Among the Jewish Descendants of Kaifeng

KAIFENG IS ABOUT THE SAME DISTANCE AND DIRECTION from Beijing that Knoxville, Tennessee, is from the District of Columbia. And there are other similarities between Kaifeng and Knoxville. Kaifeng has about five percent of greater Beijing's population and once enjoyed grander days. During the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127 C.E.), Kaifeng was the capital of China with well over one million people-more than twice its current population. [1] Today Kaifeng sits on a flat, intensely-farmed area near the Yellow River and has little or no industry. Its young people are being attracted to the nearby city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, and beyond to Shanghai and Beijing.

No one knows for sure when Jews first came to Kaifeng or their origin. We know that they arrived sometime before 1163 C.E. because in that year they were given permission to build a synagogue. [2] Professor Xu Xin of Nanjing University, who interviewed many Jewish descendants in Kaifeng, says that the descendants trace their origin to Mesopotamia and the year 1090 C.E. when they were dislodged from their homes by ravaging Crusaders. [3] Scholars, however, believe that the community was started by Jewish traders and merchants from Persia and India who began to travel overland to China along the Silk Road as well as by sea even prior to the Northern Song Dynasty. [4]

Jews of Kaifeng during the early days of their settlement maintained close contact with the communities from which they came. They were a source of goods not otherwise obtainable in China. Kaifeng legend has it that one of the Song Emperors was so delighted with the multi-hued cotton cloth being sold by the seven newly arrived Jewish families that he encouraged them to stay and bestowed upon them his surname and the surnames of six of his ministers. Even today, the Jewish descendants living in Kaifeng have one of the surnames given them by the Emperor; these names are: Zhao, Li, Ai, Zhang, Gao, Jin, and Shi. [5]

The ouster of the foreign, Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty (1280-1367 C.E.) by the native, xenophobic, Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 C.E.) brought an end to trade with the Middle East and Europe via the Silk Route and brought isolation to the Kaifeng Jews. The world forgot about them; and except for their knowledge that their religion and customs originated in the Land of Israel and had adherents in many far-away places, they forgot the world outside of China. Their isolation from the West ended when, in 1605 C.E., a Kaifeng Jew named Ai Tian (in China, surnames come first), visited the Jesuit mission of Father Matteo Ricci in Beijing. Al Tian had been told that there were foreigners in the mission who believed in one God and steadfastly maintained that they were not Muslims. He, therefore, assumed they were Jews, having never heard of Christianity. When he visited the mission, he interpreted the pictures that he saw on the wall as scenes from the Hebrew Bible. Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist, he thought, were Rebecca and her two sons, Jacob and Esau. Al also observed the likeness of four of Jesus' apostles on a wall of the chapel. With Jacob on his mind, Ai wondered aloud to Ricci whether the figures were four of Jacob's twelve sons. But Ricci knew instantly that he was speaking to a Jew, and he passed the information back to Rome. Thus, the Jews of Kaifeng were rediscovered by the West in 1605 C.E. by a jesuit priest. [6]

Over the succeeding years, Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, made strenuous attempts to convert the Kaifeng Jews. Historians differ on whether any Jews converted to Christianity, but they agree that none did during their early contact with the missionaries. [7] But other circumstances were eating away at the heart of the community. Isolation from fellow Jews, poverty, and disastrous floods in 1642 and 1849 C.E. all took their toll. Even more destructive was the fact that their young men were studying Chinese classics rather than Hebrew texts in order to pass civil service exams. Al Tian's visit to Beijing in 1605 was for the purpose of taking one of these civil service examinations. Over time, with the concentration on Chinese classics upon which their livelihood and status depended, the Jewish elite became increasingly ignorant of Torah and other basic Hebrew texts that were in their possession. Compounding the effect of this growing unfamiliarity with Jewish sources, Chinese civil servants were mad e to serve in cities other than that of their birth. Thus, the Kaifeng Jewish community was doubly deprived of the support which it should have received from its scholarly elite. [8]

In 1810, the community's last Rabbi died. [9] With his death, there was no one left who could read the thirteen Torah scrolls that had been in the synagogue for centuries. These Torahs were sold to Christian missionaries to alleviate extreme poverty. Several of the Torahs have been lost. Those that are known to exist are in Oxford University, Toronto University, Southern Methodist University, American Bible Society, Hebrew Union College, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. The flood of 1849 destroyed the synagogue, and it was never rebuilt. Its roof-tiles and utensils were sold, and some of them are now on and in the Great Mosque of Kaifeng. Many members of the community became Moslem; those who did, ceased to identify as Jews. Today there is a hospital on the spot where the synagogue stood.