From Kaifeng to Toronto via ROM

by Sheldon Kirshner
excerpted from the Canadian Jewish News, 29/01/04

The rare artifacts of an exotic and extinct Jewish community in Kaifeng, China, are scattered far and wide in museums and universities around the world. "All that's left of this community are these objects," said Sara Irwin, the Far Eastern collection manager at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto.

The ROM has 11 of these prized Chinese Jewish artifacts, which range from a striking lacquered Torah case to a weathered limestone bowl. The remaining items can be found at such far-flung institutions as the Municipal Museum in Kaifeng, Oxford University in Britain, Hebrew Union College, and the New York Public Library in the United States.

The ROM's Chinese Jewish collection - the only one of its kind in Canada - is expected to be showcased at its Asian galleries when they reopen next December. Currently, the artifacts are in storage during the museum's major renovation project. "There is hope that some of the artifacts will be displayed again," Irwin said. "We'll try our level best to have a representation of Kaifeng Jews at the museum."

Bought by Bishop William Charles White, a Canadian Anglican missionary who lived in China from 1897 to 1934 and who died in 1960, they were originally housed in Kaifeng's only synagogue…ROM acquired the artifacts between 1920 and 1931, long after Bishop White purchased them. "This was not tomb robbery," observed Irwin. "These were all commercial transactions, bought and paid for with money." The Jews who sold the artifacts were impoverished, much like China itself during this turbulent era of war, floods and famine.

Bishop White, who had a deep interest in China's history and culture, never forgot his encounters with the Jews of Kaifeng. He wrote a book about them, and in 1942, the University of Toronto published Chinese Jews, now out of print. The ROM's collection of Chinese Jewish artifacts is eclectic. It includes:

• Ink rubbings of a 15th century stone stele [which] commemorate the rebuilding of the synagogue in 1489. The actual stele, which once stood in the courtyard of the synagogue, is in China's possession. According to Irwin, the inscription on the stele is the earliest evidence that the Kaifeng community - "discovered" by the Jesuits in the 17th century - actually existed.
• Gray limestone bowls and a drain mouth, decorated with lotus leaf reliefs, which were used in ceremonial hand-washing. Sandstone basins, with relief figures of vines and lotus flowers, also for hand-washing.
• A black, cloud-shaped slate chime stone, inscribed with four Chinese characters meaning "Jade chime stone of spiritual brightness," which was rung to summon people to prayer.
• A Ming dynasty-era wooden Torah case that is covered with a fine fabric, coated with a few layers of what is now a reddish-brown lacquer, and is gilded.
• Three leaves from the Book of Genesis and a leaf from a new year's prayer, both hand-written in Hebrew on thick Chinese paper.

The ROM displayed these artifacts in a temporary exhibition titled "Precious Legacy" in the early 1980s. During the 1970s, the artifacts were on long-term loan to Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple, and in 1984, they were sent to the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv.