Chao Yingchao was the wunderkind of the Kaifeng Jewish Community. We have good records of him, both in Kaifeng documents and in the Chinese gazettes. He was born in 1619 and died in 1657. At 38, he had accomplished a great deal. He is the only Kaifeng Jew to earn the highest Jinshi degree. He, along with other Confucian Jewish scholars and rabbis were the guiding forces that restored the synagogue and its books after the Flood of 1642.
Leslie, in his The Chinese-Hebrew Memorial Book, creates a family tree of this branch of the Chao Clan. The line of men coming before and after Zhou Yingchao each have a red box. I have doubled Zhou Yingchao's red box:
Each member here is attested two in a least one of four sources.
a) the stone inscriptions of 1489, 1663, or 1669, and some of the synagogue inscriptions that have the name of the author and the dates
b) the Chinese-Jewish Memorial Book, which lists names from 1400-1670
c) the Judeo-Persian colophons to the Square Section Torah Portions written from 1619-1626
d) various Chinese gazettes from 1585-1898, including an entry that provides three generations of Chao Yingcheng's male family members.
Of the 41 men on this family tree, Chao Yingcheng is the only man to be represented in all four sources:
One of the more extraordinary elements of these many mentions is that when he was no more than one, his father dedicated or pledged the writing a Square Section Torah Portion for his young son. The colophon for manuscript HUC 951 is lengthy, but this is the section that concerns us:
This translates as Abram, son of Aaron, son of Gmlyn Gym (Chao Liang-ching) he is (the father of?) Moses, son of Abram. The "father of" is not quite born out in the text, but given what we know about this family, this assumption makes sense. This colophon is dated 1619-1620, making Moses ben Abram, Chao Yingchao, anywhere from an infant to one year old. Did his father make a pledge (donate funds?) for the writing of this book on behalf of his new born son? It appears so, and this especially makes sense based on Leslie's work, and family tree he has provided. There are two other colophons where Abram ben Aaron is featured, the section book to Numbers 1, HUC 967:
Here, the text says Abram (pisari in Persian, which means son of) Moses, but the text probably means that Abram was the father of Moses. This is a quote from Exodus 1,7 immediately below:
"And the Children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiped, and waxed exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them." Might this be yet another pledge on behalf of Abram ben Aaron for his son Moses? HUC 971 has another colophon with Abram ben Aaron:
Here, the second line what we are looking at; I have added the line above to show that the second line was added on a slip of rice paper. What are we to make of this pasted addition? It reads: Abram, son of Aaron, son of Gmlyn Gym. In all, Abram ben Aaron made three pledges for three different square section books.
This family is also interesting for another reasons beside its involvement in synagogue affairs, and its siring of the the only Jinshi degree holder among the Kaifeng Jews. They are also one of the two entries on the Memorial book of a "ben adam" a son of a Chinese man.
So was Chao Liang-ching's father a non-Jewish Chinese man? It is possible and even probably. There are many "bat adams" daughter of Chinese people in the Memorial Book. I an completely patriarchal society such as Imperial China. men would stay with their families, and women would marry out and fully become part of their husband's family. But men must have become part of the Kaifeng Community, even if rarely.
These pledges appear to presage Chao Yingcheng's distinguished Jewish and Confucian career.
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