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World Jewish News
How the Jews Lived in China
25.02.2009
In the "Ulitsa OGI" club (Moscow) the tea ceremony "Shanghai Orderly" was organized by the project "Eshkol: modern Israeli culture in Russia."
The host of the evening was an expert in Jewish culture Semen Parizhsky, who told about the most ancient Chinese Jewish community known.
It existed in the K'ai-feng from X-XI centuries. Meanwhile the Chinese called the Jews either "blue Muslims", because they wore the same headgear as the Muslims did, but of blue colour, or "People who remove the sinews" (the title reflects the Jewish practice to remove sinews from meat in order to make it kosher, which struck the Chinese).
Long life in isolation from other Jewish communities has led to gradual assimilation of K'ai-feng Jews and their acceptance of a number of Confucian ethical norms.
In many ways, this was contributed to by successful careers of several K'ai-feng Jews in public service. To get the first rank, a person had to pass the examinations on the basis of works by Confucius.
By studying them, the Jews found some common ethical provisions with those prescribed by the Torah. As a result, according to the descriptions of travelers who visited the synagogue in K'ai-feng in the XVII - XVIII centuries, there were traditional Chinese bowls for burning of incense to the spirits of ancestors, but these ancestors were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
However, assimilation has resulted in the disappearance of Jewish community in K'ai-feng in the XIX century. Now only numerous kippahs, produced by the Chinese for tourists, remind of the Jewish community.
The Eshkol project co-coordinator Yuri Sorochkin devoted his speech to the history of the Jewish community in Shanghai, which he defined as "the most free place on earth" in the XIX - mid XX century.
The founder of the Jewish community became David Sasson, the representative of the famous family of merchants, who came from Iraq. Sassons' company traded opium.
In order to push the competitors aside, Sasson focused on the organization of a wide network.
"Basically Sasson employed Iraqi Jews, built in each city, where he had a branch, a synagogue and a Jewish school. Thus there appeared a number of communities in the Far East, including the one in Shanghai," said Yuri Sorochkin.
The Jews who settled in Shanghai were anglophiles and gave the children an English education.
One of the notable figures of the Shanghai Jewry of that time was a real estate merchant Cecil Hardun, who became famous in the first place because he built gardens, and second - because of the enormous size of his family (he had 20 sons and daughters, for the most part, adopted Chinese children. Y. Sorochkin showed the guests the memories of one of Hardun’s daughters).
The second wave of emigration followed in the 1920s and 1930s - those were the Jews who fled from Russia because of the horrors of civil war and left the area of Chinese Eastern Railroad in Manchuria.
The third wave of emigration began in 1939, and was associated with the activities of Vice-Consul of Japan in Kaunas Chiuna Sugihara and Chinese Consul in Vienna, who issued visas to the local Jews to enable them to cross the USSR and get to Japan.
With the help of these visas, several thousand people managed to escape from the Nazis.
However, the Nazis (because Japan was the ally of the Nazi Germany) demanded of the Japanese to "finally solve the Jewish question."
On the other hand, the Japanese perceived the Nazi propaganda of the Jewish omnipotence rather seriously, and doubted whether or not to quarrel with such a powerful nation.
Finally they developed a compromise solution - the refugees from Europe were settled in a ghetto with a relatively free regime in Shanghai. Although the refugees were suffering from hunger, cold and diseases, local Jewish organizations were able to assist them.
The Jewish community of Shanghai disappeared in the years 1946-1949. Some Jews tried to go to Europe to meet relatives, while others did not want to be under the rule of the communists who occupied Shanghai in 1949.
"The last Jew of the old Shanghai Jewish Diaspora, who lived in the city, died in 1982. Now in Shanghai there is a small Jewish community, but all of them are new people who arrived in the last 20 years," concluded Yuri Sorochkin.
As illustrations of the exotic life of Jews in the Far East, Semyon Parizhsky told about Ignats Trebich, who was born to an orthodox Jewish family, and managed to change a lot of roles - a missionary, a member of the British Parliament, a spy, a member of a number of far-right organizations, a Buddhist monk.
Another story by S. Parizhsky was devoted to the famous Josef Trumpeldor, who was awarded the audience with Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito for organizing schools in the camps for Russian prisoners of war.
The emperor even ordered to present Trumpeldor, who lost a hand during the Russian-Japanese war, with a special prosthesis.
The story was accompanied by a demonstration of an audio movie, which recorded the sounds of 1930's Shanghai, including the Jewish songs performed in cabaret, and a movie trailer on Shanghai ghetto.
The ceremony finished with a tasting of ten kinds of green tea with spices, cooked by recipes of Jewish immigrants from India and Iraq.
Semen Charny
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