[DannyJo]

I was reading an article on Asia times online about Shanghai and it's future when I came across this paragraph;

"Most famously, it (Shanghai) was once home to tens of thousands of Jews. These ranged from rich Sephardic families such as the Sassoons and Kadoories, whose legacy includes some of the finest colonial buildings in the city, to refugees from the Bolshevik revolution and from Nazism who found shelter in Shanghai, one of the only ports in the world that did not require an entry visa. In the old Jewish ghetto of Hongkou, where Jews were concentrated during the Japanese occupation, one could find Jewish newspapers, Yiddish theater, violin concerts, European coffee shops, dance clubs and sports activities. Today this area has been slated for redevelopment and people from the international Jewish community are working with Chinese officials to preserve its cultural heritage and restore it as a living symbol of Shanghai's cosmopolitan past."

I knew about the rich Jewish trading families, but have not really heard of these tens of thousands of poor emmigrant Jews.

Does anyone know of any good books for info on this? Also what happened to them, did they leave when the civil war began or when CCP gained power, were they just using Shanghai as a staging post or something else? How long did this Jewish community last in China?

I've got loads of questions, so any info is much appreciated

Thanks

Link to article
http://www.atimes.co...s/HA07Cb01.html

This post has been edited by DannyJo: 06 January 2006 - 10:22 AM

[bayonet]

Quote

Does anyone know of any good books for info on this? Also what happened to them, did they leave when the civil war began or when CCP gained power, were they just using Shanghai as a staging post or something else? How long did this Jewish community last in China?

i dont know any books but i do know something about them since i m a shanghainese.

Though the ROC had a close relationship with NaZi Germany before the sino-japanese war, it turned a blind eye to those thousands of jews who escaped from the Nazi yoke and persecution in Shanghai. Roughly, the jew communities got along well with local shanghai people and soon integrate into Shanghai. I remember one joke said by shanghainese " never go trade with those crafty jews, they would defraud you of your underwear and u even unware of it."

When Shanghai fell into Japanese Imperial Army's hand, those jews were detained and tortured in the refugee camps by the fascism. A large part of them escaped to Soviet Union before and during the Anti-Japanese War . But still a number of jews stayed in Shanghai till today, i ve once watched a TV show about today's jews descendants' life in shanghai . they called Shanghai Noah's Ark

[Moping4U]

I've heard that the ROC embassy in Nazi Germany actually saved a lot of Jews by granting asylum and visas. Not sure if it was true.

[DannyJo]

Moping4U, on Jan 8 2006, 02:08 AM, said:

I've heard that the ROC embassy in Nazi Germany actually saved a lot of Jews by granting asylum and visas. Not sure if it was true.

Thanks guys,

I heard that rumour too.

Bayonet- Have the descendants of the Jews in Shanghai merged into the local community or do they still keep themselves apart, racially and socially?

Anyone who knows of a good book on the subject please post the title.

[TaiE]

Well.

Here is a novel telling the story of Jews in Shanghai. The book name is 《梅兰达之吻》.
http://www.spph.com.cn/cache/books/view/67...10000902767.htm


Additionally, there is a good website about Jews in China, link below
http://www.china10k....jews/index1.htm

[Howard Fu]

DannyJo, on Jan 6 2006, 09:19 AM, said:

In the old Jewish ghetto of Hongkou, where Jews were concentrated during the Japanese occupation, one could find Jewish newspapers, Yiddish theater, violin concerts, European coffee shops, dance clubs and sports activities.

The Jewish ghetto of Hongkou is not the oldest ghetto in China, for your informaiton. There is a ghetto in Kaifeng, the capital of Song dynasty, since 9th century. They keep their Jewdish identity up to now, but have lost their religious tradition after the rabbi died in 1860s.
There are some very intersting stories of them.
http://www.sino-juda...rg/kaifeng.html
or you can google kaifeng jew

[bayonet]

Quote

Bayonet- Have the descendants of the Jews in Shanghai merged into the local community or do they still keep themselves apart, racially and socially?

As i know, some Jews stayed taking Shanghai as their second hometown, and even married the locals. Their descendants merged into locals, they speak Shanghai dialect and lived as a Shanghainese . But they do keep their own religion.

[lobster]

Sometimes I wonder, how come the Jews in China can merge with the locals so smoothly, while there are so much...... "friction" elsewhere in the world, e.g. in Europe/Middle East? The Kaifeng Jews merged so well that they are almost invisible.

[Howard Fu]

lobster, on Jan 9 2006, 11:01 AM, said:

Sometimes I wonder, how come the Jews in China can merge with the locals so smoothly, while there are so much...... "friction" elsewhere in the world, e.g. in Europe/Middle East? The Kaifeng Jews merged so well that they are almost invisible.

The local muslim also assimilated to a degree that if he didn't wear white cap or tell you he is a muslim, you can't seperate him from a han. There are up to 20 millions musilims in China. It's not surprising that the muslim still hold their traditions very strongly, but the Jews in Kaifeng has only a population up to 1,000, it's really amazing they can hold on for a almost 1,000 years.

[lanjingling]

lobster, on Jan 9 2006, 11:01 AM, said:

Sometimes I wonder, how come the Jews in China can merge with the locals so smoothly, while there are so much...... "friction" elsewhere in the world, e.g. in Europe/Middle East? The Kaifeng Jews merged so well that they are almost invisible.

There are several reasons.
-Europe is traditionally a christian world in it's majority, & christians are archennemies of jews, since jews refused to admit Jesus as the messiah.
-Europe & Middle-East are christian & muslim regions, & both religions are proselyte, wich means being largely intolerant to some extent (although both have been sometimes quite tolerant).
-In Middle-East, the problem is as much political as religious, if not more.
-Now if you compare with Chinese religions, wich are much more tolerants, no wonder Jews & Muslims have been easily integrated.

[lingzhixiangu灵芝仙姑]

DannyJo, on Jan 6 2006, 11:19 PM, said:

I knew about the rich Jewish trading families, but have not really heard of these tens of thousands of poor emmigrant Jews.
Does anyone know of any good books for info on this?

Danny,

There were few batches of Jew immigrants in Shanghai:
1) Sephardic Jews from Baghdad made up the first wave of immigrants. Wealthy families such as the Sassoons and the Hardoons arrived in the mid-19th century and built up property and banking empires on the Bund.
2) A much poorer wave of Russian Jews, fleeing revolution and pogroms, trickled in during the 1920s and 30s.
3) During WWII (From 1938-) 20,000 Jewish refugees from Central Europe, escaping Nazi persecution congregated in a ghetto in the French concession. This last batch had literary no other choice as Shanghai was the only refuge where there was no need for a visa. Most of them left Shanghai before the outbreak of the civil war. [ I had seen a documentary on this last year (shown in Singapore TV) ]

Two interesting articles you should read:
http://www.dangoor.com/71page18.html
Shanghai Jews as seen by Chinese - Jewish People in Shanghai for 138 years

http://www.gluckman....iJewsChina.html
The Ghosts of Shanghai (By Ron Gluckman): A vibrant Jewish community appeared on the banks of the Huangpu River in old Shanghai, for a brief flash in history. Now scholars and former refugees of this amazing enclave are trying to make sense of it all

Other sources:
Shanghai ghetto [videorecording]
http://shanghaighetto.com/index.html
The incredible story of thousands of Jews and their dramatic escape from the Nazis to China during World War II.

Books
Port of last resort : the diaspora communities of Shanghai / Marcia Reynders Ristaino.
Stanford, Calif. : London : Stanford University Press ; Eurospan, [2004].

Shanghai diary : a young girl's journey from Hitler's hate to war-torn China / Ursula Bacon.
Milwaukie, Or. : M Press, 2004.

Ten green bottles : the true story of one family's journey from war-torn Austria to the ghettos of Shanghai / Vivian Jeanette Kaplan.
New York, N.Y. : St. Martin's Press, 2004, c2002.

Strangers Always: A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai (Paperback)
by Rena Krasno , 2000 ; rena@renakrasno.com (you could email her for info)
The account of the life and times of the Russian Jewish community under Japanese occupation
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_...401/ai_n9235699

The Distant Land of My Father by Bo Caldwell

Escape to Shanghai : a Jewish community in China / James R. Ross. 1950-
New York : Free Press ; Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; Maxwell Macmillan International, c1994.

[DannyJo]

lobster, on Jan 9 2006, 05:01 PM, said:

Sometimes I wonder, how come the Jews in China can merge with the locals so smoothly, while there are so much...... "friction" elsewhere in the world, e.g. in Europe/Middle East? The Kaifeng Jews merged so well that they are almost invisible.

From what I have heard there are no Kaifeng Jews now, and when historians tried to make contact with Jews in Kaifeng in the early 20th century there were none left. They are judged to have assimilatted completely with the local populace and had lost their Jewish culture, that is why they are invisible.

I believe the Jews of Shanghai kept themselves seperate from the Chinese population, they alongside the other foreigners living in the concessions, created there own mirror community of those they had known in Germany and Russia. One quote I found from a Jew who had lived in Shanghai said that there was no anti-semetism in China because the Chinese didn't differentiate the Jews from the other "white" foreigners. Also of interest to me is what kind of agreement did the Jews make with the Japanese, as German pressure to carry out the final solution was strong. So what made the Jews of Shanghai more useful to the Japanese than following the urges of their fascist allies?

[lobster]

Probably the Japanese couldn't care less so didn't bother. Maybe just gave some excuses to the German deligates as it's so far away the Germans couldn't put their will force there.

[Howard Fu]

DannyJo, on Jan 10 2006, 06:47 AM, said:

From what I have heard there are no Kaifeng Jews now, and when historians tried to make contact with Jews in Kaifeng in the early 20th century there were none left. They are judged to have assimilatted completely with the local populace and had lost their Jewish culture, that is why they are invisible.

ooph, I don't know much of Judaic law, I don't know how Jew themselves define who is Jew and who is not.
But there are about 500 people in Kaifeng now claimed themselves to be Jew. Scholars and travelers sometimes went to visit them, it's not hard to find them.

I don't quite understand why jewish community generally view Kaifeng jews in a negative way. As I have said, I think it is really amazing that they hold on their religion for almost 1000 years with so small a population.

[DannyJo]

Howard Fu, on Jan 11 2006, 06:35 AM, said:

ooph, I don't know much of Judaic law, I don't know how Jew themselves define who is Jew and who is not.
But there are about 500 people in Kaifeng now claimed themselves to be Jew. Scholars and travelers sometimes went to visit them, it's not hard to find them.

I don't quite understand why jewish community generally view Kaifeng jews in a negative way. As I have said, I think it is really amazing that they hold on their religion for almost 1000 years with so small a population.

I think we could argue this round and round, as you said "what makes a Jew a Jew?"
I think that most Jews would have a problem with the Kaifeng Jews being treated as "real" Jews, because Jewish identity is made up of two elements religion and race i.e. there is a Jewish religion and a Jewish race, you can be one without being the other, but you need to be apart of one to be classed as a Jew.

This is where the Kaifeng Jews have a problem, religiously speaking, they haven't followed Jewish rites for at least a century, and racially they do not share the features of the major Jewish groupings.

For practising Jews it is hard to accept a people as Jewish when they do not follow Jewish lore, do not have a synagogue and also for orthodox Jews, Jewish racial belonging is transmitted via the maternal side, so if your mother is not a Jew you can never be a fully ortodox Jew, the intermarriage therefore with the Chinese therfore adds another obstacle to this group being recognised by the more conservative Jewish society.

From Sino-Judaic Institute
http://www.sino-juda...rg/kaifeng.html

"To this day, several hundred residents of the old Song capital continue to think of themselves as bona fide members of the House of Israel. They hold firm to this belief despite the fact that their features are indistinguishable from those of their neighbors, they have had no rabbi for the better part of two centuries, no synagogue or other communal organization for several generations, and remember virtually nothing of the faith and traditions of their ancestors."

"Around the year 1500, however, the Ming rulers issued a series of decrees prohibiting travel between their domains and foreign lands. As an immediate consequence, the Jews of Kaifeng found themselves hermetically sealed off from all contact with coreligionists abroad. Meanwhile, the various Jewish settlements in other Chinese centers died out, leaving the Kaifeng Jews utterly stranded and surrounded by millions upon millions of inhabitants who looked to spiritual heritages profoundly different from their own."

"Kaifeng's last synagogue, which was dedicated in 1663, served the community until the 1860s, when it was demolished, the congregation having by then become divided, impoverished, and weakened by a general ignorance of its heritage."

"Even the rabbis remember distressingly little of the ancestral language and faith, and after the death of the last of Kaifeng's rabbis in the first decade of the nineteenth century, there is nobody to take his place. Still, the Torah scrolls are preserved in the decaying synagogal building, where they are treasured as objects of veneration, but nobody in the congregation is now able to read them. In fact, the lews display one Torah scroll in the marketplace, together with a placard offering a reward to any bypasser who could translate it for them. This turns out to be a futile gesture."

"Still, throughout all this time there persists a tenacious sense of loyalty (well-mixed, presumably, with nostalgia) on the part of some of the descendants of the ancient Jewish community to the idea of being Jewish and to their forgotten traditions. One finds occasional expressions of that attachment even now, so that it is not surprising that in two censuses made of Chinese minority peoples in recent decades, two or three hundred individuals saw fit to register themselves as Jews. "

This post has been edited by DannyJo: 11 January 2006 - 05:44 AM