It started the Muslim convert, who is half Jewish, thinking. He decided to be open about his ancestry, despite how some Malaysians view Jews.

Publisher Amir Muhammad then came up with an idea to write a history of Jews in Penang and Gregory jumped at the chance.

Amir had thought of it as part of a series of illustrated children’s books on surprising and overlooked aspects of Malaysian history and culture, Gregory said.

Gregory, 45, an academic who is fluent in Malay and writes pantuns, went on to do research on the community.

He took six months to write the book titled “The Last Jews of Penang”.

Amir, owner of Matahari Books, managed to raise funds through crowdfunding to publish the book, with 91% of the target of 200 supporters reached within a week when it started on Oct 1.

FMT caught up with Gregory, who currently resides in Kuching, Sarawak, to talk about his book.

As an avid lover of world history, he said, he knew that the story of Penang being home to a significant Jewish population at one time, had to be told. The island was home to a diverse group of Jewish people, from Europe, Arabia and India.

The book also mentions how Jews, especially those involved in the running of their synagogue, migrated from Singapore to Penang.

Gregory’s book goes beyond the physical presence of the Jewish people – the synagogue building which still stands at Nagore Road (currently a coffee shop) and the Jewish cemetery not far from there.

“This book brings out rare and unexpected aspects of Malaysian history in a format a Primary Six kid could pick up and really enjoy,” he said.

The book will be launched at the George Town Literary Festival in November.

On a personal level, Gregory said the 40-page book served to make him openly declare he is half-Jew, something he had kept to himself since he migrated from the US.

Gregory’s parents are American; his mother is a Jew with roots in Russia while his father has Polish ancestry.

He converted to Islam when he was 17.

“I stuck out enough as a foreigner already, without getting into complicated issues, so I decided to keep the fact I’m a Jew to myself.

“You find that people here don’t have a whole lot of contact with Jewish people and don’t know much about them. Actually, there are a lot of similarities between Judaism and Islam,” he said.

Gregory moved from Detroit, Michigan, to Kuching in 2002 after marrying his Malaysian wife there. He has seven children aged 11 to 23.

His wife, who is with Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), studied in the US. Through his late mother-in-law, Gregory became fascinated with the Malay language.

“I have to credit my dear departed mother-in-law Hajjah Maznah. She came and lived with me and my wife in the US, helping us with our young kids while we were completing our studies,” he said.

He said she helped him learn the Malay language.

“She was a terrific conversational partner. Later, when I moved to Malaysia, I had trouble improving my Malay as most people I met in professional settings were far better at English than I was in Malay and so we naturally would deal in English.”

Gregory said he taught himself the language by translating songs, poems and proverbs.

He also credited famous nasyid bands of the 1990s such as Hijjaz, Raihan and Rabbani for having helped him pick up the language through their songs.

Today, he is an expert in Malay literature, translating pantuns and peribahasa (poetry and proverbs) into English. His daytime job is as a lecturer at the built environment faculty at Unimas.

Gregory said what struck him about pantuns is that they are a living tradition. “People remember them, use them in speeches for formal events, and so on. You can’t say the same about quatrains or sonnets or any other formal English poetry.

“And their extemporaneous quality is remarkable … in that sense, they’re a little bit like rap.”

He also said that as a landscape architect, he is intrigued by what plants mean to people and how “pantuns are a huge repository of knowledge about that”.

Gregory ended the interview with a pantun:

Batang jati kangkung
Tumbuh rapat di dalam taman
Suka dipuji gemar disanjung
Bukanlah sifat orang budiman.

Translated, it means:

Morning glory of the water
Growing thickly in the garden
Love of praise and pride in honours
Is not the way of the gentleman.

Those interested in contributing towards the crowdfunding of the book may donate RM50 and get your name included in the book (for the first 200 contributors) here.

The book, which will be available at most bookshops after its launch, retails at RM35.