Group from Asia Minor Came in 11th Century, Persisted 700 Years (Jewish Daily Bulletin)
An authentic and complete description of the Jewish colony which came to China in the eleventh century and persisted for 700 years, although completely cut off from their own people, has been presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of China by Dr. D. MacGillivray, who has spent years of research into the subject, a despatch from the Shanghai correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor,” states. The colony was not completely submerged until the beginning of the twentieth century, when all records were sold to the highest bidder.
Dr. MacGillivray has pieced together a remarkable story from the written records of the colony, preserved on stone tablets and in manuscripts. The group consisted of 70 families, which were driven out of Asia Minor, and followed the trans-Asiatic highway, then in existence, to China. They were welcomed at the border, and proceeded to Kaifeng, in Honan Province, which was then the capital of the Sung dynasty. Here they built a synagogue, on the banks of the Yellow River, and set up a community entirely distinct from the Chinese which surrounded them. They prospered, intermarried with the Chinese, but still retained their faith and racial characteristics.
Europe obtained its first news of the colony through a Catholic priest, Father Matteo Picci, who came to Peking early in the fifteenth century. A young Jew from Kaifeng had been successful in the district civil service examinations, and had come to Peking to compete in the finals. He heard that foreigners were in the city, and called upon Father Picci, telling him of the colony which had existed at that time for almost 400 years in Kaifeng, having had no intercourse with the outside world. The young man was intensely interested in hearing of his own people. He was unable to read Hebrew, but was familiar with early Jewish history.
The synagogue was destroyed several times by floods and fire, but was always rebuilt, and was discovered by foreign visitors to Kaifeng in 1850. However, in 1866, a Christian missionary who visited the place found only a few stones remaining.
In 1901 a wealthy Jewish merchant in Shanghai attempted to revive the colony’s interest in Judaism, and offered to rebuild the synagogue, but his offer was refused. Members of the colony admitted that they no longer were familiar with the Jewish religion or cultural background, and had been almost entirely absorbed by the Chinese. At the present time they are hardly distinguishable from their Chinese neighbors. For at least a century their women have bound their feet and they have worshipped their ancestors in the Chinese fashion.
“As in the case of the Nestorian colony in China,” writes Dr. MacGillivray, “the middle wall of the partition between them and the Chinese wore thin and finally collapsed.”
This scholar’s researches have been chiefly concerned with the methods by which the Chinese gradually absorbed the colony. He says that Chinese and Jewish customs have much in common, and this bond assisted to bridge the differences between them. The material advantages of conformity also were very great, and the wonder lies in the fact that the Jewish colony remained a separate community for so long.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
