Video: Chinese Jews Arrive From Kaifeng--A Jewish Community Dating Back To 960CE

There is an article in the Jerusalem Post describing their arrival at the airport.


Some Background

According to Wikipedia:


The Kaifeng Jews are members of a small Jewish community that has existed in Kaifeng, in the Henan province of China, for hundreds of years. Although Jews in modern China have traditionally called themselves Youtai (from Judah) in Mandarin Chinese — also the predominant contemporary Chinese language term for Jews in general — the community was known by their Han Chinese neighbors as adherents of Tiaojinjiao, meaning, loosely, the religion which removes the sinew (a reference to kashrut).

According to historical records, a Jewish community lived in Kaifeng from at least the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127) until the late nineteenth century and Kaifeng was Northern Song's capital. It is surmised that the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews came from Central Asia. It is also reported that in 1163 Ustad Leiwei was given charge of the religion (Ustad means teacher in Persian), and that they built a synagogue surrounded by a study hall, a ritual bath, a communal kitchen, a kosher butchering facility, and a sukkah.[1] .

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), a Ming emperor conferred seven surnames upon the Jews, by which they are identifiable today: Ai, Shi, Gao, Jin, Li, Zhang, and Zhao; sinofications of the original seven Jewish clan's family names: Ezra, Shimon, Cohen, Gilbert, Levy, Joshua, and Jonathan.[2] Interestingly, two of these: Jin and Shi are the equivalent of common Jewish names in the west: Gold and Stone.[3][4]

At one point in the video, one of those interviewed makes reference to becoming Jewish. Apparently--and not surprisingly--there was some intermarriage with the surrounding Chinese community. While Judaism is based on matrilineal descent, Chinese Jews base their Jewishness on patrilineal descent. As a result, conversion is required.

The more well known Jewish community in China is in Shanghai:

Just as the Jews of Kaifeng were disappearing as Jews, China received a new wave of Jewish settlement - Sephardi merchants from the countries bordering on the Arabian Sea who accompanied the British to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tientsin and other cities opened to foreigners in those years. Jewish communities of several hundred people were formed in each of the first three cities. They were joined by a larger migration of Jewish refugees during the period from the turn of the century to World War II.

Thousands of Jews fleeing Russia, the upheavals of World War I and Nazism, found their way to China. They established communities in such places as Harbin, Tientsin, Mukden and Shanghai. For nearly half a century, Jewish life flourished in those communities, reaching a peak population of over 30,000. A kehillah (a formal Jewish community organization) was formed in Shanghai and for a few years, there were even yeshivot in the city, established by refugees from Nazism who left as soon as World War II ended.

After the Chinese Communist takeover in 1949, there was a mass exodus of these refugees, particularly to Israel, Australia, and North America. The communities were dissolved, leaving British-ruled Hong Kong as the only Chinese city with an organized Jewish life.

Speaking of Tientsin, there is the memoir of Heinz Dawid, From Berlin to Tiajin in The Jews of China. Below is an excerpt:



And now, at long last, the Jews of Kaifeng are coming home.

See posts on other Jewish Communities around the world.

Technorati Tag: Kaifeng and Jewish Communities.