When it comes to Jews, we have a lot of keywords and impressions in our minds, such as intelligence, wandering, cunning, business, holocaust, etc. In general, however, our impressions of Jews are generally seen in books, television, and the Internet. The Jews in our conception seem to be far away from our daily life Chinese.
But you know what,
In Kaifeng, Henan, China, there is a group of Jews and Jewish communities.
What's even more interesting is that they've been in China for a thousand years, what's going on?
Jews in China
Jews actually have a long history of living in China, and the historical documents about their residence in China record that
The earliest can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty.
Among the Jewish community in China, the most famous is the Jews living in Kaifeng. According to expert research, they entered Henan from the northwest of China along the southern part of the Tianshan Mountains during the Northern Song Dynasty.
In Chinese history, after the Jews entered China, they often appeared in the form of settlements.
They have a large number of people at a time, so they can often form a closed community, and at the same time they will write their own family history and insist on inheriting Jewish and ethnic traditions, so it is relatively difficult to be assimilated, which also reduces the difficulty of historians today to study the history of these Jewish communities. Historically, Jews came to China by way from the overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road.
Since the fall of the country, they have wandered all over the world. Jews who arrived in the Chinese region, often followed by the ships and camels of Arab and Persian merchants, entered China. The idea of coming to China via the overland Silk Road can be judged by the history of the formation of the Jewish community in Kaifeng. But from the Maritime Silk Road, how can this be verified? Because in history
During the Huangchao Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, the rebel army slaughtered a large number of Jews in the city of Guangzhou.
After coming to Kaifeng (汴梁), the Jewish community from the south of the Tianshan Mountains first offered the patterned cotton cloth unique to Central Asia to the emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty at that time, which made the emperor very happy and allowed them to settle in Kaifeng City.
After the Jews lived in Kaifeng, they soon integrated into the Chinese cultural environment, and like the Chinese Han Chinese, they took the imperial examination to become officials, or traded and sold, basically very peaceful and self-kept. So much so that Emperor Huizong of Song praised him from the next edict and said: Return to me in the middle of the summer, abide by the ancestral style, and leave behind the liang.
Kaifeng life
The local Han chinese in Kaifeng are not fully aware of the complex religious traditions of Judaism, only that they will pick the tendons off the meat before eating it. So the local people took the Judaism that the Jews believed in,
Call it "pick-and-roll teaching",
And the alley where the Jews lived, called the picky alley - the tradition of picking the tendons, originated from the Old Testament Jewish ancestor Jacob in the fight with the angels was the thigh tendon sprain, in order to respect the ancestors suffered wounds, so they did not eat animal tendons.
Judaism and Islam come from the same origin
So there are some similarities between doctrine and Islam, plus Jews often wear blue hats when they pray, so the local people of Kaifeng sometimes put these Jews.
It's called "Blue Hat Back".
In short, although the local people often deal with these Jews in their daily lives, the various living habits of the Jews are not fully understood. Of course, despite the adherence of the Jewish people to their ancestral precepts and religious traditions, a large proportion of Jews have inevitably been assimilated in their millennia of life.
The main reason is that their overall number is too small, coupled with living in the Han environment, it is inevitable that there will be inconveniences, so they have voluntarily abandoned some cultural traditions and living habits.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty, when Jews went to look for Jews in China, they found that they no longer knew Jewish, could not pray, and were "Muslim" (that is, they only retained a few taboos in life, and they were close to the Hui, and they were considered Hui by the people around them).
Most Jews in China, having lived in China for too long, do not have a sense of identification with Israel.
But with the establishment of the State of Israel and international exchanges, a section of Kaifeng Jews still wanted to return to Israel.
But Israeli officials are not impressed by this, because in the Israeli tradition, orthodox Jewish identity is matrilineal
。 Jews in the Kaifeng area, because of the deep influence of Chinese culture, their children's identity is basically patrilineal, which is not in line with Israeli cultural traditions or Israel's "Law of Return".
Therefore, the Jews in the Kaifeng area were not recognized by the Jews of Israel.