Integrity and Serenity: Two Jews from Kaifeng

By Wendy Elliman

Shi Lei's family name is Chinese for 'stone,' and he's thinking of choosing Evven, the Hebrew for stone, as his family name in Israel. He's not yet decided what to do about his first name -- 'Lei,' which means Integrity -- but, after all, it's in 'Shi' that his identity and history are cradled.

"I've known I'm Jewish for as long as I can remember," says Shi Lei (pron. Sherr-Lay), who was born in Kaifeng 26 years ago, and whose skin, hair, features and build are all classically Chinese. "I heard it from my father and my grandfather since I was a child. It's part of who I am. But no, I didn't know any more than that. I didn't know Jewish history or thought, Jewish laws, customs or traditions. I'd never heard of Seder night or Yom Kippur or opened a Tanach. I knew only that I'm a Jew."

The passion of the emotional bond, however, persists. In July 2000, when an American rabbi, whom Shi Lei had met only days before, suggested he spend a year in Israel studying his heritage, the young man's answer was an instantaneous, 'Yes.'"

"I was leading a group of American Jews on a study tour of Jewish communities in Japan and China," says Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, Chief Rabbi of Tokyo for many years before retiring to Great Neck, NY. "Shi Lei, a Kaifeng Jewish descendant and college graduate with fluent English, had been referred to us as our Kaifeng guide. From the first evening we met, he had question after question about Judaism, Jewish history and his ancestry. I asked him if he'd be willing to spend a year in Israel, experiencing the Jewish calendar, studying Judaism and learning Hebrew. Not only he, but also his father, agreed at once, tears blurring their eyes."

Shi Lei left shortly afterward -- traveling 15 hours by rail from Kaifeng, on the south bank of China's Yellow River, to Beijing and, from there, a further 14 hours by air to Tel Aviv. "I wasn't afraid to go so far," he says. "Israel is the land of my ancestors. I was going home."

Shi Lei, who has followed up a one-year Jewish Studies program at Bar Ilan University with two years at the Machon Meir Yeshiva in Jerusalem and wears a kippa on his head, is not the only Kaifeng Jewish descendant to come home. Four years ago, Jin Guang-Yuan, his wife, Zhan Jin Ling, and their daughter, Jin Wen-Jing, made a similar journey.

"There were people helping Jews from Russia go to Israel," says Jin Guang-Yuan, 48, a former furnace foreman, who now calls himself Shlomo. "They decided to look for Chinese Jews who wanted to go home, as well. They came to Kaifeng. When they asked me if I wanted to go to Israel, I said, 'Of course.' I'm Jewish. Even my Chinese papers list me as Youtai [Jew]. I'd always wanted to live in Israel. In Kaifeng, there is no Shabbat and we are not allowed to pray as Jews."

The decision to leave Kaifeng was harder for Shlomo's wife, Zhan Jin Ling, 45, who is not Jewish but Han (ethnic Chinese). "Of course I knew Guang-Jan was descended from Jews," she says. "Even before we married, I knew that. It didn't matter to me. But I hesitated when he said we should move to Israel. I agreed to go in order to keep our family together."

Their daughter, Wen-Jing, 16 when the family came to Israel, was enrolled at the Yemin Orde Youth Aliyah school near Haifa. This past June she not only matriculated high school but also appeared before a Haifa bet din (rabbinical court), which approved her conversion to Judaism. Taking the Hebrew name, Shalva (Serenity), a translation of Wen-Jing, Shalva Jin is the first descendant of the ancient Kaifeng Jewish community to return formally to Judaism.

"I didn't want to go through conversion because I've always thought of myself as Jewish," she says in faintly accented Hebrew. "But according to halacha, I had no choice. God chose the Jewish people to be his nation, and I wanted to be accepted as part of it."

Shalva Jin, Shi Lei and the other Kaifeng Jewish descendants know from their family names and traditions that an unbroken Jewish line on their paternal side stretches back 1,000 years to when a group of Persian Jews traveled the legendary Silk Road to the then-bustling metropolis of Kaifeng, capital of the ruling Song Dynasty, and to what was to prove a welcome and comfortable home. Brought before the Emperor, the travelers offered him cotton goods. He accepted the tribute, saying, "You have come to our China. Respect and preserve the customs of your ancestors, and hand them down."

And hand them down they did, but in the Chinese style where personal status patrilineal. With Chinese wives adopting the faith of their husbands, the men (such as Shlomo Jin) were permitted to marry outside the faith.

"The importance of ancestry and loyalty to ancestors in China is key to Jewish survival in Kaifeng, far outweighing intermarriage, ignorance of Jewish religion and the loss of community," says Rabbi Tokayer. "Unfortunately, however, there is a halachic problem. In Jewish law, personal status is matrilineal, and however clear the Jewish origins of the Kaifeng community and however strongly Kaifeng's Jewish descendants feel their Jewishness, they are not recognized as Jews under Jewish law.

While the halachic difficulty is undeniable, it is neither insurmountable nor unprecedented, according to Michael Freund, director of Amishav, and grandson of Hadassah's Miriam Freund-Rosenthal. Amishav (literally, My People Returns) is a 30-year-old organization, which reaches out to those with Jewish roots or ancestry who want to reclaim their Jewishness.

"Returning Jews aren't a new phenomenon in Jewish history," says Freund. "There have always been persecutions and forcible conversions and Jews torn away from their faith. Over the years, procedures have been developed for those who want to return."

He cites the Marranos who arrived in 16th century Amsterdam 150 years after the height of the Spanish Inquisition, asking to reclaim their Jewishness. "A halachic mechanism was created to receive them," he says. "We're currently researching Jewish sources and halachic approaches for a model within halacha to be used today for this 'seed of Israel' ? who include not only the Kaifeng Jewish descendants, but also crypto-Jews from Spain, Portugal and South America and the apparent descendants of the Lost Tribes. Our aim is that when someone of Jewish descent wants to return, there's both room for them and a certain halachic leniency in the conversion process."

Amishav, regarded with rabbinical suspicion when founded by Rabbi Eliyahu Avihail in 1975 in his Jerusalem apartment, has since gained respectability and is now headquartered within Israel's Chief Rabbinate building. It was in Rabbi Avihail's apartment -- now returned to solely domestic use -- that Freund first met Shi Lei.

"I'd just finished a novel about the Kaifeng Jewish community ? Peony by Pearl S. Buck," he says. "And suddenly there was Shi Lei, looking as if he's stepped straight out of its pages!"

The meeting with Shi Lei and through him, Shlomo Jin and his family, has led to growing Amishav involvement with the Kaifeng Jewish community's descendants. The organization is helping guide the Jins toward conversion through Israel's less-than-user-friendly bureaucracy and has translated into Chinese Rabbi Avihail's summary of Jewish philosophy and practice. Further plans include helping furnish a Jewish library at Nanjing University; creating a college scholarship/Jewish Studies program within China for Kaifeng's economically struggling Jewish descendants; and helping Kaifeng's Jewish descendants come to Israel to study Hebrew, Judaism and Jewish history.

"This outreach attempts to correct a historical injustice," says Freund. The Kaifeng community, staggering under repeated natural, military and economic catastrophes, and weakened by intermarriage and acculturation, appealed to world Jewry early last century to help them survive as Jews. Overwhelmed by the refugee crisis of World War I, however, their plea went unheeded.

"Now that we have a chance to remedy the past, we must do so and do so on their terms," says Freund. "Maybe all they want is knowledge about the ancestry they've honored against great odds. Maybe the majority aren't interested in converting."

This, of course, is the key question. Is there a Jewish awakening among the Kaifeng Jewish descendants, a spark waiting to be rekindled, or is their yearning for knowledge no more than curiosity?

Xu Xin, Professor of the History of Jewish Culture and President of Nanjing University's School of Foreign Studies, has no doubt. A former Cultural Revolution Red Guard, who is an expert on Jewish literature and the Kaifeng Jewish community, he lists five factors that he believes constitute a Jewish awakening.

"First, Jewish tradition has always remained strong among the Kaifeng Jewish descendants," he says. "Second, China's open-door policy has enabled Jews from the outside to visit them. Some have brought or sent Jewish religious articles and Chinese-language books about Judaism. Others have performed Friday night and Sabbath morning services for the Kaifeng Jewish descendants. All this has generated new Jewish interest among them.

"Third, the descendants now have greater opportunity to learn about Jews and Jewish history, which gives them increased reason to return to their traditions. Fourth, an increasing number of Chinese scholars are writing about Judaism and studying the Kaifeng community, making the descendants more keenly aware of their past. And fifth, the descendants themselves are becoming more active and initiating contacts with other descendants inside Kaifeng and with Jews from outside."

Michael Freund, however, sounds a note of caution. "It's easy to get swept away by the drama of the Kaifeng story," he says. "As yet, there's no clear evidence of a general awakening."

Do Shi Lei and the Jin family see themselves as exceptional in their return to Judaism?

"No, there are many like us," says Shlomo Jin. "Once they see me get Israeli citizenship, others will follow."

"It's hard for them to come to Israel and study like I did, because the Kaifeng community has very little money," says Shi Lei. "But the desire is there."

Shi Lei and the Jins all look ahead to an influx of Kaifeng Jewish descendants into Israel. With his fluent Chinese and English, Shi Lei hopes to help them find a voice in the Jewish world. Shalva Jin, who speaks Chinese and Hebrew, and has navigated four years through an Israeli high school, sees herself helping Kaifeng's Jewish descendants settle into Israel.

As far as they're concerned, their 1,000 years in China was simply an extended stay away from the land that is their true home.