The delegates invited two members of the Kaifeng community (the Zhao brothers described above) to return with them to Shanghai in order to relearn Hebrew and Judaism, with the hope of resuscitating the community upon their return. Zhao Wenkui and Zhao Jincheng were circumcised Jews, a custom still practiced in Kaifeng at that time. The latter stayed only briefly, but the former remained until his death, and was buried in the communal cemetery which 19th century Jewish emigrants had established in Shanghai.
Only a year before, a sergeant in the Chinese imperial army, Tie Dingan, wrote to the British Consul in Amoy, T.H. Layton, that eight families still existed in Kaifeng. He reported they were Chinese in appearance, but exhibited “straight features like people in the center of China.” There were no rabbis, and none could read Hebrew.
Once Jews and others outside of Kaifeng learned of their existence, attempts were made to send letters to the Jewish community, but only one was ever acknowledged — possibly the only one ever received. On August 20, 1850, Zhao Nianzi of Kaifeng wrote to T.H. Layton (in response to an 1847 letter by James Finn, a career diplomat and missionary, who was fluent in Hebrew and knowledgeable about Judaism). He described the dismal state of affairs in Kaifeng at that time, mentioning that since 1800–1810 the religion had been “imperfectly transmitted,” though religious writings were still extant. The synagogue, he mentioned, had long been without “ministers.” The structure of the synagogue itself was in ruins, and he mentioned those who were willing to mortgage or sell the synagogue and materials from the Gao, Shi and Zhao clans.
Zhao’s letter was a cry for help from the Jews of the West, as their poverty and by now general ignorance of Hebrew and most of Judaism’s religious tenets had turned them into a desperately isolated community on the threshold of total assimilation into their Chinese surroundings.
In 1860 another catastrophic flood from the Yellow River hit Kaifeng. Perhaps this marks the last time the synagogue was swept away — this time for good. For in 1866 the Reverend W.A.P. Martin visited Kaifeng, at which time he declared that the synagogue itself no longer even stood on the site at which it had been for the past seven centuries, and which, although in a dilapidated state, had been visible to the 1850 delegates.
The plight of the Jews of Kaifeng by this time is poignantly conveyed by Martin when he related learning that after the last rabbi had died, the Jews still cared enough to leave a copy of their Torah in the marketplace in the hopes that a Jew from afar who might perchance be in Kaifeng would notice it and teach them once again its contents. All he reported standing at the time was a solitary stone.
Western Jewish Contacts with Kaifeng
The first Western Jew to visit Kaifeng did so for ten days in July of 1867. Jacob L. Liebermann, an Austrian Jewish merchant, went not on behalf of a religious organization, but of his own accord, and wrote a series of ten letters to his father. He described that while the Jews lamented their degree of assimilation, they also recounted stories of a brighter past.
It was not until the turn of the century, however, that Jews, then living in Shanghai, made a concerted effort to establish close contact with the Chinese Jews in Kaifeng, attempting to help resuscitate the community. This was in response to their discovery that a year earlier, in 1899, the Jews sold the last remaining Torah scroll to the Apostolic vicar of the Henan Mission, a Monsignor Volonteri.
Until the turn of the 20th century, relatively few Jews had heard of the Kaifeng community, and even fewer made the journey there, since they had not the financial backing afforded representatives of missionary groups.
The successful Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews who had taken up residence in Shanghai during the 19th century, represented best by the Sassoons and the Kadoories, however, became alarmed when they learned of the sale of Torah scrolls and the generally decayed state of the Kaifeng Jewish community.
Banding together, they formed the Shanghai Committee for the Rescue of the Chinese Jews in 1900, hoping to save the Kaifeng Jews from spiritual oblivion. Communication with Kaifeng thus took place, prompting several Kaifeng Jews to travel to Shanghai where they reported that they still observed some of the Jewish dietary laws, and that some were even circumcised, but that the community no longer consisted of practicing Jews. They expressed the fervent hope that their synagogue could be rebuilt with the help of Shanghai’s Jews, which might revive even a semblance of the sense of community that once united them.
When pogroms and immigration of the Russian Jews began to occur soon after, however, attention and funds were diverted from the original intention of rebuilding a synagogue for the Kaifeng Jews. Almost all those who had come to Shanghai hoping to find some Western Jews who could help rebuild their community, returned to Kaifeng with their hopes dashed and their hearts heavy, realizing that the former grandeur of their synagogue and pride as a Jewish community were never again to be.
Bishop White
From 1910–1933 the Chinese Jews had in their midst the Canadian Church of England’s first Anglican Bishop of Henan Province. No other Westerner lived among the Chinese Jews as long as did Bishop William Charles White, whose magnum opus Chinese Jews was published in 1942. White succeeded in getting the heads of the seven clans agree to have his church take over protection of the two extant stone inscriptions in 1912. Two years prior to this, the Jews would not agree to give up legal title to the synagogue site. A year later, however, after a conflict over the possession of the steles with the local authorities, White was able to purchase the stones on the condition that they not leave the province. And in 1914 the site of the synagogue itself was sold by the Jews to the Mission, representing the first time in over seven centuries that someone other than the Chinese Jews owned the site.
By now no more scrolls of the Law were left, and parts of the synagogue were already being used by others in Kaifeng. A Confucian temple had obtained one of the marble balustrades of the former synagogue for over fifty years; two stone lions were said to be outside one of the Buddhist temples, and even the green roof tiles were now part of the local mosque.
In May of 1919, Bishop White held a series of meetings with the Chinese Jews to try to educate them and revive some kind of communal ties between them. Heads of all seven clans were present, and forty families out of the estimated 200 participated. They did not know one another, and only the Shi clan was reported to have kept family records.
The many Chinese-Jewish artifacts which Bishop White purchased while in Kaifeng have since passed into the hands of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where they now remain. Among those bits of Chinese-Judaica in the Museum’s possession are a black marble chime used to call the Jews to prayer, two stone lotus-carved bowls and a large, cylindrical case for the Torah scroll.
One of White’s main contributions while in Kaifeng was to attempt to revive the community by bringing together the seven major clans, documenting the occasion with photos and articles. However, nothing came of these meetings, as the Jews had by now lost all sense of community and all hopes of rebuilding their synagogue or re-learning Judaism, much less practicing it.
As a community the Jews had by now come to an end, although a strong individual sense of ethnic identity has remained with them, even through the 20th century.