From Hasmonean to Hong Kong: the headteacher who spent nearly two decades at the helm of the ‘jewel in the crown’ of Hong Kong’s Jewish community

Carmel opened with just 44 students, in grades six to nine, equivalent to years seven to ten in the UK. The first cohort – just four students – graduated in 2013.

It is Hong Kong’s only Jewish school, serving the territory’s roughly 5,000-strong Jewish population.

Group photo with Friedmann (centre front, in blue) and pupils of Carmel's high school (photo: Carmel School Hong Kong)[Missing Credit]

Jewish history in Hong Kong dates back to the 1840s, with the first Jews settling shortly after the region became a British Crown Colony. Among the most prominent were the Sassoon and Kadoorie families, both wealthy Baghdadi-Jewish dynasties who brought their businesses to Hong Kong.

The two families became major players in the development of the territory’s port and commercial economy, helping to lay the foundations for Hong Kong’s transformation from a collection of small coastal fishing villages into a global trading hub.

In 1855, the Jewish community established a cemetery in the region, located in the Happy Valley area of Hong Kong Island, which is still in use today. The cemetery’s first grave, dating from 1857, was dug for a gentleman named Leon Bin Baruel.

In 1865, Arthur Sassoon was a member of the provisional committee that established what became the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), which would play a pivotal role in Hong Kong’s emergence as one of the world’s great banking centres. His brother, Frederick Sassoon, served on Hong Kong’s Legislative Council in the 1880s.

Arthur Sassoon[Missing Credit]

Meanwhile, a member of the Kadoorie family, Elly, established a brokerage business in Hong Kong in the 1880s and went on to invest heavily in property, helping to transform Kowloon while devoting much of his fortune to philanthropy. Together with his brother Ellis, he supported schools, hospitals and other charitable institutions in Hong Kong, benefiting education, healthcare and some of the region’s poorest communities. Ellis also established a number of schools in China and Hong Kong, including the Sir Ellis Kadoorie School, a primary school founded in 1891 that still exists today.

In 2007, Elly’s grandson, Sir Michael Kadoorie, founded the Hong Kong Heritage Project in Kowloon to preserve the family’s contribution to the city and “promote heritage awareness” in Hong Kong.

The Sir Ellis Kadoorie School in Hong Kong[Missing Credit]

After the turn of the century, in 1902, three of the Sassoon brothers established Hong Kong’s first purpose-built shul, Ohel Leah, so named after their mother, which still stands today.

During British rule, Hong Kong had one Jewish governor, Matthew Nathan, who served from 1904 to 1907 and lends his name to Nathan Road, one of Kowloon’s major thoroughfares, which is known as the “Golden Mile”.

During the Second World War, the territory was seized by the Japanese. Some of the Jewish population – which included Jewish refugees fleeing Europe in the 1930s – was treated as enemy nationals and interned in camps at the Stanley Barracks, a fort on the southern side of Hong Kong Island.

Jewish communal infrastructure suffered under Japanese occupation. The Jewish Recreation Club, built in 1905 by the Kadoorie family – which became the Jewish community’s social centre – was destroyed by Japanese bombs in 1941, before eventually being rebuilt in 1949.

Sir Matthew Nathan, 13th governor of Hong Kong[Missing Credit]

Ohel Leah Synagogue survived the war when it was used as a warehouse. Community members reportedly removed and hid its Torah scrolls, which were also preserved and eventually returned to the synagogue.

Post-war, the community grew gradually, numbering in the hundreds, with a much larger influx of expatriate Jews from the 1960s onwards as Hong Kong developed into the modern international financial centre it is today.

Ohel Leah Synagogue in Hong Kong (Credit: Ohel Leah Synagogue)[Missing Credit]

Today, Hong Kong’s Jewish community continues to make its mark on the city, contributing to its success, diversity and vibrancy.

There are five places of Jewish worship in the city, including three main synagogues, Friedmann says, which encompass “all shades of faith”. There is also a “very well-stocked” kosher grocery store, and a handful of kosher restaurants.

“It’s a very strong, united, friendly, welcoming, inclusive community,” Friedmann says, with “a lot of scheduling of events across the ages”. They are organised with the help of community organisations such as the Israel Chamber of Commerce and the consul general himself, who is “key and central to every aspect of Jewish life [here]”.

Hong Kong’s Jewish community reflects the city’s international character, with members from the US, UK, France, Australia, South Africa, Israel and Canada.

And at its heart is Carmel School, which Friedmann describes as the “jewel in the crown” of Jewish life in the city.

“We’re linked with everyone,” she explains. “I went to a batmitzvah last night for the [Israeli] consul general’s daughter.”

A menorah in front of the Hong Kong skyline (Credit: Chabad of Kowloon)[Missing Credit]

At Carmel, the Jews of Hong Kong are simultaneously able integrate into the diverse demography of the territory, as the school is not selective on the basis of religion, nor on academic ability.

It comprises three campuses: the Holly Rofe Early Learning Centre (ages one to four), Carmel Elementary Campus (ages five to 11), and Elsa High School (ages 12 to 18). Carmel is the umbrella name for the three facilities.

