HEBREW, NOT HAN

After reading Yonah Jeremy Bob’s fascinating description of his trip to China and his search for connection to religion, culture and the West (“A personal journey through China,” September 13), I would like to add that in addition to Beijing and Xian, there is Kaifeng, a city with a rich Jewish past.

The Jewish community there thrived well into the 20th century, and even in 1910 it requested the London Beth Din to send it a new rabbi. This did not happen, and the community eventually assimilated into the larger Chinese culture. That being said, its Jewish descendants still bear the name “Hebrew” on their identity cards, as opposed to the “Han” written on most Chinese IDs.

Even today, there is a street called “Torah Learning Way” and many shops selling items of Jewish interest, including finely crafted paper works showing the large synagogue long since burned down, occupied today by a health complex. Children learn Hebrew songs, and there is reference to not eating pork. In the past decades, the government of China has allowed several students to come to Israel to study here in yeshivot, also a matter of religious interest.

This is all documented by Xu Xin, a professor of Jewish studies at Nanking University, whom I met on my visit to China. He was lecturing at the Ohel Moshe Synagogue of the Hongkew Ghetto in Shanghai, where many Jews found refuge during World War II, and whose upper floors house a large library of books and artifacts regarding the history of the Jews of China. Shanghai itself has a long Jewish history predating the 20th century.

It is indeed worthwhile to investigate the impact of Jewish history in China on the relationships between China and religion, and especially between China and Israel today. MARION REISS Beit Shemesh