The Jewish Mahallah of Singapore as a Site of Transcultural Memory

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.