The Theology of the Chinese Jews, 1000-1850

A thousand years ago, the Chinese government invited merchants from one of the Chinese port synagogue communities to the capital, Kaifeng. The merchants settled there and the community prospered. Over many centuries, with government support, the Kaifeng Jews built and rebuilt their synagogue, which became perhaps the world’s largest. Some studied for the rabbinate; others prepared for civil service examinations, leading to a disproportionate number of Jewish government officials. While continuing orthodox Jewish practices, they added rituals honouring their parents and the patriarchs in accord with Chinese customs. Thus they remained fully Jewish while harmonizing with the family-centred religion of China. Based on the theology they brought from Baghdad, the Chinese Jews developed a theology that bypassed the horrors of Christian persecution and expressed it in literary Chinese using Daoist terminology.

The Theology of the Chinese Jews traces the history of Jews in China and explores how their theology’s focus on love, rather than on the fear of a non-anthropomorphic God, may speak to contemporary liberal Jews. By the mid-eighteenth century?cut off from Judaism elsewhere for two centuries, their synagogue destroyed by a major flood, their community impoverished and dispersed by a civil war that devastated Kaifeng?their Judaism became defunct.

Postscript by Rabbi Anson Laytner.

Co-published with the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society.