Jewish residents repay a city's kindness
Rabbi Shalom Greenberg, director of the Shanghai Jewish Center.
Led by Rabbi Shalom Greenberg, director of the Shanghai Jewish Center, the city’s Jewish community has donated more than 20,000 face masks and hand sanitizers for elderly residents, children and doctors.
Due to the coronavirus epidemic, such items, especially masks, are in short supply.
Greenberg often has to wear a mask at the center in Changning Distrtict’s Hongqiao. But whenever he and other Jewish residents manage to buy or collect any masks, they donate them the city.
"When the Jewish refugees came here during World War II, they were welcomed so nicely and helped by the local people," Greenberg said. "So this is a time for the Jewish community to pay the debt to the city.”
In early February, Greenberg donated 10,000 face masks for elderly residents living near the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum in Hongkou District.
A week later, he along with volunteers from the local Jewish community donated 5,000 masks for children and another 1,000 for adults to the neonatal intensive care unit at the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University.
On March 9, on seeing a donation event announcement on SHINE, Shanghai Daily’s media platform, Greenberg and other Jewish residents handed over 3,000 child-size face masks and 56 hand sanitizers to Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital.
As part of the Tiandi Transit Stations for Donations, co-founded by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Medical Education Development Foundation, Shanghai Daily and Shui On Land, the anti-epidemic packages were delivered to family members of medical workers serving in Wuhan, the hardest-hit region in China.
"I think these doctors deserve all our support and help, because it is very heroic what they are doing," Greenberg said.
A large number of Shanghai’s Jewish residents have been contributing to the donation campaign. Most donate money, while others give masks and hand sanitizers. Some help distribute the equipment to the local community, he said.
There are several thousand Jewish people living in Shanghai. Most of them are from Israel, the United States and France as well as elsewhere around the world.
Greenberg, 48, came to the city with his wife in 1998 to found and serve as director of the Jewish community center to mainly help Jewish expats, businessmen and tour groups.
Jewish expats and their children can celebrate holidays, learn Hebrew, eat Jewish food and have other needs met at the center. There are more than 13 such centers around China and three in Shanghai, the other two in the Pudong New Area and Jing'an District.
Rabbi Shalom Greenberg, director of the Shanghai Jewish Center, talks with other Jewish residents at the center on Thursday.
A notice at the entrance to the Shanghai Jewish Center reminds visitors to wash hands on entry in English, Spanish, Hebrew and Chinese.
Quick response
Greenberg said increasing numbers of Jewish tour groups are coming to the city mainly to learn about Shanghai and the Jewish people during World War II.
Shanghai had the largest amount of Jewish refugees to be saved in one city, he said. During the war, about 23,000 Jews who fled Nazi-occupied Europe found shelter in the city. Most lived in the Tilanqiao area of the North Bund in north Hongkou District and established deep friendships with local residents.
Greenberg said the Jewish people have the philosophy that they must help the city they live in to prosper and be successful, especially in times of disaster.
So since the coronavirus outbreak, the city’s Jewish community has been considering what they could do to help people, he said.
Greenberg decided to launch the donation program after he witnessed a long line of people outside a pharmacy waiting to buy the limited number of masks.
"I asked myself what about the elderly and disabled who cannot stand in the freezing cold day for such a long time," he said.
The community responded quickly and they soon managed to collect a first batch of masks.
Accompanied by Chen Jian, curator of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, Greenberg and other Jewish residents presented the masks to senior citizens living in the neighborhoods where the tens of thousands Jewish refugees lived during the war.
Chen said these masks were timely for the elderly in the old neighborhoods. Many of them were living alone and finding it difficult to buy masks.
"Most of the residents tried to say 'thank you' in English and shake my hands very warmly though we wore gloves. Some even tried to pay us," Greenberg recalled.
"It was a very touching experience," he added. "If we will all try to help each other this fight with the virus will be gone much faster, and we will all benefit from it and be able to go back to a normal life.”
Rabbi Shalom Greenberg (3rd left), director of the Shanghai Jewish Center, presents face masks to the Tiandi Transit Stations for Donations.
