The island nation of Singapore is already home to southeast Asia’s oldest synagogue. Now it also has a Jewish museum, dedicated to the history of local Jewry. Clement Yong writes:
Located on the first floor of the synagogue’s neighbor, the Jacob Ballas Center, [the museum] covers the community’s history from the first Jews’ arrival in Singapore soon after it became a British colony in the early 1800s up to March of this year, when a twenty-year-old man was detained for planning a knife attack at the Maghain Aboth Synagogue.
The narrative it tells pauses at several key Jewish figures in Singapore’s history. A panel is dedicated to David Marshall, who was chief minister of pre-independence Singapore from 1955 to 1956, and a room to Jacob Ballas, . . . chairman of the Malaysia and Singapore Stock Exchange from 1964 to 1967. Other notable names include the former Supreme Court judge Joseph Grimberg, pioneering surgeon Yahya Cohen, and Sir Manasseh Meyer, a prominent businessman.
There are write-ups about Jewish rites and festivals in the museum so those interested can be given a crash course in Jewish culture. . . . One interesting tradition cited is the pouring of water on the back of a person’s car as he departs for the airport for good luck. After a boy is circumcised, the mother and child must also be on the same floor of the house for 40 days, and the child taken out to cross seven bridges.
Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, who months before had stood in front of the synagogue in solidarity with the Jewish community after a planned attack on those leaving the synagogue was foiled, was guest of honor at the [museum’s] launch. “If you look at the roads [with names like] Frankel Estate, Meyer Road, . . . Jews have made a tremendous contribution,” . . . he told reporters. . . . He also paid tribute to the seven Israeli advisers who came to train Singapore’s first soldiers.
Read more on Straits Times: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/first-jewish-museum-in-singapore-opens-in-waterloo-street