CHINESE JEWS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17345, 27 September 1924, Page 9

CHINESE JEWS.

A LITTLE KNOWN PEOPLE. THE LOST TRIBE. “Those fellows ‘missed the ’bus,’ 1 remarked my host, indicating a couple of passers-by, as we were sauntering through the streets of Amoy, writes a visitor to China. They looked slightly different from other Chinese. The bridge of tho nose was higher, though hardly aquiline, and the eyes were j rounder and more prominent. “Jews,” 1 he continued. “They, or rather their ancestors came across into China close on thirteen hundred years ago, as camp followers of the last Sassanian King of Persia, when he was chased out East by the Caliph Othman. The Persian troops went home eventually, but a number of the Jews ‘missed the ’bus,’ and found themselves stranded in tho middle of China. And there they have been ever since.” THE RUINED SYNAGOGUE On making further inquiries I found that tliis was quite true. Up-country clustered together in the town of Kaiietigfu, in the inland province of Honan, there still exists tho most curious little Jewish colony in the world. They even have a ruined synagogue in which they used to worship up to a few decades ago, and they are trying to raise funds for its reconstruction. The ruined synagogue, which was practically razed to the ground in the early part of last century, at the instigation of the large colony of local Moslems, _ was more than 100 yards long by .>0 broad, and had four courts. Tt bad a hall of ancestors, where Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, and the rest of tho famous personages of the Old Testament had the worshippers* respects paid to them, in Chinese fasliion, at the equinoxes. The last Rabbi died about 1840, while away on a journey in the Province of Kansu. A TENACIOUS BAND. There aro about 300 Jews in Kaifengfu, and a few dozen more are scattered here and there about Honan. Most of them are poor, for the rea-son that the feeling against the colony has always been so strong, especially from tho Moslems, that the more ambitious and prosperous have found . .t advantageous, from a worldly point of I view, to dissociate themselves, and marry their children into Moslem and Buddhist families. The most popular trades in the colony are dealing in old clothes, and changing the money of Chinese wayfarers bound to and from other provinces with defferent currency. They manage to get, however, only the crumbs of money changing. I A FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE. A stone still stands in the ruins, with* a;: inscription that commemorates the building of the synagogue in 1163, curing the Sung dynasty; the arrival of the- first Jews in the dynasty of Han ; and the rebuilding of the synagogue, 350 years ago, in the dynasty of Ming. There are touching, dianiatic, and bizarre episodes in the history of these extraordinary exiles. Their holy building razed to the ground, at last, after they have held out for more than 3 000 years, their last Rabbi dead, despised and persecuted by the Buddhist- Chinese, hounded by the Moslems, they still preserve in hiding-places here and there, copies of their Scriptures, their ritualistic literature, and ancient records. j HEBREW A LOST TONGUE. I have heard, from a. man who had business dealings with them, that they once displayed some of their documents in the bazaar of Kaifengfu, in the hope of catching tho eye of a wandering coreligionist, for not a man of them any | longer remembers a word of Hebrew. They talk Chinese, but the fervent among them, to whose breast the steady flame of nationalism has been 1 transmitted from generation after generation of exiled ancestors, aro eager to recapture their lost tongue They realize that without it they are becoming submerged. Six of the rolls of the- Hebrew law and several small hooks (in Hebrew) of tho Parashioth, or synagogue readings of the Law, were obtained, many years ago. from Kiafengfu, and some of these nr© now in the Bodleian and the British Museum. They are pro cisely identical with those of Europe.