Baghdadi Jews

The Baghdadi Jews are one of the main Jewish communities of India.

The "Baghdadi" Jewish community of India is so called because its members were chiefly descended from Iraqi Jewish immigrants to India who moved to that country during the British Raj. The name of the community derives from Baghdad, although they do not originate exclusively from Baghdad, but from other areas of Iraq as well, in addition to other Middle-Eastern countries of the Ottoman Empire.

History

The community developed as a result of Jews fleeing religious persecution in Muslim lands to the northwest of India during the . Unlike other Jewish communities in India whose oral tradition attest to a presence in India going back as long as 2000 years, the Baghdadi communities were established relatively recently . While the Baghdadi Jews are known primarily from their presence in India, they also established themselves in trading ports further east, notably in Yangon , Singapore, Penang, and Shanghai, as well as the west.

The Baghdadis have completely assimilated into Indian society. A contributing factor to their assimilation was their physical features and resemblance to the East Indians. The Baghdadis originally came to India from Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, so they had dark olive skin and black or dark brown hair, that gave them that distinct Middle Eastern appearance and an Indian resemblance.

Clothing in the Baghdadi community is usually Western clothing for men and the Indian sari for women.

Cuisine

Baghdadi cuisine is an Indian hybrid cuisine, with many Arab, , and Indian influences. Famous Baghdadi dishes include Beef curry, Baghdadi Biryani and Baghdadi Jewish parathas. A Baghdadi version of Tandoori chicken is also popular .

Famous Baghdadi Jews

*Lord Kadoorie
*Abraham Sofaer, actor
*, Bollywood actress
*J. F. R. Jacob, Indian military commander in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971
*Anish Kapoor, British Asian sculptor; Baghdadi Jewish mother
* & Simon Reuben, British Asian businessmen
*David Sassoon, merchant and founder of the Sassoon family
*Albert Abdullah David Sassoon, merchant
*Sassoon David Sassoon, merchant
*Sassoon J. David, banker and member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation
*Brian George, Israeli-born character actor of Baghdadi-Indian Jewish descent most well-known for playing the role of a Pakistani shop owner,"Bhabu", on Seinfeld

Shanghai ghetto

The Shanghai ghetto was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkou District of Shanghai, where about 20,000 Jewish refugees lived during World War II, having fled from Nazi Germany, , Poland and Lithuania.

The refugees were settled in the poorest and most crowded area of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food and clothing.

Background

Jews in Germany of 1930s

By the end of the 1920s, most German Jews were loyal to Germany, assimilated and relatively prosperous. They served in the German army and contributed to every field of German science, business and culture. After the Nazis were elected to power in 1933, the state-sponsored persecution such as the Nuremberg Laws and the Kristallnacht drove masses of German Jews to seek asylum abroad, but as Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts — those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."
The Evian Conference demonstrated that by the end of the 1930s it was almost impossible to find a destination open for Jewish immigration.

According to Dana Janklowicz-Mann,
“Jewish men were being picked up and put into concentration camps. They were told you have ''X'' amount of time to leave — two weeks, a month — if you can find a country that will take you. Outside, their wives and friends were struggling to get a passport, a visa, anything to help them get out. But embassies were closing their doors all over, and countries, including the United States, were closing their borders. … It started as a rumor in Vienna… ‘There’s a place you can go where you don’t need a visa. They have free entry.’ It just spread like fire and whoever could, went for it.”

Shanghai after 1937

The of Shanghai was established by the Treaty of Nanking. Police, jurisdiction and passport control was implemented by the foreign autonomous board. As a result of the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the city by and the Japanese army and Chinese Reformed Government did not establish passport regime. The port of Shanghai was the only place in the world that allowed entry with neither a visa nor a passport. Under the Unequal Treaties between China and European countries, visas were only required to book tickets departing from Europe.

By the time when most German Jews arrived, two other Jewish communities had already settled in the city: the wealthy Baghdadi Jews, including the Kadoorie and Sassoon families, and the who fled their country following the 1917 October Revolution and formed part of the .

