There are few accounts of the Jesuit visitors to the Kaifeng
Jews that are chronology, and that provide us with information not known from
other sources, or known from other sources and collaborated by the
Jesuits. Two source collaboration is rare
in the study of this community. Here I
have provided a summary and chronology culled from Pollak’s Jew, Mandarins
and Missionaries and to a lesser extent, White’s book The Chinese Jews.
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1605: Ai Tien visit Matteo Ricci at his church and
office in Beijing, making the West aware of Jews in China. Ai Tien told Ricci that Jews had been in
China for several centuries, and that there were a synagogue and community in
his hometown of Kaifeng. He told the
priest that there was once a large Jewish community in Hangzhou with a synagogue,
but it no longer existed. He said that
there were 6-8 clans of Jews in Kaifeng, and they had a 600-year-old Torah
scroll. They called themselves, in Chinese
transliteration, Yitz-u-lo-yeh.
1613: Guilio Aleni appears to be the first known
Jesuit to visit the Kaifeng community and the synagogue. He heard from members of the community that
they had not had contact with Jews outside of China in a century or more [probably
closer to two-hundred years]. Aleni was
not allowed to see their books.
1619: Nicolas Longobardi spoke New Persian to members
of the Kaifeng community and they thought he was Jewish until they saw the
pictures in his bible.
1704: Jean Paul Gozani from 1698 and 1723 was
stationed in Kaifeng on four separate occasions, visited the Jews and the
synagogue compound many times and left a detailed written record. Much of the material we know about the community
is from his work. He wrote that the community had twelve Torah scrolls, each
for one of the Tribes of Israel, and one, which was composed of composites of
other scrolls fished out of the Yellow River in 1642 flood. He was told the Kaifeng synagogue was the
last Jewish house of worship in China.
They did not use images at the synagogue and used common terms for heaven
and God in Chinese that pleased the Jesuits, who wanted to employ them as well. They had a Hall of the Ancestors where they
had bowls of incense that were burned for important biblical personages like Moses,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the 12 tribes, Ezra, and many other men and women. He also noted that they venerate Confucius in
such a manner, but it is unclear if that was done in the Hall of the
Ancestors. He noted that they venerate Confucius
in the Spring and Autumn and make sacrifices in the Ancestral Hall of oxen and
sheep; they also offered porcelain dishes filled with food for the ancestors in
this hall. They had tablets for their
own dead, but not in the Hall, but in homes, except for noted Mandarin members
of the community. He mad rubbings of the 1489/1512 stele, and
copies of the synagogue inscriptions. In
a letter from 1712 only published in 1972, he noted the they had a decalogue in
gold letters, and they told him they were descended from the tribes of Judah,
Levi, and Benjamin. He sat down with an
elder rabbi who spoke through his teeth (with a lisp?) who may have been Rabbi Pinchas,
and compared books that the Jews had, or once had, with his own. We have a list in his hand and the hand of
the rabbi.
1721-22: Jean Domege attended services at Simchat
Torah in 1722. He noted the Chief Rabbi marched
with the Scroll of Moses with a red umbrella over his head; the Scroll of Moses
was read from during the service. Domege
knew Hebrew and was critical of their skills. They refused to sell him books,
and when he tried to buy some on the side, he was banned from the synagogue. He made invaluable sketches of the synagogue
and the compound, and the interior of the synagogue.
1723: Antoine Gaubil visited the synagogue for a day
and a half. He understood Hebrew and
spoke to the rabbi and two “knowledgeable Jews” and he found all three “absolute
ignoramuses.” He saw the Scroll of Moses, which he noted was
water damaged. He was told the synagogue
was either destroyed or damaged in a fire during the Wan-Li Reign (1575 – 1620). He wished to purchase the Scroll of Moses,
but he was refused. Gaubil noted that
they keep the Sabbath, Passover, Purim and other festivals, and practice circumcision. He
appears to have contracted them to copy a scroll, but nothing came of this
(Jesuits were also expelled from inland China shortly after this). Gaubil
was asked “to resolve certain grammatical problems they were having with the conjugation
of verbs and declension of nouns. He promised
to send them a grammar written in Chinese.
This never happened. He noted the
community was composed of about one thousand individuals.
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