Kaifeng Jews - Knowledge (XXG)

2651:"The issue of lineage is important because a critique of Chinese Judaism as not being authentically Jewish is based on the fact that the clan lineages were patrilineal..Since it is now assumed by many contemporary Jews that Judaism is matrilineal, Chinese Judaism was therefore spurious and the Chinese Jews cannot really be Jews..This criticism is absurd, because the practices of the Chinese Jews in this regard were and are no different from traditional Jewish practices elsewhere...The similarity of patrilineality in both Jewish and Chinese cultures is but another way in which the two cultures were compatible." ( 1614:(1874). Finn relied on the accounts of the 17th century Jesuit missionaries. Zhou maintained that the community had no Torah scrolls until 1851, when they suddenly appeared to be sold to eager Western collectors. She also stated that drawings of the synagogue were doctored in the West because the original did not look like one, and that the Kaifeng community claimed to have kept some Jewish practices since before they are known to have begun. Xun Zhou posited that the Kaifeng community was not Jewish in any meaningful sense. Her hypothesis has not found any support within the scholarly community. 51: 1502:, matrilineal transmission of Jewishness is predominant, while Chinese Jews based their Jewishness on patrilineal descent. This has been attributed to the influence of Chinese cultural norms, where lines of descent are typically patrilineal). The Jewish sinologist Jordan Paper notes, however, that all genealogies in the Torah consist exclusively of male descent. The modern assumption that Judaism is matrilineal has been used, he adds, to deny the authenticity of Chinese Jews because their clan lineages were patrilineal. 981: 409: 1337: 992: 1574:. The codex is notable in that, while it ostensibly contains vowels, it was clearly copied by someone who did not understand them. While the symbols are accurate portrayals of Hebrew vowels, they appear to be placed randomly, thereby rendering the voweled text as gibberish. Since Modern Hebrew is generally written without vowels, a literate Hebrew speaker can disregard these markings, as the consonants are written correctly, with few scribal errors. 1316:

Kaifeng, including Ai's nephew, stopped by the Jesuits' house while visiting Beijing on business, and got themselves baptized. They told Ricci that the old rabbi had died, and (since Ricci had not taken him up on his earlier offer), his position was inherited by his son, "quite unlearned in matters pertaining to his faith". Ricci's overall impression of the situation of China's Jewish community was that "they were well on the way to becoming

1547: 2677:"The Chinese Jews had not undergone the many centuries of suffering that European Jews had endured under Christianity, nor had they experienced the second-class citizenship of Jews in Muslim countries. Instead, for nearly a millennium they existed in an atmosphere of tolerance, indeed of complete acceptance, and they not only maintained a traditional Jewish life but adapted to a Chinese one as well."; "the Jews of Kaifeng and the 2586:"Later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, it is likely, as suggested by many scholars, that several of the Kaifeng Jews did convert to Islam rather than simply being swallowed up in the Buddhist or Confucian multitude. Today, a number of Muslims (and possibly non-Muslims) have discovered that their ancestors were Kaifeng Jews. ... (Jin Xiaojing 金效靜, 1981) discovered she was of Jewish descent when on the hajj to Mecca." ( 1401:). The blue hat Hui also referred to Jews converting to Islam. Jin clan descendants also came to believe they were Muslims. Instead of being absorbed into Han, a portion of the Jews of China of Kaifeng became Hui Muslims. In 1948, Samuel Stupa Shih (Shi Hong Mo) (施洪模) said he saw a Hebrew language "Religion of Israel" Jewish inscription on a tombstone in a Qing dynasty Muslim cemetery to a place west of Hangzhou. 654:) who were captured during Mongol campaigns in the West and conveyed east to serve in the bureaucracy and assist the Mongols in administering China after its conquest. The two names associated in 1489 with the establishment of the synagogue in 1163, An-du-la and Lieh-wei (namely Abdullah and Levi), are in Yu's interpretation retrodated from later times. An-du-la, on the basis of the 1679 stele, he reads as the 764:. It would have been attractive to Persian Jewish merchants. The founding colony's members may have specialized in the manufacturing, dyeing, or pattern printing of cotton fabrics. By the early 16th century, an inscription mentions not only craftsmen, farmers and traders among them, but also scholars, physicians and officials, political and administrative, as well as military men in important posts. 2638:"this observer would hazard a guess that some of these 500 Kaifeng Jews will indeed become Jewish over the next several decades, because the Jews of the West will make them into Jews. Once discovered, they will be pursued in one way or another until they and their neighbors become so conscious of their 'Jewishness' that the deed will be done even if it will not be halakhically recognized." ( 71: 2625:"It is clear from Shi's later descriptions that many of the tombstones he saw were Muslim rather than Jewish, though one, he claimed, read 'Religion of Israel' in Hebrew. In Hangzhou, according to Ricci in 1608, there had been a synagogue. We can only wonder whether the Jews there had a separate cemetery of their own or were accepted by the Muslims in their special cemetery." ( 6102: 2599:"Islamic works translated into Chinese played a very important role in the popularization of Islam. At the same time, many Jews who did not like to abandon their tradition converted to Islam and were known as the 'Huihui with blue hats. The missionary work of Christians from the beginning of the 17th century and the Chinese Bible did not affect them'." ( 315:. In all likelihood, all of the founders of the community were male Jewish merchants: the arduous, dangerous nature of the route, and the length of time which they needed to spend in order to travel on it, would have probably forced them to rule out bringing their wives, and after they settled in Kaifeng, they married Chinese women. 484:. The inscription states that the Jews came to China from Tiānzhú (天竺), a Han-Song term for India. It adds that they brought Western cloth as tribute for an emperor, unnamed, who welcomed them with the words: "You have come to Our China; reverence and preserve the customs of your ancestors, and hand them down at Bianliang ( 1440:) out of official concerns that an ethnic status might lead them to seek privileges. What little remains of their material Jewish heritage has been locked away by Chinese authorities in a special room in the Kaifeng museum, ostensibly for the protection of their heritage or is conserved in the Dongda mosque ( 2000:"It was only by way of exception that Jewish persons or activities were of interest to Chinese officials or men of letters. There are no specific Chinese monographs on the Jews, as there are, for example, about the Tibetan or Turkish groups with whom the imperial government perforce came into contact." ( 1390:

Kaifeng Jewish ancestry has been found among their descendants living among the Hui Muslims. Scholars have pointed out that Hui Muslims may have absorbed Kaifeng Jews instead of Han Confucians and Buddhists. Kaifeng Chinese had difficulty in distinguishing Jews and Muslims, and spoke of the former as

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was reportedly seen in a mosque. The site itself was apparently bought by Bishop White in 1914, and in 1954, the Chinese Communist government confiscated the property and built the Kaifeng Municipal Clinic on it. Some usages remained. Burial coffins maintained a distinctive shape from those customary

400:

recovered from Kaifeng, and references in Chinese dynastic sources. The dates on the stelae range from 1489 through 1512 and 1663 to 1679. Chinese documents on Jews are rare compared to the voluminous records of other peoples. The first official documents referring to Jews as a distinct group date to

1537:

In the 21st century, both the Sino-Judaic Institute and Shavei Israel sent teachers to Kaifeng to help interested community members learn about their Jewish heritage, building on the pioneering work of the American Judeo-Christian Timothy Lerner. Advocates for the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews are

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The dismantlement of the synagogue sometime between 1850 and 1866 led to the community's demise. By the turn of the 19-20th century members of the community had fallen into dire poverty. The Zhang Kaifeng Jewish family had largely converted to Islam by this time. The site of the synagogue had turned

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reference="They were again deprived of their books by a fire, and the loss was in part supplied by the purchase of a roll of the Law from a Mohammedan at Ning-keang-chow (ed. note =寧羌州: níng qiāng zhōu) in Shen-se, who had received it by legacy from a dying Israelite at Canton, and from this Hebrew

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is a fictional tale which revolves around the Kaifeng Jewish community. In the show, a group of European actors joins a troupe of Chinese performers in order to present the story of Chu Chem, a scholar who journeys to Kaifeng with his wife Rose and his daughter Lotte because he wants to learn about

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The Persian rubrics of the Kaifeng Jewish liturgy are written in the Bukharan dialect and the Bukharan Jews believe that in the past, some of their kin migrated to China and ceased to have contact with their country of origin. Many of the known Hebrew names of the Kaifeng Jews were only found among

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The place of origin of these Jews and the date when they established their settlement in Kaifeng are sources of intense debate among experts. While the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews are assimilated into mainstream Chinese culture, some of them are trying to revive the beliefs and customs of their

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wrote in 1972 that the most detailed and convincing report about them, written in 1932 by an American Jew, David A. Brown, stated that: "They know they are Jews, but know nothing of Judaism. They realize they are Chinese, completely assimilated, yet there is pride in the knowledge that they spring

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To survey the predicament of Jews in much of the rest of the world is to marvel at what the Kaifeng community escaped. In China, Jews were not subjected to violence and persecution, not demonized as God killers. Their synagogues were not invaded by conversionary harangues. They were not physically

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from the 17th century and another from the 18th century, one written in Jewish-Persian hand, the other in Chinese Hebrew square script (like that of the Torah scrolls), using text primarily from an early stage of the Persian Jewish rite. A recent study of the text has a facsimile of one manuscript

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It is difficult to estimate the number of Jews in China, population count often having to fluctuate constantly due to changes in official attitudes. A survey in the 80s suggested 140 families in China bore six of the traditional Jewish surnames, with 79 in Kaifeng amounting to 166 individuals. The

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suggested it would be difficult to maintain that contemporary Kaifeng Chinese of Jewish descent are Jews. Proposals to establish a Museum commemorating their history despite the city's lack of Jewish artifacts and documents, have received enthusiastic local government backing, which considers that

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of the 1850s led to the dispersal of the community, but it later returned to Kaifeng. To avoid the threat of becoming defunct, the Kaifeng community dispatched members to Shanghai in order to seek help from Sephardic European Jewish merchants active there. The funds that were collected to this end

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expressed in coercive decrees that enforced assimilation, and therefore, Yu infers, the Kaifeng Jews, under the Ming, claimed in their monumental stone inscriptions that their roots in China were ancient, going back at least to the nativist Song if not indeed to the Han period. The stele sought to

