Jewish Communities in Modern Asia:

Their Rise, Demise and Resurgence

Kowner
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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia

Jewish settlement in Asia, beyond the Middle East, is largely a modern

phenomenon. Imperial expansion and adventurism by Great Britain
and Russia were the chief motors that initially drove Jewish settlers to
move eastwards, in the nineteenth century, combined as this was with
the rise of port cities and general development of the global economy.
The new immigrants soon become centrally involved, in ways quite
disproportionate to their numbers, in Asian commerce. Their role and
centrality finished with the outbreak of World War II, the chaos that
resulted from the fighting, and the consequent collapse of Western
imperialism. This unique, ground-breaking book charts their rise and
fall while pointing to signs of these communities’ post-war resurgence
and revival. Fourteen chapters by many of the most prominent
authorities in the field, from a range of perspectives, explore questions
of identity, society, and culture across several Asian locales. It is
essential reading for scholars of Asian Studies and Jewish Studies.

Rotem Kowner is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of

Haifa. During the last two decades, he has written extensively on the
Jewish communities in Japan and Indonesia. His books include From
White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300-
1735 (2014) and Tsushima (2022).
“This is an excellent collection of original, engaging, and carefully
researched chapters that which shed light on the multiple ways in which
the history of Jewish communities intersects with the histories of colonial-
ism and global economy. A must read for anyone interested in modern
Jewish Studies and the history of modern Asia.”
Yulia Egorova, Professor of Anthropology, Durham University, author of
Jews and Muslims in South Asia (2018)
“This highly engaging and richly varied volume will be important reading
for a wide range of audiences and disciplines, including global history,
anthropology, and religious studies. As a whole, it resonates with work on
all of the covered Asian regions and contributes fresh ways of thinking
through the themes of ethnicity and race, histories of minorities, and
economics.”
William Gould, Professor of Indian History, University of Leeds, author of
Boundaries of Belonging Localities: Citizenship and Rights in India and
Pakistan (2019)
“A formidable feat of transnational scholarship, this volume offers a both
sweeping and richly detailed historical overview of Jewish communities in
modern Asia, reconstructing a mostly lost and still too little-known world of
Jewish life stretching from Central Asia and Siberia to India, China,
Southeast Asia, and Japan, from Bukhara to Yemen and Singapore, and
even into the myths of “ten lost tribes” from the eighteenth into the twenty-
first century. This study is a major contribution to current debates about
multiple and hybrid Jewish identities in relation to histories of colonialism
and postcolonialism.”
Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Cooper Union, New York, author
of Jews, Germans, and Allies (2009) and coeditor of Shelter from the
Holocaust (2017)
“Jewish Communities in Modern Asia not only surveys vividly Jewish hubs
in various parts of Asia but also provides the most comprehensive and up-
to-date metanarrative of the Jewish presence eastward of the much
researched Middle East. At present, this is the most significant contribution
to the emerging field of Jewish Asian studies.”
Ber Kotlerman, Professor of Jewish Studies, Bar Ilan University, editor of
Mizrekh: Jewish Studies in the Far East (2009–11)
“With the growth of scholarly interest in the subject of historical and
emerging Jewish communities in Asia and the Pacific region, this excellent
volume will be more than welcome.”
Tudor Parfitt, Distinguished University Professor, Florida
International University, author of Judaising Movements: Studies in the
Margins of Judaism (2013) and The Lost Tribes of Israel (2002)
Jewish Communities in Modern Asia
Their Rise, Demise and Resurgence

Edited by
ROTEM KOWNER
University of Haifa
 Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge cb2 8EA, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009162586
doi: 10.1017/9781009162609
© Rotem Kowner 2023
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2023

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kowner, Rotem editor.
Title: Jewish communities in modern Asia : their rise, demise and resurgence / edited by
Rotem Kowner, University of Haifa.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, [2023] |
Includes index.
Identifiers: lccn 2022062322 | isbn 9781009162586 (hardback) |
isbn 9781009162593 (paperback) | isbn 9781009162609 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews – Asia – History. | Asia – Ethnic relations.
Classification: lcc ds135.A85 J47 2023 | ddc 305.892/405–dc23/eng/20230104
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062322
isbn 978-1-009-16258-6 Hardback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia

Jewish settlement in Asia, beyond the Middle East, is largely a modern

phenomenon. Imperial expansion and adventurism by Great Britain
and Russia were the chief motors that initially drove Jewish settlers to
move eastwards, in the nineteenth century, combined as this was with
the rise of port cities and general development of the global economy.
The new immigrants soon become centrally involved, in ways quite
disproportionate to their numbers, in Asian commerce. Their role and
centrality finished with the outbreak of World War II, the chaos that
resulted from the fighting, and the consequent collapse of Western
imperialism. This unique, ground-breaking book charts their rise and
fall while pointing to signs of these communities’ post-war resurgence
and revival. Fourteen chapters by many of the most prominent
authorities in the field, from a range of perspectives, explore questions
of identity, society, and culture across several Asian locales. It is
essential reading for scholars of Asian Studies and Jewish Studies.

Rotem Kowner is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of

Haifa. During the last two decades, he has written extensively on the
Jewish communities in Japan and Indonesia. His books include From
White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300-
1735 (2014) and Tsushima (2022).
“This is an excellent collection of original, engaging, and carefully
researched chapters that which shed light on the multiple ways in which
the history of Jewish communities intersects with the histories of colonial-
ism and global economy. A must read for anyone interested in modern
Jewish Studies and the history of modern Asia.”
Yulia Egorova, Professor of Anthropology, Durham University, author of
Jews and Muslims in South Asia (2018)
“This highly engaging and richly varied volume will be important reading
for a wide range of audiences and disciplines, including global history,
anthropology, and religious studies. As a whole, it resonates with work on
all of the covered Asian regions and contributes fresh ways of thinking
through the themes of ethnicity and race, histories of minorities, and
economics.”
William Gould, Professor of Indian History, University of Leeds, author of
Boundaries of Belonging Localities: Citizenship and Rights in India and
Pakistan (2019)
“A formidable feat of transnational scholarship, this volume offers a both
sweeping and richly detailed historical overview of Jewish communities in
modern Asia, reconstructing a mostly lost and still too little-known world of
Jewish life stretching from Central Asia and Siberia to India, China,
Southeast Asia, and Japan, from Bukhara to Yemen and Singapore, and
even into the myths of “ten lost tribes” from the eighteenth into the twenty-
first century. This study is a major contribution to current debates about
multiple and hybrid Jewish identities in relation to histories of colonialism
and postcolonialism.”
Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Cooper Union, New York, author
of Jews, Germans, and Allies (2009) and coeditor of Shelter from the
Holocaust (2017)
“Jewish Communities in Modern Asia not only surveys vividly Jewish hubs
in various parts of Asia but also provides the most comprehensive and up-
to-date metanarrative of the Jewish presence eastward of the much
researched Middle East. At present, this is the most significant contribution
to the emerging field of Jewish Asian studies.”
Ber Kotlerman, Professor of Jewish Studies, Bar Ilan University, editor of
Mizrekh: Jewish Studies in the Far East (2009–11)
“With the growth of scholarly interest in the subject of historical and
emerging Jewish communities in Asia and the Pacific region, this excellent
volume will be more than welcome.”
Tudor Parfitt, Distinguished University Professor, Florida
International University, author of Judaising Movements: Studies in the
Margins of Judaism (2013) and The Lost Tribes of Israel (2002)
Jewish Communities in Modern Asia
Their Rise, Demise and Resurgence

Edited by
ROTEM KOWNER
University of Haifa
 Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge cb2 8EA, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

a department of the University of Cambridge.
We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009162586
doi: 10.1017/9781009162609
© Rotem Kowner 2023
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions
of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take
place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
First published 2023

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kowner, Rotem editor.
Title: Jewish communities in modern Asia : their rise, demise and resurgence / edited by
Rotem Kowner, University of Haifa.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, [2023] |
Includes index.
Identifiers: lccn 2022062322 | isbn 9781009162586 (hardback) |
isbn 9781009162593 (paperback) | isbn 9781009162609 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jews – Asia – History. | Asia – Ethnic relations.
Classification: lcc ds135.A85 J47 2023 | ddc 305.892/405–dc23/eng/20230104
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022062322
isbn 978-1-009-16258-6 Hardback
Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence
or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this
publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will
remain, accurate or appropriate.
In fond memory of six eminent leaders of the study of Jewish communities
in Asia:
Avraham Albert Altman (1922–2016). An Israeli historian of modern
Japan, who contributed to the scholarship on the communities in the
Japanese empire.
Irene Eber (1929–2019). An Israeli historian of modern China and its
intellectual life, who led the research on the community in wartime
Shanghai.
Jonathan Goldstein (1947–2022). An American historian of the Jewish
settlement in modern Asia, who made a lifelong contribution to the
field.
Jeffrey (Jeff) Alan Hadler (1968–2017). An American historian of
modern Indonesia, who advanced the study of the community in
this country.
Mattheus (Theo) Joseph Kamsma (1960–2014). A Dutch ethnog-
rapher of Southeast Asia, who researched the Jewish diaspora across
the Strait of Malacca.
Ayala Rachel Klemperer-Markman (1964–2017). An Israeli historian
of modern Japan, who advanced the scholarship on the community
in wartime Indonesia.
 Contents

List of Maps page x

List of Figures xi
List of Tables xiii
List of Contributors xiv
Acknowledgments xx
Note on Translations and Conventions xxii

1 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia: Background,

Significance and Main Questions
Rotem Kowner 1

part i central and north asia: old and new

communities in russia’s shadow
2 The End of the “Jewish Triangle”: Geography and Mobility
in Central Asia
Thomas Loy 25
3 The Soviet Wartime Evacuation to Central Asia and the Jews:
Cultural Encounters and Literary Responses
Anna P. Ronell 47
4 Frontier Jews: The Communities of Siberia and Their
Architecture
Anna Berezin and Vladimir Levin 66

vii
viii Contents

part ii south asia: identity and culture in british

and independent india
5 Jewish Communities in the Indian Subcontinent: Torn between
Indian Nationalism and Zionism
Nathan Katz, Joan G. Roland and Ithamar Theodor 91
6 Jewish Servicemen in the Indian Subcontinent: A Unique
Asian Tradition
Ran Amitai 113
7 Cultural Exchange and Religious Guidance along the Shores
of the Arabian Sea: Yemenite Jews in India and Indian Jews
in Yemen
Menashe Anzi 127

part iii southeast asia: colonial legacies and emerging

communities
8 The Jews of Singapore: A Community Founded on the
Opium Trade
Jonathan Goldstein 145
9 From a Colonial Settlement to a New Identity: The Rise, Fall
and Reemergence of the Jewish Community in Indonesia
Leonard Chrysostomos Epafras and Rotem Kowner 163
10 Decolonization and Its Aftermath: The Fate of the Baghdadi
Jewish Diaspora in British Asia
Amos Wei Wang Lim 186

part iv east asia: communities and strife

in the sinosphere
11 The Jews of Shanghai: The Emergence, Fall and Resurgence
of East Asia’s Largest Jewish Community
Rotem Kowner and Xu Xin 207
12 The Jewish Community of Harbin: Its Meteoric Rise and Fall
under the Shade of Three Empires
Joshua Fogel 227
13 Taiwan: A Postwar Jewish Community without Deep Roots
Don Shapiro 251
14 Jews in Japan: The Winding Road of a Business Community
Rotem Kowner and William Gervase Clarence-Smith 270
 Contents ix

part v imaginary asia: lost peoples and invisible

communities
15 Finding Lost Jews in Asia: The Search for Restored
Authenticity and the Rewriting of Zionist History
Gideon Elazar 295
conclusion
16 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia: Underlying
Commonalities, Demographic Features and Distinctive
Characteristics
Rotem Kowner 315

Bibliography 350
Picture and Map Acknowledgments 398
Index 401
 Maps

1.1 Asia and its major regions page 7

1.2 Major Jewish communities in Central Asia 9
1.3 Major Jewish communities in North Asia 11
1.4 Major Jewish communities in South Asia 14
1.5 Major Jewish communities in Southeast Asia 17
1.6 Major Jewish communities in East Asia 20
2.1 Central Asia’s “Jewish triangle” 29
5.1 The Jewish groups of modern India 93
10.1 The Baghdadi network across Asia 189
12.1 Manchuria and its periphery, 1920s 229
16.1 The main clusters of origin of Jewish settlement
in modern Asia 317

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009162609.001
 Figures

2.1 Arrival of Jews from Bukhara to Kazalinsk page 30

2.2 Jewish schoolchildren with a teacher, Samarkand 33
2.3 The Arabov family, Termez 40
3.1 Polish-Jewish refugee children in an orphanage, near Andijan 53
3.2 Jewish refugees in front of Timur’s mausoleum, Samarkand 55
4.1 A Jewish house, Omsk 73
4.2 The house of Iosif Itsyn, Krasnoyarsk 74
4.3 The synagogue in Petropavlovsk 77
4.4 The synagogue in Verkhneudinsk 78
4.5 The Soldiers’ Synagogue, Tomsk 80
4.6 The synagogue in Chita 81
4.7 The synagogue in Petrovskii Zavod 84
4.8 Contemporary synagogue, Khabarovsk 87
5.1 The Paradesi Synagogue in Cochin 94
5.2 A couple belonging to the Bene Israel community, 1900s 96
5.3 Zionist members welcoming Dr. Israel Cohen, Bombay 105
5.4 The interior of the Magen David Synagogue, Kolkata 109
5.5 Jewish community leaders meeting with an Israeli emissary,
Ernakulam, Cochin 111
6.1 Jewish soldiers in a synagogue, Karachi 122
8.1 Rising Jewish real estate, Singapore 149
8.2 The Maghain Aboth Synagogue, Singapore 151

xi
xii List of Figures

9.1 A bar mitzvah celebration in prewar Surabaya 168

9.2 Celebration of a Jewish holiday with the Israeli flag, Surabaya 173
9.3 Kaki Dian Monument, Manado 178
9.4 Yaakov Baruch carries a Torah scroll, Tondano, North
Sulawesi 179
9.5 Sabbath’s virtual minyan, Bandar Lampung, Sumatra 181
11.1 Members of Betar, Shanghai 210
11.2 Students and teachers of the Mir Yeshiva, Shanghai 219
12.1 The Central Synagogue, Harbin 233
12.2 The façade of the Jewish-owned Ponve Department Store,
Harbin 237
12.3 Barely seeing “them,” Harbin 238
12.4 The city of splendor, Harbin 239
13.1 Simchat Torah at the Taiwan Jewish Community, Taipei 262
13.2 The Jeffrey D. Schwartz Jewish Community Center, Taipei 267
14.1 Joseph Trumpeldor, Osaka 273
14.2 Jewish refugees, Kobe 282
14.3 The synagogue in the Jewish Community Center, Tokyo 291
16.1 Jewish men praying, Samarkand 335
16.2 Jewish children light a menorah, Manila 337
16.3 The David Sassoon Library, Mumbai 339
16.4 Paul Komor and employees, Shanghai 341
 Tables

4.1 Jewish population and Jewish merchants in key Siberian

cities and towns, 1897 page 70
10.1 Estimates of the Jewish population in India, Burma and
Singapore 188
16.1 Total number of Jews in modern Asia by year and as
a percentage of world Jewry and the entire population of
Asia 327
16.2 Jewish population in Asia’s five regions and as
a percentage of the region’s population in the same region,
2020 328
16.3 Total number of Jews and major communities in modern
Asia by year and region 331

xiii
 Contributors

Ran Amitai is a PhD student at the Department of Asian Studies,

University of Haifa, Israel. His field of research is the modern history of
India, and Indian Jewry in particular. His dissertation deals with the
enlistment and integration of Indian Jews in the British Indian Army and
postindependent Indian Army, from the mid-eighteenth century to the
beginning of the current millennium. He is also involved in other projects
dealing with Indian Jewry, such as identifying, mapping and preserving
Jewish cemeteries and graveyards in the Indian subcontinent.
Menashe Anzi is Senior Lecturer and Rosen Family Career Development
Chair in Judaic Studies in the Jewish History Department, Ben-Gurion
University, Israel. His areas of specialization include the history of
Yemenite Jews and Iraqi Jews, the relationship between Jews and
Muslims in Islamic cities and the trade networks and Jewish migration
along the Indian Ocean. His recent publications in this area include The
S ̣anʿāʾnis: Jews in Muslim Yemen, 1872–1950 (2021, in Hebrew) and the
coedited special issue “Jews, Christians and Minorities in Islamic
Cultures” (with Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli and Haggai Ram) in Jama’a
25 (2020).
Anna Berezin is the Head of the Section for Sacred and Ritual Objects at
the Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She
received her PhD in urban economy in 2005 from the University of
Engineering and Economics in St. Petersburg and also graduated from
the Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm (2012–13). She participated
in ethnographic field research in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, in 2009 to 2010.

xiv
 List of Contributors xv

Her research interests include the economic history of East European

Jews, Jewish heritage in Eastern Europe, and Siberian Jews and their
culture. She has coauthored (with Vladimir Levin) “From Jerusalem to
Birobidzhan” on bet-tfila.org (2015) and “Jewish History and Heritage in
Siberia” in Erhan Büyükakıncı (ed.), Rus Uzakdoğusu ve Sibirya Özel
Sayısı (2016).
William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Emeritus Professor of History at
SOAS University of London, UK, and former chief editor of the
Journal of Global History. He has written and edited some dozen
books and published on various diasporas, including Moroccan Jews
in the Lusophone world and Middle Eastern Jews in the Philippines. He
is currently researching the Samuel family’s role in Asia and Africa, with
a particular emphasis on Japan. He is also investigating the story of
Egyptian Jews in Japan, notably the Antaki and Hakim families of
Alexandria.
Gideon Elazar is a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and a researcher at the
Ariel University Eastern Research and Development Authority, Israel. His
research interests include religion, ethnicity and identity in contemporary
Southwest China and upland Southeast Asia as well as the Jewish–Chinese
dialogue. His PhD degree, received from the University of Haifa’s
Department of Asian Studies, is based on ethnographic fieldwork con-
ducted among Protestant missionaries in Southwest China. He is currently
conducting an ethnographic research project on the Bene Menashe com-
munity in Israel, originally from the Indian–Myanmar border. He has
published several articles on religion in China, and his book The
Missionaries Return: Christianity, Ethnicity and State Control in
Globalized Yunnan is due to be published in 2023.
Leonard Chrysostomos Epafras is a core doctoral faculty and researcher
in the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) and the
Faculty of Theology, Duta Wacana Christian University, both in
Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He teaches a range of courses on the history of
religions, Judaism, Christianity and theology. Besides research on Jews in
Indonesia, his research projects include religion and public policy, religion
and popular culture, and religion online. His interest in Jewish issues led
to his Master’s degree research on antisemitism among Indonesians, and
his doctoral dissertation explored the identity formation of Jewish Sufism
in medieval Egypt.
xvi List of Contributors

Joshua Fogel is Canada Research Chair in the History Department at

York University, Canada. He is the author, editor or translator of over
sixty books, primarily focusing on historical cultural relations between
China and Japan. Major publications include Politics and Sinology: The
Case of Naitō Konan (1984), Ai Ssu-ch’i’s Contribution to the
Development of Chinese Marxism (1987), Nakae Ushikichi in China
(1989), The Literature of Travel in the Japanese Rediscovery of China,
1862–1945 (1996), Articulating the Sinosphere (2009), Japanese
Historiography and the Gold Seal of 57 C.E. (2013), Maiden Voyage
(2014), Japanese for Sinologists (2017) and A Friend in Deed (2019).
Jonathan Goldstein (1947–2022) was Professor Emeritus of Asian
History at the University of West Georgia, USA, and a research associate
of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. His books
on the China trade include Philadelphia and the China Trade (1978),
Georgia’s East Asian Connection (1982), America Views China (1991)
and Stephen Girard’s Trade with China (2011). His books on Jewish
communities of East and Southeast Asia include Jewish Identities in East
and Southeast Asia (2015), The Jews of China (2 vols., 1999 and 2000)
and China and Israel (1999, updated Chinese edition 2006, updated
Hebrew edition 2016).
Nathan Katz is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of
International and Public Affairs at Florida International University,
USA. He was also the founding chair of the Department of Religious
Studies, the Bhagwan Mahavir Professor of Jain Studies and Director of
Jewish Studies. He has been awarded four Fulbright grants, was a finalist
for the National Jewish Book Award and has been a visiting fellow at the
Center for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Shalom
Hartman Institute and Peradeniya University in Sri Lanka. He is the
founding editor of The Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies and author of
Buddhist Images of Human Perfection (1982), Ethnic Conflict in
Buddhist Societies (1988), The Last Jews of Cochin (1993), Spiritual
Journey Home (2009) and a half-dozen other works.
Rotem Kowner is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Haifa,
Israel. A founding chair of the Department of Asian Studies at the same
university, he has written extensively on the treatment of Jewish commu-
nities in the Japanese empire and the attitude toward Jews in contempor-
ary East Asia. Kowner has also led several projects that examine broad
themes in Asia within a global context. His project on the Russo-Japanese
 List of Contributors xvii

War has yielded several books, most recently Historical Dictionary of the
Russo-Japanese War (2017) and Tsushima (2022). A second and ongoing
project deals with questions of race and racism and has resulted in numer-
ous publications, including From White to Yellow (2014) and the two
coedited volumes (with Walter Demel) Race and Racism in Modern East
Asia (2013–15).
Vladimir Levin is Acting Director of the Center for Jewish Art at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Born in St. Petersburg, he holds
a PhD from the Hebrew University. Levin authored From Revolution to
War: Jewish Politics in Russia, 1907–1914 (in Hebrew, 2016), coau-
thored the book Synagogue in Ukraine: Volhynia (2017) and coedited
Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue (2010–12). He has published
around 120 articles and essays about social and political aspects of mod-
ern Jewish history in Eastern Europe, synagogue architecture, Jewish
religious Orthodoxy, and Jewish–Muslim relations. He has also led sev-
eral research projects in the field of Jewish Art, notably the creation of the
Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art – the world’s largest digital repository
of Jewish heritage.
Wei Wang Amos Lim is a PhD student at the Department of Asian Studies
at the University of Haifa, Israel. A native of Singapore, his interest in the
field of Jewish history started as individual research during his Bachelor’s
studies at Nanyang Technological University. A recipient of the Sir Naim
Dangoor Scholarship for Monotheism at Bar-Ilan University and subse-
quently of the Asian Sphere scholarship at the University of Haifa, he is
researching the history of the Baghdadi Jewish communities in East and
Southeast Asia.
Thomas Loy is a research fellow at the Department of South Asia,
Oriental Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. His research
interests include commemorative cultures, mobility, migration in (Soviet)
Central Asia and Tajik language and literature. His publications include
Bukharan Jews in the Soviet Union: Autobiographical Narrations of
Mobility, Continuity and Change (2016) and the two coedited volumes
Bukharan Jews in the 20th Century: History, Experience and Narration
(coedited with Ingeborg Baldauf and Moshe Gammer, 2008) and The
Written and the Spoken in Central Asia (2021).
Joan G. Roland is Professor Emerita of History at Pace University, USA,
where she chaired the History Department and directed the Middle East
Studies Minor for many years. Obtaining her PhD from Columbia
xviii List of Contributors

University in Middle East history, she began her research on the Jews of
India with the aid of a Fulbright grant and has focused on Indian-Jewish
communities in India, Israel and the USA. Her book Jews in British India:
Identity in a Colonial Era (1989) was nominated for a National Jewish
Book Award and appeared in a second edition as The Jewish
Communities of India: Identity in a Colonial Era (1998). She has pub-
lished numerous book chapters as well as journal and encyclopedia art-
icles. Recently she has been researching the reception and representation
of the Holocaust in India.
Anna Ronell is an independent scholar and writer currently managing the
Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, USA. She obtained her
doctorate degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis
University. She taught at Wellesley College and Hebrew College and
managed international academic collaborations at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Her scholarly interests are Russian-speaking
diaspora, Russian-Jewish experience in the Soviet Union and in Israel
and Eastern European Jewish civilization. Her articles have appeared in
The Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, Polin, Studies in Polish Jewry,
Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History and others.
Don Shapiro is an American journalist who has lived in Taiwan since
arriving there in 1969 for graduate studies under an East Asian Journalism
Fellowship from Columbia University. He was President of the Taiwan
Jewish Community from 1987 until 2007 and still serves on its board. He
has written for the New York Times and Time magazine and currently is
Senior Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei and
editor-in-chief of its monthly publication, Taiwan Business TOPICS.
Ithamar Theodor is Associate Professor of Hindu Studies at Zefat
Academic College, Israel, and Research Fellow at the Department of
Asian Studies, University of Haifa, Israel. He is a graduate of the
Theology Faculty, University of Oxford, a life member of Clare Hall,
University of Cambridge, a former visiting professor at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong and founder of the Asian-Jewish conference
(since 2012). His publications include Exploring the Bhagavad Gita
(2010), Brahman and Dao: Comparative Studies in Indian and Chinese
Philosophy and Religion (2014), The ‘Fifth Veda’ in Hinduism (2016),
Dharma and Halacha (2018) and The Bhagavad Gita: A Critical
Introduction (2021).
 List of Contributors xix

Xu Xin is the Diane and Guilford Glazer Chair Professor of Jewish and
Israel Studies and Dean of the Institute of Jewish Studies at Nanjing
University, China. He also serves as President of the China Judaic
Studies Association and is editor-in-chief of and a major contributor to
the Chinese edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica. His research field is
Jewish culture and the Jews in China. In 2003 he was awarded the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy, honoris causa, by Bar-Ilan University in recog-
nition of his accomplishments in studying the Jewish people in China. His
publications include Legends of the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng (1995), The
Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion (2003) and
A History of Jewish Culture (in Chinese, 2006).
 Acknowledgments

This volume represents the end result of a prolonged project that involved
extended collaborative research, an international conference and the
formation of a far-reaching network of scholars. The research project
and this volume too could not have materialized without the generous
support and cordial assistance of several organizations and many
individuals. I am particularly grateful to the Asian Sphere Program –
a joint graduate program at the University of Haifa and the Hebrew
University, which is funded by the Humanities Fund of the Planning and
Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education in Israel
(VATAT) and Yad Hanadiv as well as the two universities – for
supporting this project since its inception. Among the many individuals
who lent a helping hand, I would like to mention Gur Alroey, Nimrod
Baranovitch, Dan Ben-Canaan, Michal Biran, Chen Bram, Kimmy
Caplan, Doron B. Cohen, Sergio DellaPergola, Eli Dwek, Yulia
Egorova, Yoram Evron, Ofer Feldman, Gabriel N. Finder, Eyal Ginio,
Yudit K. Greenberg, William Gould, Atina Grossmann, Ehud Harari,
Albert Kaganovitch, Zeev Levin, Hillel Levine, Dov Ber Kotlerman,
Meron Medzini, Arik Moran, Danny Orbach, Tudor Parfit, Guy
Podoler, James Ponniah, Shakhar Rahav, Mary Reisel, Roy Ron, Mark
Schreiber, Marcos Silber, Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Yitzhak Shichor, Frank
Joseph Shulman, Yoshito Takigawa, Akiva Tor, Noam Urbach, Shalva
Weil, Itzchak Weismann, Yakov Zinberg, Efraim Zuroff, and Ran
Zwigenberg. I am grateful in particular to Ithamar Theodor, who
coconvened the conference and helped in shaping the project in its early
stages. Likewise, I am grateful to Alex Wright of Cambridge University
Press for his broad vision and leadership. Finally, I thank the authors of

xx
 Acknowledgments xxi

this volume, many of whom are the leading authorities in their respective
fields, for their close cooperation and their cordial response to the
demands raised by editorial needs.
 Note on Translations and Conventions

This book makes use of published and archival materials in many

languages, so rigorous standardization of names and transliterations is
needed. Non-English names are written in the orthography and using the
accent marks of the original language unless they have a generally used
English form. In such cases, the original name is given in parentheses the
first time it appears. As a rule, this book has striven to maintain the
contemporary spelling of surnames of non-English personalities, while
using the modern spelling of their first names according to each
individual’s native tongue. As usually accepted in academic writing in
English, East Asian names are given in the order that is common in the
region – that is, surnames preceding given names.
Chinese names and terms are written according to the pinyin
transliteration system. Japanese names and terms are written in
accordance with the revised Hepburn transliteration system and in
consultation with the Kodansha Encyclopedia (Itakasa, 1983) and the
fourth edition of Kenkyusha’s New Japanese–English Dictionary
(Masuda, 1991), whereas the romanization of given names follows
Nihonshi jinmei yomikata jiten (Nichigai Asoshiētsu, 2002). Macrons
above some of the Japanese names and terms are used to indicate a long
vowel (e.g. Setsuzō), except for commonly used ones or those adopted into
the English lexicon. Transliterations of Russian names, written originally
in the Cyrillic alphabet, adhere to the modified form of the United States
Library of Congress. Common Russian names have been rendered in the
standard English spelling in the text, as have the names of familiar Russian
figures. Otherwise, this volume follows the Library of Congress
transliteration system, except that diacritical marks have been used in
the citations only. Names and terms in Arabic are written according to
the 1991 ALA-LC romanization of the American Library Association and

xxii

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 Note on Translations and Conventions xxiii

the Library of Congress, whereas Hebrew names and terms are

transliterated according to The SBL Handbook of Style. Toponyms are
spelled in the way most familiar to English-speaking readers, at least when
an English version exists and when its pronunciation approximates the
name in the original language. For unfamiliar place names, this book uses
the modern spellings employed in the countries concerned in their
common transliteration.
Several languages often mentioned in the text are abbreviated, as follows:
Arab. Arabic
Aram. Aramaic
Chi. Chinese (Mandarin)
Dut. Dutch
Ger. German
Heb. Hebrew
Hin. Hindi
Ind. Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia)
Jpn. Japanese
Kaz. Kazakh
Mal. Malay (Bahasa Melayu)
Mala. Malayalam (India)
Mar. Marathi (India)
Pers. Persian
Rus. Russian
San. Sanskrit
Spa. Spanish
Yid. Yiddish

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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009162609.002
 1

Jewish Communities in Modern Asia

Background, Significance and Main Questions

Rotem Kowner

The history of Jewish communities in Asia is an intriguing saga of

a prewar expansion, postwar demise and a modest recent recovery. It is
largely a recent history. In spite of its vast size and large population, very
few Jews lived in premodern Asia, east of its western region.1 Indeed, it
was not until the nineteenth century that large parts of Asia witnessed the
first signs of an embryonic Jewish settlement. The expansion of the British
and Russian empires eastward was the main catalyst for a Jewish influx
into Asia’s eastern regions. They found the prospering port cities of
Southeast and East Asia and the new towns along the railroads of North
and Central Asia to offer new opportunities, which, together with the
development of a global economy, seemed irresistible. Soon, these Jewish
pioneers, whether settlers or sojourners, joined the spectacular develop-
ment of new commercial networks and modern urban society in numerous
places in Asia. Their contribution was often short-lived, however, as the
brief Japanese occupation of the region during the Second World War and
the consequent collapse of Western colonialism brought an abrupt end to
many of their communities.
Jewish Communities in Modern Asia deals with a very small diaspora,
in fact. Since 1850, the number of Jews living in Asia has fluctuated
between 25,000 to 1.2 million at the most. Today, the number of Jews in
the world’s largest continent, beyond the realms of the Middle East, is no
more than 60,000, that is, about the same as the population of a small

1
The reference here to West Asia, which is often known as the Middle East (Arab. ash-Sharq
al-Awsat), denotes a narrow definition of this geopolitical term: the Levant, the Arabian
peninsula, Anatolia (including modern Turkey and Cyprus), Egypt, Iraq and Iran.

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 2 Rotem Kowner

town, and about half the size of Australia’s Jewry.2 And yet it has been
an extremely diverse diaspora, comprising more than hundred commu-
nities across Asia’s major regions and dozens of countries. These com-
munities saw the coexistence of several Jewish group of different origins:
native groups with rich history dating to ancient times; extended families
of port-city merchants; daring adventurers and bold entrepreneurs;
expats and temporary sojourners; as well as thousands of refugees flee-
ing persecution in Europe. While the story of each community, and
probably of each individual too, is fascinating, as a group they tell us
much about Asia, if a generalization can be made, and more specifically
about their host countries and cities. In the same vein, the mosaic of
microhistories this book reveals also enriches our knowledge of modern
Jewish history, port-city networks, colonialism and decolonization.
This book is concerned with the rise and often fall of Asia’s Jewish
communities, but it also offers a fresh look at some new signs of recent
community resurgence. It focuses on the cultural contacts and identity of
these communities in relation to both wider society and other Jewish
communities in Asia and beyond. Comprising fourteen thematic chap-
ters written by some of the leading authorities in the field, this book is the
first to relate a fascinating passage in modern and contemporary Jewish
history from a broad cross-Asian perspective. In this sense, the scope of
this book is unique, since no study before has endeavored to offer this
sort of comprehensive examination. The book’s geographical focus on
Asia without its western periphery is not a matter of whim. Despite a few
exceptions, Jews living in this part of the Asian continent share many
characteristics, from their concentration in port cities and transporta-
tion hubs to their reliance on colonial regimes for their expansion and
network.
By contrast, Jews living in Western Asia, that is the Middle East, have
had, with some exceptions, a long but largely separate history. Naturally,
there were significant economic and cultural ties between the Middle East
communities and their brethren in the eastern stretches of the Asian
continent. As this volume shows, there were intricate relations between
the Jews of Iran and Central Asia, the Jews of Iraq and the Baghdadi Asian
network, and the Jews of Yemen and India. Sometimes these were even
family relations. Nonetheless, from a continental perspective, these ties
did not define the communities in either region, since they were limited
and peripheral and paled by comparison to the relations between the

2
For a detailed analysis of the Jewish population in modern Asia, see the Chapter 16.

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 3

Jewish communities within the Middle East. Moreover, until their rapid
demise in the late 1940s and 1950s, the national communities in Western
Asia were far larger than any of the Jewish settlements in other parts of
Asia. Being part of the Muslim world, and for four centuries also under
Ottoman rule and influence, Middle Eastern Jews have shared similar
cultural and religious traditions, retained similar demographic features
and benefited from close commercial and communal ties.
More importantly, these Middle Eastern communities have been the
topic of extensive scholarship, far more than other parts of Asia. This is
not to say that scholars have not studied similar themes elsewhere in
modern Asia. The opposite is true. In fact, numerous studies have been
published on specific Jewish communities in Asia, most notably during the
last decade. The Jewish community in China, for example, has been the
focus of a relatively large number of studies. Several of them have examined
the premodern community of Kaifeng and its recent legacy, and many more
have dealt with the Harbin community in northeast China and the commu-
nity in Shanghai, especially during the Second World War.3 Other studies
have sought to offer a broader overview of Jews in China as a whole.4 The
Jewish communities in the Indian subcontinent too attracted considerable
scholarly attention, with studies dealing with either one of its main sub-
communities or the entire community.5 Other Asian communities attracted
less scholarly attention, usually in the form of locally published books
written by native members.6 As for a broader scope, there are several
books that offer a regional overview, a study of several port-city communi-
ties across a few regions, and even an overview of Jewish settlement in the
entire continent since the establishment of the state of Israel.7
Altogether, however, the present book is the first to provide a truly
broad overview of the Jewish communities in modern Asia along with an

3
For Kaifeng, see, for example, White 1942, Preuss 1961, Leslie 1972, Xu 2003, Simons
2010, Laytner and Paper 2017, Bernstein 2017; for Shanghai: Kranzler 1976, Kaufman
1986, Ross 1994, Gao 2013, Hochstadt 2019; for Hong Kong, Plüss 1999; Qu and Li
2003, for Harbin, Kaufman 2006.
4
See, for example, Kublin 1971; Leventhal and Leventhal 1990; Ross 1994; Goldstein
1999–2000; Malek 2000; Yehezkel-Shaked 2003; Eber 2008a; Eber 2008b; Ehrlich
2010; Ross and Song 2016; Rebouh 2018.
5
See, for example, Timberg 1986; Katz and Goldberg 1993; Roland 1998; Katz 2000;
Egorova 2006, 2013; Ray 2016; Weil 2019; Weil 2020a.
6
See, for example, Leventhal 1985; Berg 1998; Bieder 2007; Ochilʹdiev, Pinkhasov and
Kalontarov 2007; Cooper 2012.
7
See, for example, Kotlerman 2009–11; Hutter 2013; Goldstein 2015; Yehoshuʻa-Raz
2013; Levin 2018.

