(Jewish Group) A new museum tells the story of Singapore's Jews, starting with their Baghdad roots

[Behind the Aegis]

Singapore’s Jewish history is palpable on its streets: There’s Manasseh Lane and Meyer Road, named for the hugely influential Manasseh Meyer, a Baghdadi Jew and early leader of the Jewish community who helped open two of its Sephardic synagogues.

Along Middle Road, 19th-century buildings bearing Stars of David and the names of the Jewish businessmen who built them line the street, marking what used to be the Jewish “Mahallah,” or neighborhood, where 1,500 Jews lived during the middle of the 20th century.

In fact, in the southeast Asian city of 5.7 million — mostly ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian migrants and only 2,500 Jews — countless roads and monuments in the city-state are named for influential Jews of the past and their achievements.

But in their 200 years of rich history, the Jews of Singapore have never had a place of their own to show off the story of their people, until now. In the old Mahallah and on the ground floor of the Jacob Ballas community center — named for the Iraqi Jewish philanthropist who chaired the Singapore and Malaysia stock exchange in the 1960s — a new museum tells the full story of Southeast Asia’s oldest continuing Jewish community, beginning with the arrival of the first Jew in 1819.



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