The Kaifeng Community: China's Native Jews Reborn
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Kathryn Fitzsimmons
College:
The College of Health Professions and Human Services
Major:
Holocaust and Genovide Studies
Faculty Research Advisor(s):
Adara Goldberg
Abstract:
Although Jewish communities have existed around the world for centuries, the Kaifeng Jewish community of China is not widely known about. A native Jewish community has lived in Kaifeng , located in China's Henan province for over 1,000 years. The Kaifeng Jews are the oldest Jewish community in China.
Originally isolated from other Jewish communities more by geographic distance rather than anti-semitic prohibitions on their lives, very few people outside of China knew of their existence until about 1605, when an Italian Jesuit priest met Kaifeng Jew when both were visiting Beijing.
At the community's peak in the 1600s, there were about 5,000 community
members. As a result of assimilation, there are about 100 members today.
Today some Kaifeng Jews have discreetly recovered their lost Jewish cultural identities. There is nothing close to a formal organized Jewish religious community in Kaifeng today.
Questions:
1. Who were the Kaifeng Jews?
2. Despite living in China, a country with little to non-existent history of anti-semitism, how did the Jewish tradition of the Kaifeng Jews fade away?
3. As many descendants of the Kaifeng Jews are recapturing their Jewish heritage, how does it differ from the origins of the community?
4. In present day Communist China, what is the state of relations with the Kaifeng Jews and the Chinese government?