Chiune Sugihara and Ho Feng Shan

Many in the Russian Jewish community were saved by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania. Among those saved in the Shanghai ghetto were leaders and students of Mir yeshiva, the only European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust. They managed to flee across the vast territory of Russia by train.

Similarly, thousands of Austrian Jews were saved by the Chinese consul-general in Vienna Ho Feng Shan, who issued visas during 1938-1940 against the orders of his superior the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, Chen Jie.

Arrival of German Jews

The refugees who managed to purchase tickets for luxurious Japanese cruise steamships departing from Genoa later described their three-week journey with plenty of food and entertainment — between persecution in Germany and squalid ghetto in Shanghai — as surreal. Some passengers attempted to make unscheduled departures in Egypt, hoping to smuggle themselves into the British Mandate of Palestine.

On August 15, 1938, first Jewish refugees from Anschluss Austria arrived by Italian ship. By June 1939, 8,200 Jewish refugees had arrived.

Much needed aid was provided by International Committee for European Immigrants , established by Victor Sassoon and Paul Komor and Committee for the Assistance of European Jewish Refugees , founded by . These organizations prepared the housing in Hongkou, a relatively cheap district compared with the International settlement or the French settlement. They were accommodated in shabby apartments and six camps in a former school.
The Japanese occupiers of Shanghai regarded German Jews as "stateless persons".

Most of the refugees arrived after 1937. Further immigration restrictions were imposed in 1939; however, a numbers of Jews continued to arrive until the by Japan in December 1941.

Life in the ghetto

The authorities were unprepared for massive immigration and the arriving refugees faced harsh conditions in the impoverished Hongkou District: 10 per room, near-starvation, disastrous sanitation and scant employment.

The Baghdadis and later the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee provided some assistance with the housing and food problems. Faced with language barriers, extreme poverty, rampant disease and isolation, the refugees were able to make the transition from being supported by welfare agencies to establishing a functioning community. Jewish cultural life flourished: schools were established, newspapers were published, theaters produced plays, sports teams participated in training and competitions and even cabarets thrived.

After the Pearl Harbor attack

After Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, the wealthy Baghdadi Jews were interned, and American charitable funds ceased. As communication with the US was broken, unemployment and inflation intensified and times got harder for the refugees.

The JDC liaison Laura Margolis, who came to Shanghai, attempted to stabilize the situation by getting permission from the Japanese authorities to continue her fundraising effort, turning for assistance to the Russian Jews who arrived before 1937 and were exempt from the new restrictions.

Further restrictions

As World War II intensified, the Nazis stepped up pressure on Japan to hand over the Shanghai Jews. Warren Kozak describes the episode when the Japanese military governor of the city sent for the Jewish community leaders. The delegation included Amshinover rabbi Shimon Kalish. The Japanese governor was curious: "Why do the Germans hate you so much?"

"Without hesitation and knowing the fate of his community hung on his answer, Reb Kalish told the translator : "''Zugim weil mir senen orientalim'' — Tell him the Germans hate us because we are Oriental." The governor, whose face had been stern throughout the confrontation, broke into a slight smile. In spite of the military alliance, he did not accede to the German demand and the Shanghai Jews were never handed over."


On November 15 1942, the idea of a restricted ghetto was approved. On February 18 1943, the Japanese authorities declared a "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees", ordering those who arrived after 1937 to move their residences and businesses into the one-square-mile area within three months, by May 15. The stateless refugees needed permission from the Japanese to dispose of their property; others needed permission to move into the ghetto. While the ghetto had no barbed wire or walls, a curfew was enforced, the area was patrolled, food was rationed, and everyone needed passes to enter or leave the ghetto.

Although temporary passes were issued to work outside the ghetto, these were granted arbitrarily and were severely curtailed after the first year. But the fact that the Chinese did not leave the Hongkou ghetto meant the Jews were not isolated. Nevertheless economic conditions worsened; psychological adjustment to ghettoization was difficult; the winter of 1943 was severe and hunger was widespread.