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 4 Rotem Kowner

analysis of their contacts and the trends they have followed. Combining
historical studies with contemporary perspectives, Jewish Communities in
Modern Asia examines critically the specific identities and conflicts of
some dozen different communities in five different regions of Asia. It offers
a fresh look not only at the origins and rise of these communities but also
at their contemporary development, and likewise, it highlights the con-
nections between politics, commerce and culture that have facilitated the
rise of numerous communities but also brought the eventual demise of
some of them. Finally, the book’s division into regional sections allows
a greater focus on the unique features of each region, while also paying
attention to interregional contacts and the commonalities within the
continent as a whole.

main questions and lines of investigation

When discussing “Jewish communities,” we need first to define the two
words this concept is made of. As this book reveals, quite a few of the
Jewish settlements in modern Asia were small, some even very small,
and often also short-lived, inasmuch as one wonders what makes these
concentrations of individual Jews into “Jewish communities.” Indeed,
the definition of a community is not evident, all the more so because
within the area and period we discuss there has been a wide diversity of
communities in terms of size, history, affluence, shared tradition, level
of religiosity and tangible institutions, as well as personal ties and
commitment. As a basic requirement, however, we may define
a Jewish community as a substantial group of people, say, at least 50
to 100 people, who acknowledge their Jewish identity and heritage in
various ways, whether religious, cultural or any other joint activity in
which this identity is expressed. Often in modern Asia, we find small
groups of individuals who after several years of living together joined to
build a modest synagogue together and set up a cemetery. Larger and
more established communities, usually composed of families rather than
single sojourners, tended at a certain stage also to establish a school and
to hire a rabbi who functioned also as a teacher of religion. That said, in
some Asian countries, the settlement of Jews was too scattered, and
many of them chose to avoid Jewish life to the extent that the local
“community” was virtual at best, with limited contacts and no Jewish
life or institutions whatsoever.
Another methodological issue in this context is who can be considered
a Jew. This question is relevant to the size of the communities and their

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 5

membership, especially since controversies over the number of Jews have

been raging since at least the eighteenth century.8 Traditionally, Jewish
identity has been based on halakhic definitions of matrilineal descent and
conversion. And yet, although religion and parentage are evidently
important in Jewish self-definition, they are certainly not the only, and
for many not even the most important, categories. A recent survey has
found culture and heritage to play about the same importance, whereas
ethnicity and upbringing have been considered less significant.9 By the
same token, people may differ considerably in respect of what they con-
sider essential to their Jewish identity and the modes they choose to
express their personal Jewishness.10 Until the Second World War, the
halakhic definitions were sufficient to count for membership in many
Jewish communities, since marriage with non-Jews was uncommon out-
side large urban centers in western Europe and North America. This has
changed dramatically during the postwar era, and today the definitions of
Jewishness reflect a continuum in which having two Jewish parents and
religious adherence represents one end and being eligible to immigrate to
Israel (the “Law of Return”) represents the other end.11 This book has
taken a liberal approach to this question, and its high estimates for
membership in contemporary communities (as of 2020) include people
who may not pass halakhic definitions but either are active members in
these communities or have a Jewish identity or can claim a recent Jewish
ancestry and family ties that can be traced (Law of Return).12
Now, as these definitions are less ambiguous, we may turn to particular
questions about modern Asia’s Jewish communities. The narratives
offered by each of the chapters, as well as the metanarrative of this entire
volume, are bound by questions with regard to the identity, motives and
structure, as well as the economic and cultural life, of the Jewish

8
See DellaPergola and Rebhun 2018, ix.
9
See DellaPergola and Staetsky 2021, 22, figure 8. That said, when single answers were
requested, Religion appeared first (35 percent), followed by Parentage (26 percent),
Culture (11 percent), Heritage (10 percent), Ethnicity (9 percent), Upbringing (3 percent)
and Other (6 percent).
10
See DellaPergola and Staetsky 2021, 26–32, 39–46.
11
For a seven-category continuum (A. Core Jewish Population: 1. Jewish only, religion; 2.
Jewish only, no religion. B. Population with Jewish Parent(s): 3. split Jewish identification;
4. no identification. C. Enlarged Jewish Population: 5. Jewish background; 6. Non-Jewish
household members. D. Law of Return population), see DellaPergola 2021, 280, table
7.3.
12
See Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Law of Return 5710–1950: www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/
mfa-archive/1950-1959/pages/law%20of%20return%205710-1950.aspx.

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 6 Rotem Kowner

settlements in modern Asia. More specifically, the volume’s fourteen

thematic chapters and concluding chapter seek, individually and collect-
ively, to elaborate upon the following lines of investigation:
1. Origins and Divison. Where did the Jews of Asia come from? Do
they form a single group or, alternatively, in which larger categories
can they be grouped? What are the commonalities communities of
similar origins share? What are the principal fault lines within these
communities?
2. Initial Expansion. What were the sources and motives of the
Jewish expansion in Asia? Was there any external force that
facilitated this Jewish expansion?
3. Demographic Features. Are there common features that charac-
terize the Jewish communities in Asia? What is the nature of the
communities they have formed in terms of sex ratio, ratio of
children and old people, occupation?
4. Major Communities. Which countries have hosted the largest
Jewish communities? In which Asian cities have the largest com-
munities lived?
5. Intercommunity Networks. Have the Jewish communities main-
tained cultural and commercial contacts among themselves? Have
specific groups within the communities maintained intercommu-
nal contacts?
6. Cultural and Social Features. What has been the identity of each
community? Have they shared a single identity? What has been the
place of religion in their life? What aspects of Jewish tradition have
they maintained? What has been the place of Zionism in their
identity? In which ways have these communities been affected by
the native population?
7. Contacts with Non-Jews and Contribution at Large. What have
been the relations between the Jewish communities and the
native population? What has been the contribution of the Jews
to their host communities, and have they left any legacy behind
them?
8. Decline. What were the factors for the decline of many of Asia’s
Jewish communities?
9. Recent Resurgence. What are the motives behind the recent resur-
gence or emergence of some Jewish communities in contemporary
Asia? What are the countries of origin of their members, and what
are their occupations?

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 7

10. The Place of Asia in Modern Jewish History. What has been the
place of Asia in modern Jewish history? Why have so few Jews
lived in this vast and highly populated area?

structure and content

To achieve the above goals and for the sake of convenience, this book is
made up of five thematic parts. Four of them deal with specific regions in
Asia, presented from west to east: Central and North Asia, South Asia,
Southeast Asia and East Asia (see Map 1.1). The fifth and final part is
devoted to the quest of the Ten Lost Tribes in modern Asia and so deals
with the entire continent as an idea rather than a real entity, let alone
a specific region. Jewish Communities in Modern Asia is not encyclopedic
in character, nor does it attempt to cover each and every community in the
continent. For this reason, the following section offers a brief introduction
to each part and its respective region, an overview of the communities
these regions contain and a synopsis of their respective chapters.

map 1.1 Asia and its major regions

Design: Jasmine Kowner

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 8 Rotem Kowner

Part I: Central and North Asia: Migration and Cultural Life

The first part concerns two of Asia’s major regions that during much of the
late modern period and until recently shared the same regime (Tsarist
Russia and consequently the Soviet Union) and have experienced the
enduring legacy it left behind. By the same token, a large portion of their
Jewish population stems from the same origins and came and left for
similar motives. For all these reasons, these two regions are dealt within
the same part. The first of them, Central Asia, is a landlocked area that
stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China and Mongolia in the
east, and from Iran and Pakistan in the south to present-day Russia in the
north. The region, according to current definitions, consists of the former
Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan
and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan is a country located at the crossroads of
Central and South Asia, but in the context of modern Jewish history it is
closely related to the former region and so is included in this section too.
Together, these six countries stretch over an area of some 4.7 million
square kilometers and are inhabited today (2020) by a population of
about 112 million people. In ancient times, the southern part of the region
was inhabited thinly by sedentary Iranian peoples, but with the expansion
by Turkic peoples between the fifth and tenth centuries, Turkic languages
largely replaced the Iranian languages spoken in the region. The Islamic
conquest of Central Asia began in 674, and three centuries later, most of
the people of the region converted to Islam, which has left a shared legacy
and exerted a profound impact on the native cultures to this day. During
the latter half of the nineteenth century, Tsarist Russia completed its
takeover of the entire region, except for Afghanistan, which fell into
British hands. In 1919, Afghanistan was the first to gain independence,
whereas the rest of the region had to wait until the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1988 to 1991.13
Jews arrived in Central Asia in ancient times (see Map 1.2). There is no
clear evidence for their arrival and its circumstances, but it is possible that
Jewish settlement in the region began as early as the fifth or the fourth
century bce. The Islamization of the region established the position of
Judaism as a legitimate religion, and this status was also maintained
during the Mongol rule. By the eighteenth century, the largest Jewish
community in the region lived in the Emirate of Bukhara, particularly in
its capital Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), where it comprised about

13
For an overview of the region and its history, see Baumer 2012–18, especially volume 4.

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 9

map 1.2 Major Jewish communities in Central Asia

Design: Jasmine Kowner
Uzbekistan (officially the Republic of Uzbekistan; the Soviet Union until 1991; Tsarist
Russia until 1917; Emirate of Bukhara and Khanates of Khiva and Kokand until the
1860s–70s): 1. Khiva; 2. Bukhara; 3. Karmana (Kermane); 4. Qarshi (Karshi); 5
Payshanba; 6. Kattakurgan; 7. Shahrisabz; 8. Samarkand; 9. Sherobod; 10. Termez;
11. Tashkent; 12. Kokand; 13. Namangan; 14. Margilan; 15. Fergana (Novii
Margelan; Skobelev); 16. Andijan. Kazakhstan (officially the Republic of
Kazakhstan; the Soviet Union until 1991; Tsarist Russia until 1917; Kazakh
Khanate until the nineteenth century): 17. Kyzylorda; 18. Turkistan; 19. Shymkent
(Chimkent); 20. Taraz (Dzhambul); 21. Petropavl (Petropavlovsk); 22. Astana (Nur-
Sultan; Astana; Akmolinsk; Akmola); 23. Karaganda; 24. Almaty (Vernii, Alma-Ata).
Turkmenistan (officially the Republic of Turkmenistan; the Soviet Union until 1991;
Tsarist Russia until 1917; Khanate of Khiva until the 1870s): 25. Ashgabat
(Poltoratsk); 26. Sarahs; 27. Mary (Merv); 28. Ýolöten (Yolotan); 29. Charjou
(Turkmenabat). Tajikistan (officially the Republic of Tajikistan; the Soviet Union
until 1991; Tsarist Russia until 1917; Emirate of Bukhara until the 1870s): 30.
Dushanbe (Stalinabad); 31. Khujand (Leninabad). Kyrgyzstan (officially the Kyrgyz
Republic; the Soviet Union until 1991; Tsarist Russia until 1917; Khanate of Kokand
until the 1870s): 32. Osh; 33. Bishkek (Frunze). Afghanistan (officially the Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan; Emirates of Herat and Afghanistan until 1863 and 1919,
respectively; Durrani Empire until the 1840s): 34. Herat; 35. Balkh; 36. Kabul.

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 10 Rotem Kowner

a tenth of the local population. Smaller communities lived also further to

the east, in the Kokand Khanate (in present-day Uzbekistan). A pogrom
perpetrated by Muslims against the Jewish community of nearby
Mashhad, Iran, in 1839 stirred a wave of immigration to Bukhara as
well as to Afghanistan. The Russian conquest of the region marked
a turning point for the Bukharan Jews, who were exposed now to mod-
ernization processes and renewed their contact with other Jewish commu-
nities. Ashkenazi Jews began to settle in this region in the late nineteenth
century, but it was during the Soviet period, and especially during the
large evacuation from the country’s western boundaries in 1941, that this
group became the dominant one among the Jews of the region.14
The second region in this part is North Asia, also known as Siberia. It is
bordered by the Arctic Ocean to its north and by Central and East Asia to
its south; Eastern Europe to its west and the Pacific Ocean and North
America to its east. Having short summers and long, extremely cold
winters, the area is covered mostly by boreal forest (taiga), with
a temperate forest zone in the south and a tundra belt in the north. For
the last few centuries, it has belonged to Russia, which, since 2000, has
divided it administratively into three well-defined federal districts: Ural,
Siberia, and the Russian Far East. Covering a vast area of some
13.1 million square kilometers, the region’s sparse population comprises
today (2020) about 33 million inhabitants – all Russian citizens who live
largely along its southern boundaries. For thousands of years, northern
Asia was inhabited mostly by small tribes of illiterate and nomadic herd-
ers. This ethnic composition began to change in the latter half of the
sixteenth century, when Russian explorers and hunters began to cross
the Ural range. Although they reached the Pacific Ocean in 1639, Russian
settlement began a century later, leading eventually to the predominance
(over 85 percent) of Slavs and other Indo-Europeans among the region’s
inhabitants.15
Jewish settlement in North Asia began during the early nineteenth
century, despite restrictions imposed by the tsarist government (see
Map 1.3). As with Russian expansion in general, this settlement advanced
gradually from west to east. Starting in 1891, the construction of the
Trans-Siberian Railway stimulated further Jewish immigration, but it
was the fall of the tsarist regime that gave a true boost to Jews to venture

14
Based on Cooper 2012; Yehoshuʻa-Raz 2013; Levin 2018.
15
For an overview of the region and its history, see Hartley 2014. For Russian expansion and
colonization, see Stephan 1996; Marks 1991.

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 11

map 1.3 Major Jewish communities in North Asia

Design: Jasmine Kowner
Russia (or the Russian Federation; the Soviet Union until 1991; Tsarist Russia
until 1917): 1. Tyumen; 2. Tobolsk; 3. Omsk; 4. Kuybyshev (Kainsk); 5
Novosibirsk (Novonikolaevsk); 6. Tomsk; 7. Mariinsk; 8. Achinsk; 9. Eniseisk;
10. Krasnoyarsk; 11. Kansk; 12. Nizhneudinsk; 13. Irkutsk; 14. Ulan-Ude
(Verkhneudinsk); 15. Petrovsk Zabaikal’skii (Petrovskii Zavod); 16. Barguzin;
17. Chita; 18. Nerchinsk; 19. Blagoveshchensk; 20. Vladivostok; 21. Birobidzhan;
22. Khabarovsk; 23. Nikolaevsk-na-Amure.

into Siberia. Escaping pogroms in European Russia or seeking new oppor-

tunities at the frontier, during the Soviet era the region attracted
a relatively large number of Jews. In 1934, the Soviet government officially
established a Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Far East, with the
new town of Birobidzhan as its administrative center, and after several
years, Jews constituted about a quarter of its population. Jewish settle-
ment in Siberia reached its zenith as a result of the population evacuation
during the Second World War and began rapidly to dwindle with the
collapse of the Soviet Union.16
Altogether, Part I contains three chapters that focus on Jewish commu-
nities in Central and North Asia. Chapter 2 by Thomas Loy is concerned
with the history and historiography of the traditional (native) communities
of Jews in (Soviet) Central Asia. Most scholarly and popular literature, he
argues, portrays these communities as distinct, secluded Jewish ethnic
groups, disconnected from each other and from the wider Jewish world.
However, a better understanding of their intertwined histories requires the
placement of these Jewish groups in a wider cultural and geographical

16
For a brief overview of the Jewish settlement in the region, see Berezin and Levine 2015;
Gessen 2016.

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 12 Rotem Kowner

context. Chapter 3 by Anna Ronell deals with the large-scale evacuation of

Ashkenazi Jews, perhaps as many as one million, to Central Asia following
the German onslaught in 1941. It examines the encounter between the
newcomers and this seemingly alien Asian region along with its native
inhabitants, including the Bukharan Jews. This chapter also analyzes the
cultural repercussions of the evacuation and its literary responses, especially
the postwar writings of Grigory Kanovich and Dina Rubina. Chapter 4 by
Anna Berezin and Vladimir Levin, in turn, discusses the question of Jewish
settlement in North Asia from the early nineteenth century onward. Former
criminals and their descendants turned into wealthy and proud people
who looked down upon their poor brethren in the congested Jewish Pale
of Settlement (Yid. der tkhum hamóyshev) in the western part of the
Russian Empire. Their wealth and role in Siberian life found architectural
expression in the large and prominent synagogues, communal institutions
and private houses that bore clear signs of their owners’ Jewishness.

Part II: South Asia: Identity and Culture in British

and Independent India
South Asia, which is also often referred to as the Indian subcontinent,
is the continent’s most populous and most densely populated region.
It stretches from the Himalayas, Karakoram and Pamir mountains in
the north to the Indian Ocean in the south; from Iran and
Afghanistan in the west to China and Myanmar in the east.
Dominated by the presence of India, the region also contains the
countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and
Maldives.17 Together, these seven countries cover an area of almost
4.5 million square kilometers and are inhabited today (2020) by
a population of about 1.9 billion inhabitants.
In ancient times, the Indus Valley civilization spread in the northwest-
ern part of the region for two millennia. With the collapse of this civiliza-
tion around 1300 bce, Indo-European pastoralists migrated to
northwestern India and soon established their agrarian lifestyle and
Vedic culture. Around 500 bce, the local culture witnessed the emergence
of Vedic-Brahmanic synthesis, and the Hindu religion has kept its hold
over the region ever since. Islam began to encroach on the region in the
eighth century, but it took another four centuries before an Islamic

17
Located at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, Afghanistan is not included in this
section due to the close relations its Jewish communities had with Central Asia.

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 13

kingdom was established in northern India. By 1526, Babur, a Muslim

warrior chieftain from what is today Uzbekistan, established the Mughal
Empire, which gradually took hold of almost the entire region. In two
centuries, it was the turn of Britain to gain control of the Indian subcon-
tinent. Starting from a network of trading factories controlled by the
British East India Company, by 1858 the British Crown established direct
rule in the region under the name of the British Raj or, unofficially, the
Indian Empire. The departure of the British in 1947 facilitated the inde-
pendence of the countries in the region, but it also led to its breakup along
religious lines and to mounting ethnic strife ever since. Today, South Asia
has the world’s largest populations of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains and
Zoroastrians.18
Jews, by contrast, never comprised a large group in the region, even
though Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in recorded
history. The oldest Jewish community in South Asia lived in the Cochin
Kingdom in southwest India (see Map 1.4). The date of its emergence is
obscure, but its traditional account suggests the arrival of traders from
Judea at Cranganore (present-day Cranganor), near the city of Cochin
(present-day Kochi), during the sixth century bce, with some more join-
ing after the fall of the Second Temple in 70 ce. A second group of Jews,
and the largest in the region, is Bene Israel (Heb. “The Sons of Israel”).
According to the group’s tradition, they arrived in India sometime during
the first or second century CE. It was only in the eighteenth century, or
even later, however, that a Cochin Jew named David Rahabi noticed the
presence of rural people who maintained vestigial Jewish customs, and, in
turn, taught them the rules of normative Judaism. This group numbered
about 6,000 in 1830, and this figure more than tripled to about 20,000 at
the time of India’s independence.19
Starting in the late fifteenth century, the region witnessed a small and
intermittent trickle of another Jewish group. This time, it was refugees
escaping persecution and expulsion from the Iberian peninsula, who were
followed in the seventeenth century by their brethren from additional
Mediterranean port cities. Known as Paradesi (Mala. “foreigners”), they
settled in Cochin and in Madras (present-day Chennai) and numbered
several hundred. Another major group to settle in the region were Jews
from Iraq and a few other Middle Eastern locations known collectively as
the Baghdadi Jews. Starting with the arrival of Joseph Semah in Surat in

18
For a brief historical overview of the region, see Mann 2015; Gilbert 2017.
19
For overviews of the early Jewish settlement in the region, see Katz 2000.

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 14 Rotem Kowner

map 1.4 Major Jewish communities in South Asia

Design: Jasmine Kowner
India (officially the Republic of India; British India until 1947): 1. Surat; 2.
Ahmedabad; 3. Mumbai (Bombay) and its surrounds; 4. Pune (Poona); 5 Kochi
(Cochin) and its surrounds; 6. Chennai (Madras); 7. Kolkata (Calcutta); 8. New
Delhi (Delhi); 9. Ajmer; 10. Jabalpur. Pakistan (officially the Islamic Republic of
Pakistan; British India until 1947): 11. Karachi; 12. Peshawar; 13. Quetta; 14.
Lahore. Bangladesh (officially the People’s Republic of Bangladesh; Pakistan until
1971; British India until 1947): 15. Dhaka. Sri Lanka (officially the Democratic
Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka; Ceylon until 1972; British Ceylon until 1948): 16.
Colombo.

1730, a considerable number of Baghdadi families emigrated to two major

Indian port cities, Bombay (present-day Mumbai) and Calcutta (present-
day Kolkata). Never exceeding six to seven thousand souls in the entire
region, the Baghdadis excelled in trade and became increasingly

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 Jewish Communities in Modern Asia 15

anglicized. Finally, between 1938 and 1947, some 2,000 Jews fled to the
region from Central Europe, mainly Germany and Austria. Finding safe
haven from Nazi persecution, they left soon after the end of the Second
World War.20
Altogether, Part II contains three chapters that focus on the Jewish
community in India and its periphery, with implications for the region as
a whole. Chapter 5 by Nathan Katz, Joan Roland and Ithamar Theodore
offers an overview of the four different Jewish groups that have inhabited
the Indian subcontinent during the modern era and focuses on their
encounter with modernization and their subsequent identity formation.
It suggests that the main conflict these Jews have faced, both as a group
and as individuals, was how to reconcile Indian nationalism and Zionism.
Chapter 6 by Ran Amitai explores the role India’s Jews played in the
armies of the British Raj and subsequently in the armed forces of inde-
pendent India. The chapter investigates the barriers against this service
and the achievements of Jews in this field nonetheless. Finally, Chapter 7
by Menashe Anzi examines the relations between thousands of Yemeni
Jews and the Jewry of the subcontinent in modern times. Starting in the
eighteenth century, Yemenite rabbis and emissaries filled religious func-
tions in Jewish communities first in Cochin and among other groups. In
the opposite direction, members of the Bene Israel community served as
officials and officers in the British army during the time it occupied Aden
in 1839. These mutual relations formed intimate ties among various
communities across the Indian Ocean.

Part III: Southeast Asia: Long Legacies and Emerging Communities

Southeast Asia is the continent’s southeastern region and the only one that
lies partly within the southern hemisphere.21 It stretches from China in the
north to Australia and the Indian Ocean in the south; from India and the
Bay of Bengal in the west to Oceania and the Pacific Ocean in the east. The
region is culturally and ethnically very diverse, with hundreds of lan-
guages spoken by different ethnic groups. These inhabitants live today
in eleven countries, starting from Myanmar in the west, via Indonesia,

20
For the Baghdadi Jews, see Weil 2019. For the Jewish settlement in South Asia in the first
half of the twentieth century, see Roland 1998. For wartime refugees, see Margit 2015;
Cronin 2019.
21
That said, two out of twenty-six atolls of Maldives as well as the British Indian Ocean
Territory (with a total area of less than 100 square kilometers), all in South Asia, lie within
the southern hemisphere too.

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 16 Rotem Kowner

Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei and

the Philippines, to East Timor in the east.22 Together, these countries
cover an area of some 4.5 million square kilometers and are inhabited
today (2020) by a population of about 655 million people.
Human settlement in Southeast Asia began early, but it entered the Iron
Age era as late as 500 bce. In the following centuries, Indian Brahmins
brought the tenets of Hinduism to the region, which resulted in a gradual
process of Indianization as far as (present-day) Indonesia and the Philippines.
Arriving in the third century ce, Buddhism soon established a stronger
presence and gradually displaced Hinduism. While Chinese forces and cul-
tural influence had an impact on the northern part of the region toward the
end of the first millennium ce, the southern part was affected by the spread
of Islam. The initial contact with this religion began during the eighth
century ce, but it was only some three centuries later that the spread of
this religion was made by force, along with the impact of Arab and Gujarati
traders. The arrival of European powers was spearheaded by Portugal,
which captured Malacca in 1511. Although the European presence was
characterized initially by a network of trading stations rather than by the
occupation of large territories, during the nineteenth century, Britain, the
Netherlands, France and Spain (displaced in 1898 by the United States) came
to control nearly all Southeast Asia and exploited its resources systematic-
ally. By 1942, Japan took over the entire region, and with its surrender in
1945 a decolonization process commenced, and the native population
obtained its independence gradually.23
Jewish settlement in Southeast is Asia is a modern phenomenon (see
Map 1.5). With no substantial and permanent presence during the early
modern period, it began in earnest only in the early nineteenth century.
Jewish settlers and residents followed the European colonial expansion in
the region and were concentrated in several major port cities. By then, the
most important colonial power in this region was Britain, and Jews settled
first in the territories it ruled: Burma (present-day Myanmar; in Rangoon
and Mandalay) and the Malay Peninsula (Singapore and Penang). Jews
also settled in the Dutch East Indies (especially Batavia and Surabaya), in
French Indochina (Saigon and Hanoi) and the Philippines under American
rule from 1898 (Manila). While remaining small and scattered, Jewish
presence in the area reached its apex on the eve of the Second World War,

22
Located at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, Afghanistan is not included in this
section due to the close relations its Jewish communities formed with Central Asia.
23
For a brief historical overview of the region, see Lockard 2009; Tarling 2001.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009162609.003
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 A moment later she came in carrying a small Pomeranian. She
was paler than I had ever seen her, and there was unmistakable
fright in her eyes. When she greeted us it was without her habitual
gaiety.
“This thing is getting rather ghastly, isn’t it?” she remarked when
she had taken a seat.
“It is indeed dreadful,” returned Markham soberly. “You have our
very deepest sympathy. . . .”
“Oh, thanks awf’ly.” She accepted the cigarette Vance offered her.
“But I’m beginning to wonder how long I’ll be here to receive
condolences.” She spoke with forced lightness, but a strained quality
in her voice told of her suppressed emotion.
Markham regarded her sympathetically.
“I do not think it would be a bad idea if you went away for a while
—to some friend’s house, let us say—preferably out of the city.”
“Oh, no.” She tossed her head with defiance. “I sha’n’t run away.
If there’s any one really bent on killing me, he’ll manage it somehow,
wherever I am. Anyway, I’d have to come back sooner or later. I
couldn’t board with out-of-town friends indefinitely—could I?” She
looked at Markham with a kind of anxious despair. “You haven’t any
idea, I suppose, who it is that’s obsessed with the idea of
exterminating us Greenes?”
Markham was reluctant to admit to her the utter hopelessness of
the official outlook; and she turned appealingly to Vance.
“You needn’t treat me like a child,” she said spiritedly. “You, at
least, Mr. Vance, can tell me if there is any one under suspicion.”
“No, dash it all, Miss Greene!—there isn’t,” he answered
promptly. “It’s an amazin’ confession to have to make; but it’s true.
That’s why, I think, Mr. Markham suggested that you go away for a
while.”
“It’s very thoughtful of him and all that,” she returned. “But I think
I’ll stay and see it through.”
“You’re a very brave girl,” said Markham, with troubled
admiration. “And I assure you everything humanly possible will be
done to safeguard you.”
“Well, so much for that.” She tossed her cigarette into a receiver,
and began abstractedly to pet the dog in her lap. “And now, I
suppose, you want to know if I heard the shot. Well, I didn’t. So you
may continue the inquisition from that point.”
“You were in your room, though, at the time of your brother’s
death?”
“I was in my room all morning,” she said. “My first appearance
beyond the threshold was when Sproot brought the sad tidings of
Rex’s passing. But Doctor Von shooed me back again; and there I’ve
remained until now. Model behavior, don’t you think, for a member of
this new and wicked generation?”
“What time did Doctor Von Blon come to your room?” asked
Vance.
Sibella gave him a faint whimsical smile.
“I’m so glad it was you who asked that question. I’m sure Mr.
Markham would have used a disapproving tone—though it’s quite au
fait to receive one’s doctor in one’s boudoir.—Let me see. I’m sure
you asked Doctor Von the same question, so I must be careful. . . . A
little before eleven, I should say.”
“The doc’s exact words,” chimed in Heath suspiciously.
Sibella turned a look of amused surprise upon him.
“Isn’t that wonderful! But then, I’ve always been told that honesty
is the best policy.”
“And did Doctor Von Blon remain in your room until called by
Sproot?” pursued Vance.
“Oh, yes. He was smoking his pipe. Mother detests pipes, and he
often sneaks into my room to enjoy a quiet smoke.”
“And what were you doing during the doctor’s visit?”
“I was bathing this ferocious animal.” She held up the
Pomeranian for Vance’s inspection. “Doesn’t he look nice?”
“In the bathroom?”
“Naturally. I’d hardly bathe him in the poudrière.”
“And was the bathroom door closed?”
“As to that I couldn’t say. But it’s quite likely. Doctor Von is like a
member of the family, and I’m terribly rude to him sometimes.”
Vance got up.
“Thank you very much, Miss Greene. We’re sorry we had to
trouble you. Do you mind remaining in your room for a while?”
 “Mind? On the contrary. It’s about the only place I feel safe.” She
walked to the archway. “If you do find out anything you’ll let me know
—won’t you? There’s no use pretending any longer. I’m dreadfully
scared.” Then, as if ashamed of her admission, she went quickly
down the hall.
Just then Sproot admitted the two finger-print experts—Dubois
and Bellamy—and the official photographer. Heath joined them in the
hall and took them up-stairs, returning immediately.
“And now what, sir?”
Markham seemed lost in gloomy speculation, and it was Vance
who answered the Sergeant’s query.
“I rather think,” he said, “that another verbal bout with the pious
Hemming and the taciturn Frau Mannheim might dispose of a loose
end or two.”
Hemming was sent for. She came in laboring under intense
excitement. Her eyes fairly glittered with the triumph of the
prophetess whose auguries have come to pass. But she had no
information whatever to impart. She had spent most of the forenoon
in the laundry, and had been unaware of the tragedy until Sproot had
mentioned it to her shortly before our arrival. She was voluble,
however, on the subject of divine punishment, and it was with
difficulty that Vance stemmed her oracular stream of words.
Nor could the cook throw any light on Rex’s murder. She had
been in the kitchen, she said, the entire morning except for the hour
she had gone marketing. She had not heard the shot and, like
Hemming, knew of the tragedy only through Sproot. A marked
change, however, had come over the woman. When she had
entered the drawing-room fright and resentment animated her
usually stolid features, and as she sat before us her fingers worked
nervously in her lap.
Vance watched her critically during the interview. At the end he
asked suddenly:
“Miss Ada has been with you in the kitchen this past half-hour?”
At the mention of Ada’s name her fear was perceptibly
intensified. She drew a deep breath.
“Yes, little Ada has been with me. And thank the good God she
was away this morning when Mr. Rex was killed, or it might have
been her and not Mr. Rex. They tried once to shoot her, and maybe
they’ll try again. She oughtn’t to be allowed to stay in this house.”
“I think it only fair to tell you, Frau Mannheim,” said Vance, “that
some one will be watching closely over Miss Ada from now on.”
The woman looked at him gratefully.
“Why should any one want to harm little Ada?” she asked, in an
anguished tone. “I also shall watch over her.”
When she had left us Vance said:
“Something tells me, Markham, that Ada could have no better
protector in this house than that motherly German.—And yet,” he
added, “there’ll be no end of this grim carnage until we have the
murderer safely gyved.” His face darkened: his mouth was as cruel
as Pietro de’ Medici’s. “This hellish business isn’t ended. The final
picture is only just emerging. And it’s damnable—worse than any of
the horrors of Rops or Doré.”
Markham nodded with dismal depression.
“Yes, there appears to be an inevitability about these tragedies
that’s beyond mere human power to combat.” He got up wearily and
addressed himself to Heath. “There’s nothing more I can do here at
present, Sergeant. Carry on, and phone me at the office before five.”
We were about to take our departure when Captain Jerym
arrived. He was a quiet, heavy-set man, with a gray, scraggly
moustache and small, deep-set eyes. One might easily have
mistaken him for a shrewd, efficient merchant. After a brief hand-
shaking ceremony Heath piloted him up-stairs.
Vance had already donned his ulster, but now he removed it.
“I think I’ll tarry a bit and hear what the Captain has to say
regarding those footprints. Y’ know, Markham, I’ve been evolving a
rather fantastic theory about ’em; and I want to test it.”
Markham looked at him a moment with questioning curiosity.
Then he glanced at his watch.
“I’ll wait with you,” he said.
Ten minutes later Doctor Doremus came down, and paused long
enough on his way out to tell us that Rex had been shot with a .32
revolver held at a distance of about a foot from the forehead, the
bullet having entered directly from the front and embedded itself, in
all probability, in the midbrain.
 A quarter of an hour after Doremus had gone Heath re-entered
the drawing-room. He expressed uneasy surprise at seeing us still
there.
“Mr. Vance wanted to hear Jerym’s report,” Markham explained.
“The Captain’ll be through any minute now.” The Sergeant sank
into a chair. “He’s checking Snitkin’s measurements. He couldn’t
make much of the tracks on the carpet, though.”
“And finger-prints?” asked Markham.
“Nothing yet.”
“And there won’t be,” added Vance. “There wouldn’t be footprints
if they weren’t deliberately intended for us.”
Heath shot him a sharp look, but before he could speak Captain
Jerym and Snitkin came down-stairs.
“What’s the verdict, Cap?” asked the Sergeant.
“Those footprints on the balcony steps,” said Jerym, “were made
with galoshes of the same size and markings as the pattern turned
over to me by Snitkin a fortnight or so ago. As for the prints in the
room, I’m not so sure. They appear to be the same, however; and
the dirt on them is sooty, like the dirt on the snow outside the French
doors. I’ve several photographs of them; and I’ll know definitely when
I get my enlargements under the microscope.”
Vance rose and sauntered to the archway.
“May I have your permission to go up-stairs a moment,
Sergeant?”
Heath looked mystified. His instinct was to ask a reason for this
unexpected request, but all he said was: “Sure. Go ahead.”
Something in Vance’s manner—an air of satisfaction combined
with a suppressed eagerness—told me that he had verified his
theory.
He was gone less than five minutes. When he returned he carried
a pair of galoshes similar to those that had been found in Chester’s
closet. He handed them to Captain Jerym.
“You’ll probably find that these made the tracks.”
Both Jerym and Snitkin examined them carefully, comparing the
measurements and fitting the rough patterns to the soles. Finally, the
Captain took one of them to the window, and affixing a jeweller’s
glass to his eye, studied the riser of the heel.
 “I think you’re right,” he agreed. “There’s a worn place here which
corresponds to an indentation on the cast I made.”
Heath had sprung to his feet and stood eyeing Vance.
“Where did you find ’em?” he demanded.
“Tucked away in the rear of the little linen-closet at the head of
the stairs.”
The Sergeant’s excitement got the better of him. He swung about
to Markham, fairly spluttering with consternation.
“Those two guys from the Bureau that went over this house
looking for the gun told me there wasn’t a pair of galoshes in the
place; and I specially told ’em to keep their eyes pealed for galoshes.
And now Mr. Vance finds ’em in the linen-closet off the main hall up-
stairs!”
“But, Sergeant,” said Vance mildly, “the galoshes weren’t there
when your sleuths were looking for the revolver. On both former
occasions the johnny who wore ’em had plenty of time to put ’em
away safely. But to-day, d’ ye see, he had no chance to sequester
them; so he left ’em in the linen-closet for the time being.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” Heath growled vaguely. “Well, what’s the rest
of the story, Mr. Vance?”
“That’s all there is to date. If I knew the rest I’d know who fired
the shots. But I might remind you that neither of your sergents-de-
ville saw any suspicious person leave here.”
“Good God, Vance!” Markham was on his feet. “That means that
the murderer is in the house this minute.”
“At any rate,” returned Vance lazily, “I think we are justified in
assuming that the murderer was here when we arrived.”
“But nobody’s left the place but Von Blon,” blurted Heath.
Vance nodded. “Oh, it’s wholly possible the murderer is still in the
house, Sergeant.”
 CHAPTER XVI.
The Lost Poisons
(Tuesday, November 30; 2 p. m.)

Markham and Vance and I had a late lunch at the Stuyvesant

Club. During the meal the subject of the murder was avoided as if by
tacit agreement; but when we sat smoking over our coffee Markham
settled back in his chair and surveyed Vance sternly.
“Now,” he said, “I want to hear how you came to find those
galoshes in the linen-closet. And, damn it! I don’t want any garrulous
evasions or quotations out of Bartlett.”
“I’m quite willing to unburden my soul,” smiled Vance. “It was all
so dashed simple. I never put any stock in the burglar theory, and so
was able to approach the problem with a virgin mind, as it were.”
He lit a fresh cigarette and poured himself another cup of coffee.
“Perpend, Markham. On the night that Julia and Ada were shot a
double set of footprints was found. It had stopped snowing at about
eleven o’clock, and the tracks had been made between that hour
and midnight, when the Sergeant arrived on the scene. On the night
of Chester’s murder there was another set of footprints similar to the
others; and they too had been made shortly after the weather had
cleared. Here, then, were tracks in the snow, approaching and
retreating from the front door, preceding each crime; and both sets
had been made after the snow had stopped falling when they would
be distinctly visible and determinable. This was not a particularly
striking coincidence, but it was sufficiently arresting to create a slight
strain on my cortex cerebri. And the strain increased perceptibly this
morning when Snitkin reported his discovery of fresh footprints on
the balcony steps; for once again the same meteorological
conditions had accompanied our culprit’s passion for leaving spoors.
I was therefore driven to the irresistible inference, as you learned
Solons put it, that the murderer, so careful and calculating about
everything else, had deliberately made all these footprints for our
special edification. In each instance, d’ ye see, he had chosen the
only hour of the day when his tracks would not be obliterated by
falling snow or confused with other tracks. . . . Are you there?”
“Go ahead,” said Markham. “I’m listening.”
“To proceed, then. Another coincidence attached to these three
sets of footprints. It was impossible, because of the dry, flaky nature
of the snow, to determine whether the first set had originated in the
house and returned there, or had first approached the house from
the street and then retreated. Again, on the night of Chester’s
demise, when the snow was damp and susceptible to clear
impressions, the same doubt arose. The tracks to and from the
house were on opposite sides of the front walk: not a single footstep
overlapped! Accidental? Perhaps. But not wholly reasonable. A
person walking to and from a door along a comparatively narrow
pathway would almost certainly have doubled on some of his tracks.
And even if he had failed to superimpose any of his footprints, the
parallel spoors would have been close together. But these two lines
of prints were far apart: each clung to the extreme edge of the walk,
as if the person who made them was positively afraid of overlapping.
Now, consider the footprints made this morning. There was a single
line of them entering the house, but none coming out. We concluded
that the murderer had made his escape via the front door and down
the neatly swept walk; but this, after all, was only an assumption.”
Vance sipped his coffee and inhaled a moment on his cigarette.
“The point I’m trying to bring out is this: there is no proof
whatever that all these footprints were not made by some one in the
house who first went out and then returned for the express purpose
of leading the police to believe that an outsider was guilty. And, on
the other hand, there is evidence that the footprints actually did
originate in the house; because if an outsider had made them he
would have been at no pains to confuse the issue of their origin,
since, in any event, they could not have been traced back farther
than the street. Therefore, as a tentative starting-point, I assumed
that the tracks had, in reality, been made by some one in the house.
—I can’t say, of course, whether or not my layman’s logic adds lustre
to the gladsome light of jurisprudence——”
“Your reasoning is consistent as far as it goes,” cut in Markham
tartly. “But it is hardly complete enough to have led you directly to the
linen-closet this morning.”
“True. But there were various contribut’ry factors. For instance,
the galoshes which Snitkin found in Chester’s clothes-closet were
the exact size of the prints. At first I toyed with the idea that they
were the actual instruments of our unknown’s vestigial deception.
But when, after they had been taken to Headquarters, another set of
similar tracks appeared—to wit, the ones found this morning—I
amended my theory slightly, and concluded that Chester had owned
two pairs of galoshes—one that had perhaps been discarded but not
thrown away. That was why I wanted to wait for Captain Jerym’s
report: I was anxious to learn if the new tracks were exactly like the
old ones.”
“But even so,” interrupted Markham, “your theory that the
footprints emanated from the house strikes me as being erected on
pretty weak scaffolding. Were there any other indicants?”
“I was coming to them,” replied Vance reproachfully. “But you will
rush me so. Pretend that I’m a lawyer, and my summation will sound
positively breathless.”
“I’m more likely to pretend that I’m a presiding judge, and give
you sus. per coll.”
“Ah, well.” Vance sighed and continued. “Let us consider the
hypothetical intruder’s means of escape after the shooting of Julia
and Ada. Sproot came into the upper hall immediately after the shot
had been fired in Ada’s room; yet he heard nothing—neither
footsteps in the hall nor the front door closing. And, Markham old
thing, a person in galoshes going down marble steps in the dark is
no midsummer zephyr for silence. In the circumstances Sproot
would have been certain to hear him making his escape. Therefore,
the explanation that suggested itself to me was that he did not make
his escape.”
“And the footprints outside?”
“Were made beforehand by some one walking to the front gate
and back.—And that brings me to the night of Chester’s murder. You
remember Rex’s tale of hearing a dragging noise in the hall and a
door closing about fifteen minutes before the shot was fired, and
Ada’s corroboration of the door-shutting part of the story? The noise,
please note, was heard after it had stopped snowing—in fact, after
the moon had come out. Could the noise not easily have been a
person walking in galoshes, or even taking them off, after having
returned from making those separated tracks to and from the gate?
And might not that closing door have been the door of the linen-
closet where the galoshes were being temporarily cached?”
Markham nodded. “Yes, the sounds Rex and Ada heard might be
explained that way.”
“And this morning’s business was even plainer. There were
footprints on the balcony steps, made between nine o’clock and
noon. But neither of the guards saw any one enter the grounds.
Moreover, Sproot waited a few moments in the dining-room after the
shot had been fired in Rex’s room; and if any one had come down
the stairs and gone out the front door Sproot would certainly have
heard him. It’s true that the murderer might have descended the front
stairs as Sproot went up the servants’ stairs. But is that likely? Would
he have waited in the upper hall after killing Rex, knowing that some
one was likely to step out and discover him? I think not. And anyway,
the guards saw no one leave the estate. Ergo, I concluded that no
one came down the front stairs after Rex’s death. I assumed again
that the footprints had been made at some earlier hour. This time,
however, the murderer did not go to the gate and return, for a guard
was there who would have seen him; and, furthermore, the front
steps and the walk had been swept. So our track-maker, after having
donned the galoshes, stepped out of the front door, walked round the
corner of the house, mounted the balcony steps, and re-entered the
upper hall by way of Ada’s room.”
“I see.” Markham leaned over and knocked the ashes from his
cigar. “Therefore, you inferred that the galoshes were still in the
house.”
“Exactly. But I’ll admit I didn’t think of the linen-closet at once.
First I tried Chester’s room. Then I took a look round Julia’s
chamber; and I was about to go up to the servants’ quarters when I
recalled Rex’s story of the closing door. I ran my eye over all the
second-story doors, and straightway tried the linen-closet—which
was, after all, the most likely place for a transient occultation. And lo!
there were the galoshes tucked under an old drugget. The murderer
had probably hidden them there both times before, pending an
opportunity of secreting them more thoroughly.”
“But where could they have been concealed so that our
searchers didn’t run across them?”
“As to that, now, I couldn’t say. They may have been taken out of
the house altogether.”
There was a silence for several minutes. Then Markham spoke.
“The finding of the galoshes pretty well proves your theory,
Vance. But do you realize what confronts us now? If your reasoning
is correct, the guilty person is some one with whom we’ve been
talking this morning. It’s an appalling thought. I’ve gone over in my
mind every member of that household; and I simply can’t regard any
one of them as a potential mass-murderer.”
“Sheer moral prejudice, old dear.” Vance’s voice assumed a note
of raillery. “I’m a bit cynical myself, and the only person at the
Greene mansion I’d eliminate as a possibility would be Frau
Mannheim. She’s not sufficiently imaginative to have planned this
accumulative massacre. But as regards the others, I could picture
any one of ’em as being at the bottom of this diabolical slaughter. It’s
a mistaken idea, don’t y’ know, to imagine that a murderer looks like
a murderer. No murderer ever does. The only people who really look
like murderers are quite harmless. Do you recall the mild and
handsome features of the Reverend Richeson of Cambridge? Yet he
gave his inamorata cyanide of potassium. The fact that Major
Armstrong was a meek and gentlemanly looking chap did not deter
him from feeding arsenic to his wife. Professor Webster of Harvard
was not a criminal type; but the dismembered spirit of Doctor
Parkman doubtless regards him as a brutal slayer. Doctor Lamson,
with his philanthropic eyes and his benevolent beard, was highly
regarded as a humanitarian; but he administered aconitine rather
cold-bloodedly to his crippled brother-in-law. Then there was Doctor
Neil Cream, who might easily have been mistaken for the deacon of
a fashionable church; and the soft-spoken and amiable Doctor
Waite. . . . And the women! Edith Thompson admitted putting
powdered glass in her husband’s gruel, though she looked like a
pious Sunday-school teacher. Madeleine Smith certainly had a most
respectable countenance. And Constance Kent was rather a beauty
—a nice girl with an engaging air; yet she cut her little brother’s
throat in a thoroughly brutal manner. Gabrielle Bompard and Marie
Boyer were anything but typical of the donna delinquente; but the
one strangled her lover with the cord of her dressing-gown, and the
other killed her mother with a cheese-knife. And what of Madame
Fenayrou——?”
“Enough!” protested Markham. “Your lecture on criminal
physiognomy can go over a while. Just now I’m trying to adjust my
mind to the staggering inferences to be drawn from your finding of
those galoshes.” A sense of horror seemed to weigh him down.
“Good God, Vance! There must be some way out of this nightmare
you’ve propounded. What member of that household could possibly
have walked in on Rex Greene and shot him down in broad
daylight?”
“ ’Pon my soul, I don’t know.” Vance himself was deeply affected
by the sinister aspects of the case. “But some one in that house did it
—some one the others don’t suspect.”
“That look on Julia’s face, and Chester’s amazed expression—
that’s what you mean, isn’t it? They didn’t suspect either. And they
were horrified at the revelation—when it was too late. Yes, all those
things fit in with your theory.”
“But there’s one thing that doesn’t fit, old man.” Vance gazed at
the table perplexedly. “Rex died peacefully, apparently unaware of
his murderer. Why wasn’t there also a look of horror on his face? His
eyes couldn’t have been shut when the revolver was levelled at him,
for he was standing, facing the intruder. It’s inexplicable—mad!”
He beat a nervous tattoo on the table, his brows contracted.
“And there’s another thing, Markham, that’s incomprehensible
about Rex’s death. His door into the hall was open; but nobody up-
stairs heard the shot—nobody up-stairs. And yet Sproot—who was
down-stairs, in the butler’s pantry behind the dining-room—heard it
distinctly.”
“It probably just happened that way,” Markham argued, almost
automatically. “Sound acts fantastically sometimes.”
 Vance shook his head.
“Nothing has ‘just happened’ in this case. There’s a terrible logic
about everything—a carefully planned reason behind each detail.
Nothing has been left to chance. Still, this very systematization of the
crime will eventually prove the murderer’s downfall. When we can
find a key to any one of the anterooms, we’ll know our way into the
main chamber of horrors.”
At that moment Markham was summoned to the telephone.
When he returned his expression was puzzled and uneasy.
“It was Swacker. Von Blon is at my office now—he has something
to tell me.”
“Ah! Very interestin’,” commented Vance.
We drove to the District Attorney’s office, and Von Blon was
shown in at once.
“I may be stirring up a mare’s nest,” he began apologetically, after
he had seated himself on the edge of a chair. “But I felt I ought to
inform you of a curious thing that happened to me this morning. At
first I thought I would tell the police, but it occurred to me they might
misunderstand; and I decided to place the matter before you to act
upon as you saw fit.”
Plainly he was uncertain as to how the subject should be
broached, and Markham waited patiently with an air of polite
indulgence.
“I phoned the Greene house as soon as I made the—ah—
discovery,” Von Blon went on hesitantly. “But I was informed you had
left for the office; so, as soon as I had lunched, I came directly here.”
“Very good of you, doctor,” murmured Markham.
Again Von Blon hesitated, and his manner became exaggeratedly
ingratiating.
“The fact is, Mr. Markham, I am in the habit of carrying a rather
full supply of emergency drugs in my medicine-case. . . .”
“Emergency drugs?”
“Strychnine, morphine, caffeine, and a variety of hypnotics and
stimulants. I find it often convenient——”
“And it was in connection with these drugs you wished to see
me?”
 “Indirectly—yes.” Von Blon paused momentarily to arrange his
words. “To-day it happened that I had in my case a fresh tube of
soluble quarter-grain morphine tablets, and a Parke-Davis carton of
four tubes of strychnine—thirtieths. . . .”
“And what about this supply of drugs, doctor?”
“The fact is, the morphine and the strychnine have disappeared.”
Markham bent forward, his eyes curiously animated.
“They were in my case this morning when I left my office,” Von
Blon explained; “and I made only two brief calls before I went to the
Greenes’. I missed the tubes when I returned to my office.”
Markham studied the doctor a moment.
“And you think it improbable that the drugs were taken from your
case during either of your other calls?”
“That’s just it. At neither place was the case out of my sight for a
moment.”
“And at the Greenes’?” Markham’s agitation was growing rapidly.
“I went directly to Mrs. Greene’s room, taking the case with me. I
remained there for perhaps half an hour. When I came out——”
“You did not leave the room during that half-hour?”
“No. . . .”
“Pardon me, doctor,” came Vance’s indolent voice; “but the nurse
mentioned that you called to her to bring Mrs. Greene’s bouillon.
From where did you call?”
Von Blon nodded. “Ah, yes. I did speak to Miss Craven. I stepped
to the door and called up the servants’ stairs.”
“Quite so. And then?”
“I waited with Mrs. Greene until the nurse came. Then I went
across the hall to Sibella’s room.”
“And your case?” interjected Markham.
“I set it down in the hall, against the rear railing of the main
stairway.”
“And you remained in Miss Sibella’s room until Sproot called
you?”
“That is right.”
“Then the case was unguarded in the rear of the upper hall from
about eleven until you left the house?”
 “Yes. After I had taken leave of you gentlemen in the drawing-
room I went up-stairs and got it.”
“And also made your adieus to Miss Sibella,” added Vance.
Von Blon raised his eyebrows with an air of gentle surprise.
“Naturally.”
“What amount of these drugs disappeared?” asked Markham.
“The four tubes of strychnine contained in all approximately three
grains—three and one-third, to be exact. And there are twenty-five
tablets of morphine in a Parke-Davis tube, making six and one-
quarter grains.”
“Are those fatal doses, doctor?”
“That’s a difficult question to answer, sir.” Von Blon adopted a
professorial manner. “One may have a tolerance for morphine and
be capable of assimilating astonishingly large doses. But, ceteris
paribus, six grains would certainly prove fatal. Regarding strychnine,
toxicology gives us a very wide range as to lethal dosage, depending
on the condition and age of the patient. The average fatal dose for
an adult is, I should say, two grains, though death has resulted from
administrations of one grain, or even less. And, on the other hand,
recovery has taken place after as much as ten grains have been
swallowed. Generally speaking, however, three and one-third grains
would be sufficient to produce fatal results.”
When Von Blon had gone Markham gazed at Vance anxiously.
“What do you make of it?” he asked.
“I don’t like it—I don’t at all like it.” Vance shook his head
despairingly. “It’s dashed queer—the whole thing. And the doctor is
worried, too. There’s a panic raging beneath his elegant façade. He’s
in a blue funk—and it’s not because of the loss of his pills. He fears
something, Markham. There was a strained, hunted look in his
eyes.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as strange that he should be carrying such
quantities of drugs about with him?”
“Not necessarily. Some doctors do it. The Continental M.D.s
especially are addicted to the practice. And don’t forget Von Blon is
German-trained. . . .” Vance glanced up suddenly. “By the by, what
about those two wills?”
 There was a look of astonished interrogation in Markham’s
incisive stare, but he said merely:
“I’ll have them later this afternoon. Buckway has been laid up with
a cold, but he promised to send me copies to-day.”
Vance got to his feet.
“I’m no Chaldean,” he drawled; “but I have an idea those two wills
may help us to understand the disappearance of the doctor’s
pellets.” He drew on his coat and took up his hat and stick. “And now
I’m going to banish this beastly affair from my thoughts.—Come,
Van. There’s some good chamber-music at Æolian Hall this
afternoon, and if we hurry we’ll be in time for the Mozart ‘C-major.’ ”
 CHAPTER XVII.
Two Wills
(Tuesday, November 30; 8 p. m.)

Eight o’clock that night found Inspector Moran, Sergeant Heath,

Markham, Vance, and me seated about a small conference-table in
one of the Stuyvesant Club’s private rooms. The evening papers had
created a furore in the city with their melodramatic accounts of Rex
Greene’s murder; and these early stories were, as we all knew, but
the mild forerunners of what the morning journals would publish. The
situation itself, without the inevitable impending strictures of the
press, was sufficient to harry and depress those in charge of the
official investigation; and, as I looked round the little circle of worried
faces that night, I realized the tremendous importance that attached
to the outcome of our conference.
Markham was the first to speak.
“I have brought copies of the wills; but before we discuss them I’d
like to know if there have been any new developments.”
“Developments!” Heath snorted contemptuously. “We’ve been
going round in a circle all afternoon, and the faster we went the
quicker we got to where we started. Mr. Markham, not one damn
thing turned up to give us a line of inquiry. If it wasn’t for the fact that
no gun was found in the room, I’d turn in a report of suicide and then
resign from the force.”
“Fie on you, Sergeant!” Vance made a half-hearted attempt at
levity. “It’s a bit too early to give way to such gloomy pessimism.—I
take it that Captain Dubois found no finger-prints.”
“Oh, he found finger-prints, all right—Ada’s, and Rex’s, and
Sproot’s, and a couple of the doctor’s. But that don’t get us
anywheres.”
 “Where were the prints?”
“Everywhere—on the door-knobs, the centre-table, the window-
panes; some were even found on the woodwork above the mantel.”
“That last fact may prove interestin’ some day, though it doesn’t
seem to mean much just now.—Anything more about the footprints?”
“Nope. I got Jerym’s report late this afternoon; but it don’t say
anything new. The galoshes you found made the tracks.”
“That reminds me, Sergeant. What did you do with the
galoshes?”
Heath gave him a sly, exultant grin.
“Just exactly what you’d have done with ’em, Mr. Vance. Only—I
thought of it first.”
Vance smiled back.
“Salve! Yes, the idea entirely slipped my mind this morning. In
fact, it only just occurred to me.”
“May I know what was done with the galoshes?” interjected
Markham impatiently.
“Why, the Sergeant returned them surreptitiously to the linen-
closet, and placed them under the drugget whence they came.”
“Right!” Heath nodded with satisfaction. “And I’ve got our new
nurse keeping an eye on ’em. The minute they disappear she’s to
phone the Bureau.”
“You had no trouble installing your woman?” asked Markham.
“A cinch. Everything went like clockwork. At a quarter to six the
doc shows up; then at six comes the woman from the Central Office.
After the doc has put her wise to her new duties, she gets into her
uniform and goes in to Mrs. Greene. The old lady tells the doc she
didn’t like this Miss Craven anyway, and hopes the new nurse will
show her more consideration. Things couldn’t have gone smoother. I
hung around until I got a chance to tip our woman off about the
galoshes; then I came away.”
“Which of our women did you give the case to, Sergeant?” Moran
asked.
“O’Brien—the one who handled the Sitwell affair. Nothing in that
house will get by O’Brien; and she’s as strong as a man.”
“There’s another thing you’d better speak to her about as soon as
possible.” And Markham related in detail the facts of Von Blon’s visit
to the office after lunch. “If those drugs were stolen in the Greene
mansion, your woman may be able to find some trace of them.”
Markham’s account of the missing poisons had produced a
profound effect on both Heath and the Inspector.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed the latter. “Is this affair going to
develop into a poisoning case? It would be the finishing touch.” His
apprehension went much deeper than his tone implied.
Heath sat staring at the polished table-top with futile
consternation.
“Morphine and strychnine! There’s no use looking for the stuff.
There’s a hundred places in the house where it could be hid; and we
might search a month and not find it. Anyway, I’ll go out there to-
night and tell O’Brien to watch for it. If she’s on the lookout she
maybe can spot any attempt to use it.”
“What astounds me,” remarked the Inspector, “is the security felt
by the thief. Within an hour of the time Rex Greene is shot the
poison disappears from the upper hall. Good Gad! That’s cold-
bloodedness for you! And nerve, too!”
“There’s plenty of cold-bloodedness and nerve in this case,”
answered Vance. “A relentless determination is back of these
murders—and calculation no end. I wouldn’t be surprised if the
doctor’s satchel had been searched a score of times before.
Perhaps there’s been a patient accumulation of the drugs. This
morning’s theft may have been the final raid. I see in this whole affair
a carefully worked-out plot that’s been in preparation perhaps for
years. We’re dealing with the persistency of an idée fixe, and with
the demoniacal logic of insanity. And—what is even more hideous—
we’re confronted with the perverted imagination of a fantastically
romantic mind. We’re pitted against a fiery, egocentric, hallucinated
optimism. And this type of optimism has tremendous stamina and
power. The history of nations has been convulsed by it. Mohammed,
Bruno, and Jeanne d’Arc—as well as Torquemada, Agrippina, and
Robespierre—all had it. It operates in different degrees, and to
different ends; but the spirit of individual revolution is at the bottom of
it.”
“Hell, Mr. Vance!” Heath was uneasy. “You’re trying to make this
case something that ain’t—well, natural.”
 “Can you make it anything else, Sergeant? Already there have
been three murders and an attempted murder. And now comes the
theft of the poisons from Von Blon.”
Inspector Moran drew himself up and rested his elbows on the
table.
“Well, what’s to be done? That, I believe, is the business of to-
night’s conclave.” He forced himself to speak with matter-of-factness.
“We can’t break up the establishment; and we can’t assign a
separate bodyguard for each remaining member of the household.”
“No; and we can’t give ’em the works at the police station, either,”
grumbled Heath.
“It wouldn’t help you if you could, Sergeant,” said Vance. “There’s
no third degree known that could unseal the lips of the person who is
executing this particular opus. There’s too much fanaticism and
martyrdom in it.”
“Suppose we hear those wills, Mr. Markham,” suggested Moran.
“We may then be able to figure out a motive.—You’ll admit, won’t
you, Mr. Vance, that there’s a pretty strong motive back of these
killings?”
“There can be no doubt as to that. But I don’t believe it’s money.
Money may enter into it—and probably does—but only as a
contribut’ry factor. I’d say the motive was more fundamental—that it
had its matrix in some powerful but suppressed human passion.
However, the financial conditions may lead us to those depths.”
Markham had taken from his pocket several legal-sized sheets of
closely typed paper, and smoothed them on the table before him.
“There’s no necessity to read these verbatim,” he said. “I’ve gone
over them thoroughly and can tell you briefly what they contain.” He
took up the top sheet and held it nearer to the light. “Tobias Greene’s
last will, drawn up less than a year before his death, makes the
entire family, as you know, the residuary devisees, with the
stipulation that they live on the estate and maintain it intact for
twenty-five years. At the end of that time the property may be sold or
otherwise disposed of. I might mention that the domiciliary stipulation
was particularly strict: the legatees must live in the Greene mansion
in esse—no technicality will suffice. They are permitted to travel and