Judaism, one of the three main monotheistic religions of the world, is also one of the oldest faiths.
The Jewish community has existed and still exists in many countries of the world,
and even in the Far East.
The origin of Jewish people in China is very hard to trace.
Alfred Edersheim, reports in his book "The History of the Jewish Nation",
published in 1856,
that an inscription in the old Jewish temple of the town of Kaifeng
states that the Jewish religion entered China during the Han Dynasty.
However, if that were indeed the case, the isolated practitioners were unable to establish a perennial community.
The first reliable evidence of Jewish people in China dates from the Tang Dynasty,
where Emperors largely tolerated practically any religious practices.
A business letter, written on Chinese paper,
Identified as dating from 718 C.E. was found in a post along the Silk Road.
It was composed in a Judeo-Persian language.
In his reports, Abu Zayd Hasan Ibn Yazid Al-Sirafi,
a ninth century Arab adventurer, describes the massacre of Canton by Huang Chao in 878 C.E.
where, according to him, many foreign merchants, including Jews, were killed.
At the time, the Chinese society had little knowledge of Western religions,
and considered all Abrahamic religions to be different sects of the same religion. They often mistook Jews for Muslims.
It was also in the 9th century that a strong Jewish community was established in China.
Kaifeng, a prosperous town and the Chinese end of the Silk Road, became a place of rest for merchants.
Many foreigners, especially arabs and persians, settled there.
Some were jewish, initiating a long lineage that still exists today.
In 1163 C.E, the town was still thriving, having become the capital city of the Song Dynasty.
The Jewish community founded their first synagogue, of which no trace still exists today.
They gradually assimilated with local ethnic Chinese.
Many explorers from the West noted the presence of Jewish communities in China, such as Marco Polo in the late 13th century,
John of Montecorvino, later to become the first Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing, in the late 14th century,
and Ibn Battuta, a Muslim scholar and world Explorer in the middle of the 14th century.
During his conquests,
Gengis Khan forbade for Muslims and Jews, that he considered to be more or less the same people, from practicing many of their rituals,
Especially regarding food. This law would still be applied after his death when his son Ögedei Khan captured Kaifeng in 1233 C.E.
one of the last steps of defeating the Jurchen-led Jin Dynasty.
The overthrow of the mongol rule by former peasant Zhu Yuanzhang, soon to become the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty,
took place in 1368 C.E.
An Emperor of the Ming Dynasty
declared that Jewish people would be conferred eight family names, as was done to all communities.
Two of them, Shi and Jin, meaning stone and gold, are probably linked with their Western counterparts
Stein and Gold.
Matteo Ricci, perhaps the most influential Christian missionary to China,
reported on the Jewish community. While in Beijing in 1605 a Chinese Jew from Kaifeng,
who had come to the capital to take the Imperial Examination, a necessary test for aspiring civil servants, approached him.
He introduced himself as "Ngai", but his Chinese name was probably Ai Tian, and he was about sixty years old.
He had come to Ricci because while reading about Christianity he had found that they worship the same God.
He told the missionary that about ten families in kaifeng practiced Judaism.
There were also other Jewish communities in other cities like Hangzhou.
Ricci, being a Christian missionary, hoped to convert to the Chinese Jews, and later dispatched another missionary to Kaifeng to investigate.
The man reported that Jewish texts did indeed exists in the Kaifeng synagogue.
A few years later, three other Kaifeng jews including Ai Tian's nephew went to Ricci in Beijing to be baptized.
They informed him that the old rabbi had died, and that his son who had replaced him was quite
"Unlearned in matters pertaining to his faith".
Ricci said the Chinese Jews would probably become extinct.
He was partially right as a Chinese Jewish community,
besides Kaifeng, was indeed declining.
A few years later, another Jesuit priest missionary, named Alvaro Semedo, who had arrived in Nanjing from Portugal in 1630,
was told there by Muslim merchants that the last four Jewish families in Nanjing had converted to Islam.
Three years later, in 1616, Zhao Yingcheng, a Chinese Jew was born in Kaifeng.
He grew up speaking both Chinese and Hebrew, and at 27 years old,
he obtained the Jinshi degree at the Imperial examinations, ranking first.
He became an official, being appointed director of the ministry of justice.
In 1642, Kaifeng was voluntary flooded by the Ming dynasty army,
in an attempt to stop Li Zicheng, the "Dashing King", a rebel leader who would later
overthrow de Ming and established his own short-lived Shun dynasty that lasted for a year.
As a result, the town was destroyed and the Jews emigrated north, taking with them any sacred texts they could save.
Most of them was strongly damaged and became illegible.
About 10 years after these events,
Zhao Yingcheng was determined to restore the city with the help of his brother, Zhao Yingdou, and other Chinese Jews.
They incited the kaifeng Jews to come back to the city and largely financed the reconstruction of the synagogue, rebuilt in 1663.
Some of the sacred scrolls were deciphered and copied on new paper,
With the expertise of Zhao and other scholars proficient in Hebrew and with a good knowledge of Jewish texts.
The Kaifeng jewish community started to decline irrevocably during the Qing dynasty, during the 19th century.
In 1810, the last rabbi died without an heir, as knowledge of Hebrew had not been passed on.
In 1853, the synagogue fell in ruins and was completely destroyed by a flood in 1866.
Thanks to the work of several French priests who sketched it,
we still know what it looked like.
A year after, the first modern Western Jews to visit Kaifeng, Aaron Halevi Fink and
J.L. Liebermann, a Viennese merchant,
reported that the Chinese Jews in Kaifeng still had their own cemetery and kept on some practices.
In the early 20th century,
Shanghai became a strong area of Western influence
Please don't hesitate to go and watch my video on that subject (links in the description),
many Jewish traders settled there and developed businesses.
Most of them were German and Russian but French, Austrian and Italian Jews also went off to Shanghai, and other concessions such as Tianjin.
With the repression of Jewish people in Europe during the Second World War,
many moved away and came to China, as the country did not impose visas on them.
In 1940, there are about 36,000 Jewish people in China. The Jewish Diaspora settle in two main areas :
Shanghai and Hong Kong if they came from Europe or the Middle East, and Harbin if they came from Russia.
Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese Republic, held strong admiration for the Jewish people,
often comparing their struggles of China's against Western powers.
It is estimated that in the hundred years between 1845, date around which the Western powers started colonizing China,
and 1945, end of the Japanese invasion, more than 40,000 Jewish people went to China for work and security.
After World War two, most of them returned to the west or went to Israel.
Today synagogues still exist in Shanghai where about 2,000 to 3,000 Jewish people remain,
and Hong Kong, with about 5,000 Jewish people.
There are also about 1,500 to 2,000 Jewish people in Beijing today.
Concerning Taiwan, about 300 Jewish people live on the island.
Rabbi Ephraim Einhorn its only rabbi, arrived there in 1975.
As for Kaifeng, a census estimated the Jewish population to be about 500 people,
out of which 40 to 50 people still practice their religion today.
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