As China's most international city, Shanghai experienced several waves of Jewish immigration, each leaving its mark. The first to arrive, in the late 1840s, were the Sephardic Jews. Businessmen who made their fortunes in opium and property, they built large estates, as many as seven synagogues, and were responsible for some of Shanghai's finest architecture. The Sassoons, who emigrated from Baghdad in the mid-19th century, were the first Jewish family to make a fortune in Shanghai, and both the Peace Hotel on the Bund and the villa estate next to the zoo (now the Cypress Hotel) were their creations. Silas Hardoon was a later Jewish real estate baron whose great estate was razed to make way for the Sino-Soviet Shanghai Exhibition Center on Yan'an Xi Lu (south of the Portman Hotel). Meanwhile, the Kadoories' legacy, the stunning "Marble House" on Yan'an Xi Lu, is today the city's most popular and impressive Children's Palace.

The second wave of Jewish emigrants comprised Russian Jews fleeing the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the 20th century. They were followed in the 1930s by a third wave of European Jews who were fleeing Hitler, and who landed here only because Shanghai was the only city in the world at that time willing to accept these "stateless refugees." Just before World War II, the numbers of Jews in Shanghai topped 30,000. In February 1943, to appease the Germans who wanted the Japanese to implement the Final Solution in Shanghai, the occupying force of the Japanese army forced the "stateless Jews" into a "Designated Area" in Hongkou District (north of the Bund), marked by today's Zhoujiazui Lu in the north, Huimin Lu in the south, Tongbei Lu in the east, and Gongping Lu in the west. Tens of thousands of Jews lived cheek by jowl in this "ghetto," where the local synagogue became the center of their material and spiritual life until the end of the war.

Travelers interested in learning more about the Jewish community in Shanghai, attending Shabbat dinners, or participating in religious services, should visit the Shanghai Jewish Center.