Judaism in China

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Synagogue of Kaifeng
drawing by Jean Domenge , 1722

The Jews of China ( Chinese  中國 猶太人  /  中国 犹太人 , Pinyin Zhōngguó yóutàirén ) are a minority of about 2500 people. Due to different historical roots, ethnic mixing with Han Chinese and assimilatory tendencies , they do not form a homogeneous group. They are not officially recognized as an independent " nationality " by the People's Republic of China or the Republic of China (Taiwan) .

history

Kaifeng

Jews in Kaifeng, ca.1907
David Sassoon (1792–1864)
Contemporary daguerreotype
Military rabbis hold a church service in China. 1945

The first Jews probably came in the 8th – 9th centuries. Century as a trader on the Silk Road to China . Proof of this is provided by a paper with a Selicha prayer found in the caravan city of Dunhuang . Permanent Jewish settlements are first documented in the early 12th century in the city of Kaifeng , where the first synagogue was built in 1136 . There were other larger settlements in Yangzhou , Ningbo and Ningxia .

Originally, the Jews of China attached great importance to the preservation of their cultural heritage. Nevertheless, many of them lived in polygamy according to local customs and took Chinese concubines alongside a Jewish chief wife; this promoted ethnic mixing with the autochthonous population and cultural assimilation. Since the Ming dynasty , ties to the Jewish community - following the Chinese model - have been linked to one's own "household family". When the Jewish community of Kaifeng was "discovered" by the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci in 1605 , he could hardly distinguish the Kaifeng Jews from the Han Chinese. The Kaifeng synagogue, which was destroyed several times by fires and floods, was in operation until 1851, the last rabbi died in 1810. The Kaifeng community reached its highest membership in the middle of the 19th century with around 2000 people.

"Baghdad Jews"

Judaism in China experienced a revival after the First Opium War . After the British had forced the opening of Chinese ports for overseas trade in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, Iraqi Jews came with the foreign merchants , who settled in Shanghai in particular . Some families like the Sassoon , the Hardoon and the Kadoorie made great fortunes with the opium trade and later with real estate , banking , transport and construction , but their activities also contributed to the growth and development of the former provincial city of Shanghai into one of the leading financial centers of the Far East.

In 1901/02 the Sassoon family built the Ohel Lea Synagogue in Hong Kong . In 1909 the Kadoorie expanded it to include an affiliated Jewish club. In the same year two more Jewish places of worship were built in Shanghai, the Shearith Israel and the Beth El synagogues . In 1920 the Ohel-Rachel and the Beit-Aharon synagogues were added. Unlike the Jews in Kaifeng, the “Baghdad Jews” residing in Shanghai did not assimilate to the Chinese culture, but rather isolated themselves from the Chinese population, similar to the European immigrants. Zionist currents hardly gained ground in the relatively small Shanghai community with around 1,000 members, not least because of their prosperity and their prominent social position.

This epoch was impressively described by Egon Erwin Kisch in his report Capitalist Romance from the Baghdad Jews in the China Secret Collection ! from 1932.

Russian community

At the beginning of the 20th century, Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and the Soviet Union also immigrated to China . Some of them fled the October Revolution , others left their country out of economic hardship. By 1940 this group had grown to around 8,000 people. After the Russian community known as Ohel Mosche had initially enjoyed hospitality in the Shearith Israel Synagogue in Shanghai, it built its own house of worship in the French concession in 1941 , in the vicinity of which a lively Russian-Jewish cultural life developed; Among other things, a Zionist-oriented weekly newspaper with the title Nascha Shisn ( Наша жизнь - "Our Life") was published. Similar to the "Baghdad Jews", the Russian Jews limited their contact with the Chinese population to the bare minimum. From the Russian community in Harbin , the doctor and Zionist activist came Abraham Kaufman , who in World War II entered a collaboration with the Japanese, in turn, Jews for their Fugu Plan tried to win.

Refugees from National Socialist persecution

A fourth wave of Jewish immigration to China followed after 1933, especially after the November pogroms in 1938 , when numerous European Jews fled the National Socialist sphere of influence. Unlike the Jews who immigrated to China in earlier years, most of them had no intention of settling permanently in China. They viewed the country as a transit station on their journey to the USA or to Palestine . They were supported among others by the Dutch organization Gildemeester, which operates from Vienna .

While a minority of the refugees in Shanghai were able to work as small traders, café operators, teachers or journalists, most of them were unable to achieve economic integration. They were therefore dependent on the support services of the Baghdad and the Russian community as well as aid organizations such as the Joint Distribution Committee . Most of them lived in overcrowded asylums with insufficient food and poor hygienic conditions. In 1941, when Shanghai was under Japanese occupation, the total number of Jewish refugees was estimated at 5,000. After the outbreak of the Pacific War and the occupation of Shanghai by the Japanese , the economic situation of the refugees in the Shanghai ghetto deteriorated , the number of which had now risen to 20,000 . The hoped-for onward journey had become almost impossible and was delayed until the end of the war in 1945.

population

In the first half of the 20th century, small Jewish communities existed in Hailar and Manjur ( Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region ), Harbin ( Heilongjiang Province ), Dalian and Shenyang ( Liaoning Province ), Beijing , Tianjin and Qingdao ( Shandong Province ) .

In the mid-1980s, 638 (750 in 2000) descendants of the Jews of Kaifeng were counted. There are also 1200 to 1300 Jews of other origins. Of the 638 Jews in the 1980s, 348 lived in Kaifeng; another 290 people were distributed over 50 cities and counties across China. Individual Jewish citizens of other origins from China live in Shanghai, Beijing, and possibly Harbin and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . About 1,000 Jews live in Hong Kong , most of them permanent residents . They come from over 20 countries. How many of them acquired Chinese citizenship after 1997 is not known. Like the small Jewish community in Taipei , which consists of 40 to 50 families, the Hong Kong community belongs to the Asia-Pacific Jewish Association (based in Australia ). Most of the Jews in Taipei are stateless and naturalized from the United States , Israel, and Europe .

language

The descendants of Kaifeng's Jews speak Chinese. Even among the Jewish citizens of other origins, Chinese is likely to be the main lingua franca today; the languages ​​of the countries of origin are also spoken.

religion

In a survey of 64 descendants of Kaifeng Jews at the beginning of the Chinese Republic (1912), six people named Judaism as their religion, 32 named themselves Muslims, 15 Protestant, two Catholic Christians and eight Buddhists. The six people who professed Judaism all lived in Shanghai and had joined the communities of Sephardic (since 1845) and Russian (since 1887) Jews. Evidently there are efforts towards a religious "rebirth" among the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews. Stockwell (see bibliography) reports on a descendant of the Kaifeng Jews who found her way back to the Jewish faith during a study visit to the USA. Synagogues that are open as places of worship are currently only available in Shanghai (with an American rabbi), Hong Kong and Taipei.

Personalities

literature

  • 1999 The Republic of China Yearbook. Taipei [Taibei] 1999, p. 471.
  • Georg Armbrüster, Michael Kohlstruck , Sonja Mühlberger [Eds.]: Exil Shanghai 1938–1947. Jewish life in emigration. Teetz 2000.
  • Paul Hattaway: Operation China. Introducing all the Peoples of China , Carlisle / U. K., Pasadena / CA 2000, p. 564.
  • Thomas Hoppe: The ethnic groups of Xinjiang: cultural differences and interethnic relations , [communications from the Institute for Asian Studies Hamburg No. 258]. Hamburg 1995, p. 78 f.
  • Jiang, Wenhan 江文汉: 中国 古代 基督教 及 开封 犹太人Zhongguo gudai Jidu jiao ji Kaifeng Youtai ren (Christianity in Ancient China and the Jews of Kaifeng) , Shanghai 1982.
  • Egon Erwin Kisch : Capitalist Romance of the Baghdad Jews. In: China secret! Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-88520-604-8 .
  • Li, Guiling 李桂玲: 台 港澳 宗教 概况Tai Gang Ao zongjiao gaikuang (Outline of the religions in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao). Beijing 1996, pp. 244 f., 425 f.
  • Itamar Livni Jews in China. In: Jakob Hessing (ed.): Jüdischer Almanach des Leo-Baeck-Institut 1997. P. 37 ff., ISBN 3-633-54119-5 .
  • Roman Malek Ed .: From Kaifeng ... to Shanghai. Jews in China. [Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XLVI]. Nettetal, St. Augustin 2000.
  • Shlomy Raiskin: A Bibliography on Chinese Jewry. In: Moreshet Israel. Journal of Judaism, Zionism and Eretz-Israel. No. 3 (September 2006), pp. 60-85.
  • Sidney Shapiro : Jews in old China. Studies by Chinese scholars. Hippocrene, New York 1984, ISBN 0-88254-996-0 ; Translation into Hebrew by Ya'akov Sharet: בני־ישראל בסין העתיקה: אסופת מאמרים סיניים, Tel Aviv, Sifre Shihor 1987.
  • Pan Guang : The Jews in China. China Intercontinental Press, Beijing 2003.
  • Stockwell, Foster: Religion in China Today. Peking 1993, pp. 235-242.
  • Zhang, Sui 张 绥: 犹太教 与 中国 开封 犹太人Youtai jiao yu Zhongguo Kaifeng Youtai ren (Judaism and the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng). Shanghai 1990.
  • Zhidong Yang: Klara Blum - Zhu Bailan, life story of a Jewish and Chinese woman. In Jakob Hessing (Ed.): Jüdischer Almanach des Leo-Baeck-Institut 1997. S. 57 ff.
  • Zs. Structure . Main topic: The myth of the Silk Road . Searching for traces: the beginning of globalization. No. 7/8, July / Aug. 2010. passim, in all kinds. - In German, abstract in English.
  • Peter Kupfer (Ed.): Youtai- Presence and Perception of Jews and Judaism in China. Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57533-8 .
  • Alfred Dreifuss: Shanghai. An emigration on the edge. Report. In: Exile in the USA. Series: Art and Literature in Anti-Fascist Exile 1933–1945, 3rd Reclams Universal Library , RUB 799. Ed. Werner Mittenzwei u. a .; Eike Middell . Reclam (Leipzig) 1979 and Röderberg, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-87682-468-0 , p. 447 to the end; 2. verb. and exp. Edition (Reclam only) 1983

notes

  1. ↑ Loyal to the GDR view, rich in material, numerous. Fig.