Chinese City Launches Fund-Raiser to Preserve Unique Jewish Heritage
The Chinese city of Kaifeng has launched an international fund-raising drive to help it preserve a unique Jewish heritage that dates from before the time of Italian explorer Marco Polo.
Kaifeng, in central Henan province, is seeking to rebuild a 17th-Century synagogue and collect research documents on a Jewish community that thrived 1,000 years ago on the Chinese side of the ancient Silk Road trading route.
The $4-million project aims at reproducing a Chinese-style synagogue in Kaifeng and using it as a museum of China’s Jewish history.
That history is one of the more mysterious tales of the Jewish people. While researchers have found documentation of relatively recent history of Kaifeng’s Jews, few are able to explain how the group made its way from ancient Judea to central China.
At its height, Kaifeng’s Jewish community numbered about 2,000 people.
About 200 descendants of this group are still believed to live in the city, although virtually all religious tradition has been lost after centuries of intermarriage.
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