of then the the two brothers in the image they they were brought to Hong Kong because some when they the the Protestant missionaries were quite disappointed when they went to on you know kind of Kaifeng and Metz this community none of them speak Hebrew yeah the um they only kind of their story goes back to Moses but you know kind of other than that and they're and so they don't really know any of their Jewish heritage so um those Protestants missionaries decides to educate them so they brought these two brothers to Hong Kong to teach them uh you know kind of Hebrew and so unfortunately one of them died in Hong Kong the other one insured the hardship what he could have and so he escaped um okay so that was some under you know kind of that was a picture taken in the republican China's early 20th century of that community um now the community actually identify themselves um as Jewish interestingly in 1949 after the people's communists took over China and funded people's republic of China they started dividing the Chinese population into um you know different ethnic groups and they invited the leader of this um you know Jewish community I couldn't even come and steal the I think the identity is still in question and somehow and and so the community they they the the Chinese government actually you know kind of invites the leader of this community and wanted to you know kind of make them Jewish a Jewish ethnic group but they refused very interesting but now they have become Jewish again and so this community has you know kind of they still there are streets of this community you know kind of lived and and they become major Jewish tourism for the city and actually one member of that community also immigrated to Israel about 10 years ago um so that was the Kaifeng Jewish story then in the 19th century and we've seen this picture already from Sarah okay and so that's um you know kind of the main and I would say the main Jewish immigration into China the first group of Jews um you know arrived actually arrived in Hong Kong um in 1842 after the first Anglo-China war and better known as the European War to the western world now and most of them came via the them British Bombay and Kolkata and and most you know all these people are safaris um before you know the European War a number of them had already been trading in Canton and David Sassoon they were a safari textile merchant they came from Baghdad as we know and they had they have also been selling opium to the Chinese for a number of years prior to the opium war and during the war David Sassoon sent his oldest son Elias David Sassoon to Hong Kong to cash in on the opium trade the in the aftermath of the opium war the Treaty of Lanking in 1842 forced China to open five ports to foreign trade and three years later in 1845 the Sassoons opened a branch of their commercial operation in Shanghai which was one of the treaty um the port which was opened for trade um and by 1870s the David Sassoon song and company was um became indisputably the largest opium importer in China in the meantime the Sassoons also overtook the Parsees to dominate the British textile trade the younger generation of the Sassoons um as well as some other Jewish merchants um such as um yeah I don't have a image of Kaduri but this is the other person Celius Aaron Harding he was one of the Sassoons in the firm's employee and David widened their business interest into shipping and banking and non-speculation that non-speculation become a much more they they soon discovered non-speculation become much more profitable they actually trade so they stopped you know kind of selling opiums and switched on and that's what um Sassoon um well well Harding normally that's what he made his money from he um he's one of my favorite character Harding he's very interesting very very colorful he joined the Sassoon firm as a clerk and then he rose to quite high position and become you know kind of very powerful and quite wealthy and he is um while he remained Jewish you know kind of all his life he um he married a buddhist and and Eurasian buddhist I don't have here his wife is um I don't know that that's his wife um Luo Jialin she's very beautiful she was also the you know kind of a god daughter of Doris Doris Doris's empress and um he um so he was very Celius Harding while he remained Jewish he also become very sort of um you know integrated you could say the word into the local sort of thing and this um he's um he built this um um um what's he called an Eileen garden yeah known as Harding garden is one of the you know kind of famous site in Shanghai and um his Eileen garden had become you know kind of um home for a number of Chinese revolutionaries include Dr. Sen Yatien this is Dr. Sen Yatien he was the founder of the Chinese revolution the founder of you know kind of republic in China and um so he um he's um you know the Eileen garden become a place where the Chinese revolutionaries met um you know kind of because they were escaping sort of um um being um arrested so they they would use the Eileen garden as a shelter which is very interesting then when Harding died by you know kind of when Harding died he he become the richest man in the far east yeah and he's funeral and it was um and this this was um he you know the the site for his funeral and he his funeral was um um conducted by a rabbi Daoist and you know a scriptwriter and a buddhist priest and so you know kind of it was um um so it just shows that Harding he was one of those typical what you call Eurasian they were so cosmopolitan you know kind of why he remained Jewish but he's not you know kind of um he also embraced other identities as well you know he you could you know he was um that's why you know his funeral I mean his funeral tells you know kind of the story of his life yeah he's Jewish but he's more than just Jewish um okay and so um yeah ah okay sorry I have um lots of pictures so this um you know as um um we just go back to Hong Kong again you know