Transnational Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia

The Jewish communities of East and Southeast Asia display an impressive diversity. Jonathan Goldstein's book covers the period from 1750 and focuses on seven of the area's largest cities and trading emporia: Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Harbin, Shanghai, Rangoon, and Surabaya. The book isolates five factors which contributed to the formation of transnational, multiethnic, and multicultural identity: memory, colonialism, regional nationalism, socialism, and Zionism. It emphasizes those factors which preserved specifically Judaic aspects of identity.
Drawing extensively on interviews conducted in all seven cities as well as governmental, institutional, commercial, and personal archives, censuses, and cemetery data, the book provides overviews of communal life and intimate portraits of leading individuals and families. Jews were engaged in everything from business and finance to revolutionary activity. Some collaborated with the Japanese while others confronted them on the battlefield. The book attempts to treat fully and fairly the wide spectrum of Jewish experience ranging from that of the ultra-Orthodox to the completely secular.

Auteur

Jonathan Goldstein, Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, and University of West Georgia/USA.

Résumé

"[...] perhaps one of the most remarkable contributions to the already rich literature on Jewish experiences from the late twentieth to mid-twenty-first century. What makes this book unique, however, is its focus on the study of Jewish experiences in seven settings in East and Southeast Asia (namely, Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Harbin, Shanghai, Rangoon [Yangon], and Surabaya), a region rarely treated in the voluminous collections of essays in American and European libraries regarding the plight of Jewish people during this period. Thus, this work is a great contribution, offering a new, though less theoretical, perspective."
Henelito A. Sevilla in: Pacific Affairs: 90 (2017) No. 3

"This volume is a most interesting collection of essays on the history of seven distinct Jewish communities in East and Southeast Asia [...] useful volume that brings together compatible and fascinating histories and opens the way to new avenues of research."
Marcella Simoni in: Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 11 (10.2017), www.quest-cdecjournal.it/reviews.php?id=118