歷史長河中猶太人的上海方舟

The arrival of year 5774 was celebrated in Shanghai, as in Jewish communities all over the world, with the tones of a cantor reciting Rosh Hashana prayers in a synagogue filled with people honouring one of the world’s oldest religions. Just like everywhere, except that the state owns the synagogue and the Communist party decides when Jews can worship there, ie not often.

隨着猶太曆5774年新年的到來，上海的猶太社區和全世界所有猶太社區一樣，聚在猶太會堂裏吟唱猶太新年禱文。這座會堂是爲紀念世界上最古老宗教之一的猶太教而修建的。與其他地方的猶太會堂唯一不同的是，這座會堂歸政府所有，猶太人何時可以在裏面舉行宗教活動由共產黨說了算（這意味着頻度不會很高）。

Outside the main gate of the leafy compound in which the Ohel Rachel synagogue is located, a sign says “Shanghai Afforestation Commission” – although, thankfully, there is no indication that the building is used to store agricultural equipment between Jewish high holidays. But the Shanghai Education Administration, which actually owns the building, limits the days on which it does open for worship to a handful. The rest of the time, the city’s best preserved symbol of Judaism is closed both to the public and to the observant.

拉結會堂(Ohel Rachel)坐落在一座綠意盎然的院子裏。院門外標牌寫着：“上海市綠化委員會”。但值得慶幸的是，沒有跡象顯示，在不舉行猶太教慶祝活動的時候，這裏被用來存放農用設備。但因受到會堂實際擁有者——上海市教育局的限制，會堂一年中對信衆開放的天數屈指可數。在開放日以外的其他時候，公衆和信衆都無法進入這座上海保存最完好的猶太教標誌性會堂。

But don’t worry, it’s not really personal: China is far less anti-Semitic than just plain anti-religious. Chinese Christians have it far worse.

但別擔心，這種安排並非有意針對猶太人。事實上，與其說中國反猶，不如說中國反宗教。在中國，基督徒的日子難過得多。

In fact, the story of Jews in China has remarkably little anti-Semitism in it, says Israeli Dvir Bar-Gal, whose vocation is researching and publicising Jewish life in Shanghai – including searching for thousands of desecrated Jewish gravestones that peasants have used as threshold stones, or to beat laundry against, since the cultural revolution.

事實上，專門研究和宣傳在上海的猶太人生活的德維爾•巴爾-賈勒(Dvir Bar-Gal)稱，在華猶太人令人矚目地幾乎沒有遭遇反猶活動。巴爾-賈勒的工作之一，是搜尋文革以來流散至民間的猶太人墓碑，這些墓碑被一些農民挖去，用作家裏的門檻或洗衣板。

“There is no anti-Semitism here – here everything is about business,” he says, as he guides us through the streets of Jewish Shanghai on one of his daily tours, which take in some of the most famous buildings on the Shanghai Bund (built by Baghdadi Jews early in the last century) but also the Jewish ghetto.

巴爾-賈勒在他的“一日遊”活動中，領着我們穿行於當年猶太人在上海經常活動的街道，一邊告訴我們：“這裏沒有反猶主義——這兒一切都是生意。”他的路線既包括上海外灘（Shanghai Bund，由巴格達猶太人(Baghdadi Jews)在上世紀初建造）邊的一些著名建築，也包括當年的猶太人聚居區。

“No other city saved so many Jews,” says Mr Bar-Gal, as he tells the story of Shanghai, port of last resort during the Holocaust. When other nations closed their doors, only Shanghai (then controlled by Japan) did not require visas for entry and imposed no quotas on incoming Jews, more than 20,000 of whom fled there to escape Nazi Europe.

巴爾-賈勒爲我們講述上海的故事。在那場針對猶太人的大屠殺中，上海是猶太人最後的避難所。他說：“任何其他城市拯救的猶太人都沒有上海多。”當其他國家對猶太人關上大門的時候，只有上海（當時已在日本控制下）不要求猶太人提供入境簽證，也不限制猶太人入境總人數。當時，爲逃離納粹控制下的歐洲，總計有逾兩萬猶太人來到了上海。

Shanghai was no promised land, even so. At the urging of the Gestapo, Japanese forces confined stateless Jews into Shanghai’s own version of a ghetto, in the Hongkou district, where they already had 100,000 Chinese neighbours. One in 10 did not survive the war, but this was through no fault of their hosts: they died of diseases they shared with their cheek-by-jowl local neighbours, or at their own hands when they could bear no more poverty and hunger. But there were no concentration camps and no organised extermination of Jews in Shanghai – a rare human rights story where China ends up on the right side of history.

即便如此，猶太人在上海也並非高枕無憂。在蓋世太保的敦促下，日軍開始把來自淪陷國的猶太人限制於上海市虹口區的一個聚居區，讓他們與10萬名中國鄰居擠在一起。區域內的猶太人有十分之一未能活着看到戰爭結束，但這不怪爲他們提供容身之地的上海。他們要麼死於疾病（被緊鄰的上海鄰居們傳染），要麼死於自殺（因爲無法繼續忍受貧困與飢餓）。但上海沒有集中營，也沒有任何有組織的清洗猶太人活動。在這段有關人權的歷史章節中，中國罕有地站在了正義的一邊。

Mr Bar-Gal takes us to one of the alleyways of that ghetto, where two men can scarcely walk abreast, where multiple families still crowd into dark, dank, tenement-style houses that can have changed little since the remaining Jews moved out of them after the Communist party won power in 1949.

巴爾-賈勒帶我們來到當年上海猶太區裏的一條巷子。那條巷子窄得幾乎無法容納兩個人在裏面並排行走，兩旁的房屋光線昏暗、陰冷潮溼、簡陋至極，卻仍容納了好幾戶家庭。自共產黨在1949年奪取政權、猶太人搬離以來，這些房屋一直大體維持着原貌。

Today, perhaps 5,000-6,000 Jews make their home in the city, says Mr Bar-Gal. So when the Jewish high holy days rolled round this month, a couple of hundred of them chose to celebrate at Ohel Rachel, built in 1920 by Baghdadi tycoon Jacob Sassoon, and named after his wife.

巴爾-賈勒說，如今在上海安家的猶太人大約有5000至6000人。因此，在上月的猶太新年時，有幾百名猶太人選擇在拉結會堂慶祝節日。拉結會堂建於1920年，建造者是巴格達猶太人大亨雅各布•沙遜(Jacob Sassoon)，他用自己妻子的名字命名了這個會堂。

Rhonda Levin was there, on the eve of the new Jewish year 5774, sitting in the section reserved for women in the cavernous house of worship, where a row of artificial elephant ear plants runs straight down the centre to keep the men away from their womenfolk. And at the dinner afterwards, over apples dipped in honey and other traditional foods, she explained her theory of the relationship between Jews and Chinese – a theory I heard repeatedly that night.

在猶太曆5774年新年前夕，朗達•萊文(Rhonda Levin)就在拉結會堂，坐在專門的女賓席。在巨大的會堂中央，擺着一排人造綠葉植物，將男賓席和女賓席分隔開。在儀式後的晚餐上，萊文一邊吃着蜜汁蘋果和其他猶太傳統食品，一邊表達她對猶太人與中國人關係的理解——同樣的見解我在那天晚上聽過許多次。

“To me the Chinese are just like the Jews,” said Ms Levin, who said she was “in town on a trade fair”. “Hardworking, good at business, focused on family,” she said, while another tablemate opined that, per head, Chinese and Jews have more Nobel Prizes than the average guy, too. Those are the same stereotypes some people hold against Jews – but here they are seen as a good thing.

自稱目前“在這裏參加一個貿易展會”的萊文說：“我覺得，中國人跟猶太人很像，都勤勞肯幹，有經商頭腦，家庭觀念重。”桌上另外一人提到，中國人和猶太人獲得諾貝爾獎的比例也高於各民族平均水平。這些對猶太人的程式化認識正是某些人反猶的理由，但在中國，這些特點都被視爲優點。

At the end of the day, and for whatever reason, China has a lot of time for Jews and Jews have a lot of time for China. And now that China has figured out that there are plenty of tourist renminbi to be made from the story of the Jews of Shanghai – and the Chinese who saved them – there seems a good chance that the mutual admiration society will endure even into 5775, and beyond.

最終，無論如何，中國很重視猶太人，猶太人也很重視中國。而如今既然中國已經發現，“在上海的猶太人”（以及挽救了許多猶太人的中國人）是個不錯的噱頭，能夠讓遊客大掏腰包，兩個民族的這種相互欣賞，看上去很有可能會持續到猶太曆5775年，並一直持續下去。