from Shanghai um in and so as some in the early days as most of the member of the Hong Kong Jewish community were suffered the merchants and they mostly you know kind of the employees of um the Sarsun company so as the number of the Jews increased over the years a formal Jewish life began to establish itself and the Sarsuns they purchased um these some piece of land so they uh you know um they yeah then they they felt that there was it was necessary to have a regular place of worship for this ever expanding Jewish community so in 1867 they missed a premises on Hollywood road in central Hong Kong and this um was the earliest cynical in Hong Kong and um and the other thing is um in they also um the the Jewish community also leased a land you know kind of um in a Chinese village called Wennai Chang it's today's Happy Valley and um they built a Jewish cemetery um you know in this place and they they got to the crown knees um you know from the British and built the Jewish cemetery here and the cemetery is still here it's still in the in Happy Valley this place as the employer of um you know 40 and Safadis the youngest Sarsuns become the lateral leader of the Hong Kong Jewish community um in the 1881 and the um they purchased well this actually it's um you know they um the grandson of David Sarsun Jacob and Edward at Major Sarah probably knows all those names um they donated section of the Sarsuni state um in central Hong Kong it's um in today's Cane Road and Robinson Road above the city center to the Jewish community and in addition to you know um giving this piece of land they also give money um to the community to build a new synagogue and in return they requested the synagogue be named in memory of their mother Leah so the synagogue is called O'Hare Leah synagogue it's still there it's very beautiful um in a place it's also become a major heritage site for Hong Kong so alongside of Sarsuns um Eli Kaduri and his sons um yeah they Eli Kaduri was a former employee of the David Sarsun company and his son brother Eli Kaduri also took up active role in needing the Hong Kong Jewish life um the Hong Kong Jewish recreational club it's um um the today's the home of the Jewish community center in Hong Kong it was first started in 1605 as it was a quite modest association but um Eli Kaduri he had married he married a safadi from England he was very attracted to Victorian English life and he wanted to introduce the English club to Hong Kong Jewish life so he would train and this um and the the Jewish recreational club into a Victorian club and according to him fit for the Hong Kong colonial life so the new club building you know opened in 1609 and it become the focus of Jewish social life in Hong Kong for the great part of the 20th century today is still in the center of the Jewish life there's also a big vine there and it's as well as a Jewish preschool by the 10th of the 20th century the Kaduri Sarsuns were among some of the most prominent families in Hong Kong's economic and civic culture even till today their names are enshrined in streets buildings and instituting institutions across the territory um I don't know whether any of you have been to Hong Kong but when you walk around Hong Kong you see all this you know kind of Jewish names all over the place and why so as I said the O'Hare Leah Senegal which is just you know kind of adjusted to the Jewish center you can see actually here this is um you know come to the top of the Senegal has become a part of Hong Kong's historical and cultural heritage the Kaduri's are the name behind one of Hong Kong's most famous landmarks the Panuslah Hotel the Kaduri's are also the founder of the China and night the you know kind of responsible for illuminating the streets of Hong Kong and supplying electricity of 80% of the territory's population and the company's castle peak power station first building in 1980s was still was at the time and still is one of the largest and most modern co-fired power station in the world and being key players of the city the Kaduri's are also famous for their philanthropy work amongst the non-Jewish population in Hong Kong this is in 18 uh in sorry in 1910s the Kaduri's opened a school for the Chinese and another for the Hindus as well as Helena May a home for English working girls in Hong Kong another member of the Hong Kong jury um it's Emmanuel Raffael Elieo Los sorry about my pronunciation he was also famous for his the philanthropy work to promote the welfare and education of Chinese girls who were driven by crime and prostitution um because of the poverty he gave money to the Hong Kong colonial government to build the central school for girls and the school was later re-leamed you know kind of after him and Belius public school and you all know him and the school is still there today and Belius was the oldest member of the Safadi synagogue um he um but he is quite interesting because as I said earlier most of the Safadi communities they are from Baghdad yeah while the British from Bay and Belius he was different he was a Venetian by origin so he did not see eye to eye with the other Safadis who had you know came from Arab lands also they didn't speak the same language because an Arabic and Serab would know was the Limba Franca amongst the Jews of Baghdad whereas in Belius he spoke a different language so he was some much more interested in to become identified with the British elites and so to begin with he's another very colorful character to begin with he played the Jewish card by making attempts to establish ties with the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and so this resulted in building the Beaconsfield Arcade in central Hong Kong and named in Disraeli's honor and in 1879 he also gave one thousand pound it was lots of money at the time to the British governor of Hong Kong um you know trying to erect a statue of Disraeli in Hong Kong but his offer was rejected by Disraeli himself so instead he used the money to to set up a