Born into immense wealth, Flora Sassoon could have easily strayed from the path of Torah. Instead, she became a legend in her time — raising strong frum Jews in the heart of India, managing her family’s company after she was widowed at age thirty-five, and opening her doors and pocketbook to all who sought her help
On April 13, 1936, an Australian newspaper, The Cairns Post, ran a small article on page 11 entitled “Famous Hostess Dies.”
“Lavish hostess and one of the world’s most learned women, Mrs. Flora Sassoon, has died at her home in Bruton street [London] … after a long illness,” the article read, describing the passing of a woman across the globe. “Her meals were lavish Eastern Banquets and there was no greater crime in her eyes than to refuse the dishes, which she pressed on her guests. It is known that some of those invited to her home abstained from food earlier in the day so that they could do justice to her hospitality.”
The article failed to mention, however, that Flora was an Orthodox Jewess and that the meals she served to princes, dukes, literati, and other non-Jewish high society members, were strictly kosher. The Cairns Post, which described Flora as one of the world’s most learned women, was certainly referring to her secular and business knowledge, but did not indicate that Flora was also very well versed in Tanach, Mishnah, Gemara, halachah, and Jewish philosophy.
Family Ties
Flora was part of the legendary and exceptionally affluent Sassoon family dynasty — both by birth and marriage. She was the great-granddaughter of the dynasty’s founder, David Sassoon (Flora’s mother, Azziza, was the daughter of David’s eldest son, Albert). She was also married to David’s youngest son, Shlomo, which made her great-grandfather her father-in-law.
When David fled Iraq in 1826 from the oppression of the Wali (governor) of Baghdad, it’s doubtful that he could have foreseen that such a tragic event would ultimately lead to his success and fortune. After his escape, David settled in Bombay (now called Mumbai), India, where he laid the foundation of a vast mercantile empire with branches in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Turkey, Japan, Persia, and England. In the words of a contemporary: “Silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium, cotton wool and wheat — whatever moved over land and sea felt the hand and bore the mark of Sassoon and Company.”
Flora’s maternal grandfather, Albert Sassoon, followed his father’s lead in business. Knighted by Queen Victoria of England, Sir Albert was famous for having built and established the first and largest dock in Bombay, which to this day is called Sassoon Docks. In 1869, when the Suez Canal opened and merchant ships could travel between Europe and Asia without needing to circumnavigate around Africa, it was imperative, in Sir Albert’s view, that India build a dock for ships to load and unload goods. The government officials in India were initially against Sir Albert’s plan of reclaiming land (creating land out of the sea) to establish docks. Once, however, they recognized that the docks cemented the future of Bombay as India’s primary port, they were deeply grateful to Sir Albert and paid him handsomely for his work.
The Sassoons, also known as the “Rothschilds of the East,” were rich in yichus, too. Flora could trace her lineage back to the Davidic dynasty through King David’s fifth son, Shefatyah. The family had eventually exiled to Spain and called itself “Ibn Shoshana” (son of a rose), which later became Ibn Sasson (son of happiness).
Flora’s father, Reb Yechezkel Gabbai, was an outstanding talmid chacham and businessman. The Gabbais were another wealthy Torah family who, while still living in Baghdad (before relocating to India), had intermarried with the Sassoons numerous times. In fact, David’s mother was Ammam Gabbai — the wife of Sheikh Sassoon ben Saleh, a leading talmid chacham and philanthropist, and the daughter of a former nasi of Baghdad Jewry.
Becoming Mrs. Sassoon
Shlomo, who was known as Solomon, had returned from a business trip to China and was visiting the head office in Bombay when he came across Flora for the first time. Although he was double Flora’s age, he was immediately impressed. Flora, then seventeen, was very beautiful and unusually mature. She spoke and wrote English, French, and German almost as fluently as she did Hebrew, Arabic, and Hindustani. She could quote Shakespeare by the page and was very knowledgeable in Torah, as she had been tutored privately by rabbanim.
When Shlomo sought her hand in marriage, his half-brother, Sir Albert, was initially taken by surprise. Yet, after some thought, he quickly welcomed the match, which he believed would benefit the family firm, David Sassoon & Sons. He offered Shlomo a position as managing partner in Bombay. Then Sir Albert relocated to England so that he could make London the firm’s nerve center and the source of all its policy decisions.
A Home of Torah
Flora and Shlomo had three children together — Rachel, David (named after the dynasty’s founder), and Mazel Tov, who was called Mozelle. As a baby, Mozelle was tragically dropped by a nurse and sustained an incurable spinal injury that plagued her for the rest of her life.
Raising the children, caring for Mozelle’s special needs, and entertaining guests kept Flora busy. But she would also sometimes accompany her husband to his office and consult with him regarding the thriving family business. In addition to managing the Bombay office, Shlomo had inherited much from his father’s estate. He added to his portfolio property holdings in Shanghai and Hong Kong, which were being converted into shops and apartments. Shlomo’s regular business consultations with his wife later proved to be fortuitous.
Shlomo and Flora’s palatial Bombay home, called Nepean Lodge on Malabar Hill, had a shul attached to it. Shlomo, who was considered to be the most Torah-minded of the Sassoon sons, recited all 150 prakim of sefer Tehillim daily before leaving for his office at 11:00 a.m. sharp. Modest and unassuming, he would enter shul each morning through the back door.
Unlike the rest of the Sassoons, Shlomo had no interest in luxuries and was content studying Gemara. His happiest moments were when he was away from the stress of business in Bombay. For Yamim Tovim and other occasions, he and his family would travel 120 miles to the resort town of Poona (Pune), where they owned a villa called Rose Bank. There, the family davened at the Ohel David Shul, which was built by David Sassoon (see sidebar).
This staunch commitment to Torah continued through the generations. In England, two of Flora’s grandsons — Solomon’s sons — were talmidim of Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, author of Michtav MeEliyahu.
Stepping into a New Role
In 1894, just as their daughter Rachel reached marriageable age, Shlomo passed away. Flora always believed it was the stress of work that had contributed to his early demise.
His passing left a gaping hole in Flora’s personal life — and in the family’s business. At the time, there was no member of the older generation of the Sassoon family to replace Shlomo since they had all relocated to London. Flora’s son, David, also couldn’t assume leadership since he was only fourteen years old.
Instead of hiring outside of the family, Flora decided to take over the helm. At the annual meeting of the Sassoon and Alliance Silk Company in Bombay, Mrs. Flora Sassoon, then thirty-five, was unanimously appointed as the director of the board. She was admitted as partner and was appointed chairman and director on the board of two mills. She went to the office every morning and worked all day, personally attending to all inquiries from merchants, traders, and brokers from China, Japan, and the Persian Gulf. Her outstanding memory and Talmudic training led some of the bookkeepers to compare her with the dynasty’s founder, David Sassoon.
A few years after Flora started running the Bombay office, the Indian trade industry came to a halt. Mill workers were fleeing the city at the rate of more than 10,000 people a week as a result of the bubonic plague and the spread of Asiatic cholera. Huge stocks of goods rotted in the ports, which were not quarantined, and several cotton factories had to close down.
To help save lives, Flora joined the plague committee. She teamed up with her neighbor, Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, a frum Jew from Odessa and a bacteriologist who had studied under Louis Pasteur. Dr. Haffkine had developed an effective vaccine and was leading a campaign to get the population inoculated, despite the reservations of both Hindus and Muslims. Anti-inoculation riots took place and the vaccine was denounced as unclean and offensive to their religions. To counter the opposition’s efforts, the well-known and admired Flora became one of the first to be inoculated. The news spread throughout Bombay and, the following day, many followed her example. Under Flora’s stewardship, the firm stayed afloat during the plague period.
Flora also managed the company while preparing for the marriage of her daughter Rachel to David Ezra of Calcutta (Kolkata). Flora’s machateineste, Mozelle Sassoon Ezra, was actually her mother’s sister. Lady Rachel Ezra, as she was to become known, inherited her mother’s passion for chesed. She presided over several of the Jewish community’s institutions and, in 1947, the British government awarded her the Kaiser-I-Hind Gold Medal for her major philanthropic contributions to all classes of the Calcutta community. During both world wars, she opened her home to allied Jewish servicemen stationed in Calcutta. The Ezras also welcomed and rehabilitated European Jewish refugees who began arriving in 1939.
Farewell to India
Over the years, as more of the firm’s business was relocated to London, many Sassoon family members made the move to England. Flora began to grow lonely in Bombay, especially after Rachel got married. Her decision to join the family in London was sealed after she learned that better treatment and physicians were available there for her daughter Mozelle.
“Flora put on a good face at Ballard Pier where she and her family were seen off by a crowd of officials, tearful servants, and well-wishers of all creeds,” writes Stanley Jackson, author of The Sassoons, about Flora’s departure in 1901. “Her stateroom was choked with bouquets and gifts. Just before sailing time, a Parsi girl ran forward to place a garland around her neck inscribed to her Majesty, the Queen of Bombay and Empress of Malabar Hill. Flora sailed away with a small retinue including a rabbi to conduct daily prayers.”
In a footnote, the author writes that Flora’s son, David, accompanied by Dr. Haffkine, at a later date attended the Delhi Durbar to celebrate King Edward’s accession. The two lived for a week on specially prepared sandwiches and raw cauliflower to avoid nonkosher food. “Virtue had its reward,” he writes. “Both were spared the gastro-enteritis which claimed many victims.”
A Lady of London
Flora spent the remaining thirty-five years of her life in London, where she dedicated herself to philanthropic causes. It’s said that mailmen would come to her home every day with heavy bags filled with letters, many of which were simply addressed to: Flora Sassoon, England. On the very day that she received the mail, Flora crafted handwritten responses. Pleas for money came from as far away as Russia, Persia, and the Far East.
