For Mother's Day: Remembering Ohel Leah Synagogue in Hong Kong, Built for a Mom

For Mother's Day: Remembering Ohel Leah Synagogue in Hong Kong, Built for a Mom
by Samuel Gruber

Today is Mother's Day in the United States, and because it is a holiday celebrating mothers, its naturally a sort of Jewish holiday, too. I got to thinking about in what formal ways Jews remember their mothers. Jewish comedians would have you believe that Jews never remember to call their mothers enough, nor can Jewish men ever hope to marry to the standards of their moms. Certainly American Jews practice a tough love with their moms - often publicly denigrating their mother's for their protective demands while craving their attention all the while.

When mothers die, their children say kaddish. In many synagogues, children have made remembered their mothers (and fathers) with donations of memorial windows and other furnishing and fittings. But there are few instances where devoted sons have built entire synagogues to their mother's memory, and even fewer that bear the mother's name.

One such famous instance is Ohel Leah in Hong Kong, built by Sir Jacob Sassoon in memory of his mother Leah. Sassoon also built Ohel Rachel in Shanghai in memory of his wife (a slightly more common practice).

I have never been to Hong Kong, and so have never seen the synagogue. I remember well, however, when it was nearly torn down in the late 1980s to make room for the new Jewish club of Hong Kong, which was to rise on the synagogue site after the historic building - one of the oldest in Hong Kong - was razed. There was talk of building a replica of the 1901-02 synagogue on the top of the new skyscraper.

Shortly after I began work as Director of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund I began to collect information and write letters to help save the synagogue. At that time I think neither the name of WMF nor (certainly) my own made any difference, but over time the tide of local opinion in Hong Kong and among the Jews there shifted (or maybe it the leader of the demolition faction died) and a compromise design was settled upon. Development rights to the synagogue gardens were sold to a property developer in 1995, and this funded the construction of a large new Jewish Community Center, which includes a library, supermarket, swimming pool and a strictly kosher restaurant and the restoration of the synagogue. The restoration, completed in 1998 and reported to cost $6 million returned Ohel Leah's interiors and exteriors to their original state.

I hope that Leah Sassoon was pleased. Happy Mother's Day!

Remembering Jewish Mothers: Synagogues Named for Mothers and Wives

The Snoa, Curacao. The four great interior columns have been dedicated to the Jewish Matriachs - Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. We remember them on Mother's Day.
Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2007.

Remembering Jewish Mothers: Synagogues Named for Mothers and Wives
by Samuel D. Gruber

Today is Mother’s Day in the United States. This isn’t a very Jewish holiday – for isn’t every day supposed to by one on which mothers are honored? Still, in the history of synagogues we don’t see much evidence of that. Until the advent of Reform and Conservative Judaism, synagogues were mostly for men – places they could get away from their months (and wives). There a few examples, however, where synagogues have been dedicated to the memory of mothers, and several more in memory of wives and other women – who may have been mothers, too.

The best known example is the Ohel Leah synagogue of Hong Kong. This lovely building erected by Jacob Sassoon in 1901 was named after his mother Leah. Built by the local architectural firm of Leigh and Orange in the Hong Kong Midlevels in 1901, the building was almost torn down in the early 1990s, but was saved due to international protests, and it was restored in 1997. I remember this well, as it was one of the very first “endangered synagogue” cases to cross my desk when I was director of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund. Until it was hemmed in by skyscrapers, the white synagogue, with its short twin octagonal towers flanking a projecting Palladian porch, had been for a century a stately beacon visible far out at sea.

According to the website of the synagogue:

On August 7, 1901, Abraham Jacob Raymond, the senior member of E. D. Sassoon & Co, laid the foundation stone of the new Sassoon-sponsored synagogue in Robinson Road. It was an event attended by a large gathering of the new century's Hong Kong Jewish community. 'It now affords me very great pleasure.' Raymond addressed the gathering, 'on behalf of Mr Jacob Sassoon, to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that this synagogue when completed will be dedicated to the Jewish community of Hong Kong in commemoration of his beloved mother Leah, and will be a gift to the Jewish community of Hong Kong - the building from himself and the site from himself and his brothers, Messrs Edward and Meyer Sassoon.'

Sir Jacob later endowed a synagogue in Shanghai, which he dedicated in memory of his wife Lady Rachel Sassoon, and named Ohel Rachel. It opened in March 1920, and was consecrated by Rabbi W. Hirsch on January 23, 1921. Since Jacob died soon after the building’s completion, the classical-style was named dedicated in memory of husband and wife. The building still stands and serves as the Jewish Center of Shanghai. Ir was once one of seven synagogues in Shanghai. Today. Only one other survives. Ohel Moishe Synagogue located in Hong Kong district, hosts a museum dedicated to the history of the Jewish Experience in Shanghai.

I know of at least two other synagogues named after women. Rachel Simon in her 1992 book Change within Tradition among Jewish Women in Libya (University of Washington Press, p. 158) reports that the Tripoli (Libya) Dar Shweykah Synagogue was named after a women named Shmeykah of the Guetta family for Yelren who paid for it. To me this woman’s involvement recalls the ancient tradition in North Africa of awarding women synagogue honors – as recorded and analyzed by Bernadette Brooten in her Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues. (Chico, CA : Scholars Press, c1982).

In America, the small classical style Temple Freda on 205 Parker Street in Bryan, Texas was certainly named after a woman named Freda, but there is disagreement over which one. The more accepted view and the one recorded in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination (added to the NR in1983 – building #83003128) is that Freda refers to Ethel Freda Kaczer (1860-1912), wife of the president of the synagogue when it was built, and who died during the period of its construction.

A competing account says that the name is for Freda Tapper, the mother of Max Tapper who was on the building committee. Curiously, the two camps could never agree just to settle the dispute by honoring both women. The last I heard the 1912 synagogue is used as a church, but it continues to deteriorate.

Lastly, there is the case of Curacao’s to Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel (the Snoa), a building erected in 1732, the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. Inside the four great columns recall those in the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam and have added significance, since tradition states that when the Snoa was built these were dedicated to the four Matriarchs. At the time of the building the honor of laying the foundation stones of the columns went to (for a price) Daniel Aboab Cardoze and his wife Ribcah; and to Abraham Aboab Cardoze and his wife Leah. During a 1974 restoration of the building, the names of the Matriarchs Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah were attached in raised Hebrew letters to the columns, symbolizing the indispensable contribution of our women to the Synagogue.