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brought about a precipitous drop in their population, to around 1,000 souls. The flood also destroyed the synagogue. Considerable efforts were made to save the scriptures. One man of the Gao clan, Gao Xuan, dove repeatedly into the flooded synagogue to rescue what he could and afterward all seven

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were issued that forbade members of such communities from marrying within their own groups. They were at liberty to marry only Han Chinese. Failure to do so would lead to enslavement. To what degree these measures were applied is unknown, but is evident from their Memorial Book that intermarriage

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in 878/9 in which not only Muslims and Christians but Jews were also killed, attesting to the latter group's presence in China. Trade with China was predominantly maritime, and dominated by Arabs, with many Jews also engaged in this network. By the 11th century, more than a million Arabs lived in

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Rabbi Joshua Stampfer (1921–2019), on a visit to Kaifeng in 1983, estimated there were from 100 to 150 descendants of Kaifeng Jews, and provided the means for Jin Xiaojing's daughter, Qu Yinan, then a Beijing journalist, to study Judaism and Hebrew in California where she became the first of the

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Kaifeng was a cosmopolitan industrial metropolis with 600,000 to a million inhabitants in Northern Song times, which formed an intense hub for overland trade via the Silk Road and the commercial riverine networks connecting it to the eastern seabord. Through it vast amounts of grain tribute also

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where they underwent circumcision. One died within two years but the other, Feba, was renamed Shalem Sholome David, and was employed by the Sassoons in their Shanghai office (1872–1882). In 1883 he married a Baghdadi Jewish woman, Habiba Reuben Moses, and became a respected member of the Jewish

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wrote back, saying that the Messiah would not come for another ten thousand years. Nonetheless, apparently concerned with the lack of a trained successor, the old rabbi offered Ricci his position, if the Jesuit would join their faith and abstain from eating pork. Later, another three Jews from

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Father Joseph Brucker stated that Ricci's account of Chinese Jews indicated that there were only in the range of ten or twelve Jewish families in Kaifeng in the late 16th to early 17th centuries) In the Jesuits' manuscripts it was also stated that there was a greater number of Jews in

1285:, his eyes, and all his features". This has been taken to allow an inference that, up to that time, the Kaifeng Jews had still largely shunned intermixing and were thus physically distinguishable from the surrounding population. About three years after Ai's visit, Ricci sent a Chinese 1956:"In China, the merchant Jews who arrived around the eleventh century were, given the length, difficulties, and danger of the journey, unlikely to have brought wives with them. Those who elected to remain in China took Chinese wives, who, as is well documented, converted to Judaism." ( 1670:

Peony, loves her master's son, David ben Ezra, but she cannot marry him due to her lowly status. He eventually marries a high-class Chinese woman, to the consternation of his mother, who is proud of her unmixed heritage. Descriptions of remnant names, such as a "Street of the

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segregated from non-Jews nor forced to wear humiliating forms of identification on their dress. They were not forced into the most despised and vulnerable occupations, not stigmatized as grasping and vindictive, and portrayed neither as predatory monsters nor pathetic victims.

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dietary law, which marked them off from most neighbouring Chinese. She had been under the impression her family was Muslim, who likewise abstain from pork, and her grandfather, like them, had worn a skullcap, only blue as opposed to the white cap worn donned by local Muslims.

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language, a language which was only developed in the 8th century CE. Weisz ignores the anachronisms which are written on the stelae, such as the attribution of a grant of land to build a synagogue to a Ming dynasty emperor even though it dates back to the Song dynasty

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Recently, Peng Yu has challenged the Song-entry consensus, favouring instead a variant of the "second wave" theory of Kaifeng Jewish origins, one version of which holds that Jews probably figured among the large number of peoples collectively known as the

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last official census revealed about 400 official Jews in Kaifeng, now estimated at some 100 families totalling approximately 500 people. Up to 1,000 residents have ties to Jewish ancestry, though only 40 to 50 individuals partake in Jewish activities.

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into a fetid swamp. Much material belonging to it, even the roof tiles, was purchased by Muslims and others: two young Kaifeng Jews sold three Torahs to two Americans and an Austrian. Some property was also said to have been stolen. The Ark of the

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such a centre would have positive effects on the local economy via Jewish tourism. Elazar opines that, over the ensuing decades, Western Jews will manage to encourage the growth of Chinese Jews among the descendant population The establishment of

1713:", that is, the alley of the Jews. He mentioned that there are still Jews in Kaifeng today, but they are reluctant to reveal themselves "in the current political climate". The documentary's companion book further states that one can still see a " 2572:

S.M. Perlmann, a Shanghai businessman and scholar, wrote in 1912 that "they bury their dead in coffins, but of a different shape than those of the Chinese are made, and do not attire the dead in secular clothes as the Chinese do, but in linen."

