Subject: Jews--China--Kaifeng Xian--Social life and customs

Chinese Jews of Kaifeng : a millennium of adaptation and endurance / edited by Anson H. Laytner and Jordan Paper.
AuthorZürcher, E. (Erik)Laytner, AnsonPaper, Jordan D.
PlaceLanham, MD
PublisherLexington Books
CollectionRicci Institute Library
Edition
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook
Series
ShelfHallway Cases
Call NumberDS135.C5 C48 2017
Descriptionxix, 270 pages ; 24 cm.
NoteThe Chinese Jews of Kaifeng : a millennium of adaptation and endurance / edited by Anson H. Laytner and Jordan Paper.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Jordan Paper and Anson H. Laytner -- Part I. Past -- Radhanites, Chinese Jews, and the Silk Road of the steppes / Nigel Thomas -- Eight centuries in the Chinese diaspora : the Jews of Kaifeng / Erik Zürcher -- Kaifeng Jews : sinification and the persistence of identity and history / Irene Eber -- The Confucianization of the Chinese Jews : interpretations of the Kaifeng stelae inscriptions / Andrew H. Plaks -- The Old Testament and Biblical figures in Chinese sources / Donald Daniel Leslie -- The issue of the Jewishness of Chinese Jewish magistrates / Jordan Paper -- Zhao Yingcheng from fact to fiction : the story of "The Great Advisor" / Moshe Yehuda Bernstein -- Part II. Present -- A history of early Jewish interactions with the Kaifeng Jews / Alex Bender -- Delving into the Israelite religion of Kaifeng : the patriotic scholar Shi Jingxun and his study of the origins of the plucking the Sinews Sect of Henan / Xianyi Kong -- Identity discourse and the Chinese Jewish descendants / Mathew A. Eckstein -- Messianic Zionism, settler colonialism, and the lost Jews of Kaifeng / Mohammed Turki al-Sudairi -- Between survival and revival : the impact of contemporary Western Jewish contact on Kaifeng Jewish identity / Anson H. Laytner -- Chronology.

EUCHINA note: Erik Zürcher (1928-2008), “Eight centuries in the Chinese diaspora: the Jews of Kaifeng”, pp. 25-38 (without footnotes and bibliography):

p. 38 n.1 (the only footnote): “Text of a lecture delivered before the Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo, May 25, 1995. Originally published in Sino-Judaica: Occasional papers of the Sino-Judaic Institute 3 (2000), pp. 11-21. Reprinted by permission of the Sino-Judaic Institute. Because it was an oral presentation, the editors have slightly modified the language of the article to reflect the appearance in a formal anthology.”
​For a summary (of the lecture) compiled by Hugh Wilkinson, see The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin, no. 7 (Sept. 1995), an adapted version of which can be consulted on http://www.asjapan.org/web.php/lectures/1995/05s.
The same lecture (shortened) Zürcher gave in Dutch on 12 Dec. 1994 (Amsterdam, KNAW), the full version of which (including footnotes [1-25] and a bibliography of 25 items, missing in the 2017 publication) was published as In de uiterste diaspora: de Joden van Kaifeng (20 p., ISBN 978-0444857893; Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde. Nieuwe Reeks, deel 58, No. 2, pp. 65-79).

For a kind of review, see the introduction pp. vii-xix (by the editors, Laytner and Paper), p. xi / xii:

"In his article included in this anthology, Zürcher’s expertise with the early Christian missions is highlighted in his discussion of the early contacts between the Kaifeng Jews and the Jesuit missionaries. In this discussion, he points to the Jesuit participation in the offerings to Confucius in the wenmiao (Temple of Civil Culture), which they justified by asserting that Confucianism was not a religion in the sense of Christianity. Jordan Paper’s article in this anthology focuses on the same problem in understanding the participation of Jewish literati in these same rituals. Although an expert on Chinese Buddhism and Christianity in China, Zürcher’s knowledge of Judaism is comparatively weak. Among several examples, he considers the presence of lion images in the Kaifeng synagogue an anomaly and hints that they were due to Chinese Buddhist influence, whereas it is common in synagogues worldwide, and he does not understand when tefillin are worn. But these few lapses do not lessen the importance of his presentation of the earliest contacts of the Kaifeng Jews with Christianity and his learned analysis of the survival of the Kaifeng Jews over so many centuries. Zürcher’s analysis concurs with Eber’s article in this anthology and the view of the editors, as seen tangentially in the article by Paper. This viewpoint is in contradistinction to most theories that assimilation led to the demise of Judaism in China, forgetting that assimilation took place many centuries before its heyday, let alone its collapse. It is the synthesis of Judaism and Chinese culture that led to Chinese Judaism in the fullest sense of the compound term and its great success in China."

ISBN9781498550260 ; 1498550266
LCCN2017018093