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Kaifeng JewsKaifeng Jews comprise the best documented Jewish community in China. Although their profile was low among the Chinese, they attracted interest from European visitors, who were curious about this most remote outpost of Jewish culture. History According to historical records, a Jewish community with a synagogue existed from the 12th (Song Dynasty) until the middle of the 19th century in the old city of Kaifeng in Henan Province, China. It is surmised that the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews came from Central Asia. The uninterrupted existence of this religious and ethnic group, lasting for more than 700 years in totally different socio-cultural surroundings strongly dominated by Confucian moral and ethical principles, is a unique phenomenon, not only in Chinese history, but also in the thousands of years of Jewish civilisation. Besides its long history, the Kaifeng Jewish community had another conspicuous feature: Although existing almost in isolation and without any contacts with the Jewish diaspora outside China, it still managed to keep alive Jewish traditions and customs for hundreds of years. However, although it experienced neither discrimination nor persecution on the part of the Chinese, a process of gradual assimilation went on. Up to the 17th century, the assimilation of the Kaifeng Jews intensified and escalated. It resulted in changes in Jewish religious and ritual customs, social and language traditions, as well as intermarriage between Jews and other ethnic groups, such as the Han Chinese and the Hui and Manchu minorities in China. In the 1860s, the Jewish synagogue in Kaifeng collapsed because it had long been in disrepair. As a consequence, Jewish religious life, together with the Jewish identity in the community, came to an end. Kaifeng Jews today The existence of the Jews in China was unknown to the rest of the world until Matteo Ricci met a Jew from the Kaifeng community by accident at the beginning of the 16th Century. It was then that European research on the Jews in Kaifeng began, mostly carried out by European missionaries. However, the Jews in China remained almost unknown to Chinese society until the beginning of the 20th century, although they had existed in the country for over 700 years. Together with the growing interest in Western cultures among Chinese intellectuals during this time, the presence of the Jews, and Judaism, began to be realized by scholars in China. This subject had gradually developed into an independent field of research by the time the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. Due to the poor conditions for research on religions owing to the political atmosphere in the country, research on the Jews and Judaism in China came to a standstill until the beginning of the 1980s, when political and economic reforms started. The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Israel in 1992 accelerated the research work by Chinese scientists in this field. Research on the Jews in China gained new attention around the world through the reappraisal of the experiences of around 25,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the Nazi period. In recent years, research into the history and culture of the Kaifeng Jews has been carried out not only in China, but in other countries as well. Increasing academic interest in related subjects is also expected in the future. In appearance, the Kaifeng Jews were indistinguishable from their non-Jewish neighbors. External links
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