The Whereabouts of Kaifeng Artifacts

 

Stone bowl purportedly from Kaifeng Synagogue, ROM

We already traced the Hebrew books from the Kaifeng community in Michael Pollak's "The Manuscripts and Artifacts of the Synagogue in Kaifeng."  We will now turn to the artifact portion of this article.

Pollak starts with the stele that were erected at the synagogue in 1489, 1512, 1663, and 1679.  Only three of these survived.  The 1663 disappeared sometime after 1866.  We have rubbings of this stone at a number of Western institutions, to quote Pollak.  I will not enumerate those here.  This list can be found on page 100 of his article.  

The Kaifeng City Museum houses the existing stele.  The museum does not have a readily accessible webpage.  It is a large institution:

Laying south of the Baogong Lake, Kaifeng Museum occupies an area of 16,000 square meters in a layout of the Chinese character "山(mountain)" with pseudo-classic architecture. As a museum of social society and arts, the museum has collected more than 80,000 cultural objects and nearly 50,000 professional books since its establishment. Of all the collections including potteries, porcelains, bronze wares, paintings, carvings, stone inscriptions, ancient currency, jade articles, lacquer wares, costume, etc, ten are considered as "first grade cultural relics" and over 1000 "second grade cultural relics", several of which are unique in China even in the world.

There are traveler accounts going back to the 1980s about the difficulty of seeing the Kaifeng Synagogue stones.  They were no the top floor and kept under lock and key for years.  They were supposedly damaged during the Cultural Revolution.  Their status now in Kaifeng is unclear.  A new museum was recently constructed, but I am not certain that the Kaifeng City Museum is still open.  Confusion about this museum and its holdings has been a constant for Westerners for decades.

Another artifact in Kaifeng from the synagogue (and not discussed by Pollak) is the remains of the well.  A traveler took this photo:

It is numbered 19 in Domenge's 1722 drawing of the synagogue.  It was located next to the main hall of the synagogue, in the eastern section, south side of the compound, adjacent to the communal kitchen:

During the 2016 crackdown on Jewish religious activity the well was referenced by the New York Times:

It seems the authorities have buried the well.  Did they destroy the tile?  We will examine the current site of the synagogue in the future.  As far as we know, the well and its tiles are the last artifact of the synagogue on the actual synagogue site. 

Back to Pollak's article.  He correctly writes that nearly "all of the synagogal artifacts in Western hands were purchased by Bishop White during the two dozen years of his residency in Kaifeng, which ended in the second half of the 1930s, and were subsequently given to the ROM" the Royal Ontario Museum.

Pollak questions the authenticity of White's "ornamental and utilitarian appurtenances" from the Kaifeng Community.  He is right to do so, as with the exception of the pages of Hebrew he procured from the book of Genesis and the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, the other objects are not specifically Jewish.  Pollak cites Wendy Abraham's visit to Kaifeng community in the 1980s and the stories she was told that appear to collaborate that the objects at the ROM are from the Kaifeng synagogue.   But we will not examine this claim.  It does not seem to be particularly strong.  See page 101 of this article.

Regardless, ROM is more circumspect about these artifacts.  Under each of the Kaifeng objects, these words are attached: Said to be from the synagogue at Kaifeng, China.

A listing of their objects can be found here: ROM

As we said, the Hebrew books are certainly Kaifeng Jewish artifacts:

a leaf from Genesis at the ROM

We are on less firm ground with the Torah case:

"Torah" case at the ROM

It is certainly similar to the other surviving case at Skirball Cultural Center Museum in Los Angeles:

"Torah" case at Skirball

The Skirball case was procured from the Dong Da Mosque in Kaifeng.  The provenance of both is uncertain. 

This jade stone (used as chime to call people to services?) 

jade "chime" at ROM

Which we will mostly likely never know if this was used in the Kaifeng Synagogue.  The inscription on the chime is of interest:

As White notes below the image, the use of the chime in the synagogue is a Zhao family tradition:

The Chinese characters on the chime read:

It is translated by White as "The Jade Chime (which calls) to the Spirits of the Departed and the Living." 

Pollak has this suggestion this translation of text, from a footnote.  What are we to make of this?

Pollak has a list of documented but missing Kaifeng synagogal relics that, if found, would be of interest:

The stone lions in front of the synagogue.  These were mentioned by the Chinese Delegates in 1850, and is cited by White in  Chinese Jews, I, p. 110.  In Shapiro's Jews in Old China, the late Wang Yisha is quoted by Sidney Shapiro as stating that the stone lions were sold to a Buddhist temple when the synagogue was demolished, as was later moved to an entryway of a factory, but disappeared after 1958.  Here is the text on page from Jews in Old China:

The major issue with the rediscovery of these lions is that they are very common Chinese ornaments.  How would be know they come from the Kaifeng Synagogue?  Establishing provenance after so much time would be challenging, if not impossible. 

A gilded bell.  No further information from Pollak.  He does not mention much about this item. Is this from the account of the Chinese Delegates? There is no way to follow up on this item.