medical scholarship fund named after him and also helped to establish the Allison Memorial Hospital and the hospital later served as one of the major teaching hospital for students of Hong Kong College of Medicine really was a fascinating presentation and so many interesting details there and I really like the way it sort of interweaves with the Sasun story um from Sarah as well thank you very much for that please feel free to submit questions if you're watching as well um very interested in putting those to the panel too but just to start those off Sarah um I was really interested in your in your story about Iraqi Jewry in Bombay my family of Iraqi Jews were you know I grew up listening to music from the Middle East including you know Iraqi Jewish music traditions musicians such as the Al Kuwaiti brothers or uh you know Nadine El Razali I'm sure you know but I'm really interested in what you think about the degree to which Iraqi Jewish musicians music traditions in Bombay continued I know your group Rivers of Babylon um are featured as part of the British Library exhibition Hebrew manuscripts but to what extent what was that continuation like how did it change and develop in Bombay yes um well even today if you go to Bombay and visit the synagogues some of the melodies are still um in the Iraqi Jewish tradition how long that will last I don't know um so as I would say um from the religious point of view that has been that has carried on all the time um of course there were changes as well but also let's say in the 1930s 1940s still there were people who were there were musicians who were singing in Arabic whether it was Julia Arabic or the songs of Nadine El Razali or bringing in bringing in music from Iraq still the Al Kuwaiti brothers um so there was still very much aware of what was happening in Baghdad and carrying on with those traditions but of course things did change gradually and um in Bombay certainly when I was growing up we had visiting musicians like Arthur Rubenstein so we had classical western classical music we had Aka Bilk and David Dave Brubeck so we had jazz um so so really there was a lot of western popular influence as well as classical music um also it's very interesting that Jewish musicians in Bombay um were very important in Indian film so we had for example Faisal Atagioff who was from Central Asia a brilliant mandolin player and he was very well known for his playing in Indian film um as was David Saab who was called David Saab but he was Jewish and he played mandolin as well Isaac Dunn Decker um so we you know there were both things were going on we were still continuing with the old traditions and being introduced to western traditions and entering uh Indian traditions as well if I have just another second um one of the songs that we sang in Habonim um was list heard by one of the music producers for Indian film and he put that melody there's more than one Jewish melody actually sung in Indian film to Hindi words so um yeah so there's a lot of mixing going on which was great yeah that sounds so interesting thank you for that um Joanne there's so many things that I want ask you about but what one thing that really sort of got my curiosity was about the um your your the story that about your grandmother who gave you the Philo Atlas the book that was published at that time to give information about where in the world refugees could come in how did that book come about and how did it get into circulation so the the uh the Jewish organizations in Germany uh had started were voluntary organizations they became representative organizations and they became um in the end part of the state operators but they made it their business to to find ways in which they could help Jews who wanted to emigrate I think it's true to say that up until um up until 35 most German Jews thought that they would be spaced for them in Germany and that once the initial anti-Semitism of the regime had sort of died down things would be okay but um with the changes in Nazi policy and and persecution intensifying particularly after Kristallnacht which was the burning of synagogues in November 1938 there was an official Jewish community acknowledgement that there was no future for the German Jews and then with the occupation of Austria and the creation of the office for the Reich um which which was vicious and tragic and basically turned Jews from citizens into penniless refugees through the process of chucking them out so there were mass arrests uh Saxon housing concentration camp and others were used and the only exit from these concentration camps was either death through brutality or having a ticket to go somewhere and what's interesting about the Philo lexicon is that I think I don't know the complete history of it but I think it was published in 34 and 35 and it did provide information about places around the world that had Jewish communities and places around the world that didn't require visas and of course the two organizations in Germany or the communities that were most interested in it was the office for Reich emigration uh and the Jewish communities and so you had the Nazi authorities and the Jewish communities knowing the most about where they could find loopholes and and places and so my grandmother who came to the UK as a refugee in 1937 um was um a very assimilated German Jew whose bookcases in London were full of of sort of German philosophy and German classics but also uh a whole history of what happened to the Jewish community in Germany which is actually where I've got my interest in initially in learning more about the history of of what happened during the Holocaust so interesting thanks so much for that um finally I just wanted to ask Shunjo um such an incredible chronology and chronicle of life Jewish life in China one of the things that I wondered if you could expand on was you mentioned that you know in 1949 China started to document ethnic groups so categorize ethnic groups but the Chinese