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increased. With some Kaifeng families, Muslim men did marry their Jewish women, but the converse did not happen. In 1849, an observer who had contact with the Kaifeng Jewish community noted that "the Jews are quite Chinese in appearance." The

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provides a precise date for a large population of Jewish expatriates accompanying Ni-wei-ni from India who putatively arrived in Kaifeng on 20 February 998. These inferences contradict Buddhist records for Ni-wei-ni's visit. Both the

1859:, prayer books, etc.—in his thesis, he only quoted the stories which were recounted on the stelae. Berg also criticized Weisz's failure to study the implications of the fact that the Kaifeng liturgical documents were written in the 1791:"The debate about the origin, arrival and nature of the Kaifeng Jews is one of the most heated in the entire field of Sino-Judaica, arguably second only to that surrounding the history of the Jewish refugee community of Shanghai." ( 2285:

whose court supposedly prized a small-footed dancer. When they were deported by the Northern Song to Kaifeng, the practice took root there. After the fall of Kaifeng, the Song continued the custom in their new capital at Hangzhou

2559:"Some of those who converted to Islam, like the Zhang family, still seem to cherish this past as well and consider themselves as 'fake Moslems'. This has been confirmed by Zhang Qianhong and Li Jingwen in 'Some Observations'." ( 594:). By 1163, when the synagogue is thought to have been established, Kaifeng had been occupied by the Jurchen for 37/38 years: and had been their capital since 1161. The 1489 stele speaks of its establishment coinciding with the 371:

and then by barge to Kaifeng. The Jewish community that was eventually established in Kaifeng survived the collapse of these sister communities on the eastern seaboard, all of which disappeared in the 15-16th centuries when the

2163:), who was promoted within the same Embroidered Uniform Guard and had the same surname bestowed on him in 1421 in recognition for acting as an informer concerning the treasonous designs of the Prince of Zhou, namely 2612:"This also involves a difficult study of the relations that existed between the Kaifeng Jews and Muslims there. A number of Jewish descendants converted to Islam rather than melting into the general populations." ( 2212:

actually has a broader, more general denotation, referring to several peoples from Central and Western Asia (西域: Xīyù). Orthodox Christians for example were called "green-eyed Huihui", and Huihui was also used of

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requires proof of Jewish descent through at least one grandparent. Though such evidence is not available for the Kaifeng community, and strict Orthodox Jewish rabbis would question their authenticity as Jews,

2434:"The reasons for Ai Tian's journey are not stated; possibly his visit was connected with his official duties; possibly he may have undertaken it in the hope of securing promotion in the civil service." ( 275:

as operating over a wide arc from Western Europe to China. It has been conjectured that this group constituted the first of two waves of Jewish settlement in China, the second being associated with the

2396:), identified or conflated with Adam in the 1489 inscription, was the mythical first being of Chinese cosmology. In the 1663 inscription, instead, Adam is depicted as a descendant of Pangu. Likewise, 1155:

in the Memorial Book suggests the prayer was recited at funerals. By sometime after the mid 19th century all of these practices appear to have been abandoned, including the observance of the Sabbath.

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ancestors. In the 21st century, efforts have been made to revive Kaifeng's Jewish heritage and encourage the descendants of its original population to convert back to Judaism. Via the offices of the

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Silk Road Linguistics: The Birth of Yiddish and the Multiethnic Jewish Peoples on the Silk Road, 9-13th Centuries, the Indispensable Role of the Arabs, Chinese, Germans, Iranians, Slavs and Turks

1666:) in a Chinese Jewish community. The novel deals with the cultural forces which are gradually eroding the separate identity of the Jews, including intermarriage. The title character, the Chinese 944:

took place on a large scale among the Kaifeng Jews certainly from Ming and it may be assumed, in Qing times. From the 19th century onwards it became the norm. They followed the Chinese custom of

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The origin of the Kaifeng Jews and the date of their arrival is one of the most intensely debated topics in the field of Chinese-Jewish relations. Though some scholars date their arrival to the

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Earlier scholarship transcribed 俺都喇 as "Yen-tu-la". In the 1489 and 1512 inscriptions, this 俺/Yen represents a family name which was later changed to Zhao by imperial favour. 俺 is to be read

1732:; upon learning about the Jews of Kaifeng, the members of the expatriate Jewish community decided to travel to Kaifeng in order to meet some of the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews and hold a 1906:

reverenced Moses, and kissed a volume of the Hebrew scriptures, often used as evidence for Jews in China in the 13th century, is regarded as a later interpolation, probably the handiwork of

2247:"Because the narratives in the various stelae differ, so we have the followers of the religion in Kaifeng having '70 surnames,' '73 surnames,' and 'Seven Surnames and Eight Families'." ( 1851:, circulated a decree which stated that he was seeking the wisdom of foreign scholars. In his review of Weisz's book, Irvin Berg states that the author excluded many religious documents— 4749: 722:

The explanation for these contradictions within the various stelae must lie, Yu thinks, in the impact of Ming imperial policies aiming to constrain peoples such as the Semu, who came

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1322－1403) noted down 31 ethnic groups as belonging to the second, Semu, rank of the four class Mongol classificatory system ((a) Mongols, (b) Semu, (c) Han (including Jin) and (d)

