Shanghai’s Quiet Sanctuary Where Jewish Life Keeps Growing
On the eve of Yom Kippur, Giorgia Valente steps through an unassuming Shanghai doorway and finds a world in miniature: a Chabad center where Rabbi Shalom and Dina Greenberg have spent nearly three decades turning a transient city into a steady community. What began in 1998 with a few hundred expats now moves to a familiar rhythm—prayer upstairs, a mikveh down the hall, and a kosher kitchen where Chinese staff learned, patiently, why every egg is checked and why two bowls matter.
That kitchen became a bridge. Parts of the chicken not used for communal meals—like the feet—went to grateful colleagues; recipes traveled in both directions; trust settled in. The Greenbergs’ approach is simple: give families the tools—kosher food, Shabbat and holiday observance, Hebrew classes—so Jewish life can carry forward wherever people land.
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History hums beneath the present. Valente traces three waves of Jewish Shanghai—Baghdadi merchants, Russian Jews via Harbin, and refugees who arrived in the 1930s and ’40s with little more than boat tickets and “Sugihara visas.” Post-1949 departures thinned the numbers to almost none; normalization between China and Israel in the 1990s set the stage for a revival that swelled before COVID, dipped during lockdowns, and is building back.
Since Oct. 7, travelers connected to the war have passed through—families of hostages, festival survivors—finding space to grieve and regroup. Dina describes China as free of inherent antisemitism and praises cooperative ties with local authorities. Rosh Hashanah drew crowds this year; Yom Kippur will gather “most of the community” in fasting and reflection—and, she insists, joy.
To see how this quiet center holds a global crowd together—and to hear the Greenbergs in their own words—read the full piece by Giorgia Valente.