Chinese community then in Kefeng didn't want to be categorized in that way do you know what that was about can you expand on that a little bit um part of the reason is um you know they probably didn't feel that um they want to become a minority because once you become one of the ethnic group then you become a minority and they wanted to become uh they wanted to be caught of the you know kind of majority the the Chinese population so on their identity card they actually had a hand yeah which is um you know kind of the the Chinese ethnic sort of category so they had a hands fact in their um you know kind of identity card but um interestingly and sort of after the 90s because um the western fascination mostly American Jews who went to you know kind of Kaifeng to look for this um Jewish community yeah and so and so there was prospect of you know kind of them if they become Jewish um then they could move to immigrate to Israel so some of them start in a kind of um wanting to have that Jewish identity but um then the Chinese government refused and to acknowledge that so identity politics yeah and it's um everywhere and it's here and could I just add some because the refugee stories very interesting um the um because this also well in the um there are two stories um amongst you know kind of the Safadi community and the Jewish refugees the first wave of Jewish refugees came um you know as a result of the programs and so they they came the Jewish refugee came from you know kind of Russia and Balkans and these were Ashkenade Jews and so they they are different from the Safadis who had established themselves so there's lots of conflict and the Safadi somehow failed that um you know kind of they didn't really want to be associated with the Ashkenades because many of these Ashkenades they were quite poor yeah and they were involved in street bullying or sorts and you know kind of etc so it became they saw them as an embarrassment and in the end and the two two community well they had to split so the Ashkenades actually hired another place themselves and where they would meet you know kind of rather than join the Safadi synagogue but um by the during the Second World War when there's some large influx of Jewish refugees came from you know kind of in Europe and they passed through Hong Kong and um by then the Jewish community under the Kaduri's leadership they had to show um you know kind of a lot of hospitality towards they they call them Jewish brothers and so this is one of the things Kaduri appealed to the Hong Kong Jewish the Safadi community to unite together and help the the refugees from Europe and this is what he said today more than ever is the duty of every Jew to realize his responsibility so he in 47 you know kind of when when the war ended a lot of refugees they first went to Shanghai and then they they after the war they were leaving China they were going to like Palestine North America and Australia on routes and they they all had to pass through Hong Kong so when they you know kind of all arrived in Hong Kong and because in the past the Kaduri says in fear of anti-Semitism he had you know kind of got involved you know and so he trained the Peninsula hotel you know kind of as a refugee camp quite luxury refugee camp some of my friends actually stayed in there you know kind of they they went later on they went to Israel and so I well I I have I had an image but I won't show you now and so then the the the the Peninsula hotel the board room in the Peninsula hotel was made into makeshift synagogue for the Jewish refugees and he actually he also you know kind of appeal he wrote thousands of letters to governments NGO and individuals to guarantee in the successful repatriation of the Jewish refugees thank you that was the last one you know kind of my story for the add to the refugee story thank you so much that's an incredible story I know I'm now going to open out to questions from people watching and thank you so much for those the first one is for Joanna this is from Emil Cohen Cohen who says Joanna's presentation is absolutely fascinating as I've not even heard of Jewish refugees in Trinidad there was a reference to refugee agencies would that be the Jewish agencies and were there any attempts to migrate these people to Israel so the Jewish agencies I'm talking about are a network of agencies that are actually set up in the late 19th century to help a big migration from Eastern Europe to the to America you know and thousands of of Jews emigrate at that time as did Irish and Germans and others for a new world and at the time agencies were set up from the east through to the west to help the migrants pass through and also to to an extent to also send migrants back this was the period of the Golden Medina where the pavements were meant to be golden in New York and so they were really well set up so the irony again is that on the one hand when you really need them in the beginning of the 1930s and there's a crisis you have the most well established network of Jewish agencies international agencies that are national based but work together actually most powerless in their whole history because the the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee which had the most funding took over really from the UK funded agencies in terms of funding rescue and relief but they had no power and there was huge fights it's fascinating to to look at the histories of these Jewish organizations and between the political ones who wanted for example like the World Jewish Congress to fight for the creation of Israel and to be explicit about what was happening to Jews in Europe and the other agencies who preferred particularly in the 1930s backdoor diplomacy that didn't push the Jewish that didn't push the point about the the persecution of the Jews in particular because of this terrible dilemma where Western democracies felt that by acknowledging that it was only Jews being persecuted they were actually doing what the Nazis