Two unnamed British barristers will arrive here during the month to take up the cudgels in defense of claims made by Ezra Abdullah Hardoon, Jewish native of Baghdad, who two years ago contested unsuccessfully the will of Silas Aaron Hardoon, Jewish multi-millionaire. An estate of more than $150,000,000 was bequeathed to Mrs. Liza Hardoon, Chinese wife of Silas, and Ezra Abdullah set forth that he was a “cousin and one of the next-of-kin of Silas, who died at Shanghai on June 19,1931.”
The case, which has been virtually closed since 1932, attracted wide attention. Mr. Hardoon filed a petition with the British Supreme Court in which he asserted that he was related to the dead multi-millionaire both on his paternal and maternal sides. His claim followed the publication of a legal notice in the North China Daily News on July 28, 1931, requesting all persons related to the deceased to enter their claims with the solicitors of Mrs. Eliza Hardoon within seven days.
Developments subsequently proved that the deceased had put his signature to the will a week before his death while he was on his sick bed. There was much speculation as to why Hardoon had left nothing to charity. The estate was bequeathed to the widow with the provision that should Mrs. Hardoon die within fourteen days after the testator’s demise it was to revert to their adopted children, but only if they embraced the Jewish faith.
The marriage of the Jewish millionaire to the Chinese woman was recorded in the British consulate here under date of August 23, 1928, but there was no record of the marriage in the archives of the Jewish community.
Israel’s Messenger commented on the case, under date of October 1931, as follows:
“There is the possibility of the Jewish marriage of the deceased with Miss Loo Chia Ling being subjected to examination and cross-examination by the legal luminaries. It is up to Mrs. Liza Hardoon to prove that this is Jewish and a member of the Jewish faith.
“contributing funds toward a synagogue or attending once in a while divine services does not make one Jewish or a member of the Jewish faith. The Jewish law is very explicit on this point. To profess a faith one must openly avow and live it in accordance with the fundamental principles which it teaches. We all know that Mrs. Liza Hardoon is a Buddhist and conforms admirably to the principles of the faith with a loyalty and devotion second to none.
“We praise her at the gate for her virtues. But that does not allow us to admit her to the fold of Judaism, or to toerate her practice of pagan rites at the threshold of our sacred sanctuary. It is time that we made that very clear and showed self-respect and dignity for the faith which we are bound to uphold and pass on to future generations in all its purity and essentials.
“We all know that the Jewish law will not allow a member of an alien faith to be united in holy wedlock, unless he or she has embraced the Jewish faith. to argue that in the case of Mrs. Liza Hardoon her father was a Jew of French extraction and her mother a Chinese Buddhist, and that this makes her Jewish, is puerile
“We all know that Mrs. Liza Hardoon has never avowed Judaism or practised its principles.”
Regarding Mr. Hardoon himself Israel’s Messenger wrote:
“The late Mr. Hardoon was born in Baghdad and owed allegiance to the new government which one functions in that country. He had never lived in British territory nor had he become a naturalized British subject. He was accepted in 1925 as a British citizen by a special act of grace by the London Foreign Office.”
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