5653: 1248:) which, according to Zhang Ligang, first appeared in the 1820s when a German missionary used this translated name of "Jews Country" in a journal. When he saw a Christian image of 939:(1368–1644), in reaction to the foreign dynasty it replaced, laid down a policy of discrimination against foreigners, such as the resident Mongols and Semu. Laws regarding ethnic 572:, among others, assumes that this context suggests that the Kaifeng Jews must have settled in this Song capital, then known as Bianjing, no later than 1120, some years before the 1416:

which have been granted this official status in China. Their bid to be so listed in 1953 was turned down by the Chinese government. Their registration as "Jewish descendants" (

1509:. Some desire to reconnect with Judaism and some say their parents and grandparents told them that they were Jewish and would one day "return to their land". Under Israel's 1242:

decades earlier in 1573. Ai Tian explained that he was a member of a 1,000 strong Israelite congregation that worshipped one God. They were unfamiliar with the word "Jew" (

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was practiced: one Kaifeng Jew, the Zhang (張) clan's Zhang Mei, is recorded in the Memorial Book as having six wives, while Jin Rong-Zhang from the Jin clan (金) had five.

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Laytner, Anson (2017). "Between Survival and Revival: The Impact of Western Jewish Interaction on Kaifeng-Jewish Identity". In Laytner, Anson H.; Paper, Jordan (eds.).

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Yu, Peng (Autumn 2017). "Revising the date of Jewish arrival in Kaifeng, China, from the Song Dynasty (960–1279) to the Hung-wu period (1368–98) of the Ming Dynasty".

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to visit Kaifeng; he copied the beginnings and ends of the holy books kept in the synagogue, which allowed Ricci to verify that they indeed were the same texts as the

1728:, covers the present-day Kaifeng Jewish community in China during a trip to Kaifeng which was taken by Jewish expatriates who met for weekly Friday night services in 2533:"Two families intermarry with Chinese Mohammedans only. The Jews give their daughters to the Mohammedans; the Mohammedans do not give their daughters to the Jews." ( 959:

Towards the end of the Ming period, calculations based on the community's memorial book suggest that the Kaifeng Jewish community amounted to some 4,000 people. The

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The self-published sinologist and independent researcher Tiberiu Weisz undertook a new translation of the stelae, and based on it, he theorizes that after the

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exploring ways to convince the Chinese authorities to recognize the antiquity of the Kaifeng Jews and allow them to practice their Chinese Jewish way of life.

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From the 17th century, further assimilation had begun to erode these traditions as the rate of intermarriage between Jews and other ethnic groups such as the

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Urbach, Noam (2008). "What Prevented the Reconstruction of the Chinese Synagogue? Kaifeng Jews Between Revival and Reconstruction". In Kupfer, Peter (ed.).

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Pollak, Michael (2017) . "The Manuscripts and Artifacts of the Synagogue of Kaifeng;: Their Peregrinations and Present Whereabouts". In Malek, Roman (ed.).

4825:"Delving into the Israelite Religion of Kaifeng: The Patriotic Scholar Shi Jingyun and his 'Study of the Origins of the Plucking the Sinews Sect of Henan'" 2268:

was used to refer to honoured members of the community by the Jews of eastern countries of the time concerned and meant 'the honourable, your highness'." (

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by sea. Ibn Khordadbeh's Rhadanites used both routes. Some evidence has been interpreted to suggest that their ancestors may have mostly hailed from the

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upon the Jews. Other evidence points to 70-73 surnames. The late 1672 inscription states that at the synagogue's inception (1163) there were 73 clans (

351:, where they were allowed self-administration. At least 7 synagogue communities are attested for this period in all major Chinese port cities, such as 216:

neighbors advanced, until, by the 19th century, its Jewishness largely became extinct, apart from its retention of memories of its clan's Jewish past.

1281:), and possessed a great number of written materials and books. Ricci wrote that "his face was quite different to that of a Chinese in respect to his 4228: 1404:

By Ricci's time, it is said that the Nanjing and Beijing Jews had become Muslims, though a Jewish community and synagogue still existed in Hangzhou.

259:(960–1279). That prior to the Song, Jewish merchants were active in China appears probable from the fact that the Eastern Islamic Persian geographer 4990: 2017:

Ni-wei-ni (沙門你尾抳) and others came to China to meet Emperor Song Zhenzong with Buddhist relics, scriptures, banyan leafs and several banyan seeds." (

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has sponsored for over a decade (2006–2016) the emigration of 19 descendants of Kaifeng Jews to Israel, where they have studied variously Hebrew in

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erected by the Kaifeng community bears the date 1489. This, it is affirmed, commemorates the construction in 1163 of a synagogue called Qingzhensi (

1078:), and grasping profound mysteries, founded Judaism. This is said to have occurred in the 146th year of the Zhou dynasty (i.e., 977 BCE). The 463:) in the Buddha Almanac of Zhi-pan mean "Buddhist monk", not rabbi. Furthermore, Ni-wei-ni did not bring Western cloth with him, but banyan seeds. 1474:

back to the religion of her ancestors. Qu Yinan's family abstained from certain foods, such as shellfish and pork, similar to the stipulations of

