Above is a detail of the last Kaifeng Synagogue, drawn by a Jesuit French Jesuit missionary Jean Domenge in 1722. The center structure is the synagogue building, which had a eastern and western halves, connected by a narrow hall. The eastern (nearest) half was where services took place; the western part, the farthest, was the Beth-El, where books and Torah scrolls were held. To the left and right of the synagogue building were the Halls of the Ancestors. White in his book numbers these buildings 20 and 21:
According to White, 20 was devoted to Abraham, and 21, to just about every other holy person in Judaism:
This kind of ancestor veneration, where bowls of incense were burned in honor of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others, is often cited as the deepest and most profound adjustment of Kaifeng Judaism to Chinese religious and social practices. Ancestor veneration would also be in commensurate with the Confucian official practice of the numerous Kaifeng Jewish men who received Civil Service Degrees. Having such devotion to ancestors who be in keeping with the Confucian ideals of degree holders, and to an extent, Judaic notions of the honor of one's ancestors benefiting living Jews. But a belief in ghosts and spirits, yet another very common Chinese belief, did not fit in with Kaifeng Judaism. The 1489 stones tells us this about the patriarchs:
The did not "flatter" spirits and ghosts. Interestingly, the stone does not say that they did not believe in spirits and ghosts. We can only image that flatter means placate ghosts so that they may help us or at least fail to do us harm. Whether or not Confucian scholars engaged with ghosts and spirits seems evenly split among scholars. Confucius himself believed in them, but held that people should pay more attention to the living than the dead.
In the article Traditional Hui Mosques in Northern China, by Candice Del Medico (PhD student at the Université Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne, recipient of a fieldwork grant from the EFEO) the author explains that a very common piece of Chinese religious architecture are spirit wall(s) or yíngbì.
It was widely believed that ghosts and spirits could do harm to holy places, and much like zombies in contemporary movies, they had difficulty maneuvering around 90 degree angles. Many, but not all, Chinese mosques have spirit walls. The author provides a reason:
It appears from Domenge's drawing of the synagogue that the Kaifeng Jews did not have spirit walls. He did not draw them, and given the Jesuit fixation on Kaifeng Jewish accommodation to Chinese religious practice, one would think that he would have done so if they existed. If this is the case, the lack of spirit walls would fit in with the strident statement about ghosts and spirits in the 1489 stone.
There might be very little ontological difference between Chinese ancestors, gods, spirits, and ghosts, but it seems the Jews of Kaifeng, at least in their official utterances, did draw a sharp line between ancestors and ghosts.
For much more detail on the subtle line between ghosts, spirits, gods and ancestors in Chinese religion, see Joseph A. Adlers' Varieties of Spiritual Experience:
Shen in Neo-Confucian Discourse. Among other things, Adler expresses this which has impacts directly our understanding of Kaifeng Jewish spirituality:
Here we can see that there is no difference between the different spiritual entities in Chinese religion, broadly considered. Confucius and other Confucian worthies were also "installed in government-established temples and accorded special rites" just like gods. Despite this, Neo-Confucians distanced themselves from popular worship of ghosts and spirits:
Ghosts and spirits were viewed, in the spirit, as essentially natural phenomenon; they were a specific instantiate of xi, the life-stuff-force. Despite this, ancestral worship was undertaken and considered worthy by Neo-Confucians:
Does this Neo-Confucian stance on the lack of permissibility of "flattering" ghosts and sprits, and the normativity of ancestor veneration in the Hall of the Patriarchs in Kaifeng? Intuitively, it seems that ancestor veneration of the type practiced at the Kaifeng Synagogue is not commensurate with Rabbinical Judaism (this is open for debate, of course. Judaism is laden with latent ancestor veneration at every turn!) If we take this as a given, then the special Neo-Confucian/Jewish fusion inherent in Kaifeng Judaism explains the fissure between ghosts/sprits and ancestors.
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