Jews in China

* I am visiting here from my home in Beijing, and a news item in The Times (Aug. 14) concerning the Jewish community in Kaifeng, China, a millennium ago, recently came to my attention. It says that “few are able to explain how the group made its way from ancient Judea to central China.”

The fact is that over the past 300 years several Western and Chinese historians, based in part on records inscribed in stone by the Jews themselves, have described their route.

To those interested in learning the details, I immodestly recommend a book I edited and compiled, “Jews in Old China: Studies by Chinese Scholars” (Hippocrene, New York, 1984). A Hebrew edition was published in Israel in 1987.

I am not a Chinese Jew, but as a Chinese citizen who celebrated his bar mitzvah in Flatbush in 1928, I believe I may confidently lay claim to being a Jewish Chinese!

SIDNEY SHAPIRO

Los Angeles