1595: 699:. The Jews themselves were defined as a Hui people, due to similarities between Jewish and Islamic traditions. They were called blue hat Hui ( 6074: 6055: 6027: 6000: 5938: 5890: 5863: 5840: 5815: 5764: 5742: 5702: 5639: 5612: 5589: 5456: 5404: 5379: 5317: 5275: 5211: 5101: 5071: 4975: 4948: 4925: 4894: 4867: 4840: 4782: 4735: 4625: 4598: 4541: 4516: 4493: 4479: 4452: 4402: 4303: 4206: 4178: 1831:

province, China, where they were spotted by the Chinese general Li Guangli, who was sent to the region and ordered to expand the borders of

1168:) or "Hall of the Ancestors" where, according to the Portuguese Jesuit Jean-Paul Gozani (1647–1732) who lived in Kaifeng from 1698 to 1718, 338:

which was probably composed in the eighth or ninth century. A century later, the Arab geographer Abū Zayd Ḥasan al-Sīrāfī mentioned (910) a

6148: 5851: 5142: 2408:), the name for a Chinese goddess of creation remembered in myth for her intervention in staying a great flood that threatened mankind. ( 1204: 4643: 636:), within whose territory Kaifeng lay. If the city was Jurchen, it is asked, why does the stele associate its foundation with the Song? 334:

with Hebrew characters, they wrote their documents on paper, something which was unavailable in the West, together with a fragment of a

193:. In the early centuries of their settlement, they may have numbered around 2,500 people. Despite their isolation from the rest of the 4244: 1365:

community made attempts to assist Kaifeng Jews in returning to Judaism, accepting them, despite their Asian features, as fellow Jews.

251:(618–907), or even earlier, Steven Sharot, reflecting the majority view, considers that the most probable date for the formation of a 5466:

Sharot, Stephen (Winter 2007). "The Kaifeng Jews: A Reconsideration of Acculturation and Assimilation in a Comparative Perspective".

1847:, which they were then living in. Weisz believes that they later returned to China during the Song dynasty, when its second emperor, 4655: 2463:

and Koreans). Jews do not figure there, but there are several names in the third class that look like a reference to them, such as

4585:

Eckstein, Matthew A. (2017). "Identity Discourse and the Chinese-Jewish Descendants". In Laytner, Anson H.; Paper, Jordan (eds.).

5267: 2135:) conferred as an imperial memorial for his meritorious services, together with the rank of rank of Military Commissioner in the 4758: 4609: 4245:"Review: The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions: The Legacy of the Jewish Community in Ancient China By Tiberiu Weisz (iUniverse, 2006)" 964:

clans helped restore and rewrite the 13 scrolls. They obtained some from Ningxia and Ningbo to replace them, and another Hebrew

6178: 4370: 1836: 928:. Jewish written sources do not mention how the Jews arrived in Kaifeng, though a legend says that they arrived by land on the 740:

passed. Its strategic importance and wealth were recognized by successive dynastic powers over the period 905–959, such as the

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Zhang, Qianhong; Liu, Bailu (2006). "A Study on the Social Condition of Kaifeng Jews from the Remaining Stone Inscriptions".

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Kaifeng Jews are not recognized as Jews by birth and are required to formally convert to Judaism in order to receive Israeli

1032: 609: 140: 4672: 4527: 6183: 5396: 1550:

Membership list in a prayer book, in Hebrew characters (without vowel pointing) and Chinese characters, circa 17th century

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Katz, Nathan (May 1995). "The Judaisms of Kaifeng and Cochin: Parallel and Divergent Styles of Religious Acculturation".

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When Kaifeng Jews introduced themselves to the Jesuits in 1605, they called themselves members of the house of "Israel" (

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with the Mongols peoples, to assimilate to the culture of the revived Han hegemony. The dynasty was marked by a distinct

6118: 5774: 5511: 5444: 4342: 4327: 1750: 1450:), where the relics are inaccessible. Family papers and heirlooms were reportedly discarded or burnt out of fear of the 741: 237: 178: 551: 6173: 2264:(ע) could easily have been converted into the Chinese nasal final n. Moreover, according to Professor Rabin, the term 1598:

expressed doubts about the authenticity of the Kaifeng community, arguing that it was a construct of Christian-driven

1455: 925: 5713: 1488: 494:)," i.e., Kaifeng. The same stone inscription also associates the building's establishment with two names: An-du-la ( 4917: 4766: 1413: 749: 745: 2503:). Unfortunately there is no evidence that might allow one to assert that the three terms denote an ethnic group ( 4686: 4668: 4533: 4421: 4198: 2299:"No one seems to have seriously questioned the permissibility of the Kaifeng Jews marrying more than one wife." ( 1907: 1899: 1523: 1366: 985: 719:), who were Muslims. Chinese sources do not mention the existence of Chinese Jews until the Mongol Yuan dynasty. 573: 5875:"Between Disintegration and Expansion; A Comparative Retrospection of the Kaifeng Jewish and Muslim Communities" 731:

assert proof of a long accommodation by Jews to Chinese civilization in order to avoid discriminatory measures.

6163: 5782: 5752: 5564: 5327:

Pollak, Michael (Spring 2005). "Review: The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion by Xu Xin".

5221:

Okuma, Taryn L. (Spring 2008). "Jews in China and American Discourses of Identity in Pearl S. Buck's "Peony"".

