Notes on the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng

Abstract

EviaR SINCE A CHINESE JEW from laifeng paid a visit to Matteo Ricci in Peking in 1605 interest in that orphan colony has continued for some three hundred sixty years. two bibliographies compiled by Rudolph L6wenthal, namely, The Jews in China: an annotated bibliography, (CSPSR, 1940) and The early Jews in China: a supplementary bibliography (Folklore Studies, 1946), list as many as three hundred fifty items and more. Few of them, however, offer any real contribution. Only four or five works contain the results of serious research on the basic source materials, especially four Chinese inscriptions of 1489, 1512, 1663, and 1679, cut on stone monuments that once stood in the courtyard of the synagogue in Kaifeng, and a Chinese-Hebrew manuscript of names. most comprehensive work to date is William C. White's Chinese Jews (Toronto, 1942, in 3 parts), which contains the original text as well as an annotated translation of each of these documents. White consulted all the important earlier works, particularly the French translation of the first three of the inscriptions by Jerome Tobar in the latter's Inscriptions juives de K'aifong-fou (Shanghai, 1900 and 1912). Of the four inscriptions the first one dated 1489 and captioned Ch'ung-chien ch'ing-chen-ssu chia (Commemoration of the Restoration of the Synagogue) is of primary importance because it is the only source of information on the early history of the Jewish community in Kaifeng. It tells the story about the arrival of a group of Jewish merchants who were ordered to settle at Kaifeng, then capital of the Northern Sung dynasty (960-1124) and a thriving center of trade and transportation. Concerning the synagogue the inscription records how it was first erected in 1163, rebuilt in 1279, restored in 1421, and enlarged in the years 1461 to 1489. years 1163 and 1279 happen to be two milestones marking low points in the history of the Chinese people. In the former year the Jurchen Chin dynasty moved its capital to Kaifeng and in the latter the last Sung emperor was drowned, ending the Chinese resistance to the Mongols. That the Jews showed their prosperity by building or rebuilding their synagogue in precisely these two years may be coincidental, and to read any significance into the matter is entirely speculative. account about the 1421 restoration of the synagogue is what concerns us in this paper. restoration marked the beginning of a period of three hundred years of prosperity for the Jewish community. It all started with the sudden rise of one Jew into the official-gentry society in that year. Unfortunately the passage in the inscription about this dramatic story was written in a cryptic way and contained an error in sequence; these together misled the translators into making incorrect interpretations and drawing erroneous conclusions. passage in questionb appears in columns 1821 of the inscription (White, II, plates 9 and 10, p. 37; Tobar, p. 47). White translated it as follows: