Among the Jewish Descendants of Kaifeng

Before I left Kaifeng, I gave a member of one of the jewish families a copy of a Passover Haggadah handwritten in Kaifeng about 350 years ago and also a mezuzah. I was profusely thanked for the "precious book, the Haggadah of Chinese Jews" and "that delicate thing which can be put onto a gatepost." How does one interpret this strong response to my gifts? Does it reflect the desire to know more about one's origins, or is it a polite "thank you"? Or could it reflect a religious spark?

IRWIN M. BERG is an attorney actively engaged in personal injury litigation in New York City. His visit to Kaifeng is part of an interest in branches of Jewish life that have been lost or separated.

FROM ALL THEIR HABITATIONS takes its title from Ezekiel 37:23 and features reports of Jewish religious, intellectual, and communal life in various parts of the world.

NOTES

(1.) Jiang Qjngxiang and Xiao Guoliang, "Glimpses of the Urban Economy and Bianjing (Kaifeng) Capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, 1981," in Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars, edited by Sidney Shapiro (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1984). Jiang and Xiao estimate the population during the Northern Song at one and one-third million (p. 106).

(2.) Michael Pollack, Mandarins, Jews and Missionaries: The Jewish Experience in the Chinese Empire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), pp. 60, 267. Irene Eber, "Kaifeng Jews: The Sinification of Identify," in The Jews of China: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by jonathan Goldstein (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1999). p. 23.

(3.) Xu Xin, Legends of the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng (New Jersey: KTAV Publishing, 1995), p. 4.

(4.) Pollack, Mandarins, pp. 266-267. According to Pollack, "it is generally agreed" that Jews reached Kaifeng between 960 and 1126 G.E. and that they came from Persia or Bokhara. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that Christian scholars favor the sea route followed by an overland march from the coast to Kaifeng. Still, as he farther points out, synagogue inscriptions hint at an Indian homeland, while synagogue liturgical texts point to a Yemenite background.

Wang Yisha, "The Descendants of the Kaifeng Jews," in Jews in Old China, p. 167. Wang thinks it possible that Jews first came to China at the time of the Roman Empire, but that they settled in Kaifeng during the Northern Song (960-1127 C.E.).

Pan Guandan, "Jews in Ancient China: A Historical Survey," in Jews in Old China, pp. 65-84. Pan reports that Kaifeng Jews in 1850 told two Chinese Protestants that they arrived in China during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.), pp. 69-70. Pan believes that the Jews came to Kaifeng from India during the middle or at the end of the eleventh century (p. 92).

Gao Wangzhi, "Concerning Chinese Jews 1983," in Jews in Old China. Gao asserts that many Jews were living in China at the end of the Tang Dynasty (6 18-907 G.E.) and that they also settled in Kaifeng at this time (pp. 118-119). In addition, he believes that there was another large influx in the thirteenth century because of the westward expansion of the Mongols (p. 122).