The 67-Year-Old Buddhist Caretaker Maintaining Asia's Oldest Jewish Cemetery
Blessed are you, Hashem our God, King of the universe...the Resuscitator of the dead are You; abundantly able to save – reads a placard outside a white one story-building-stained gray with acid rain, a placard made to recite for those who have not seen a cemetery for 30 days.
This white building houses a few plastic chairs, a shelf filled with Torah books—the first five books of the Hebrew Old Testament for Judaism—a quaint altar made for sermons, and a backdoor stainless aluminum-clad room for the preparation of dead bodies.
Illuminated by the bright heat of Hong Kong in the autumn weather, this structure rests in the kept and clean gardens of Hong Kong’s cemetery for the city's Jewish population: a small but wealthy community that have occupied business in the city since the mid-1800s and the Happy Valley burial site since 1855.
The Hong Kong Jewish cemetery is the largest burial place in Asia still in operation. Engulfed by high- rise apartment buildings and flanked either side by a bright yellow and red-roofed Buddhist temple and school, the burial grounds have enjoyed a continuous 166 years in operation, through the Second Opium War, the opening of Hong Kong’s main synagogue, Ohel Leah Synagogue in 1902, the two world wars, the 1966 Hong Kong Riots, the 1997 handover, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The burial grounds of Asia’s largest Jewish cemetery east of Jerusalem holds 375 deceased Jews: travelling businessmen from Shanghai, Polish and Lithuanian Jews visiting friends, old Jewish royalty and wealthy, families who settled in the city during increased periods of trade in south China, members of any synagogue in Hong Kong, and Jews in the city.
Since the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cemetery has largely remained desolate and serene, lacking the former of tourist numbers made up of locals, Americans, and Israelis on tours. After a border shutdown in January 2020 for overseas tourists, the cemetery has enjoyed a peaceful existence.
The only face that patronizes the grounds these days, and has done every working day for four years, is the cemetery’s devout-Buddhist caretaker, Sae Ho Amui, 67, a Thai-born Hong Kong-Chinese woman, who has made it her own career goal to maintain the beauty and religious spirit of the cemetery, with a mix of Buddhist and Jewish values.
Amui was first hired by JLL, a global commercial real estate firm that currently manages the grounds, in 2017 to manage the general upkeep of the cemetery: pruning vegetation, clearly the grounds of fallen leaves, and cleaning mould off of graves.
"Apart from Howard [Elias, who looks after the cemetery and is a member of the Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong], I've only met the rabbi and some of the community's trustees a few times," Amui told The Beat Asia in Mandarin Chinese, as we toured the grounds together in October 2021. She applies the Jewish teachings learnt on how to respect the dead everyday with her cleaning practices.
With an off day on Saturdays where the cemetery is closed in respect to the Jewish sabbath, Amui works six days a week from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM beautifying the burial grounds for the dead and preparing the cemetery for visitors that sadly do not come.
“Because of the [coronavirus] disease, visitors are recommended to call in advance to visit here. I still work every day, even when the pandemic won’t allow overseas tourists to come.” Despite no background or connection to the Jewish community, Amui is obsessive with the beauty, cleanliness, and serenity of the burial grounds.
With a very Jewish way of thinking and a share of Buddhist values for respecting the dead, Amui strives to ensure that every spot of land is cleared from grime, mould, and dead leaves. “Look over there and over there!” she directed us when we toured the cemetery. “There’s no place in the cemetery that is dirty, everything is beautiful and clean.”
When asked whether she is scared to work around the dead, Amui shrieked. “I’m not scared! After all I am a believer in Buddhism, to me, my work [in taking care of the grounds] and my religion should be done 全心全意 (quán xīn quán yì) / whole-heartedly.”
Hong Kong’s former status as a crown colony of the British empire is the reason for the construction of the cemetery and the immigration of the city's first Jews in the mid-1800s. When China ceded the sleepy port town of Hong Kong to Great Britain in 1842, families up north in the mainland and beyond in other British colonies looked towards the city for new opportunities in business and soft power.
The Sassoon family, known comically as the “Rothchilds of the East,” were the first number of religious Jews to make landfall in Hong Kong. A Baghdadi-Jewish family originally based in Iraq, and then Bombay, India, the Sassoon’s saw Hong Kong has a city of opportunity to extend their export trade of opium, spices, fabrics, and cotton from China.
The family transferred their regional trade offices from then-Canton (Guangzhou) to Hong Kong in 1844 and funded the establishment of Hong Kong’s Jewish community in 1857, with construction of a physical space for Jewish prayer and celebration in Central.
With a need to house the dead of the Jewish population, Reuben David Sasson, son of Sassoon patriarch, David Sassoon, purchased a plot of land for a burial site in Wong Nei Chong (todays Happy Valley) in 1855, with the first burials, unmarked and unnamed, placed in the east corners of the cemetery, an elevated patch of grass high beyond the march grounds that once made-up Happy Valley.
A contract was signed in 1858 to ensure the site be used solely as a burial ground and the rent be priced at four shillings and two pence Sterling (£12.32 / HK$130.39) for the duration of a 999-year lease. In 1906, during the tenure of Sir Matthew Nathan, Hong Kong’s sole Jewish governor, a 75-year lease was provided for a piece of land adjoining the cemetery. A renewal of the lease in 1981 for an additional 150 years made space for the construction of todays chapel building and tehara room, fountain, workers closet, and bathroom.
Today, the Hong Kong Jewish cemetery homes the bodies of emigrating Jewish families following the Sassoon arrival, a resting place for Baghdadi, Indian, European, and American families who set up base in Hong Kong, and the former and current members of the Ohel Leah Synagogue.
For an hour on a hot morning in October 2021, Amui brought us around on an impromptu excursion throughout the cemetery, walking through the main burial grounds, the fountain and garden, and the chapel and tahara room, where dead bodies are washed before burial.
When we passed the graves of European and Iraqi Jews buried in the 1800s, Amui pointed me to a patch of grass beside a gray stone grave. “Look,” she shouted, “here is the grass!”
“In Buddhism, we are shown that only deities in the temples are allowed to wear long hair. It is considered unattractive for commoners to have too long hair. In the cemetery, I like to religiously cut the grass surrounding the graves so as not to make those who are dead look ugly.”
“These dead people don’t know have conscious, obviously. I want to use the teachings of the Jewish synagogue (on how to care for the dead after burial) and my Buddhist values to make them look attractive and continue their spirit in the living world.”
Amui wants her work, scrubbing the graves, cutting the grass, cleaning the leaves, to speak for itself. “I try as much as possible and diligently to keep the cemetery in a top shape, like a beautiful garden. Whenever a visitor may pass through, they may not notice any dirt at all.”
“I’m exulted to have this job (in cleaning). It’s stable, my boss is hands-off and I don’t have any stress.”
Amui brought me to the graves of four members of the Kadoorie family, where Sir Ellis Kadoorie, founder of Hong Kong’s CLP Group and Peninsula Hotel, is buried. She pointed to the Hebrew and English text on the grave heads, praising their grand history in her spoken Mandarin Chinese. To a Thai-Chinese caretaker, even the richness of Hong Kong’s Jewish community is one of an amazement.
We continued the interview, passing through the luscious gardens of the cemetery, into Amui’s shed, where she stores her cleaning equipment, rice cooker, and clothes. Amui turned on the fountain system, located in front of the main burial section, where water began spurting out of the top of a nine-foot-high bronze statue. The water dripped down and collected into a two-foot-high basin shaped in a Persian design, filled with mucky green water.
She attempted to beckon over a group of goldfish swimming in the fountain by clapping and waving frantically. She told me that the few red goldfish that swim in the waters act as protection for the spirits and dead of the cemetery, another act of Buddhist belief in her work as a caretaker and protector of a Jewish place of worship.
Amui was born in Thailand in 1954 to her parents who were immigrants from mainland China. At 23, she met her late husband after emigrating to Hong Kong in 1977. She, alongside her late Thai-Chinese husband, qualified for an apartment unit in a government -housing in Chai Wan 44 years ago, where she continues to live to this day.
Her husband died three years ago to cancer, but this has not shaken her, nor convinced her to remove the ring off of her right hand. “It’s bad luck in Buddhism to remove the ring of your former spouse. I still want to remember him and his life.”
Her dedication to her job is exhibited in her passion for Buddhism and her diligent nature of cleanliness in the cemetery. “I can’t read English so I don’t know who each person [is] to me, I only know if they are young or old. But I treat every person with the dignity and respect that they deserve.”
When asked whether she may be interested in touring the Ohel Leah Synagogue, Amui replied that she will retire in the summer of 2022. Her caretaking role is a job in itself and she has no intention nor motivation to visit the synagogue, as she “wants to sleep all the time” after retiring.
After her retirement, her faint connection with the Jewish community will evaporate and her work at the cemetery will follow onto another worker at JLL who possibly may lack Amui’s “whole-hearted” dedication to the cemetery.
Most graves in the Hong Kong Jewish cemetery are made with white or gray marble or stone and are inscribed with black ink.
According to Jewish custom, almost every grave is inscribed with simple factual information about the deceased: Hebrew name and year, place of birth, date of birth, and a traditional blessing. Most graves are written in both Hebrew and English, with some in Arabic, Russian, Slovak, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Yiddish, an homage to the colorful history of colonial Hong Kong’s Jewish immigrants.
Those buried in the late 1800s and early 1900s include the members of the children and nieces and nephews of the Sassoon family, the wealthy Baghdadi-Mizrahi Kadoorie family whose business in Shanghai brought them to Hong Kong in the 20th century, the Elias family who traded in Shanghai, the Goldenbergs who brought spices from Bombay to Hong Kong, and the Ellis family hailing from Australia.
The earliest burial, dated 1857, is of Leon Bin Baruel, about whom nothing further is known but whose imposing granite sarcophagus bears witness to his having passed his final days in Hong Kong.
The cemetery’s last burial was of Jeffrey Marc Follick on Feb. 5, 2020, a 54-year-old American Jew, who worked and lived in Hong Kong since 1994, a manufacturer of catering equipment in the city.
Other notable Jews buried in the cemetery include Reverend Max Wolff, Ohel Leah Synagogues first rabbi in 1868, Leon Weill, a Jewish officer who fought in WW2, main benefactor of the Hong Kong Jewish community, Mervyn Gatton, and Amy Coxall, a 16-year-old Island School student who lost her life in 2010 in a tragic go-karting accident.
The Hong Kong Jewish Cemetery – along with the Jewish community as a whole – is unknown to the locals of Hong Kong. Very few non-Jews have passed through the doors of the burial site in recent years, besides a Buddhist woman from Thailand with Chinese parents who emigrated to Hong Kong in the 1970s and now spends almost 300 days a year pruning and perfecting the state of a cemetery for 375 deceased individuals in Asia’s largest burial site for the Jewish community.
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