Sweet & Sour Safe Heaven
The Surprising and Little-Known Story of the
WW2 Jewish Experience in Shanghai
An insightful talk by Dvir Bar-Gal
Documentarian, Photo-Journalist, Tour Guide & Expert on Shanghai Jewish History
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
7:00 pm
at the
Chabad Jewish Center
1803 S. Maple Grove Rd., Boise, ID 83709
Registration required.
FREE EVENT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Donations accepted.
Did you know there were yeshivas in Shanghai in the 1940s and 1950s?
Between the Opium War (1840s) until the Chinese Communist Revolution (1940s) Shanghai morphed from a tiny city-port to one of the world’s largest cosmopolitan cities and important international financial centers.
Known as the “The Paris of the Orient,” Shanghai’s history involved an extraordinary and a little-known Jewish heritage facilitated by 3 different Jewish communities from Iraq, Russia and Europe. The Baghdadi Jews were the movers and the shakers in the development of this unusual city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while thousands of Jewish refuges found it as a port of last resort during WW2. Yet they all left. A community of 30,000 Jewish people vanished from a place where there was no Anti-Semitism, only communism.
An extraordinary place created by extraordinary people and unparalleled chains of events. You will not want to miss these eye-opening and little known stories from Jewish Shanghai.
ABOUT DVIR BAR-GAL
Dvir graduated Tel-Aviv University in Film studies, Mass Communications and Arts. Bar-Gal worked his way in Israeli TV from news cameraman to director of short documentaries and current-affairs stories.
In the summer of 2001 Bar-Gal came to Shanghai China to document the awaking empire, and has stayed in his new hometown ever since.
Soon after arrival in Shanghai, Bar-Gal began journalistic research for the lost Jewish cemeteries of Shanghai. His findings turned to a decade-and-a-half long mission to unearth and save the lost Shanghai Jewish graves and to bring the gravestones he collected to a befitting place of memory. Bar-Gal's research and his personal attempts to preserve the forgotten Jewish heritage of Shanghai were documented and covered by the media.
Since 2003 Bar-Gal has been leading the Shanghai Jewish Heritage tour, a 4-hour-long, in-depth insight to the extraordinary Jewish history of China’s cosmopolitan city. The tour covers the City’s history and the unique Jewish presence since The Opium War of the 1840’s to the Communist revolution in 1949.
Bar-Gal is a sought-after speaker at universities, communities and other organizations, bringing this forgotten history to students and the general public.
