24 Facts About Kaifeng Jews

Kaifeng Jews are members of a small community of descendants of Chinese Jews in Kaifeng, in the Henan province of China.

Chinese documents on Kaifeng Jews are rare compared to the voluminous records of other peoples.

Two Chinese scholars have argued that the Kaifeng Jews went to China in 998, because the Song History records that in the year 998, a monk named Ni-wei-ni and others had spent seven years traveling from India to China in order to pay homage to the Song Emperor Zhenzong.

The inscription states that the Kaifeng Jews came to China from Tianzhu, a Han-Song term for India.

Irene Eber, 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 Song-Jin alliance broke down.

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Yu's Yuan-entry theory claims that the Kaifeng Jews entered China together with the Muslim Hui-hui people during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty.

The Kaifeng Jews themselves were defined as a Hui people, due to similarities between Jewish and Islamic traditions.

Jewish written sources do not mention how the Jews arrived in Kaifeng, though a legend says that they arrived by land on the Silk Road.

When Kaifeng Jews introduced themselves to the Jesuits in 1605, they called themselves members of the house of 'Israel' The Jesuits noted that a Chinese exonym labelled them as Tiao jin jiao, 'the sect that plucks the sinews' .

Ai said that many other Jews resided in Kaifeng; they had a splendid synagogue, and possessed a great number of written materials and books.

About three years after Ai's visit, Ricci sent a Chinese Jesuit lay brother to visit Kaifeng Jews; 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 Pentateuch known to Europeans, except that they did not use Hebrew diacritics .

When Ricci wrote to the "ruler of the synagogue" in Kaifeng, telling him that the Messiah the Jews were waiting for had come already, the wrote back, saying that the Messiah would not come for another ten thousand years.

Shanghai's Baghdadi community made attempts to assist Kaifeng Jews in returning to Judaism, accepting them, despite their pure Chinese features, as co-religionists.

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.

Kaifeng Jews are not recognized as a minority among the 55 ethnic groups which have been granted this official status in China.

The Portland Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, 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 Kaifeng community to be reconverted back to the religion of her ancestors.

Kaifeng Jews's 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 Islamic believers.

Elazar opines that, over the ensuing decades, Western Kaifeng Jews will manage to encourage the growth of Chinese Kaifeng Jews among the descendant population The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Israel in 1992 rekindled interest in Judaism and the Jewish experience.

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

Advocates for the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews are 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.

Kaifeng Jews's 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.

In China, Kaifeng Jews were not subjected to violence and persecution, not demonized as God killers.

Kaifeng Jews eventually marries a high-class Chinese woman, to the consternation of his mother, who is proud of her unmixed heritage.

Kaifeng Jews mentioned that there are still Jews in Kaifeng today, but they are reluctant to reveal themselves "in the current political climate".