28 ARTS&LIFESTYLE
The Australian Jewish News – ajn.com.au
arts&lifestyle
Gary Braut (right) with his staff. Braut is a Jewish resident of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who runs an auto parts remanufacturing business.
Jewish Malaysia
It may appear to be an unusual place for Jews to live, but Andrew Harris finds Malaysia is host to a fascinating, if miniscule, Jewish population.
W
HAT colour kippah are you
wearing?” says Kuala
Lumpur’s (KL) 62-year-old
Gary Braut. “I’ll send some-
one down to the lobby to get you.” Need-
less to say, it was a superfluous question –
even if I were wearing one, I’d be easy to
spot. In a country of 27 million, only one,
Braut, wears a kippah.
A rooftop mural depicting Rabbi
Avraham Shemtov (right) and
US President George Bush
Senior emblazoned on the side
of Braut’s factory.
Soon I’m sitting with Braut in a wait-
ing room of the palatial Prince Court
Medical Centre private hospital. Braut
doesn’t feel well. He’s telling me, quite
loudly, that his mum doesn’t want him
to wear a kippah and tzitzit in public.
Such overt Jewish talk is unusual in KL,
and I’m feeling a little nervous.
I see a curly-haired Caucasian woman
to my left, the only other non-Asian in
the room, eavesdropping. On a whim I
ask her, “Are you Jewish too?” Yes, as a
matter of fact, she is, and works at the
nearby US embassy. I explain I am a
curious Jewish writer from Melbourne
and that Braut has offered me an insight
into life as Jew in KL. She hands me her
card. “I’d be interested to hear what he
tells you,” she says, and goes off to her
doctor’s appointment.
Family, Religion, Company
B RAUT’S business, Precision
Automotive Industries (motto:
Family, Religion, Company), which re-
manufactures starters, alternators, A/C
compressors and ball bearings for the
auto industry, employs about 180 people
spanning the full gamut of the Malaysian
populace. In the delivery bay of his fac-
tory are a Chinese shrine, a gilt reminder
of Muslim prayer times; and a huge
photo titled “Sultan of World Jewry
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson,
The Lubavitcher Rebbe”, waving benev-
olently from behind a man-sized oil-
burning menorah made of car parts. As I
arrive, one of Braut’s employees sets
about lighting the wicks.
It’s hot, humid and easy to dehydrate
in KL, and I have the odd feeling that I’m
hallucinating. Opposite the delivery bay
is a marble plaque attesting to the com-
pany’s philosophy, which is to adhere to
the values laid out by the Rebbe.
There’s a company van emblazoned
with “Mitzvah Tank” and “Chabad
Malaysia”, and back at the entrance to
the delivery bay I notice that the stone
Feng Shui lion/dog guardians on either
side of the gate are respectively engraved
with “Chabad Malaysia” and “Mikvah
Malaysia”. The Rebbe’s image again
hangs alongside portraits of the
Malaysian royal couple and a portrait of
the former prime ministers, Ahmad
Badawi and Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad.
The Rebbe’s image again
hangs alongside portraits
of the Malaysian royal
couple and a portrait of the
former prime ministers.
That’s not to mention the rooftop
mural featuring the Kotel and a depic-
tion of Rabbi Avraham Shemtov visiting
US President George Bush Snr, the huge
Jewish library and the DVD room fes-
tooned with Jewish paraphernalia pur-
pose-built to enjoy Chassidic music.
Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad
I SIT down with Braut in his office
meeting room, and a chocolate cake
iced with “Shalom Andrew Harris”, to
discuss his unique situation. Firstly, what
about Dr Mahathir?
“Yes, the previous prime minister
said things, but I think a little bit is taken
out of context,” he says. “At the end of
the day, Yahya Cohen, the late president
of the medical association in Singapore,
told me he and Dr Mahathir were class-
mates. And that actually, he was a swell
guy.”