Partial list of notable Shanghai ghetto survivors

* Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld, who spent nine years overseeing health care for the Communist army.
* Michael Medavoy, a Hollywood executive at Columbia, Orion and TriStar Pictures.
* Peter Max, American pop artist.
* W. Michael Blumenthal, served as the .
* Eric Halpern, a cofounder of the Far Eastern Economic Review and its first editor.
* Shaul Eisenberg, who founded and ran the Eisenberg Group of Companies in Israel.
*Charles K. Bliss, whose Chinese experience inspired him to create Blissymbols.
* Rene Rivkin, Australian financier.
* Laurence Tribe, professor, Harvard Law School, Carl M. Loeb University Professor
* Gunther Gassenheimer, Rabbi, Temple Israel, Alameda, CA

Films

* Documentary by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann.
*''The Port of Last Resort: Zuflucht in Shanghai'' Documentary directed by Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy.

Shanghai Russians

The term Shanghai Russians refers to a sizable Russian diaspora that flourished in Shanghai, China between the World Wars. By 1937 it is estimated that there were as many as 25,000 anti-Bolshevik Russians living in the city, the largest European group by far. Most of them had come from the Russian Far East, where, with , the had maintained a presence as late as the autumn of 1922.

In the late 19th century, the Russian imperial government was shifting the focus of its investment to Manchuria. As a consequence, China's trade with its northern neighbour soared. As soon as there was a regular ferry service between Vladivostok and Shanghai, the Russian tea merchants started to settle in the commercial capital of China. About 350 Russian citizens resided within the Shanghai International Settlement in 1905. In order to protect their interests, the was opened in 1896. The old building of the consulate, still occupied by the Russian diplomats, ranks among the Bund's minor landmarks.

The bulk of the Russian exile community relocated to Shanghai from Vladivostok following the fall of the Provisional Priamurye Government at the close of the Russian Civil War. 's squadron alone brought several thousand from Vladivostok in 1922. Many Harbin Russians, attracted by the booming economy of Shanghai, moved from Manchuria to the coast over the following years. Barred by both distance and money from joining established communities in Paris and Berlin, a large number gravitated towards Shanghai, a freeport at the time, requiring no visa or work-permit for entry. For this same reason it was later to become a refuge for Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Although free, and relatively secure, conditions for the émigrés were far from ideal. For one thing they were all stateless, as the Soviet government had revoked the citizenship of all political exiles in 1921. The only travel document most of them had was the Nansen passport, issued by the League of Nations. Unlike other foreigners in China they did not have the benefits conferred by extraterritoriality, which granted immunity from local laws, complex and almost impossible for foreigners to understand.

This was made worse by the barriers to employment opportunities, which in this international city required a good command of English as a minimum requirement. There were whole families that depended on wives or daughters who made a living as taxi dancers .

Some did manage to make a go of things, teaching music or French. Other women took work as dress-makers, shop assistants and hairdressers. By slow degrees, and despite the many difficulties, the community not only retained a good deal of cohesion but did begin to flourish, both economically and culturally. By the mid 1930s there were two Russian schools, as well as a variety of cultural and sporting clubs. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. An important part was also played by the local Russian Orthodox Church under the guidance of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco.

Many exiles set up restaurants in the district known as Little Russia, and Russian musicians achieved a dominance over the city's foreign-run orchestra. The most famous Russian singer, Alexander Vertinsky, relocated from Paris to Shanghai; and Fyodor Chaliapin was seen on tour. Vladimir Tretchikoff, the "King of Kitsch", spent his youth in the city. Russian teachers offered lessons in theatre and dancing. Margot Fonteyn, the English ballerina, studied dance in Shanghai as a child with Russian masters, one of whom, , had formerly danced with the in Moscow.

But it was the contribution that Russian women made to the entertainment industry, dancing and otherwise, that gave the city its exotic reputation, noted in the guidebooks of the day. A fictionalized portrayal of their predicament is presented in the film ''The White Countess'' . Those who were left became the focus of earnest campaigns by the League of Nations and others to end the "white slave trade."

The Shanghai Russians survived through the difficult days of the Japanese occupation, but left in the end with the advance of the Communists. They were forced to flee, first to a refugee camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines and then mainly to the United States and Australia. The Russian monuments of Shanghai did not escape the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. The Pushkin statue, funded by public subscription and unveiled on the centenary of the poet's death, was smashed by the Red Guards in 1966. It was subsequently restored in 1987, and remains the only monument to a foreign writer in China. The Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas, consecrated and elaborately frescoed in 1933, was converted into a washing machine factory, and is now a restaurant.

Shanghai International Settlement

The Shanghai Municipal Council was the governing body which administered the combined and in Shanghai, known as the Shanghai International Settlement . It was established in 1854 to reorganise the existing concessions. Wholly foreign-controlled, the council was staffed by individuals of all nationalities, including Britons, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, and Japanese. Chinese members were not permitted to join the council until 1928.

Representing a wide spectrum of nations, the Shanghai Municipal Council along with the foreign residents of the International Settlement recreated the architecture and institutions of their homelands in Shanghai. It maintained its own police force, the Shanghai Municipal Police and even possessed its own military reserve in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps . The immense presence of the council and the settlement's foreign residents can still be seen throughout present day Shanghai, most notably the architecture of The Bund.

Amongst the many members who served on the council, its American chairman during the 1920's, Stirling Fessenden, is the most notable. In addition to serving as the settlement's main administrator during Shanghai's most turbulent era, he was also remembered for being more "British" than the council's British members. The International Settlement was not a British possession, unlike its neighbor, the French Concession, which was formally part of the French colonial empire, under the direction initially of the Governor-General of Indo-China. Thus the SMC exercised a considerable degree of political autonomy, not always wisely. Actions in the 1920s in particular, such as the May 30 1925 shooting of Chinese by members of the Shanghai Municipal Police, embarrassed and threatened the British Empire's position in China.


Over the years a large number of Chinese took up residency at the International Settlement, either to escape civil conflict, or to seek better economic opportunities. In 1932 there were already 1,040,780 Chinese living within the International Settlement, with another 400,000 fleeing into the area after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937. Moreover, Shanghai was for a time the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews who were escaping from the s, although they often lived in squalid conditions in an area known as the Shanghai ghetto.

The Council was formally abolished twice. In July 1943 it was retroceded to the City Government of Shanghai, then in the hands of the pro-Japanese Wang Jingwei Government, by its then Japanese leaders on the Council. Anglo-American influence had effectively ended after 8 December 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Army entered and occupied the city. Although senior Allied personnel and councillors were removed from their posts, most Allied nationals working for the administration remained in their jobs until they were interned after February 1943. The Settlement was also returned to Chinese control in the Sino-British Friendship Treaty of February 1943 between Britain and the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. After the war a Liquidation Commission fitfully met to discuss the remaining details of the handover. The Council's headquarters building still stands in downtown Shanghai.

After 1949, city government was re-instated under the .

List of Chairmen of the Shanghai Municipal Council

* Arnold Foster
*
* J. S. Fearon
* - Quarter

Consul General of France

The French Concession was governed by a separate municipal council, under the direction of the Consul General. The French Concession was not part of the International Settlement.

Sassoon family

The Sassoon family is a family of international renown, which originated in the , said to have originally been descended from Ibn Shoshans, of Spain.

Sassoon ben Salih was a banker to the of Baghdad. His son fled from a new and unfriendly vali, going first to the Gulf port of Bushehr in 1828 and then to Bombay, India, in 1832, with his large family. In Bombay, he built the international business called David S. Sassoon, with the policy of staffing it with people brought from Baghdad. They filled the functions of the various branches of his business in India, Burma, Malay, and east Asia. In each branch, he maintained a rabbi. His wealth and munificence were proverbial, and his business extended to China, where the Sassoon Building on the Bund in Shanghai became a noted landmark, and then to England.

