Winds of Change.NET: Jews in China: A Reader Writes

July 26, 2002

Jews in China: A Reader Writes

by Joe Katzman at July 26, 2002 1:45 AM

A couple of days ago I posted a roundup piece on the B'nai Menashe, a group of Jews who live in India and believe themselves to be one of the Lost Tribes. At the time, I joked that "Israelis are still anxiously waiting to find a lost Cantonese tribe, however, hoping against hope that they may finally be able to follow Jewish tradition and eat at some decent Chinese restaurants on Sundays."

That comment drew the following response from reader Michael Marcus in Maryland. If I hadn't checked the URL, I'd swear he was making this up:

"Now today you have referenced something I really do know about, Jews and their existence in China. In 1998 we adopted a baby girl from Guangxi (spelling varies) Province (laughably called an "Autonomous Region") in south-central China, which entailed a glorious (i.e. in a cocoon of quality hotels) trip to the country, and included a limited amount of sightseeing. You mention "Canton province", but I guess you were being funny because Canton isn't a province, it's a city now known as Guangzhou in Guangdong province, with Guangxi directly to the west and Hong Kong to the east. As you rightly comment, kosher Chinese in North America is bloody terrible. Interestingly enough people here go to Chinatown in downtown Boston for sponge cake, which was admittedly stupendous in China, but not what you'd automatically assume.
Re: Jews in China, there was a substantial Jewish community in the city of Kaifeng from about the year 800, but it disintegrated about 150 years ago when the rabbi died and was not replaced. People there still refer to themselves as having Jewish ancestry, and there are a couple of buildings and street names which still remain.
The man principally responsible for unearthing information about this is Professor Xu Xin, who used to teach English literature at Nanjing (previously known as Nanking) University and, when about 15 years ago he realized that he was reading novels by authors such as Roth, Bellow et al who were curious creatures called "Jews" he took it upon himself to learn more. I remember seeing an article about him in the Jerusalem Post, about the time he was in Israel studying Hebrew and Yiddish, headed "One in a Billion".
He was doing research here at Harvard a few years ago and we invited him to attend our synagogue & have Shabbat lunch, and he was a delightful guest. But he didn't finish his tea, I think he's used to superior quality. We also took him one evening to Rubin's Kosher restaurant, and he was overjoyed when he observed at the deli counter the esoteric delicacies that he'd read about - "Look! Kreplach! Chopped liver! Lokshen kugel!" His one disappointment was the absence of kishke, which in its authentic state is stuffed intestine.
You can read all about his work at http://servercc.oakton.edu/~friend/chinajews.html

I did. Thanks for writing.

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