History of the Jews in Indonesia

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The history of the Jews in Indonesia began with the arrival of European explorers and settlers. At present there is only a small Jewish community in Indonesia with around twenty Jews, most of whom are Sephardic .

history

In the 1850s, the Jewish traveler Jacob Saphir wrote the first report on the Jewish community of Dutch Indies after his visit to Batavia . In Batavia he had spoken to a local Jew who told him about twenty Jewish families in the city itself and others in Surabaya and Semarang . The majority of the Jews native to the Dutch East Indies in the 19th century were Dutch Jews who worked as traders or were members of the colonial administration. However, there were members of the Jewish community who had immigrated from Iraq or Aden .

In the interwar period , Israel Cohen estimated the number of Jews in the Dutch East Indies to be around 2,000. Indonesian Jews suffered greatly from the Japanese occupation. They were interned and had to do forced labor in the camps. After the war, the formerly interned Jews did not get their expropriated property back, which is why many emigrated to the United States , Australia or Israel .

At the end of the 1960s, there were estimates that twenty Jews lived in Jakarta, 25 in Surabaya, and more in Manado .

population

The total number of Jewish community members in Indonesia is given by the World Jewish Congress as 25.

Assimilation and population change

It was the same social and cultural characteristics of Indonesia that fueled both the exceptional economic, political and social success of the local Jewish community and its assimilation .

The number of marriages outside the Jewish community rose from around 55% in 1944 to an estimated 90–94% in 2004. Usually, the children resulting from these marriages are raised non-Jewish, so given the composition of the Indonesian population, they are mostly Muslim .

The Indonesian government only recognizes six religions, Judaism is not among them. This is expressed e.g. B. in the fact that in the Indonesian identity card (Kartu Tanda Penduduk) in the field in which the religion of the owner is recorded, the Jewish cannot be entered.

literature

  • Sören Kittel: "Survive until the Messiah comes". Portrait of Yaakov Baruch, Indonesia's only rabbi. In: Welt am Sonntag , December 25, 2011, page 12.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Jewish Virtual Library - Indonesia