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Concept
Kaifeng Jews
Summary
The Kaifeng Jews (; יהדות קאיפנג Yahădūt Qāʾyfeng) are members of a small community of descendants of Chinese Jews in Kaifeng, in the Henan province of China. In the early centuries of their settlement, they may have numbered around 2,500 people. Despite their isolation from the rest of the Jewish diaspora, their ancestors managed to practice Jewish traditions and customs for several centuries.
The distinctive customary life of the Kaifeng community slowly eroded, as assimilation and intermarriage with Han Chinese and Chinese Muslim neighbors advanced, until, by the 19th century, its Jewishness largely became extinct, apart from its retention of memories of its clan's Jewish past.
The place of origin of these Jews and the date when they established their settlement in Kaifeng are sources of intense debate among experts. While the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews are assimilated into mainstream Chinese culture, some of them are trying to revive the beliefs and customs of their ancestors. In the 21st century, efforts have been made to revive Kaifeng's Jewish heritage and encourage the descendants of its original population to convert back to Judaism. Several have undertaken to qualify for aliyah and relocate to Israel.
The origin of the Kaifeng Jews and the date of their arrival is one of the most intensely debated topics in the field of Chinese-Jewish relations. Though some scholars date their arrival to the Tang Dynasty (618–907), or even earlier, Steven Sharot, reflecting the majority view, considers that the most probable date for the formation of a Jewish community in Kaifeng was sometime during the Song dynasty (960-1279). That prior to the Song, Jewish merchants were active in China appears probable from the fact that the Eastern Islamic Persian geographer Ibn Khordadbeh in his Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik) ca. 870 describes the Jewish Radhanite merchants as operating over a wide arc from Western Europe to China.
Official source
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