His eight sons also branched out into many directions. , his son by his first wife, had been the first of the sons to go to China, in 1844. He later returned to Bombay, before leaving the firm to establish E. D. Sassoon in 1867, with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Another son, Albert Abdullah David Sassoon took on the running of the firm on his father's death, and notably constructed the Sassoon Docks, the first wet dock built in western India. With two of his brothers he later became prominent in England and the family great friends of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII.

Of those who settled in England, Sir Edward Albert Sassoon , the son of Albert, married Aline Caroline de Rothschild, and was a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 until his death. The seat was then inherited by his son Sir Philip Sassoon from 1912 until his death. Sir Philip served in World War I as military secretary to Field Marshal Sir and, during the 1920s and 1930s, as Britain's undersecretary of state for air. The twentieth-century English poet, memoirist, and anti-war figure Siegfried Sassoon was David's great-grandson. Intermarriage in England has caused the general loss of Judaism within this branch.

The branch that carried on the ancestral tradition has been represented by Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon , who moved from Letchworth to London and then to Jerusalem in 1970. He was the son of the David Sassoon who collected Jewish books and manuscripts and who catalogued them in Ohel David, in two volumes. This David was the son of Flora Abraham, who had moved from India to England in 1901 and established a famous salon in her London home. Solomon Sassoon had one son, Isaac S.D. Sassoon, who is also a rabbi.

Family members

*David Sassoon
**''by 1st wife Hannah Joseph''
**
***
****
**Elias David Sassoon
***Jacob Elias Sassoon, 1st Baronet
***Edward Elias Sassoon, 2nd Baronet
****Victor Sassoon, 3rd Baronet
**''by 2nd wife Flora Hayim''
**Sassoon David Sassoon
***Alfred Ezra Sassoon
****Siegfried Sassoon
**Solomon Sassoon
***David Solomon Sassoon
****Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon
*****Rabbi Isaac S.D. Sassoon

Radhanite

The Radhanites were medieval merchants. Whether the term, which is used by only a limited number of primary sources, refers to a specific guild, or a clan, or is a generic term for Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network is unclear. Jewish merchants dominated trade between the and Islamic worlds during the early Middle Ages . Many trade routes previously established under the Roman Empire continued to function during that period largely through their efforts. Their trade network covered much of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of India and China.

Etymology

Several etymologies have been suggested for the word "Radhanite". Many scholars, including Barbier de Meynard and Moshe Gil, believe it refers to a district in Mesopotamia called "the land of Radhan" in Arabic and Hebrew texts of the period. Others maintain that their center was the city of in northern Persia. Cecil Roth and Claude Cahen, among others, make the same claim about the Rh?ne River valley in France, which is ''Rhodanus'' in Latin. The latter claim that the center of Radhanite activity was probably in France as all of their trade routes began there. Still others maintain that the name derives from the terms ''rah'' "way, path" and ''dān'' "one who knows", meaning "one who knows the way". English-language sources added the suffix ''-ite'' to the term, as is done with ethnonyms or names derived from place names.

Activities

The activities of the Radhanites are documented by Abū l-Qasim Ubaid Allah ibn Khordadbeh, the Director of Posts and Police for the province of Jibal under the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tamid , when he wrote ''Kitab al-Masalik wal-Mamalik'' , probably around 870. Ibn Khordadbeh described the Radhanites as sophisticated and multilingual. He outlined four main trade routes utilized by the Radhanites in their journeys. All four began in the Rh?ne Valley of France and terminated in China. The commodities carried by the Radhanites were primarily those which combined small bulk and high demand, including spices, perfumes, jewelry, and silk. They are also described as transporting oils, incense, steel weapons, furs, and .

Text of Ibn Khordadbeh's account

: These merchants speak , , , the , , and languages. They journey from West to East, from East to West, partly on land, partly by sea. They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, , , marten and other furs, and swords. They take ship from Firanja '''', on the , and make for Farama ''''. There they load their goods on camel-back and to al-Kolzum '''', a distance of twenty-five ''farsakhs'' ''''. They embark in the and sail from al-Kolzum to al-Jar '''' and , then they go to , India, and China. On their return from China they carry back musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products of the Eastern countries to al-Kolzum and bring them back to Farama, where they again embark on the Western Sea. Some make sail for Constantinople to sell their goods to the ; others go to the palace of the to place their goods. Sometimes these Jew merchants, when embarking from the land of the Franks, on the Western Sea, make for Antioch ''''; thence by land to al-Jabia '''', where they arrive after three days’ march. There they embark on the Euphrates and reach Baghdad, whence they sail down the , to al-Obolla. From al-Obolla they sail for Oman, Sind, , and China ...

: These different journeys can also be made by land. The merchants that start from Spain or France go to Sus al-Aksa '''' and then to Tangier, whence they walk to Kairouan and the capital of Egypt. Thence they go to ar-Ramla, visit Damascus, al-Kufa, Baghdad, and al-Basra, cross Ahwaz, Fars, Kirman, Sind, Hind, and arrive in China.
:Sometimes, also, they take the route behind Rome and, passing through the country of the , arrive at , the capital of the Khazars. They embark on the , arrive at Balkh, betake themselves from there across the , and continue their journey toward Yurt, , and from there to China.

Historical significance

During the Early Middle Ages the Islamic policies of the Middle East and North Africa and the Christian kingdoms of Europe often banned each others' merchants from entering their ports. Corsairs of both sides raided the shipping of their adversaries at will. The Radhanites functioned as neutral go-betweens, keeping open the lines of communication and trade between the lands of the old Roman Empire and the Far East. As a result of the revenue they brought, Jewish merchants enjoyed significant privileges under the early Carolingians in France and throughout the Muslim world, a fact that greatly vexed the local Church authorities.

While most trade between Europe and East Asia had historically been conducted via Persian and Central Asian intermediaries, the Radhanites were among the first to establish a trade network which stretched from Western Europe to Eastern Asia. More remarkable still, they engaged in this trade regularly and over an extended period of time, centuries before Marco Polo and ibn Battuta brought their tales of travel in the Orient to the Christians and the Muslims, respectively. Indeed, ibn Battuta is believed to have travelled with the Muslim traders who travelled to the Orient on routes similar to those used by the Radhanites.

While traditionally many historians believed that the art of Chinese paper-making had been transmitted to Europe via Arab merchants who got the secret from taken at , some believe that Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites were instrumental in bringing paper-making west. Joseph of Spain, possibly a Radhanite, is credited by some sources with introducing the so-called Hindu-Arabic numerals from India to Europe. Historically, Jewish communities used letters of credit to transport large quantities of money without the risk of theft from at least classical times. This system was developed and put into force on an unprecedented scale by medieval Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites; if so, they may be counted among the precursors to the banks that arose during the late Middle Ages and early modern period.

Some scholars believe that the Radhanites may have played a role in the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. In addition, they may have helped establish Jewish communities at various points along their trade routes, and were probably involved in the early Jewish settlement of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and India.



Besides ibn Khordadbeh, the Radhanites are mentioned by name only by a handful of sources. Ibn al-Faqih's early tenth century ''Kitab al-Buldan'' mentions them, but much of ibn al-Faqih's information was derived from ibn Khordadbeh's work. ''Sefer ha-Dinim'', a Hebrew account of the travels of Yehuda ben Meir of Mainz, named Przemy?l and Kiev as trading sites along the Radhanite route. In the early twelfth century, a French-Jewish trader named Yitzhak Dorbelo wrote that he travelled with Radhanite merchants to Poland.

The end of the Radhanite age

The fall of the Tang Dynasty of China in 908 and the destruction of the Khaganate some sixty years later led to widespread chaos in Inner Eurasia, the Caucasus and China. Trade routes became unstable and unsafe, a situation exacerbated by invasions of Persia and the Middle East, and the Silk Road largely collapsed for centuries. Moreover, the fragmentation of the into small states provided more opportunities for non-Jews to enter the market. This period saw the rise of the mercantile city-states, especially Genoa, Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi, who viewed the Radhanites as unwanted competitors.

The economy of Europe was profoundly affected by the disappearance of the Radhanites. For example, documentary evidence indicates that many spices in regular use during the early Middle Ages completely disappeared from European tables in the 900s. Jews had previously, in large parts of Western Europe, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the spice trade.

Sources

* "China." ''Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present,'' vol. 1, ed. Cynthia Clark Northrup, p. 29. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005.
* . ''Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages''. New York: Dover Publications, 1987.
* . ''The Rise and Fall of Paradise''. New York: Putnam Books, 1983.
* . "Rādhānites". ''Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia''. Norman Roth, ed. Routledge, 2002. pp 558–561.
* . ''The Jews of Khazaria.'' 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
* De Goeje, Michael. ''Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum''. Leiden, 1889. Volume VI.
* ''The History of the Jewish Khazars,'' Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954.
* Fossier, Robert, ed. ''The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages,'' vol. 1: 350–950. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997.
* Gottheil, Richard, ''et al.'' ''Jewish Encyclopedia''. Funk and Wagnalls, 1901-1906.
* . "The Radhanite Merchants and the Land of Radhan." ''Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient'' 17:3 . 299–328.
* Gregory of Tours. ''De Gloria Martyrorum''.
* Josephus. ''Antiquities of the Jews''.
* . ''Jewish Merchant Adventurers: A Study of the Radanites''. London: Edward Goldston, 1948.
* "Radanites". ''Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present,'' vol. 3, ed. Cynthia Clark Northrup, p. 763–764. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005.
* . "The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism." ''Harvard Ukrainian Studies'' 3:2 .
* . "Dzieje Gospodarcze ?ydów Korony i Litwy w Czasach Przedrozbiorowych." ''?ydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, ed. A. Hafftka et al. Warsaw, 1936.
* Weissenbron, Zur. ''Gesch. der Jetzigen Ziffern'', 1892.

Morris Cohen (adventurer)

Morris Abraham "Two-Gun" Cohen was a Jewish soldier and adventurer who became aide-de-camp to the leader Sun Yat-sen and a major-general in the Chinese army.

According to a 1954 biography written by Charles Drage with Cohen's assistance, Morris Cohen was born in London in 1889 to a family that had just arrived from Poland. However Cohen was actually born into a poor Jewish family in Radzanów, Poland. Soon after his birth in 1887, the Cohens escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and emigrated to the St. George's in the East district in London's .¹

Cohen loved the theaters, the streets, the markets, the foods and the boxing arenas of the English capital more than he did the Jews' Free School, and in April 1900 he was run in as "a person suspected of attempting to pick pockets". A magistrate sent him to the Hayes Industrial School, an institution set up by the likes of Lord Rothschild to care for and train wayward Jewish lads. When he was released in 1905 and Cohen's parents shipped the young Morris off to western Canada with the hope that the fresh air and open plains of the New World would reform his ways.

Cohen initially worked on a farm near Whitewood, Saskatchewan. He tilled the land, tended the livestock and learned to shoot a gun and play cards. He did that for a year, and then started wandering through the Western provinces, making a living as a carnival talker, gambler, grifter and successful real estate broker. Some of his activities landed him in jail.

Cohen also became friendly with some of the Chinese exiles who had come to work on the Canadian Pacific Railways. He loved the camaraderie and the food, and in came to the aid of a Chinese restaurant owner who was being robbed. Cohen training in the alleyways of London came in handy, and he knocked out the thief and tossed him out into the street. Such an act was unheard of the time, as few white men ever came to the aid of the Chinese. The Chinese welcomed Cohen into their fold and eventually invited him to join the Tongmenghui, Sun Yat-sen's anti-Manchu organization. Cohen begun to advocate for the Chinese.

Morris Cohen soon moved to the city of Edmonton in the neighboring province of Alberta. There he became manager of one of the provincial capital’s leading real estate agencies and was appointed, on the personal recommendation of the Attorney General Sir Charles Cross, to serve the province as a Commissioner of Oaths, an appointment offered only to “fit and proper persons”².

Cohen fought with the Canadian Railway Troops in Europe during World War I where part of his job involved supervising Chinese laborers. He also saw some fierce fighting at the Western Front, especially during the Battle of Passchendaele. After the war, he resettled in Canada. But the economy had declined and the days of the real estate boom were long over. Cohen looked for something new to do, and in 1922 he headed to China to help close a railway deal for Sun Yat-sen with Northern Construction and JW Stewart Ltd. Once there, he asked Sun for a job as a bodyguard.

In Shanghai and Canton Cohen trained Sun's small armed forces to box and shoot, and told people that he was an aide-de-camp and an acting colonel in Sun Yat-sen's army. His lack of Chinese—he spoke a pidgin form of Cantonese at best—was thankfully not a problem since Sun, his wife Soong Ching-ling and many of their associates were western educated and spoke English. Cohen's colleagues started calling him Ma Kun, and he soon became one of Sun's main protectors, shadowing the Chinese leader to conferences and war zones. After one battle where he was nicked by a bullet, Cohen started carrying a second gun. The western community were intrigued by Sun's gun-totting protector and began calling him "Two-Gun Cohen." The name stuck.

Sun died of cancer in 1925, and Cohen went to work for a series of Southern Chinese Kuomintang leaders, from Sun's son, Sun Fo, and Sun's brother-in-law, the banker TV Soong, to such warlords as Li Jishen and Chen Jitang. He was also acquainted with Chiang Kai-shek, whom he knew from when Chiang was commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, which was located outside of Canton. His dealing with Chiang, though, were minimal since Cohen was allied with southern leaders who were generally opposed to Chiang. Cohen ran security for his bosses and acquired weapons and gunboats. Eventually he earned the rank of acting general, though he never led any troops.

When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Cohen eagerly joined the fight. He rounded up weapons for the Chinese and even did work for the British intelligence agency, Special Operations Executive . Cohen was in Hong Kong when the Japanese attacked in December 1941. He placed Soong Qingling and her sister Ailing onto one of the last planes out of the British colonies.

Cohen stayed behind to fight, and when Hong Kong fell later that month, the Japanese tossed him into Stanley Prison Camp. There the Japanese badly beat him and he languished in Stanley until he was part of a rare prisoner exchange in late 1943.

Cohen sailed back to Canada, settled in Montreal and married Judith Clark, who ran a successful women's boutique. He made regular visits back to China with the hope of establishing work or business ties. Mostly, though, Cohen saw old friends, sat in hotel lobbies and spun out tales—many of them tall—of his exploits. It was his own myth making, together with the desire of others to fabricate yarns about him, that has resulted in much of the misinformation about Cohen, from the claim that he had a hand in the making of modern China, to such outlandish ones like him having an affair with Soong Qingling and a wife in Canada back in the 1920s. After the 1949 Communist revolution, Cohen was one of the few people who was able to move between Taiwan and mainland China. Unfortunately, his prolonged absences took a toll on his marriage, and he and Judith divorced in 1956.

Cohen then settled with his widowed sister, Leah Cooper, in Salford, England. There he was surrounded by siblings, nephews and nieces and became a beloved family patriarch. His standing as a loyal aide to Sun Yat-sen helped him maintain good relations with both Taiwanese and Communist Party of China leaders, and he soon was able to arrange consulting jobs with Vickers , and Decca Radar. His last visit to China was during the start of the Cultural Revolution as an honored guest of Zhou Enlai.

Morris Cohen died 1970 in Salford. He is buried in Blakeley Jewish Cemetery in Manchester³

Books about Cohen

* Charles Drage - ''Two-Gun Cohen''
* Paolo Frere - ''The Pedlar and the Doctor''
* Daniel S. Levy - ''Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography''