The Jewish Mahallah of Singapore as a Site of Transcultural Memory

Abstract

The Jewish quarter in Singapore, from the 1870s until the 1960s, was known by its residents
as the mahallah. From the Arabic for “stopping place,” the term and many of the cultural
practices of its residents were transported to Singapore from the Middle East, mostly from the
Ottoman Empire, specifically Iraq, as Jews migrated from this region to Singapore. Drawing
predominantly on oral histories of Singapore Jews, this essay establishes how the Singapore
mahallah was shaped by transcultural memory. Never appearing on a map, the mahallah did
not conform to the racial divisions expressed by British imperialist Singapore in the Jackson
(or Raffles Town) Plan. However, I show how the mahallah disintegrated, as the Singapore
Jewish community divided along the lines of class and racial identification informed by
British imperialism. The mahallah is now wholly memorialized, in the oral histories, in
memoirs, a novel, and the Jews of Singapore Museum, rather than a vital Jewish quarter.