Kaifeng Jews

China’s lost tribe

[caption id="attachment_7962" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Jin Guangtong reads from the scriptures at his home in Kaifeng, Henan Province. Photos: Zhang Xin/GT"][/caption] Guo Yan lives in an old courtyard found along an alley in the ancient city of Kaifeng in Central China's Henan Province. Her place is a...

First person from Israel: Report on Kaifeng Jews from Israeli/American Ilan Yavor

[caption id="attachment_7412" align="alignleft" width="288" caption="Ilan Yavor (second from left) with his class of Chinese students in Israel"][/caption] As I was growing up in the largely Ashkenazic Jewish community in Milwaukee, I rarely met someone whose native tongue wasn’t Yiddish, English, or Hebrew. It was only after I made aliyah more than 12 years ago that I began grasping how diverse the Jewish people has become, having incorporated foreign peoples and cultures into its main body. In just over 60 years, the State of Israel has progressed from being a haven for Eastern European ideologues and refugees to being a burgeoning multi-ethnic society, the envy of nations throughout Europe and the Middle East. By the time I began studying for my masters’ degree at Bar-Ilan University, I had grown used to living among Ethiopians, Yemenites, Brazilians, Indians, Russians, and so on. But one Shabbat on campus, I discovered that I hadn’t known the half of it. For sitting in front of me was a young man whose facial features were undeniably East Asian. The young man spoke no Hebrew, but his English was impressive. He proudly informed me that he’s a scion of a once large and prosperous Jewish community from the city of Kaifeng in eastern China. We became friends, and he related the fascinating saga of a group of Persian Jewish traders whose livelihoods had taken them to Kaifeng, which, at the time, was an important trading center in Imperial China. In a land that never knew anti-Semitism, the community quickly flourished. Tragically, however, the community was nearly wiped out by a devastating 19th century earthquake, which claimed the lives of thousands, and reduced the synagogue to rubble. Driven into poverty, the survivors eventually sold off the communal relics, including their Torah scrolls. Assimilation and intermarriage were the last nails in the community’s coffin, and by the beginning of the 20th century, not one individual remained that traditional Judaism would consider a Jew. Were it not for the oral traditions of seven families from the original community, who educated their posterity about their family origins, hundreds of years of Jewish life in China would remain a sparsely documented phenomenon. My young friend — Shi Lei was his name — eventually returned to China, and we lost contact, but he had ignited in me a new passion: to learn more about these long-lost cousins of the Orient.

Chinese Jews and the power of Jewish peoplehood

[caption id="attachment_5387" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Kaifeng Jews (with Eran Barzilay in back)"][/caption] When December's devastating fire ravished Israel's Carmel mountain range, the Jewish community in Kaifeng, China was distraught. Without most of the community ever having visited Israel, let alone the country's lush north, the Jews of Kaifeng nevertheless felt strongly that they needed to help in whatever way they could. With the assistance of Eran Barzilay, a young Israeli who has been studying Chinese at Henan University in Kaifeng for the past year, the community decided to make a donation to the Yemin Orde Youth Village, which was at the epicenter of the fire. Yemin Orde was home to more than 500 children from 20 countries, ranging in age from 5 to 19-years-old. Reconstruction efforts are already underway, but school officials estimate it will take nearly two years to rebuild the entire village. A video of the school and its destruction can be found on its website here.