Flora saw opportunities for chesed at every turn. On one very hot day, she passed a policeman, who was mopping his forehead of sweat. “What you need is a melon,” she said to the officer. “It’s the best thing to cool you on a warm day. Do you like melons?”
Today, melons are quite common, but they were a rarity at the time. The police officer indicated, likely with some surprise, that he did like them.
“How many police are there in the force here?” she asked. “Sixty-four,” he replied. The following day, sixty-four choice melons arrived at the local police station, compliments of Flora Sassoon.
Flora loved making shidduchim and believed there was no greater mitzvah than setting up a Jewish home. In 1912, she was able to celebrate the match of her own son David to Sarah Selina Prins. The kallah was the daughter of Moshe Meir, whose father Rabbi Eliezer Lippman Prins was a prominent diamond merchant and talmid chacham from Amsterdam who later relocated to Yerushalayim with his famous library. David shared Rabbi Prins’ love of books (see sidebar).
On Shabbos, Flora’s dining room was filled with guests. At the commencement of the meal, her Indian servants would produce a ewer and basin made of solid gold to wash for netilas yadayim. As for her dress, “She had the sense of dress, often lacking in those who have the other senses so acutely developed,” writes Cecil Roth, the late Oxford historian and author of The Sassoon Dynasty. “Her jewels, famous even in India, set off her costume instead of detracting from it by their magnificence; though it was said that they were graduated in wear in accordance with her esteem (not dictated by wealth or rank) of the guests whom she was going to entertain. She ruled over her drawing room like an empress over her court, and would summon specially favored visitors from the remoter twilight to sit by her chair for the honor and pleasure of more intimate conversation.”
Flora’s conversations were far from trivial: A visitor to her Shabbos table once related that when a dispute took place regarding the observance of a certain halachah, she called her granddaughter to bring her a certain volume of the Gemara and pointed out the various interpretations of the commentaries. It was said that when Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman visited her home, they discussed learning.
Several of her scholarly writings have been published. Among them is a learned discourse that she delivered at Jews’ College in London on April 13, 1924; an essay on Rashi that appeared in the Jewish Forum in October 1930; and an article she wrote on the numeral 13, for which she used forty-one references, for the same periodical in March, 1931.
In a eulogy, Chief Rabbi Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog described Flora as “a living well of Torah, of piety, of wisdom, of goodness and charity, of the staunchest loyalty to tradition and, out of her wonderful well, Israel could draw in abundance noble incentives and holy inspiration.”
Dr. Pearl Herzog teaches Jewish history at Kean University.
The Red Shul
If you visit Pune, India, you’ll find an impressive synagogue built by David Sassoon. Although it’s named Ohel David Shul, it is popularly known as Lal Dewil (the red temple) because it was constructed of red brick. The well-known landmark boasts a clock tower, a ninety-foot spire, a bell that chimes the hours, and stained glass windows.
A Legendary Library
When Flora’s son, David, was just a young child, he astonished his parents by trading his toy kite for an Arabic translation of the Book of Ruth. That trade was the first item in his lifelong pursuit of collecting Jewish books and manuscripts.
Called “The Elkan Adler of the Sephardim,” David later wrote that he assembled a huge library because he wanted to observe the mitzvah of writing or acquiring a Sefer Torah by extending the mitzvah to include all religious literature, from Nevi’im to Ksuvim to Gemara.
In 1902, he purchased several manuscripts in Egypt that had been discovered in the Cairo Genizah in 1896. These included an extremely early fragment of the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah and Rabbi Saadiah Gaon’s Tafsir, a Judeo-Arabic translation of Chumash Bamidbar.
David traveled extensively to purchase manuscripts. His search for seforim took him to, among other places, Yemen, Frankfurt, Livorno, Shanghai, and the Himalayas. On a trip to Eretz Yisrael in 1925 with his mother, he acquired a manuscript from the thirteenth century of Yishayau de Trani on Maseches Chulin. In one noteworthy example, David spent ten years negotiating to buy an illuminated Farhi Bible, which was over 700 years old. He purchased manuscripts from booksellers such as Rabbi David Frankel and from the famous Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy.
When the war halted his travels, David kept in touch with his sister Rachel in Calcutta on a daily basis. It was she who would keep him posted about Torah treasures in India, North Africa, and China.
Perhaps one of David’s most special acquisitions was the Diwan of Shmuel HaNagid, which Oxford University Press published with an introduction by David in 1924. The manuscript, which David acquired in Aleppo (Aram Tzova), was copied in 1584–1585 by an Italian rabbi named Tam Ben Gedaliah ibn Yachay. It contained 1,743 poems, of which 1,500 were previously unknown. In the manuscript, there is a poem about the earthquake and eclipse in the year 1047 and a eulogy for Gaon Chai ben David (939–1038), the last gaon of Pumbeditha.
David tirelessly pursued his passion. According to the late Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein, principal of Jews College, David learned from an early age “to scorn delight and live laborious days.” He also authored The History of the Jews of Baghdad and published a two-volume catalog called Ohel David, which listed more than a thousand works that he had collected.