The Jews of Kaifeng

by Michael Pollack

Introduction: The Sect that Plucks Out the Sinews

During the 166 years beginning in 960 C.E., China was ruled by the emperors of the Song Dynasty from their capital at Kaifeng, a bustling metropolis straddling the legendary Silk Road that linked their sprawling domain to its trading partners in the West. And it was sometime during this period that a band of wandering Jews-probably merchants (or perhaps refugees) of Persian birth or descent passed through the gates of the city and was granted an audience in the imperial palace. The emperor graciously accepted the tribute of cotton goods they had brought to him, saying, "You have come to our China. Respect and preserve the customs of your ancestors, and hand them down here in Pien-liang [Kaifeng]."

Centuries later, in 1489, the grateful descendants of these newcomers inscribed the emperor's words (or, at any rate, what were purported to have been his words) on a stone tablet which they placed in the courtyard of the resplendent synagogue their more immediate forebears had constructed in the year 1163 at the intersection of Kaifeng's Earth Market and Fire God Streets. This monument is now among the holdings of the municipal museum of Kaifeng.

To this day, several hundred residents of the old Song capital continue to think of themselves as bona fide members of the House of Israel. They hold firm to this belief despite the fact that their features are indistinguishable from those of their neighbors, they have had no rabbi for the better part of two centuries, no synagogue or other communal organization for several generations, and remember virtually nothing of the faith and traditions of their ancestors. Quite surprisingly, the street on which many them now live bears a sign that was erected somewhat less than a hundred years ago and whose Chinese characters read "The Lane of the Sect that Teaches the Scriptures." However, it is exceedingly rare, one would suppose, that a passerby is moved to ask how and why a small street in the middle of China came to bear so unusual a name.

The Jewish community (Heb.: kehillah) of Kaifeng, which seems never to have had more than a thousand or two members, has attracted far greater interest throughout the past few hundred years than its meager size would appear to warrant. However, this interest is fully justified, for the bittersweet saga of that tiny segment of Israel whose destiny it was to be hidden away for a millennium or so in one of the most improbable of diasporic sanctuaries, has a good deal to teach us about the survival and disintegration of Jewish communities. For this reason, and also because of the curious role it was unwittingly made to play in certain pivotal European theological matters, the story of Kaifeng Jewry deserves to be told and retold.