After the First World War, the Baghdadi Jews began to refer their religious questions to the Sephardic Chief Rabbi in Britain. Rites concerning circumcision, betrothal, and protections of the newborn preserved Iraqi Jewish customs. Baghdadi Jewish wedding celebrations gradually grew less Middle Eastern and more European in style in the 20th century. Throughout this period, the leading Baghdadi Jewish families set themselves up as sponsors of Mizrahi Jewish religious life in the Middle East. Across Syria and Iraq, schools, synagogues, yeshiva and charitable foundations were supported by Baghdadi Jewish merchants of Bombay and Calcutta. Struggling communities across the Middle East sought the support of patrons in Asia such as when Moise Sassoon of Calcutta was called upon to by Lebanese Jews to sponsor the construction of the Magen Avraham Synagogue of Beirut. Almost all these works were destroyed after the starts or the Israeli-Arab conflict brought about the flight and expulsion of these ancient Jewish communities in Arab lands. Today only the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem, founded by donations from the Baghdadi Jews of Calcutta, survives. As the Second World War saw most of the Baghdadi Jews of Burma, as well as individual families from across Asia, flee from the Japanese Occupation of Burma the Jewish population of Calcutta, the heart of the Baghdadi network, swelled with refugees to over 5,000 strong. A small number of Jews fled the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Baghdad for Bombay. Even some of the leading Baghdadi Jewish families who had settled in Britain, chose to return to India as the Nazi Holocaust began the slaughter of European Jews. Despite India offering this place of refuge, the Second World War was the beginning of the end for old Baghdadi world. The Japanese occupation of Burma, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia saw much of the Baghdadi community interned by the Japanese army. As the war ended, it was miraculously revealed to the rest of the Baghdadi world that in Japan itself, Rahmo Sassoon, leader of the tiny Baghdadi Jewish community of Kobe, had skillfully negotiated with Japanese authorities to ensure no Jews were harmed during World War II. Despite this, the one Baghdadi synagogue of Japan, in Kobe was burnt down during an American air raid. At the heart of the Baghdadi world, in India, the end of the war ushered in the implosion of the old order. At this point, ethnic strife, political violence and fear of civil war were widespread in India on the eve of Indian Independence.