Meir Ashkenazi (rabbi of Shanghai)

Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi of Shanghai's Russian Jewish community from 1926 to 1949

Meir Ashkenazi
Born	Cherikov, Mogilev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	25 August 1954 Brooklyn, New York
Occupation	Rabbi
Known for	Rabbi of the Russian Jewish community in Shanghai, 1926–1949
Parents	Shneur Zalman and Keila Ashkenazi
Spouse(s)	Toiba Liba Ashkenazi (née Soloveitchik)
Children	Including Moshe Ashkenazi; two daughters

Meir Ashkenazi (died 25 August 1954) was a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi who served as rabbi of the Russian (Ashkenazi) Jewish community in Shanghai from 1926 until 1949. Contemporary reports often styled him chief rabbi of the city's Jews. During the Second World War he was a central figure in relief work for European Jewish refugees there, including students of the Mir Yeshiva. After leaving for Crown Heights in 1949 he took part, according to the biographer Chaim Miller, in the early 1951 campaign for Menachem Mendel Schneerson to accept the Chabad-Lubavitch leadership. He was the paternal grandfather of Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, later rabbi of Kfar Chabad.

Early life and Vladivostok

Sources differ on his date of birth. Shmuel Super, writing in Anash.org, says he was born in Cherikov, then in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire, on the first day of Chanukah, 25 Kislev 5651, to a Chabad family; his parents were Shneur Zalman and Keila Ashkenazi. Miriam Liebermann, in The Jewish Press, gives the year as 1891 and places the birth in the Pale of Settlement.

According to Super he studied briefly at the Tomchei Tmimim yeshiva in Lubavitch, leaving after less than a year because of typhus, and received rabbinic ordination from Chaim Eliezer Soloveitchik of Cherikov, later his father-in-law, and from Tzvi Hirsh Tumarkin of Kremenchug. He was drafted into the Russian army in the First World War. Super dates his appointment as rabbi of Vladivostok to 5678, while still unmarried; Liebermann gives 1918 and says he served for seven years. He married Toiba Liba, Soloveitchik's daughter, in Harbin; Super dates the wedding to 10 Teves 5679.

As Soviet rule closed in on the Russian Far East he prepared to leave. Sources differ on the destination he first intended. Liebermann says he had accepted an offer to lead a community in New York when Shanghai's Russian Jews asked him to become their rabbi. Super reports a family tradition of an offer from Boston, and says Ashkenazi had also planned to move to Mandatory Palestine with the blessing of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. Super, quoting a June 1926 interview in Israel's Messenger, says it took two years to obtain an exit visa; Liebermann writes that he was smuggled out, followed five weeks later by his wife and two young children.

Rabbi of Shanghai

Super, quoting Israel's Messenger of 5 March 1926, says the paper reported his arrival from Vladivostok, and that a commemorative album later dated the appointment to 19 Shevat. Liebermann records that the family settled in Shanghai in 1926. The city's Jews were divided between a smaller, established Baghdadi Sephardi community and a larger, poorer Russian Ashkenazi community, which Super puts at more than 1,000 people by 1926.

Liebermann writes that Ashkenazi established the Ohel Moshe synagogue in Hongkew. Super, drawing on Israel's Messenger, says the congregation had existed since 1907 and acquired a new building in Hongkew around the time of his appointment. Super says that, although he was hired by the Ashkenazi community, he also gained the respect of the Sephardim and came to be treated as the city's senior rabbinic authority. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency described him in November 1937 as "chief rabbi of the Jewish community here".

Shortly after his arrival he took part in the dedication of the Sephardi Beth Aharon Synagogue, funded by the businessman Silas Aaron Hardoon. Super reproduces a letter of blessing he sent for the occasion, published in June 1927. After the Japanese bombardment of Hongkew in 1937, Liebermann says, most of the community moved to the French Concession, where Ashkenazi arranged a large "New Synagogue", opened, according to Super, on 9 Nisan 5701.

On 23 November 1937 the JTA reported a $125,000 appeal to American Jewry to aid destitute Jews in Shanghai and other Chinese cities. It said Ashkenazi had given a statement in Hebrew appealing for help for "their brethren stricken by the undeclared war", and that a community matzo factory in Yangzepoo had been "blown up by the Japanese".

Sources differ on when he founded a Talmud Torah in Shanghai. Liebermann dates it to 1939, with 35 pupils at first and eventually 300. Super, quoting the Shanghai Jewish Chronicle and a later interview Ashkenazi gave to Hatzofeh, dates the announcement to Tishrei 5701 (autumn 1940) and says it grew from fewer than 30 pupils to more than 200 boys, with about 150 girls in an associated Bais Yaakov school, almost all from German Jewish refugee families. Liebermann says a yeshiva ketana was later headed by his son-in-law, Hershel (Tzvi Hirsh) Milner, with a staff drawn from students of the Mir Yeshiva.