The red satin umbrella that was held over the head of the rabbi at Simhat Torah services and in 1850 was still preserved in the synagogue, per the Chinese Delegate accounts.  No further information is provided by Pollak.  There is no way to follow up on this item.

The pointer, yad, that was used during the public readings of the Torah portions, and that  "was rumored to be given by a Kaifeng Jewish friend to Pearl Buck."  This yad inspired Buck to write her Kaifeng Jewish novel Peony, according to this story.  Pollak relates that this story "was told to me perhaps twenty-five years ago by an editor of The New York Times.   Where are Buck's archives?  They appear to be in three locations, Columbia University, West Virginia University, and her birth house in West Virginia.  After inquiring, both the West Virginia & Regional History Center and Columbia University only holds Buck's documents.  No yad or anything resembling it is noted in their collections. There is little to nothing in the way of other materials besides that which is written.

The two 1663 stelae, which disappeared somewhat before 1866. Pollak cites a story about a Japanese report of a Yuan dynasty stele that was sold to a curio dealer in Shanghai, in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries. The same source cites that the two stone lions that were in the synagogue were (at two?) locations in Kaifeng.  See Pollak's articles, page 102. There is no way to follow up on this item.

One small vase and three large ones, engraved all over with flowers and leaves of the water-lily [nelumbium].  The Chinese delegates reported these items in 1855.  One of the vases contained a tree made of coral, and the other three, some artificial rocks.

There are two stones bowls at the ROM.  

A smaller bowl, 29.9 x 48.2 centimeters:

"Synagogue" Bowl at the ROM

And  larger bowl, 34.1 x 57.7 centimeters:

"Synagogue" bowl at the ROM

Here is White's photo and write up of the large bowl:

White places this bowl in the third courtyard of the synagogue compound, just in front of the synagogue entrance, labeled fifteen (the stone lions are adjacent to the bowl, underlined as 13):

The bowl that White did not acquire, he claims, is on the eastern terrace of the Dong Da Mosque.  Is this the bowl?:

It is difficult to tell from this image:

The ROM images of the bowl are not taken from multiple angles, but the picture below, purported to be of the large Kaifeng bowl at ROM, has the prominent floral image:

They both have these flowers, and therefore have to be twin sets of bowls.  Is the twin still at the Dong Da Mosque?

The smaller bowl is pictured here from White's book:

Here is a close up of the text:

Where in the synagogue courtyard were these two small bowls.   Where is it in Domenge's 1722 sketch:

The companion bowl was donated to the "Episcopal Catherdral in Washington."  Does White mean the National Cathedral?  I have contacted them to see if they are in possession of the bowl.  White writes that "two others are still in Kaifeng" but not where.

With only slight evidence, Pollak believe that Dong Da Mosque presently holds an undetermined number of manuscripts and objects.  There is a long history of accusing, either by implication or outwardly, that the mullahs of the Dong Da Mosque are hiding materials  from the synagogue. Often the implications is that they stole the materials.  Let us look at this citations:

Oliver Bainbridge obtained the Torah case, presently at Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, in 1906.  Here is the case in front of the Dong Da Mosque:

Bainbridge "Torah" case, Dong Da Mosque, 1906

Bainbridge's journey on behalf of National Geographic can be read here.  His trip in 1906 bears all the hallmarks of his age, as he was given much "valuable information regarding the Mohammedans and Confucians, who had stolen many things from the Jewish ruins, including the ark of the Sepher Torah, and Jewish tiles bearing sacred inscriptions." 

The issue of roof tiles from the synagogue, perhaps in the 1850s taken to the Dong Da Mosque, or relics somewhere in Kaifeng, pops up occasionally.  In this article, Pollak cites an article in the newspaper the Forward from August 22 1997 about synagogue roof tiles:

I see no other references to excavated blue roof tiles with Hebrew characters.  Why would roof tiles have Hebrew characters?  If they did, and they were found in Kaifeng, they would surely have come from the Kaifeng synagogue.  But if the tiles were just that - tiles - and the synagogue roof tiles would like like any, well, roof tiles?  They would be as Chinese as the wooden beams that held up the roof.  We could never know they are from the synagogue

Pollak cites a Kaifeng visitor named Frits Holm who in the 1920s who visited the Dong Da Mosque "where the remaining Jewish relics are now reverently kept."  Holms goes on to say: "many of the Jews had become Mohammedans, and a good many of them of the Hebraic scrolls and signs, being ancient inscriptions, had been deposited in the mosque nearby."  When Holm had tea with the mullahs and asked to see the Jewish relics, he was told he could not.   So how then did he know any relics were in the Dong Da Mosque if he did not see them?

So what should be done about possible artifacts in the Dong Da Mosque.  I doubt they exist, but as the Dong Da Mosque still exists, and its largely the same building it was in 1855, polite inquiries should be made by people on the ground at Kaifeng.  And such inquires should be polite - as there is a long history of western scholars treating the Muslims at the Dong Da Mosque poorly.  The members of the community must be approached with respect about what they hold from the former synagogue.  They must be told with certainty that they can keep all the property they hold - no matter is provenance.