I'll admit that at first, I foolishly wasn't planning on going to Seder because it was kind of expensive. But then my mom said 'why don't you just go anyway' and I said 'OK', and it wasn't a problem anyway because there was a student discount that I never saw.
I had known that Jews had been in Singapore since the mid-1800s, and I knew that there were two synagogues in Singapore, that use to hold a fairly large (about 4000) Jewish community, mostly Iraqi Jews. I wasn't sure, though, whether the Seder that I would be attending would include any of the original Singapore Jewish community, or whether it would just be a bunch of foreign transplants (I just hate those foreign transplants!).
The journey over was pretty stressful, because the internal NUS bus that was supposed to come every five minutes at that time didn't show up for half an hour, so I thought I was going to be late. I ended up having to get off of the MRT (metro) and take a cab, and I arrived at the Magen Aboth Synagogue just as evening services were getting out; as I was walking up, a hired security guard said 'do you have a reservation?'. I said 'well, I made a payment last night, but the email to which I was supposed to send my reservation info gave me a ' mailer daemon this email doesn't actually exist' message, so he just let me in.
The Synaogue itself was a beautiful structure, with stucco siding, a red-upholstered interior, with the platform in the middle that is typical of orthodox Sephardic Synagogues.
Here is a picture of the other Synagogue, Chesed El; very architecturally impressive, maybe I should take the time to visit.
When I got there, everyone was saying 'Chag Sameach' and shaking hands. One of them was a Chabadnik, around my age. I forget his name, but he asked me 'where are you from?' and I said 'The USA' and he said 'yeah, of course, but where'.
There were guys my age from quite a variety of places; mostly France, Canada, and South Africa.
Someone asked me 'which Seder are you going to?' and I said 'I'm not sure'. There was one being held in the community center right next to the Synagogue, and one being held at someones house, about a 20 minutes walk away. I was told most of the young people were going to the house, so I went there.
Often, Jews remark how amazing it is that we have a culture that spans every continent, that has been remarkably preserved for 2000 years, even between communities that have very little contact with each other. I definitely felt that on the walk over to the house.
I had some interesting conversations on the walk there, which took a good deal longer than 20 minutes.
I had some pretty ineteresting conversations on the way over there. I talked to Ari, who was studying at Richard Ivey school of business in Canada, studying abroad at Singapore Management University. He told me about his adventures in Asia, including two weeks in Japan, and many other places; he even flew to Miami for two days for a wedding. He said that the quality of the students at SMU was pretty low; that they played around on Facebook all day, and called it studying, that they were rote learners who think inside the box, and things like that. He hadn't even gone to class for two weeks, that is how much he was able to get ahead. He noted that it is usually very easy for Westerners to advance in the financial industry in Singapore; "My friend who worked for Goldman Sachs would get to work every day at six in the morning before the markets would open, and stay till ten thirty at night, but these kids show up to work at nine, take a two hour lunch break at twelve, and go home at five... this is not true, though, for the people I know from Hong Kong, those guys are seriously efficient'.
I also talked to Hillary, a girl from Sioux City, Iowa. She had done some pretty extensive travelling in SE Asia, so I told her my (very rough) travel plans for what I was going to do after my last exam, on may 7. 'I am going to start in Cambodia, travelling with some French people. I will go up through Thailand, visiting Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and to Vientiane in Laos, and take the 24 hour bus ride to Hanoi, after which I will travel south to Ho Chi Minh city, and make my way back to Singapore for my flight home, if I can do that in a month'. I am not sure how plausible that is, in the time I will have. She remarked 'Are you sure they want to go to Laos? I hear that their government is anti-American, to which I responded 'yeah I wouldn't be surprised!'. She also expressed concern about Israeli-Lao relations. But a quick Google search reveals that her fears were completely overblown.
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So, after a very hot and humid half-hour walk, and a five-minute, twice as hot and humid elevator ride, we arrive at the apartment. It was a nice place; there was a whole entire wall covered with family photos, in a very nice geometric arrangement. The seder plates had Sephardic haroset, made from dates. At first there were not enough chairs for everyone, so but when I finally sat down, I was right next to the head of the table, with the Seder leader, and his (I think) brother in law on my left, at the head. Across from me was a very elderly lady. To her right sat a couple guys from South Africa. To my right was Thomas, a Sephardic Jew from Paris, about my age, whose family's location before Paris was Libya. So the Seder went forward pretty normally; there were two differen Haggadot, the Ashkenazi Artscroll version, and a Sephardic version.
When we got to the part where we ate the Haroset, it was great, because that Sephardic date Haroset is seriously good; thick, sticky, black and super sweet; a bit like heroin.
At some point, Thomas told me that it can be difficult to be a Jew in France, because there is some anti Semitism, and some anti-Israel sentiment. During the time when we were enumerating the 10 plagues, I asked him 'hey, do you know if frogs are kosher?' and he said 'French people don't actually eat frogs, it is a myth'.
But the real interesting part of the night was talking to the elderly lady, who was the mom of the guy sitting on my right. It turns out that she was born in Baghdad, and emigrated to Singapore when she was six, in 1926. Back then, Singapore was just a small trading outpost, mostly Jungle. Her husband's family had even older roots in Singapore and Indonesia. Her son had also grown up in Singapore. At various points through the night, we had conversations about Singapore, such as our respective dislike and like of the fruit Durian. I also mentioned that I had visited the Synagogue in Yangon, Myanmar. He told me that the Synagogue there was build by Iraqi Jews.
The dinner was amazing. It included rice, because they were Sephardic. There was this amazing Iraqi fish puff, very nicely flavored. There were also amazing Iraqi chicken-potato dumplings, pickles, and chicken-rice similar to Biryani. The best thing, overall, though was some fried Okra; not in the American southern sense, but sliced very thin, and really crispy. A lot of this food was the recipe of the nice old lady, so I was eating Iraqi Jewish cuisine, something that I guess is, overall, pretty hard to find nowadays. No Matzoh ball soup, but still an amazing meal. I remarked 'I would choose this over gefilte fish any day!', and the guy said 'oh yeah I can't stand the stuff, how do you even eat it!'. I explained to him, though, that there is such thing as good Gelilte fish, you just have to get the fresh made kind.
So, overall, it was a good, interesting, meaningful Seder.
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