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Arab
and European travelers, including Marco Polo in the thirteenth century,
wrote of meeting Jews or hearing about them during their travels in the
Middle Kingdom, as China was then called. Polo records that Kublai Khan
himself celebrated the festivals of Muslims, Christians and Jews alike,
bespeaking the existence of Jews in sufficient numbers in China to warrant
attention by its rulers.
It was not until the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci was called upon by Ai
Tian, a Kaifeng Jew, in 1605, that the existence of this mysterious community
come to the attention of the West. Ai had heard that there were China Westerners
who steadfastly maintained their belief in one God, but who were not Muslims.
What else could they be, thought Ai having never heard of Christianity but
Jews?
The Jesuits who visited Kaifeng during the eighteenth century were intent
on befriending Chinese Jews and studying their holy writings. They were
motivated by a prevailing belief in Europe that the rabbis of the Talmudic
era had excised from the Torah certain passages which spoke in specific
terms of the coming of Jesus. If only they could find the Torah of the Chinese
Jews, who knew nothing of Christianity, they reasoned, they would be able
to locate these deleted passages. They hoped to bring back an unedited Torah
to prove to Western Jews that their rabbis had deceived them-and they envisioned
mass conversion to Christianity as a result.
Needless to say, the Jesuits did not find what they were looking for. They
did, however, write letters to Beijing and to Rome, which have become a
part of the Vatican archives. In these letters, they described the daily
life and religious observances of the Chinese Jews, noting the great pride
and care with which they maintained their synagogue. Jean Domenge, a Jesuit
who visited the Chinese Jews in 1722, drew sketches of the interior and
exterior of the synagogue, illustrating the degree of assimilation that
had occurred among Chinese Jews by this time.
Set in a typical Chinese courtyard structure, with many pavilions dedicated
to ancestors and illustrious men of Jewish history, the synagogue (called
the Temple of Purity and Truth, a name common to mosques as well) had a
separate hall for the ritual slaughter of animals. Inside on a front table
were incense sticks burned in honor of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob.
On the Sabbath, the Jews read from the Torah, only after it was placed on
a special "chair of Moses. " Above this chair loomed a great tablet with
gold Chinese letters proclaiming, "Long live the great Qing [dynasty] Emperor"
a requirement for Muslim, Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist temples as well
until the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911. The Chinese Jews,
however, added Hebrew characters above the proclamation, which the non-Jews
could not understand: This was the Shema, the Jewish statement of faith,
and it was put above the Chinese characters so that the Jews and God alone
knew that He was the highest of all.
The Jesuits sent back rubbings of the two steles, or stone monuments, which
had been erected in the courtyard of the synagogue compound. The earliest
inscription on one of the steles, dating to 1489, tells of the history and
religious beliefs of the Jews. The stele points to the year 1421, when the
emperor conferred upon An Ch'eng, a Jewish physician, the surname Zhao,
as the turning point for the acceptance of the Jews into Chinese society.
From that time on, Chinese Jews would prove able to pass the civil service
exam and thus be accepted into the mainstream Confucian society far out
of proportion to their small numbers. Local gazetteers from the sixteenth
through the twentieth centuries attest to this.
The 1489 inscription also notes that the first synagogue was erected in
1163, after the Jews were ordered by the emperor to "keep and follow the
customs of your forefathers and settle at Bian liang [Kaifeng]. " The stele
itself was erected to commemorate the reconstruction of the synagogue after
a devastating flood in 1461-one of several which would destroy the synagogue
and many Kaifeng inhabitants over the next few centuries.
An inscription on the back of the 1489 stone, dated 1512, suggests the existence
of established Jewish communities in other parts of China. It records for
posterity the donation of a Torah scroll by a Mr. Gold (Jin) of Hangzhou
to the Kaifeng kehilla. This inscription also attempts to draw parallels
between the basic tenets of Confucianism and Judaism, an effort which needs
little help, since both emphasize the moral basis for conducting one's daily
affairs. The notion of tzedaka (charity), common to Confucianism and Judaism,
is duly noted.
With a ban on preaching and the banishment of missionaries by the Yong Zheng
Emperor in 1724, contact with the Jews came to a halt and would not resume
for over a hundred years. During the intervening century, assimilation took
its toll, as a letter from a Kaifeng Jew to the West, written in the mid
nineteenth century attests: "Morning and night, with tears in our eyes and
with offerings of incenses do we implore that our religion may again flourish.
We have everywhere sought about, but could find none who understood the
letter of the Great Country [Hebrew], and this has occasioned us deep sorrow.
"
The absence of a rabbi and the dilapidated state of the synagogue were prime
reasons for the diminishing confidence of the Jewish community in their
future. Although circumcision and observance of the dietary laws were still
reported, the poverty rampant among the Jews, like that of their Chinese
neighbors, led some to attempt to sell parts of the synagogue building and
even some of their manuscripts. Scrolls of the Law and other Hebrew manuscripts
were in the end sold to Protestant missionaries during the nineteenth century.
Many are now in the Klau library of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati
Some time between 1850 and 1866, the synagogue was destroyed for the last
time. But not until 1900, with the establishment of the Shanghai Society
for the Rescue of the Chinese Jews, was a concerted effort made by Western
Jews to help their brethren in Kaifeng but it was practically too late by
then. Two Jews, a father and son of the Li clan, came to Shanghai at the
behest of the Shanghai Society. They were joined in a later visit by six
other members of the Kaifeng community, who all expressed eagerness for
financial support to rebuild the synagogue that once stood near South Teaching
Scripture Lane.
Shortly after the turn of the century, programs in Russia and the resulting
Jewish emigration diverted the needed funds and attention away from Kaifeng,
and a synagogue for the Kaifeng Jews was no longer considered a priority
for the Shanghai Jewish community, when faced with threatening life-and-death
Jewish crises elsewhere.
The elder Li remained in Shanghai until his death in 1903 and was buried
in the Jewish cemetery there. His son was raised by the family of D.E.J.
Abraham, and when he was circumcised, he was given the name Shmuel. Shmuel
and lived in Shanghai for nearly 50 years, returning after the Second World
War to Kaifeng, where he died. Shmuel's son, who grew up in Shanghai, was
sent to Kaifeng after the Communists came to power in 1949. Shmuel's son,
Li Rongxin (pronounced Rungsheen), lives in Kaifeng today. At 77, he is
healthy and fu11 of stories of Jewish life in Shanghai-of the synagogue
on Museum Road near where the Li family lived, and of the foreign Jews,
mostly from England, with whom he had contact-and of Jewish worship in Kaifeng.
The one small room Li calls home is filled with correspondence from Western
Jews he has met over the years since Kaifeng was opened to tourists. He
has accumulated something of a Judaism library, as they have given him copies
of Haggadas and Hebrew primers. Nevertheless, his knowledge of Jewish law
and custom seems tinged with memories passed down among Chinese Jews- such
as the "fact" that Jews observe the Sabbath in part by fasting. (Interestingly,
the stele from 1489 does state that Jews are to fast on the Sabbath, four
times a month.) |
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