A team of senior Israeli rabbis is due to rule soon on whether thousands of Indians who say they are members of one of the lost tribes of Israel can settle there.
Shlomo Amar recently led a delegation of rabbis to the north-eastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram where members of the Benei Menashe tribe live and practise Judaism.
At the Beith-el Synagogue in the Manipur capital, Imphal, nine men wearing knitted skull caps read silently from the Old Testament.
Four others stand on a wooden platform in the centre of the room as a young man reads from the holy book under the supervision of an elderly priest.
These people claim to be one of the lost tribes of Israel.
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3575716.stmAlso:
Are There Really Jews in China?: An Update
Daniel J. Elazar
<snip>
There are four groups of Jews, or people of Jewish descent in China. The first are the so-called Chinese Jews of Kaifeng, now estimated at some 100 families totalling approximately 500 people. The city of Kaifeng, located approximately 300 miles from Beijing, contains the remnants of a Jewish community which
flourished in the city from about the ninth to the seventeenth centuries, and which continued to be identifiably Jewish until the 1840s. The origins of the community are unclear, although they appear to be derived from an invitation extended by a Sung Dynasty emperor to a group of Jews to settle and manufacture cotton fabrics in Kaifeng, which at that time was the imperial capital. Approximately 1000 Jews responded as a group and formed a community, which reached its peak in the Middle Ages, when Jews from Western and Southern Asia (principally Iran, Afghanistan and India of today) were actively involved in the China trade. They settled in at least six other cities throughout China, including Beijing in the seventeenth century.
Of those communities, only Kaifeng Jewry flourished sufficiently to survive for a millennium, preserving some traces of their Jewishness until their synagogue was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1840s and the last of them assimilated. The only remnants of the community today are a knowledge of the site of the synagogue, upon which another building now stands; a stele from the Middle Ages with inscriptions of major events in the history of the community carved into it, but no longer legible; and a practice, still preserved by some, of avoiding the eating of pork. The surviving records and artifacts of the community have long since been transferred to Britain or the United States. I myself have seen one of the community's two surviving Torah scrolls in the Hebrew Union College library in Cincinnati. There are substantial records of the community's existence, compiled or written by Europeans, since the Kaifeng Jews were discovered by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century.
Beginning with the settlement of Jews in Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong in the nineteenth century, some efforts were made to bring the Jews of Kaifeng back into the Jewish fold, but all of these came to naught. In my opinion, based upon the experiences of similar Jewish populations in other parts of the world which had also acquired an indigenous cast over the centuries and appeared racially different, these local Jews, living in a xenophobic environment,
were afraid to identify with any foreigners. As a result, the Jews themselves hastened the process of their assimilation into the general society. Still the facts of their assimilation are murky. Some became "simply Chinese," as Professor Gao described them, but most became "white Moslems," who did not eat pork but did not practice traditional Islam either. To avoid pork in China is to set oneself truly apart and, in a civilzation where organized religion is virtually unknown, this leaves many questions unanswered.<snip>
Thousands of Jews fleeing Russia, the upheavals of World War I and Nazism, found their way to China. They established communities in such places as Harbin, Tientsin, Mukden and Shanghai. For nearly half a century, Jewish life flourished in those communities, reaching a peak population of over 30,000. A kehillah (a formal Jewish community organization) was formed in Shanghai and for a few years, there were even yeshivot in the city, established by refugees from Nazism who left as soon as World War II ended.
After the Chinese Communist takeover in 1949, there was a mass exodus of these refugees, particularly to Israel, Australia, and North America. The communities were dissolved, leaving British-ruled Hong Kong as the only Chinese city with an organized Jewish life.
By the early 1960s, only two Jews remained on the books in Shanghai out of a community of 20,000. The Joint Distribution Committee knew of a diminishing handful of others in other cities. It seemed that all the others emigrated.
More:
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles2/china.htmSee also:
Jewish Communities in Exotic Places
by Ken Blady
ISBN: 0765761122
This unique volume looks at seventeen Jewish communities in Third World countries and chronicles the history of these groups by tracing their survival, exploring aspects of their culture, religion, and folkways. These Jewish communities are situated in remote places on the Asian and African Jewish geographical periphery, which, over the centuries, became isolated from the major centers of Jewish civilization.
Jewish Communities in Exotic Places examines seventeen Jewish groups that are referred to in Hebrew as edot ha-mizrach, Eastern or Oriental Jewish communities. These groups, situated in remote places on the Asian and African Jewish geographical periphery, became isolated from the major centers of Jewish civilization over the centuries and embraced some interesting practices and aspects of the dominant cultures in which they were situated.
<snip>
Table of Contents
Pt. 1. From the land of frankincense and myrrh. The Jews of North Yemen — The Jews of Habban, South Yemen —
pt. 2. Pariahs among ayatollahs. The Jews of Persia — The Djedid al-Islam (New Muslims) of Meshed —
pt. 3. Lost in the land of Assyria. The mountain Jews of Kurdistan —
pt. 4. On the Russian riviera. The Krimchaks of the Crimea —
pt. 5. From the land of the golden fleece. The Ebraeli of Georgia —
pt. 6. Samson warriors, Bar Kochba's heirs. The mountain Jews of Daghestan —
pt. 7. The people with the blue-stained fingers. The Tadjiki Jews of Bukhara —
pt. 8. A remedy for the evil eye. The Jews of Afghanistan —
pt. 9. Jewish untouchables? The Bene Israel of Bombay — The Malabaris and Paradesis of Cochin —
pt. 10. The "blue-turbaned Muslims". The Jews of Kaifeng, China —
pt. 11. Mellah, Medinah, Marabouts, and Mahia. The Judeo-Berbers of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco —
pt. 12. Cave rabbis? Cave synagogues? The Jews of Libya : merchants and cavern dwellers —
pt. 13. From the land of the lotus eaters. The Jews of Jerba, Tunisia —
pt. 14. The Queen of Sheba's lost children. The Beta Israel of Ethiopia.
More:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-0765761122-1
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