In June of 1985, two months before my own solo journey to Kaifeng, the Sino-Judaic Institute was created in Palo Alto, California to promote scholarly research and exchange of information on the subject of the Chinese Jews around the world. In support of the creation of a Judaica Wing of the Kaifeng Municipal Museum, it publishes a newsletter to disseminate information, old and new, on the Chinese Jews, as well as accounts of recent visits to Kaifeng.
Reminiscent of the Shanghai Committee for the Rescue of the Chinese Jews established at the turn of the century, it attempts to focus attention on this miniscule remnant of the Jewish diaspora so that their story may be made known, and efforts on behalf of the promotion of friendship and understanding between the Chinese and the Jews may succeed.
As for Chinese interest in the subject, since 1988 the Shanghai Judaic Studies Association and the China Jewish Studies Association in Nanjing have been established. The latter organization is planning an exhibit of Chinese scholarship on Judaic studies, and the former is amassing a Judaica library to be shared with scholars and others interested throughout China, among other projects.
Other indications that the Chinese are officially interested in fostering closer ties with Jews around the world is the fact that for the past four years a pilot Hebrew program has been conducted at Peking University for six undergraduate Chinese students. Other older scholars from various Chinese universities have also been to Israel from time to time. A tour of the exhibit on the Chinese Jews is being planned in China for the near future as well.
Although the Chinese government has long sought to avoid mention of Israel between Jewish visitors and the descendants in Kaifeng, 1990 has seen the establishment of Academic Exchange offices between China and Israel in Beijing and Tel Aviv. Just how long it will be before formal diplomatic relations are established between the two countries is impossible to predict, but the likelihood appears to be greater each year.
Pearl S. Buck’s knowledge of the Chinese Jews can only be explained by a possible association with missionaries who were in Kaifeng while she was growing up in Nanjing at the turn of the century, or in her discovery of Bishop White’s Chinese Jews, published just six years before Peony was written. The details of daily life and customs prevalent among the Chinese Jews which were incorporated in the story of the Ezra family can only be described as uncanny. In writing Peony, Pearl S. Buck did much to foster greater cultural understanding between the Chinese and the Jews. And in republishing Peony at this particular point in Chinese-Jewish relations, one cannot help but imagine what the future holds in store for continued contact between the two oldest civilizations on earth.
WENDY R. ABRAHAM, Ed.D., author of the Afterword for this edition, is a scholar of the history of the Jewish descendants of Kaifeng. Her dissertation at Teachers College, Columbia University was on the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng, 1605–1985.
A frequent lecturer on the topic, she serves on the Board of the Sino-Judaic Institute, Palo Alto, CA., and is currently teaching Asian studies at NYU and the New School for Social Research in New York City. She has visited China six times since 1981, and in 1985 recorded oral histories of the oldest descendants of Chinese Jews in Kaifeng which she hopes to publish.
Bibliography
Abraham, Wendy R. “Kaifeng’s Legacy, Chinese Jewish Identity,” Hadassah Magazine, vol. 69 no. 1, August/September 1987, p. 20–25. (Illus. with photos by the author).
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Leslie, Donald Daniel. The Survival of the Chinese Jews. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972.
______. “The Kaifeng Jewish Community: A Summary.” Jewish Journal of Sociology 9, no. 2 (December 1969): 175-85.Reprinted in Kublin, Studies, pp. 187-97.
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______. ed. The Sino-Judaic Bibliographies of Rudolf Loewenthal. Hebrew Union College Press, Cincinnati, in association with The Sino-Judaic Institute, Palo Alto, CA., 1988.
White, William Charles. Chinese Jews. 3 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942. (Reprinted (3 vols. in 1), Cecil Roth, ed., New York, Paragon Book Reprint, 1966.