The dissolution of the Kaifeng Jewish Community will not be overly examined here. But some of the issues surrounding it are of interest. Why did the community survive and even thrive as they recovered from the Flood of 1642, yet dissolve as the last rabbi died without a successor around 1810?
W.A.P Martin, visited Kaifeng in 1866, and in the course of speaking to community members, noted this:
"One of my visitors was the son of the last rabbi, who, some thirty or forty years ago, died in the province of Kan-suh. With him perished the last vestige of their acquaintance with the sacred tongue."
Pollak believes that Martin was speaking to the grandson of the last rabbi, and that the last rabbi died sixty years before the conversation. So the last rabbi died in between 1806 and 1836. It does make sense that this would be an earlier date. I have seen 1810 as the date of his death, but if we take Martin at his word, and he is being accurate about the conversation, it is 1836-1846.
Leslie's work on the Memorial Book shows that each generation had at least 10 to 20 men deemed a rabbi. When the last Jesuit visited in 1723, the community was teaching its children (boys) to read and write Hebrew. In a hundred years, or less, no one could read it. I have never seen anyone speculate as to why the last rabbi was in "Kan-shu" in 1810. Ganzu is a province in north-western China. It is adjacent to Ningxia. Is this a reference to Ningxia, and not Ganzu? It is difficult to know.
In the 1512 stone inscription, we are told that Chin Jun of Ning-hsia set up the stone tablets and its pavilion. Were there still Jewish resources in this area in 1810? Is that why he was in that far off (from Kaifeng) area?
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