5111: 5081: 5053: 5019: 4985: 4691:"Stopping the crackdown on China's Jews: There is no excuse for Israel to be turning its back on Kaifeng Jewry" 2421:

The source for the data on current observances recorded by Aaron Halevi Fink, dated to 1850, is problematical (

1774: 1706: 622:), namely 1161, which sets the synagogue's establishment in the first year of the reign of the Jurchen Emperor 481: 277: 2179:) had identified in 1965 the Kaifeng Jewish physician with this An San, an identification endorsed by Leslie ( 408: 4380:"'I thought we were Muslims because we never ate pork' - Qu Yinan: Chinese Jew Comes to U.S. to Trace Roots" 2546:"...religious strictures required anyone, whether man or woman, who married a Muslim to convert to Islam." ( 2327: 1848: 1046:

The evidence on the stelae shows that they identified the emergence of Judaism as coinciding with the early

960: 761: 668:), said to be a Kaifeng Jewish physician, who "restored" the synagogue in 1421 (not 1163). According to the 1202:, then established in Beijing, was visited by a Chinese official from Kaifeng. According to the account in 1172:

were placed to commemorate the patriarchs and outstanding figures of the Law, as well as various holy men (

5930: 5882: 5684: 5604: 5559: 5550: 5203: 5093: 4859: 4318: 1249: 1148: 623: 167: 5962: 4379: 4314: 4194:

A Social and Religious History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages and the era of European expansion, 1200-1650

2076:. One suggestion is that rather than the Moslem "Abdullah", the Chinese may have represented an original 6153: 5832: 5468: 2281:

Kaifeng played a pivotal role in the diffusion of this often frowned-on practice, which arose among the

1531: 1471: 980: 2114:

It has been conjectured that the Chinese name may originally have transcribed the Arabic name Hassan (

6158: 5790: 5116: 4188: 1559: 1239: 1183: 396:

was established relies on two forms of evidence: the information surviving in inscriptions from four

287:

According to a scholarly consensus, the Jewish community of Kaifeng primarily consisted of people of

4529:

Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History: Northeast Henan in the Fall of the Ming

991: 430:) and others had spent seven years traveling from India to China in order to pay homage to the Song 5718: 5694: 5658: 5223: 4508: 2359:"The Jesuit Jean-Paul Gozani.. wrote in 1704 that the '...idolators first gave them this name '." ( 1140: 1043:, marking them as distinct from Muslims who otherwise, like them, also refrained from eating pork. 760:

when they unified the empire, until the city was conquered by the Jurchen in 1127. Under siege, it

364: 348: 5668: 1369:

took two Kaifeng brothers in flight from the Taiping rebels under their wing and had them sent to

1336: 916:. It has been suggested however that it may well have been a phonetic transcription of the Hebrew 5493: 5485: 5354: 5346: 5309: 5248: 5240: 5182: 5151: 5125: 5041: 5007: 4811: 4709: 4695: 4677: 4573: 4426: 4332: 4170: 2488: 1304: 339: 577: 5438: 4704: 2234:. This arose as the result of a misreading of a mistranslation of the relevant stele by White ( 2230:

It is occasionally repeated in the literature that the Kaifeng Jews dated their arrival to the

1709:

traveled to Kaifeng and walked down a small lane known as the "alley of the sect who teach the

330:, northwestern China, was a bill of sale for sheep which dated back to 718 CE, written in 6070: 6051: 6023: 5996: 5934: 5922: 5886: 5874: 5859: 5836: 5811: 5799: 5760: 5738: 5698: 5649: 5635: 5608: 5585: 5538: 5452: 5400: 5375: 5313: 5271: 5207: 5195: 5097: 5085: 5067: 5057: 4971: 4944: 4921: 4905: 4890: 4878: 4863: 4851: 4836: 4824: 4778: 4731: 4719: 4621: 4594: 4537: 4512: 4475: 4463: 4448: 4436: 4398: 4384: 4299: 4202: 4174: 1755: 1350: 1297: 802: 581: 31: 5984: 5826: 5778: 5623: 5390: 4261: 4164: 5909: 5734: 5728: 5528: 5520: 5477: 5418: 5338: 5329: 5261: 5232: 5174: 5165: 5063: 5033: 4999: 4909: 4803: 4770: 4635: 4565: 4556: 4295: 1978: 1805: 1683: 1657: 1621:

notes its exceptionality to the tragic diffidence of host societies to Jewish settlements:-

1499: 1483: 1466: 1257: 1169: 768: 595: 537: 431: 92: 4252: 2147:). This is almost identical to a passage in the Ming biography of the Emperor at that time 2034:

However the 1479 stone also uses a term "The Temple of Israel" for their synagogue.(一賜樂業業:

1546: 1340:

Earth Market Street, Kaifeng, 1910. The synagogue lay beyond the row of stores on the right

691:

Yu's Yuan-entry theory claims that the Kaifeng Jews entered China together with the Muslim

197:, their ancestors managed to practice Jewish traditions and customs for several centuries. 6019: 5581: 4967: 4940: 4832: 4590: 1936: 1924: 1745: 1617:

In an overview of the place of Kaifeng Jews within the broader context of Jewish history,

1555: 1375: 813: 655: 194: 158: 4366: 5533: 5506: 2500: 2338:

it would appear he preferred the alternative pronunciation for the character 賜, namely

2172: 2148: 2051:"Others have favoured an Indian origin, but their arguments do not appear convincing" ( 1265: 1144: 681: 548: 260: 1465:

pilgrimage the Hui Muslim woman Jin Xiaojing (金效靜) realized she had Jewish roots. The

1378:

the Bombay community offered to subsidize the relocation of Kaifeng Jews to Shanghai.

