The Tianjin Synagogue

There are only two countries in which I feel no anti-Semitism, Israel and…China. One might argue in the latter case that there are no Jews in China - but then that lack has never inhibited anti-Semites. In fact, there has been a small indigenous Jewish presence since at least the 12th Century in Kaifeng - an ancient capital. No one is quite sure of the origin of that community, and anyway it is quite extinct since the 18th Century - with only the odd unsubstantiated report of local Chinese traders counting strangely in Hebrew, since 'their ancestors did so'.

The modern Jewish presence in China dates from the mid-nineteenth Century, with the migration of Baghdadi Jews to Shanghai (1843-1920). This was followed by Russian Jews fleeing pogroms, notably to Harbin - my cousin married a girl from that city - as well as Shanghai, and Tianjin (1920-1937). Finally, there was the great migration of Jews seeking refuge from the Nazis (1938-1952), mainly to Shanghai. At one point there were more than 30,000 Jews living in Shanghai, which fell under Japanese occupation during the Second World War. The Japanese detained foreign Jews in a ghetto, but stopped short of obeying instructions from their Nazi allies to murder them. The Japanese behaved most cruelly, but impartially, to all their captives independent of race (except the Chinese), and lacked the European cultural attitudes necessary to perform genocide on Jews.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Jewish presence has declined, with emigration to Israel, the United States and Australia. In fact, although I had visited Tianjin several times, I was unaware that there had been a Jewish presence there, until I had a phone call last year from my friend Joe, a physics professor from New York. "Allan, I hear that you're going to a meeting in Tianjin. They're going to raze the Tianjin synagogue to make way for a Metro station, and I want you to get some pictures of it if it's still there- maybe arrange for a plaque or something."

So on our free afternoon, I arranged for a small party to set off to find the synagogue. This was facilitated by the local students, who made up the party by accosting the conference participants, demanding if they were Jewish (no inhibitions there). (In fact, one Chinese delegate from Singapore stared at me dubiously, à la hoary joke: "You Jewish? You don't look Jewish." It transpired that he was only familiar with Singapore's Sephardi Jews who looked more like my wife.)

But at least we will have a permanent pictorial record of Tianjin's synagogue.

[Material on China's Jewish presence 1834-1952 from Shanghai Jewish Center www.chinajewish.org. Japanese occupation story from Dr Helen Au Yang. Photo taken Tianjin, 26 August 2005 by AIS.]