Refugees and the Second World War

From the mid-1930s European Jewish refugees reached Shanghai in large numbers, first from Germany and Austria and later, in 1941, from Poland and Lithuania, many of them travelling via Kobe in Japan. Liebermann puts the German and Austrian arrivals by 1939 at 14,000, and says that in August 1941 nearly 1,000 refugees arrived from Poland and Eastern Europe, including more than 400 yeshiva students, of whom more than 150 were from the Mir Yeshiva. In a 1946 Hatzofeh interview, quoted by Super, Ashkenazi put the pre-war Central European influx at 17,000 and said that more than a thousand Jews arrived from Poland in 1941, "over half of them" rabbis and yeshiva students. Super reports that the Mir Yeshiva was housed in the Beth Aharon synagogue, and reproduces a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum photograph of it there, dated 5702.

Liebermann writes that Ashkenazi established a yeshiva for students from other Polish and Lithuanian yeshivas, Yeshivas Mizrach ha'Rachok, and served as its rosh yeshiva. She says he headed a committee of Russian Jews that financed the printing of religious books, beginning with the Talmud tractate Gittin in May 1942 and later close to 100 titles, including a full set of the Talmud.

After Japan entered the war in December 1941, Liebermann writes, Sephardi Jews who held British citizenship were interned and their assets frozen, and in May 1942 the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee stopped sending money to Shanghai under the Trading with the Enemy Act. She says Vaad Hatzalah funds were then sent to Ashkenazi through neutral countries; he distributed them "at great personal risk" and was interrogated by the Japanese several times. In the Hatzofeh interview quoted by Super, Ashkenazi called 1942 "a year of hunger" and said he later received substantial sums from the Vaad Hatzalah, first in his name and later also in the name of Chaim Shmuelevitz, rosh yeshiva of Mir.

Departure and New York

In the autumn of 1946 Ashkenazi travelled to Mandatory Palestine, where, Super says, his parents and his son Moshe were living. Moshe had been sent there in 1934, at bar mitzvah age, to study at Yeshivas Toras Emes in Jerusalem; Liebermann says fourteen years passed before his parents saw him again. Super, quoting Haboker of 16 October 1946, says Iraqi officials at Basra delayed the journey for twelve days because the travellers were Jews bound for Palestine. He then visited the United States. Super, quoting Der Tog of 3 January 1947, says he arrived on a mission to Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn and was welcomed by the Vaad Hatzalah, but returned to Shanghai in the spring of 1947 rather than leave the community without a rabbi.

As the Chinese Civil War approached the city he left Shanghai in Kislev 5709. Super, quoting Der Tog of 4 January 1949, says he arrived in New York on 2 Teves 5709 and told the paper that some 8,000 Jews were then in Shanghai, most waiting for ships to Israel. Liebermann records that he and his wife settled in Crown Heights in 1949. Super says that shortly afterwards Schneersohn appointed him, in a letter dated 26 Teves, director of the Shanghai refugee department of Machne Israel, and that in March 1949 he visited Shanghai refugees detained on Ellis Island.

According to Miller, in early January 1951 the Yiddish papers Der Morgen Journal, Der Tag and The Forward were told that a committee of Chasidim led by rabbis Meir Ashkenazi, Shlomo Aharon Kazarnovsky and Zalman Gurary had chosen Menachem Mendel Schneerson as the next Lubavitcher Rebbe and had presented him with a letter of hitkashrut (bond of allegiance); on 4 January the papers ran headlines to that effect. Miller writes that on 17 January 1951, the first anniversary on the Jewish calendar of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn's death, a group led by Ashkenazi again presented such a letter, and that for the first time Schneerson was not dismissive, saying, "You all have to help me."

Death and family

Ashkenazi died on 26 Av 5714, 25 August 1954. Super, quoting Der Tog of 27 August 1954, says he died at three o'clock in the afternoon and that the funeral was held the same day, at the instruction of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from his last residence at 518 Crown Street, Brooklyn. He was buried in the Agudas Chasidei Chabad section of Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, just past the Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbes; kevarim.com gives the grave as block 94, row 5, grave 14L. Der Tog, as quoted by Super, said he was survived by his wife, his son Rabbi Moshe Ashkenazi (later a rabbi in Tel Aviv), and two daughters in the United States. One daughter, Malka (Manya), had married Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh Milner in Shanghai in 5704. Moshe was the father of Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, rabbi of Kfar Chabad from the 1970s until 2015, who was in turn succeeded by his son, also named Meir Ashkenazi.

See also

• Chabad Lubavitch of China
• Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi
• Meir Ashkenazi (rabbi of Kfar Chabad)
• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
• Menachem Mendel Schneerson
• Machne Israel
• Kfar Chabad