were doing and robbing these citizens of Germany or Austria of their citizenship and their status as as nationals which is what the Nazi state was doing so these Jewish agencies worked together most were national agencies and some were were international and they after the war did fund refugee passage for example the joint had an office in Rome and helped refugees escape there was a lot of illegal immigration to Palestine shortly after the war and they also helped refugees move to other countries in fact countries like South Africa other countries across the colonial empire at that point did start to it's worth noting that very few refugees after the war were allowed into Britain Britain maintained its policy all the way through from the 1930s to post-war that they had an immigration policy it's only really with the United Nations declaration of human rights and the refugee legislation which came as a result of the Holocaust that refugees today have rights at that time there were no rights so refugee agencies were working in a kind of unregulated way in a way working across and between existing immigration requirements that's great thank you so much for that answer Joanna next we have one for Sara which is from Monica Goodwin who asks thank you for all these questions by the way Monica asks even though you did not hear the word anti-semitism the fact is your family left bug guard did they ever talk to you about why they left and the events that led up to their exodus to India and why India Sara thank you um yes there was no I say no anti-semitism in India is how I certainly remember things and certainly Davis to soon left because of persecution in Baghdad that is well known and many many Jews did leave because of persecution in Baghdad even in 1941 there'd been the pogrom the Farhud in Baghdad and a number of Jews then came to India and even before that I know some musicians who in the 1910-1915 were in the Turkish army in the Ottoman army and having to fight wars there and their sister bought them out and then brought them to India so certainly people did leave Iraq to come to India because of persecution um I mean my parents my mother's family didn't leave because of persecution so some people came because of persecution and others came for business there were business opportunities in India so those were the two reasons but having grown up there with friends you know from all different spheres like Zoroastrians and Christians and Mohammedos and Hindus and Buddhists everyone was different so in that sense everyone was the same and then there was certainly no anti-semitism then I hope that answers it thank you so much for that Sara I that's that's a great answer and I just wanted to move on to our final question for today um and thank you all for sending these through this one is um from Dori Shmetaling and it's for Shunjo uh when do you think real Jews disappeared from in Kefeng those that knew about the practices and went to the synagogue at least occasionally um and she adds I thought I read a while ago that a group of Chinese people of claimed Jewish descent immigrated to Israel not just once though they had to go through a formal conversion process well in I mean when certainly in the 19th century by the end you know kind of a 10th of the 20th century when the Protestant missionary went to Kefeng none of the community members speaks any Hebrew they didn't really keep any traditions um so the other thing which recently about 20 years ago when I went to Kefeng I actually asked them you know kind of um you know how do you keep your Jewishness how you know kind of where do you get your Jewish education from because um all the um you know kind of they they go by the um father's blood line yeah so and the father's family line and so um I said you know kind of um because uh and you normally that you go by mother's line yeah and um they said um it's very interesting um so they said oh this is China we go by the father you know that um so yeah it's um um it's interesting they said it's more complex question you know kind of how when did they cease to become Jewish um or were were they there were there are also different Jewish communities I would just say and you know kind of maybe maybe China is too far and after the I would imagine these people had to come from you know kind of join the Mongol period and um they probably come from Central Asia somewhere and then they were unable you know um to travel back to get instruction you know kind of for everything and gradually over time so they had you know kind of lost that connection with um and the what you probably call the the center yeah then they become more and more peripheral and so then they become a center fight like many of the Muslim and you know kind of Muslim community they become center fight and they become an ethnic group rather than a religious group um that's great thank you so much for that um I also want to thank everyone for the questions the apologies if we didn't have time to get through to all of them but we must now close this session um I found it absolutely fascinating I learned so much from these three panelists and I'm left curious about much more that that they each raised in their discussions which I think is a great way to leave it um I hope that all of you watching felt the same and that you all enjoyed this session too I want to thank you all so much for joining us this evening um and thank you all for putting through the questions and I'm going to leave the final farewell to the curator Liana Tahan so on that note I will leave you all with thanks ladies and gentlemen we hope you have enjoyed today's event a big thank you to the panel and a very special thank you to our partners Jewish Book Week for working with us on this event please fill up the feedback form we'd like to know what you think of our online events and do please keep an eye on what's on pages on our website for more exciting events thank you again for joining us today