Judaism—China
Chinese of the Jewish faith existed in China from the period of the first millennium. Jews of Kaifeng and Jewish sojourners in Shanghai and Harbin were practically invisible to the people of China. The former assimilated themselves into the Han population; the sojourners were isolated from most Chinese and departed after World War II. The memories of these communities are sharp among their descendants and among many scholars, however.
These scholars tend to agree that cloth traders and dyers using the Judeo-Persian written language migrated to Kaifeng at the end of the tenth century. They had arrived earlier in China overland along the Silk Road from Central and South Asia and by sea, possibly with Muslim traders. They converged on Kaifeng, the capital of the Song dynasty (960–1279), because it was the most important commercial and intellectual center in the country.
Although they built their first synagogue in 1163 and possessed sacred texts, including several Torah scrolls, their isolation from world Jewry, their efforts to conform to Chinese culture and religious practice, and the openness of the Chinese educational and bureaucratic systems to persons of talent led to their absorption. Information about their lives and practices comes from their descendants, but mainly from the writings of seventeenth-century Christian missionaries and Arab, Chinese, and Jewish travelers and inscriptions on stone steles. The Kaifeng Jews probably never accounted for more than two thousand people at any one time.
Beginning in the 1840s, an even smaller community of Arabic-speaking Baghdad Jews arrived in Shanghai and Hong Kong from India in the wake of the British control of Hong Kong and the grant of extraterritorial rights in the five major cities, including Shanghai. Never more than about 700 in number, these Jews enjoyed great influence through trade and real estate holdings. The Sassoon and Kadoorie families and their employees led the Jewish community by offering jobs to coreligionists and supporting the synagogue and educational institutions. With the exception of Silas Aaron Hardoon, an active participant in Chinese culture and politics, the Baghdadis considered themselves temporary visitors, and they departed after World War II.
The last and largest group of Jews, twenty thousand refugees, arrived in Shanghai, where no visas were required, between 1938 and 1942; they included Russians escaping from Japanese-occupied Harbin and Germans, Austrians, and others escaping Nazi terror. After World War II, most of these sojourners departed for Israel and the United States. Today, Jews still live in Hong Kong, and because of trade and diplomatic missions enough Jews reside in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong for the observance of major Jewish holidays.
Further Reading
Goldstein, Jonathan, ed. (1999) The Jews of China: Vol. I— Historical and Comparative Perspective. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
——. (2000) The Jews of China: Vol. II—A Sourcebook and Research Guide. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Liu, Xinru. (1996) Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Pollak, Michael. (1998) Mandarins, Jews, and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire. New York: Weatherhill.
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