The Memorial Book of the Kaifeng community is a topic we will explore in the future in greater detail. We particularly want to examine the pivotal work of Donald Leslie on this manuscript, and ask what more needs to be accomplished with this fascinating codex which Leslie was unable to address. For now, we will examine two curious entries that have left Leslie puzzled.
The Memorial Book was a community document. White believed it was a census, but Leslie has convincingly proven that the document is a register of the dead. Along with the Chinese language stone inscriptions which we will examine later, this manuscript provides scores of names of Chinese Jews. Another source of its real importance is that it provides names of women - something completely missing from other sources. We will examine that importance of the naming of women here.
Here is a link to the Hebrew Union College scan of this codex:
Which is Ms. 926, Chinese 4.
The book contains women names in two categories: ones labeled "bat Yisrael" daughters of Israel, and those labeled, "bat adam," daughters of Adam. The former are Jews, women from the Kaifeng community, while the latter are Chinese women.
In the seventeenth century, and perhaps previously, it was not unusual for Jewish men to marry Chinese woman. We do not know if Jewish women married Chinese men, for they would then leave the Jewish community, and be counted among their husband's relatives.
But there are two entries where men are labeled "ben adam" sons of man, that is non-Jewish. Are these two men converts? What are we to make of these curious entries. Before I begin, I want to state that I will ask far more questions here, then even provide tentative answers. The texts we will examine are complex.
This entry deals with the Zhao (Chao) family, and the most famous Kaifeng Jews, Chao Yingch'eng and his family . The entries for his family involve use of Hebrew letters used for Chinese characters. The name GMLYN GYM, stands for Chao Liang-ching, Page 53:
The red underline is ben Adam in Hebrew. What does this mean? Leslie writes that the son of Adam designation presents "serious problems" and perhaps it does. He suggests that son of Adam is a mistake for son of Israel [?] The span of this family entry is as such:
Moses Aaron Moses SMN son of Ezekiel
Aaron son of GMLYN GYM
GMLYN GYM son of Adam
Abram Chao Mingyu ben Aaron
Rather than being a mistake for ben Israel, this might be an error for ben Aaron?
Leslie states that perhaps the reason Chao Yingch'eng was the first Jewish chin-shih, or Jinshi (Chinese: 進士; pinyin: jìnshì) which was the highest and final degree in the imperial examination in Imperial China, because his great-grandfather was a convert. It is difficult to see his point. Did he learn from his great-grandfather. Was the family more Chinese than other Chinese Jews as descendants of a male convert?
The second instance of a "ben Adam" among the Kaifeng men is found in this entry and appears to be more straightforward, pages 26-27:
This man is names Gao Ji, son of Adam. Was his father a convert to Judaism?
We will examine the Memorial Book, and these entries, in greater detail at a later time.
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