The Location of the Synagogue Site Today

 

As recently as a few years ago, it was fairly easy to visit the site of the Kaifeng Synagogue.  That is no longer the case.  As the New York Times reported in 2016, the Chinese government has cracked down on all illegal forms of religion - and this includes most elements of Kaifeng Judaism.

There are five legal religions in China, and Judaism is not one of them.  Before this, it seemed that Judaism in Kaifeng was gearing up for a revival.  In the early twenty-first century, Kaifeng municipal authorities put up this stone on the street outside the location of the synagogue:

There were rumors that the hospital on the synagogue site would be torn down, and a museum replica of the synagogue and its grounds would be build, and this would bring tourists and revenue to Kaifeng.  It seemed Kaifeng officials were finally willing to take ownership of Chinese Judaism, and capitalize on their unique status as the home of China's only long lasting 'native' community. 

But CPC officials were and are excellent students of Chinese history.  Some of China's largest and most destructive rebellions began as religious movements.  The catastrophic Taiping Rebellion started as a syncretistic messianic movement, and was one of China's costliest wars, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.  China seeks to squash new religious movements, and keep established ones in line.  The CPC outlawed Falun Gang in 1999 for this reason, and their American branch has become staunchly anti-Communist.  As China has opened its economy, it has squeezed religious freedom.  

In a work on the Kadoories and Sassoon families, Baghdad Jewish families who made millions in China and Hong Kong, The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China (p. 289) the author makes this apt claim:

History in China is fungible. When I first visited Shanghai, historians could talk about the “lost tribe” of Kaifeng Jews who settled in China a thousand years ago and kept some Jewish traditions alive—but not about the Sassoons and the Kadoories and their more recent and more transformative impact on Shanghai. Capitalism, in 1979, was still a forbidden topic. Forty years later, you could talk about Victor Sassoon and the Kadoories, but not about the Kaifeng Jews; the Chinese were cracking down on religion.

The author is incorrect about the Kaifeng Jews, there were not a lost tribe, nor did they only manage to "keep some Jewish traditions alive[!]" but he is correct that the Chinese Jews who can be openly discussed are the capitalists of Shanghai and Hong Kong, and not the native Chinese of Kaifeng.  But he is correct about the Kaifeng Jews.  They have become a forbidden topic.  All westerners involved with teaching Kaifeng Jewish descendants about Judaism were kicked out of China at around by 2015.  

So where is synagogue site is Kaifeng?  It is difficult to find on Google Maps.  

The Kaifeng Jewish community collective owned the synagogue land from the construction of the first synagogue in 1163 until they sold the Canadian Anglican Mission in December of 1912.  It was used as a YMCA playground for sometime.  After the Communist Revolution, the site was seized by Kaifeng municipal authorities, and a hospital was built.  There is still a hospital on the site, usually called Kaifeng Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital Number One.  There are many Chinese hospitals in Kaifeng, so searching by this name is often confusion. On the map above, the site is to the south, north of Kaifengxian Street:

The property retains is east-west orientation, as we can see from this 1910 map:

synagogue site is arrowed

The facade of the hospital looks like this, at least in the early 2000s:

The site still has its east/west orientation:

The far west would have been the site of the synagogue building, and the small lane that led into it is pictured here, facing east:

This is a picture taken of the synagogue compound in 1910, facing west.  It is abandoned, and like much of Kaifeng in the early twentieth century, shows signs of flood damage with standing water:

 Bishop White points of the gate in the distance, to the west:

This is the gate from this photo:

Here is Earth Street, or Earth Market Street as it is more often called in 1910:

This is the road that runs north/south of the hospital on the modern map.  The synagogue site did not seem to have a direct outlet to this street.  As Bishop White points out, in a colonial vein, to "...the right of the wheel-barrow coolie [!], in the lower right hand center of the illustration, is a small opening into the narrow winding lane which leads to the Li Family Street, which skirts the southern boundary of the synagogue enclosure.  I presume it is this lane:

The compound itself was spacious:

The Lane of the Sect that Pluck the Sinew led out from the west of the compound.  A feature of the Kaifeng scene has been this dwelling, number 12 on the Sect that Teaches the Torah Lane.  Here pictured:

This is the gate, and house, of members of the Zhao clan, who have been in residence for generations.  The house is circled here.  

[Is this where the Zhao family stele was found in the wall of a Zhou residence 1904:

In 1904, American engineer Edward Jenks discovered this stone. It was built into the wall of a house occupied by the Zhao Clan, on the southern boundary of the synagogue enclosure. Since the name of the stone was related to the Ancestral Hall, it is possible that this was the original site of the Zhao Ancestral Hall: source]

It is unclear to me if the Li Lane and the Torah Lane are identical?  I presume not.  The Zhao house pictured in 1923:

This house is mentioned in The Jews of Old China in 1984:

Until the crackdown, this house was the unofficial museum of the Kaifeng Jews.  Here is a modern photograph of the Zhao house:

As mentioned before, the well on the site of the synagogue may be the the only piece of the synagogue existent on the site.  We know from the 1663 stele that members of the Ai clan built the well, or contributed funds to do so:

The well before it was covered (destroyed?):

Does the site of the synagogue site or the descendants of the Kaifeng Jews matter for the study of the community?  It seems unlikely.  More can be learned about the Kaifeng Jews from their extant books and other artifacts.  A museum at the site would have been unique, and on the map of Jewish places to visit in the world, it would have been a stand out, but the CPC is completing hostile to this prospect.  Even the Kaifeng Jews as history is too much for Beijing.

the Torah Teaching Lane from the NYT

 

warning signs at the site of the synagogue