Shanghai Zionist Association
Shanghai Zionist Association (also styled Shanghai Zionist Organization or Shanghai Zionist Federation) was the principal Zionist organisation in Shanghai from its foundation in 1903 until the dispersal of the city’s Jewish community after 1949. It emerged within the Baghdadi Sephardi community of the International Settlement and later incorporated Ashkenazi and refugee groups.[1][2]
Founding
In April 1903 Sephardi Jews in Shanghai, influenced by the First Zionist Congress in Basel (1897), met and resolved to establish a local branch. The association was formally constituted on 26 April 1903 and sent a representative to the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel later that year.[1][2] Early membership was drawn overwhelmingly from the Baghdadi mercantile families (Sassoon, Kadoorie, Hardoon, Ezra and others) who had settled in the treaty port after the First Opium War.[3]
Nissim Elias Benjamin Ezra (N.E.B. Ezra, 1883–1936), a Baghdadi Jew born in Lahore and employed by the Sassoon firm, was the driving organiser and long-serving secretary. By March 1905 the association had about one hundred members.[4]
Leadership and activities
Elly Kadoorie (Sir Eleazer Silas Kadoorie, 1867–1944) served as president for thirteen years and was a major financial backer; he became chairman around 1915. In 1928 he was succeeded as chairman by Mrs Raymond Elias Toeg, from another prominent Sephardi family.[5][2]
The association’s principal public organ was the English-language periodical Israel’s Messenger (Hebrew: Mevasser Yisrael), launched on 22 April 1904 as a bi-weekly and later issued monthly. Ezra edited it until his death in 1936; the paper continued until 1941. Its masthead described it as “A fearless exponent of traditional Judaism and Jewish Nationalism.” It covered Sephardi communities across China, Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore as well as world Zionist news, and was distributed beyond East Asia.[1][4]
The association maintained formal links with the World Zionist Organization and followed the mainstream (Herzlian) line. It also ran a literary circle; Ezra delivered a lecture to it in December 1905 on “Jews and Judaism in America.”[2]
Relations with Chinese nationalists
In 1920 Sun Yat-sen wrote to Ezra, then editor of Israel’s Messenger, expressing support for the Zionist movement:
- Though their country was destroyed, the Jewish nation has existed to this day… [Zionism] is one of the greatest movements of the present time. All lovers of democracy cannot help but support wholeheartedly and welcome with enthusiasm the movement to restore your wonderful and historic nation, which has contributed so much to the civilization of the world and which rightfully deserves an honorable place in the family of nations.[5]
In 1929 Mrs Toeg and Ezra attended the reburial ceremony of Sun Yat-sen in Nanjing at the invitation of the Chinese government. In 1938 the Chinese vice-minister of foreign affairs communicated to Kadoorie the government’s continued respect for the Balfour Declaration.[5][2]
Later development and wartime
The arrival of Russian Jews after 1917 and, from the late 1930s, of several thousand refugees from Nazi Europe transformed the community and the Zionist scene. Ashkenazi groups such as Kadimah appeared alongside the older Sephardi core. Revisionist Zionism also took root, arriving via Harbin and other northern communities.[6]
During the Japanese occupation and the establishment of the Hongkew designated area (1943), several Zionist bodies (including the German-speaking AZO “Theodor Herzl” and others) coalesced into a single Zionist Organization Shanghai. After the war, mainstream and Revisionist elements held a joint rally at the Kadoorie School on 14 October 1945 calling for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Revisionist activists, among them Yana (Ya’acov) Liberman, later organised much of the post-1948 emigration to Israel.[6][7]
Decline
Most of Shanghai’s Jewish population left between 1945 and the early 1950s for Israel, the United States, Australia and elsewhere. The association, like the rest of the organised community, ceased to function as a significant body after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.[3]
See also
- Israel’s Messenger
- N.E.B. Ezra
- Elly Kadoorie
- Jewish community of Shanghai
- Revisionist Zionism
- Jewish communal and Zionist organisations in China
- Chabad Lubavitch of China
- Chabad Lubavitch of Taiwan
- Igud Yotzei Sin
- Israeli Pressure Groups in China
- Chinese policy on Jews, Zionism and Israel
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Shanghai, Jewish Encyclopedia, 1905.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Maisie J. Meyer, From the Rivers of Babylon to the Whangpoo: A Century of Sephardi Jewish Life in Shanghai (University Press of America, 2003), chapter 13, “Shanghai Zionist Association”.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Shanghai, Jewish Virtual Library.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 N.E.B. Ezra, Editor of Israel’s Messenger, Dies in Shanghai, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7 December 1936.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 The Long View from China, Moment, 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Jonathan Goldstein, “The Multiethnic Zionism of Shanghai and the Sino-Judaic Exodus,” in Shanghai as a Mosaic and Microcosm of Eurasian Jewish Identities, 1850–1950 (China Zentrum, 2013).
- ↑ Shanghai Collection, Center for Jewish History.