“They come to us as soon as they can walk,” says Friedmann, who is 72 years old. “I love seeing the little tiny ones who come and hug me when I go to the preschool.”

Friedmann’s most salient legacy in the school is her introduction of the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum all the way through the ages.

“The IB resonated with me as a very rigorous educational system and one that embraces Judaism’s basic tenets,” Friedmann says. “It’s a very holistic education, which wants to develop the whole person.” For instance, from the age of 16 to 18, students take six subjects, write a 4,000-word research paper, take the Theory of Knowledge course and fulfil the three strands of CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service).

After its success in the high school, she introduced IB programmes into the other two campuses, making Carmel a “continuum-IB school”.

Friedmann, a lifelong educator, was born in Port Said in Egypt to a British Army veteran father and a French mother. She moved to London at the age of two, where she spent her childhood in West Hampstead and Golders Green. At Hasmonean, she started at the school as a French and English teacher and ended as its deputy headteacher.

Friedmann delivering a speech in front of the Hong Kong, China, and Israel flags (photo: Carmel School Hong Kong)[Missing Credit]

She became aware of the role in Hong Kong when her aunt showed her a job advert in the JC. Having visited annually since one of her sons moved there with his family, she was well-acquainted with the territory, and brave enough to eventually take the leap into the Far East.

Such a move naturally comes with plenty of challenges, but Friedmann was nonchalant about the obstacles she has faced during her time presiding over the school.

The first issue she had to overcome was, simply, the climate. “Unfortunately, my husband passed away four-and-a-half years after we got here, and I had driven him completely insane… ‘So hot, so hot, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’,” Friedmann says. “It took me about five-and-a-half years to adapt.”

More recently, 2020’s controversial national security law – which allows for many of China’s national laws to be valid in Hong Kong – and the events of October 7 could feasibly have changed circumstances, but Friedmann insists that “nothing, literally nothing” changed, with respect to the treatment of the Jewish community in Hong Kong.

Rather, she said the challenges were mostly professional. “The biggest challenges I faced at the beginning were the small student population and trying to get people to understand what the IB does,” she says. “And my biggest challenge today would be sustaining the very high levels we’re at.”

The school, which is relatively small – around 170 students attend the high school, with nearly 400 in total between the three campuses – regularly goes above and beyond in terms of its offering to ambitious students.

“We’ve been going to robotics competitions in the US, and two years ago we got to the championships,” Friedmann explains with a big grin. “How do we get to the championships? We were the rookie team, and we’re tiny. We’re like a drop in the ocean, yet we came eighth.”

Meanwhile, one of their students took second place in the inaugural international Rabbi Sacks essay contest.

When they leave, many Carmel students go on to study at Oxbridge and other top institutions around the world, Friedmann says.

The international aspect is unsurprising. “These are children who hop on and off planes the way you hop on and off a bus or a train,” Friedmann smiles.

Friedmann talking to students with a large display of the Western Wall in the background (photo: Carmel School Hong Kong)[Missing Credit]

She is immensely proud of what the students achieve. “I’m in the process of writing a report,” she says, holding it up. “We’re going to maths competitions with thousands of participants and little Carmel School is winning.”

The staff are a major reason that the school is flourishing, she says. “It’s a gift that I’ve been able to hire the most phenomenal teachers, phenomenal.”

While Friedmann seems to have amassed innumerable responsibilities at the school, one thing she leaves down to her students is the welcoming of prominent visitors to their campuses.

“At the high school, one of the things I instituted is guest speakers,” she explains. “The oldest students, grades 11 and 12, are ambassadors for the school. When people come to visit, I don’t go around or show them the school – they take them.”

“And when there is a Yom HaShoah or a Yom HaZikaron tekes [ceremony], our kids act as ambassadors in some way or form. That’s what I mean by the community.”

Carmel can count Shimon Peres and Lord Wolfson among their most high-profile guests. Friedmann describes meeting the former as a “humbling moment”.

“So many guests from so many different places come and love the school, and spend an hour talking to me before assembly if I’m lucky, and I learn so much from so many different people.”

Friedmann with Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis when he visited the school (photo: Carmel School Hong Kong)[Missing Credit]

What next for Friedmann? “I am definitely not retiring,” she makes clear.

After one more year at the school, she will move to Israel and intends to champion the IB curriculum in Israeli schools and Jewish schools worldwide.

“I’m extremely energised to see the IB growing in Israel,” she says. “I’ve made links with IB schools in Israel, and I look forward to working within education.” It will be bittersweet, of course, when Friedmann makes aliyah, trading Carmel School for Carmel Market.

“I love children,” she says. “I fell on my passion. I’ll miss the job and being here every day. And also, the faculty,” she concludes. “I’m very, very privileged to have an extremely high-level faculty, and we are like a family, but in the right way. And I think I will miss that as much as I will miss the children.”

Carmel School Hong Kong is currently recruiting for a new headteacher. For more information, visit thejc.com/jobs