6142: 6133: 5497: 5358: 5252: 5137: 5024: 4852:"The Perception and Self-Perception of Jewishness in Kaifeng in the Past and Present" 4362: 2282: 1928: 1860: 1662: 1653: 1583: 1519: 1510: 1362: 1310: 1136: 1112: 331: 308: 221: 201: 116: 1092:) in turn is set in the 613th year of the same dynasty, namely around 510 BCE. 5631: 5448: 5434: 5426: 5414: 5178: 4569: 4500: 4489: 4471: 4393:

Chen, Changqi (2001) . "Buddhist Monk or Jewish Rabbi?". In Shapiro, Sidney (ed.).

2460: 2231: 2214: 1903: 1844: 1618: 1199: 1182:). This was similar to Chinese rites regarding ancestors, with the difference that 1047: 1036: 965: 945: 936: 696: 685: 402: 373: 368: 312: 288: 281: 256: 248: 120: 5800:"On the Religious Life of the Kaifeng Jewish Community in the 15th-17th Centuries" 5296: 1878: 1635: 1303:

When Ricci wrote to the "ruler of the synagogue" in Kaifeng, telling him that the

544:, ("master", religious leader), and "rabbi" in a Jewish context in that language. 6011: 5688: 5573: 4959: 1827:. he further guesses that sometime prior to 108 BCE, these Jews migrated to 935:

Some Jesuit reports inaccurately stated the Kaifeng Jews did not intermarry. The

416:

Two Chinese scholars have argued that the Jews went to China in 998, because the

2678: 1970: 1832: 1718: 1599: 1506: 1427: 1383: 1345: 1289: 1282: 1271:

Ai said that many other Jews resided in Kaifeng; they had a splendid synagogue (

1099:

usage, celebrating all the Jewish festivals, observing the prayers, rituals and

319: 292: 209: 124: 4639: 1778:

from an ancient people who are different from the other Chinese in K'ai feng" (

676:

or synagogue leaders were drawn, only arrived in Kaifeng after relocating from

5481: 5306:

Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire

4774: 4651: 4551: 1977:

with Hebraic characters. Jewish speakers of Persian also knew how to write in

1603: 1586:

haggadah (in Hebrew characters), as well as an annotated English translation.

1562:'s Klau Library in Cincinnati, Ohio. Among the works in that collection are a 1451: 1293: 1187: 1108: 1100: 753: 727: 692: 569: 224:

organization, a number of young Chinese descendants of Kaifeng Jews have made

213: 128: 5913: 5524: 5236: 4807: 5923:"The Understanding and Attitude of Chinese Society Towards the Kaifeng Jews" 5807: 5371: 5037: 4988:(July–September 1962). "Some Notes on the Jewish Inscriptions of K'aifeng". 4886: 4727: 4617: 4554:(1993). "K'aifeng Jews Revisited: Sinification as Affirmation of Identity". 4444: 4367:"Minyan in Kaifeng: A Modern Journey to an Ancient Chinese Jewish Community" 2681:

never experienced anti-Semitism, making them unique among the world's Jews."

1932: 1151:

were acclimatized to the respective Chinese customs, though the text of the

929: 343: 300: 296: 272: 5542: 5114:; Pollak, Michael (1998). "The Fink/Liebermann Visit to the Kaifeng Jews". 4219:

The Jewish People and Their Place in History - The Jews of China and Harbin

536:) of the community. This last term probably is a phonetic rendering of the 6101: 5342: 299:, or whether they travelled inland after they reached coastal cities like 200:

The distinctive customary life of the Kaifeng community slowly eroded, as

5978:(in Chinese). Vol. 44. Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association. 4346: 2496: 1856: 1688: 1667: 1578: 1571: 1325: 1198:

The existence of Jews in China was unknown to Europeans until 1605, when

1128: 1116: 1096: 953: 949: 940: 360: 352: 335: 323: 304: 5423:

China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610

5350: 5244: 5186: 5155: 5129: 4577: 4166:

Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400–1800: The Rise of Consumerism

1973:. Technically, Judeo-Persian is a form of the Persian language which is 318:

With regard to this first wave, among the vast trove of documents which

5489: 5291: 5045: 4815: 4745: 4412:

Chen, Yuan (1981). "Study of the Israelite Religion". In Wu, Z. (ed.).

2401: 1940: 1882: 1840: 1817: 1813: 1809: 1733: 1729: 1714: 1355: 1317: 1261: 1152: 1120: 1104: 1079: 969: 677: 565: 205: 182: 104: 6124: 5011: 2260:"This fits the Chinese pronunciation far better – the Hebrew gutteral 1939:

to Chang'an, whose re-opening coincided with the establishment of the

291:

origin. Uncertainty persists as to whether they came overland through

6016: