There are two synagogues in the most cosmopolitan city on the mainland of China which once hosted a thriving Jewish community.

Ohel Moshe Synagogue on Ward Road (today's Chang Yang Road) was founded by Russian Jews in 1907 and moved to this site in 1927. It was headed by Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi and became the center of religious activities for the Jewish refugees from Europe during wartime.

Built in 1927-28, the Ohel Moshe Synagogue was a center of the community in the Tilanqiao neighborhood, where Shanghai's Japanese overlords, under German pressure, forced German and Austrian Jews to live in the final years of World War II.

About 30,000 European Jews found a haven from Nazi persecution in Shanghai, whose status as an open city made it one of the last places they could flee to without visas.

Their presence expanded an already thriving Jewish community that included many of the city's top business leaders and supported German and Yiddish newspapers, schools, and at least seven synagogues.

The refugees left after the war's end and the 1949 communist takeover, and in 1996, the city turned the synagogue into a museum of Jewish history. Its collection will be expanded under the fix-up that began last month, according to a spokesperson for the Hongkou district government.

Efforts to salvage Shanghai's Jewish history have been driven by both domestic and overseas scholarly interest, as well as by the growing numbers of Jewish expatriates in the city.

Shanghai’s government has announced that restoration is due to take five months. While the project's budget wasn't known, reports said the government has already spent 10 million yuan ($1.3 million) on restoring the surrounding area and promoting it as a tourist site.

On Shanxi Bei Road, lies Ohel Rachel Synagogue, built in 1920 by Sir Victor Sassoon. The house of worship was a gift to the Sephardic Jewish community in honor of Sassoon's wife, Rachel. The synagogue, the largest in Asia, is within Shanghai's French Concession, an area in which some members of the Jewish community resided or worked, including Shanghai's Sephardic community. The Jewish community actively used it until the Japanese occupied it during the 1940s.
After formation of the People's Republic, Ohel Rachel became home to the Bureau of Education which, since 1998, opens it for Jewish services only a few times a year. Presently, Shanghai's estimated 2,000 Jewish residents worship mainly in private homes and Judaism is not recognized as an official religion by China's communist government, which strictly controls religious activities.

The building is not open to the public, but is visited by dignitaries and occasional tour groups.

Written by: Rabbi Hecht