Friday, July 17, 2009
Photos: Andrew Harris
Braut has met Dr Mahathir on several
occasions. A photo from one meeting
hangs in his lunchroom. “Once I said
‘Yahya Cohen’, he became very warm,”
Braut says. “He said, ‘Send him my best,
how’s that fellow doing, he’s getting old.’
I felt like saying if he’s getting old, Dr
Mahathir [born December 20, 1925],
you’re also getting old!”
Cohen was a Jewish Singaporean-
born surgeon, with a Yemenite father
and Iraqi mother. He became a world-
renowned professor and expert in his
field, and died in 2003. Cohen and Dr
Mahathir studied medicine together at
the then University of Malaya, in
Singapore.
Dr Mahathir kept up a correspon-
dence with Yitzhak Rabin when he was
Israeli prime minister, and helped
organise a trip with Rabin to bring Israeli
kids to Malaysia to meet local Muslim
children. He also runs the Global Peace
Forum, and in 2006 invited Bar-Ilan
University academic Dr Ben Mollov and
made special arrangements for him to
enter the country. Dr Mollov went again
to Malaysia last year.
Being a Jew in KL
B RAUT tells me he ended up in KL
after a search for cost-effective
skilled labour in South-East Asia. It was
to Thailand, the Philippines or Malaysia,
and this is where he ended up, about 21
years ago.
Nu, so, how does Braut feel being a
Jew in Kuala Lumpur? “Comfortable,”
he says. “More comfortable than
Brooklyn, that’s for sure.” He thinks the
extremely small community, if you
could call it that, attracts so little atten-
tion, that it’s no problem being Jewish in
Malaysia.
Friday, July 17, 2009
It’s more due to his isolation that
it’s difficult for Braut to be fully
observant in KL. He does what he
can. “My strength is not putting
tefillin on every day. My strength is
trying to be warm, recognise every-
one, whether Jewish or non-Jewish,
as God’s children.” Still, Braut’s
house (marked with “Chabad
Malaysia” in marble) is fitted with a
marble Aron Kodesh. It houses a
Torah he purchased in Sofia,
Bulgaria, which he says was open to
his bar mitzvah parshah when he first
saw it.
A few times, Braut has managed to
hold a seder, with matzah from
Singapore, a brand-new oven, paper
plates and fresh salmon, officiated by
young Rabbi Nochi Goldschmid,
who he flew in from Brooklyn. Other
curious attendees always outnumber
the Jews, and it’s more of an outreach
and public relations exercise than a
full-on seder. Braut advertises in local
English-language papers, and the
enquiries trickle in.
Common ground in KL
T WO Palestinians made it to one of
Braut’s seders, one Christian and
one Muslim. Braut met them by
chance in the lobby of the hotel
where he was putting up the two rab-
binical students, who were to offici-
ate. They spotted his matzah, and one
read off Braut’s kippah, and called
out “Leibel ben Peretz, I haven’t seen
matzah in a long time!” Two days
later, they joined the seder.
town, and then starts to tell me about
the other permanent Jews he knows:
a guy from New Orleans who runs a
furniture export business, a British
woman who fell in love with a Malay
architecture student and has lived
there for 40 years, and an art lecturer
at one of the universities.
“Oh, and there are two Jewish
Moroccan fellas – cousins,” Braut
says. “One was, or is married to the
daughter of one of the royal families.
He came to a couple of my seders. He
might be divorced from the girl now.
They [the boys] were running a bar
here.”
My strength is trying to
be warm, recognise
everyone, whether
Jewish or non-Jewish, as
God’s children.
Gary Braut
Jewish Kuala Lumpur resident
And there’s a young Chinese
woman with a Yiddishe neshamah,
who has a be’ezrat hashem on her
business card and hosts regular
Friday night dinners.
Braut invites all the Jews to Sunday
barbecues at his home. “And some-
times,” he says, “they even show up”.
The last Jews of Penang
O NLY two Jews carry Malaysian
passports. One is the 87-year-old
David Mordecai, the last remaining
ARTS&LIFESTYLE
The Australian Jewish News – ajn.com.au 29
few fanatics in the office – they threat-
ened me on the phone.” She had
already applied to move to Australia.
Ephraim’s paternal grandfather
came from Baghdad, and her mother
was born in Burma. She speaks
English, Malay, Hokkien and Iraqi
Judaeo-Arabic. Despite Ephraim’s
ability to blend in, she steadfastly wore
a Magen David around her neck and
that’s largely what singled her out.
The only time her family had
issues was in the 1940s, and it was due
to their relatively fair complexions.
“During the Japanese occupation, I
was five or six years old,” Ephraim
says. “Every time they used to come
to the house, my father would push
me and my younger brother out the
back door.”
The Penang Jews never had a
rabbi to officiate anything. In the
1990s, when the community had vir-
tually disappeared, Ephraim
observed what she could by herself.
Nonetheless, from the 1940s, a syna-
gogue was situated at 28 Nagore
Road. It closed in 1976 and after
Ephraim’s father passed away, all the
communal possessions – “the pray-
ing things” – were sent away. The
Torah resides at Singapore’s
Waterloo Street Synagogue, and
other items ended up in Israel.
Even at the peak of the commu-
nity, there were never many Jews.
“When I was living there with my
father and mother, there were 15 or
20 of us.” Everybody, Ephraim says,
kept kosher and kept Shabbat.
The entrance to Braut’s house in Kuala Lumpur.

The Palestinian-Malaysian-Jewish 1835 to the most recent in 1978.

exchange went further. Another
Palestinian, this time a tertiary stu-
dent of hotel management, taught
Braut’s 12-year-old son, David
Marshall Braut, (he has three older
boys in the US) his aleph-bet. “We
made him [the teacher] a name
card,” Braut says, “‘Dr Yusuf,
Yeshivah of Kuala Lumpur’ – some-
thing cute, you know. And he liked it.
Because, thank God, there are lots of
Palestinians that are okay with us.”
Braut says there’s a rotating cast of
three- or four-year expat Jews in
Jew in Penang, a causeway-linked
island 300 kilometres north of KL.
The other is his 71-year-old cousin
Tefa Ephraim, who lives in Bondi,
and left Penang 15 years ago. Before I
left for KL, I spoke to Ephraim over
the phone, from Melbourne.
How was it growing up Jewish in
Penang? “It was alright. Only towards
the end, when there was the Gulf War
– they started their rubbish over there
becoming anti-Jewish, and they knew
I was Jewish and they started passing
remarks and all that ... There were a
For a while, there was a shochet in
Penang, Hugh “Hayawi” Jacobs.
Ephraim’s grandfather, Aboody
Ephraim Nahom, was also quite
learned. “When he was alive, he used
to cut the chicken, he used to slaugh-
ter the chicken for us,” she says. “Once
he passed away, it was very hard.”
Ephraim’s cousin David continues
to live in Penang, and is tended to by
a carer. She saw him last in May 2008
when she went for a few weeks to
tend the Jewish cemetery, which con-
tains 106 graves, the earliest from
Despite her Bondi address,
Ephraim, rather than Mr Mordecai,
is the custodian of Penang’s Jewish
heritage. “He’s very forgetful,” she
says. “One day he knows you, the
next minute he doesn’t know who
he’s talking to.”
Meanwhile, things are changing in
Penang. Her childhood stomping
ground has been razed, and the
cemetery street, which used to be
Jalan Yahudi, has been renamed. “It’s
their country,” Ephraim says, “What
can we do?”
Travel info
MALAYSIA Airlines (www.malaysiaair-
lines.com) flies direct from Perth,
Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and
Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur. Flight time
from Melbourne is eight hours. Kosher
food is now available on board, as are
a range of vegetarian options, the pick
of which is the Indian-style Asian
Vegetarian meal. Make sure you con-
firm your meal preference in advance.
There’s no problem with an Israeli
stamp in your passport, but you can’t
enter on an Israeli passport.

The delivery bay of Braut’s factory in Kuala Lumpur.