What happened to the Kaifeng Jews?
The Kaifeng community’s everyday activities incorporated some customs unusual for China (such as abstinence from pork) as well as many elements of Confucian thinking and traditional Chinese practice (binding of feet, and the taking of second wives). It is generally asserted that they had rabbis (the last dying in 1810), observed Torah readings in their synagogue, kept the sabbath, and circumcised their boys until the 20th century, though some Chinese historians dispute this. Eventually the Kaifeng community assimilated so far that they disappeared into the Chinese mainstream. Certainly by the mid-1800s their synagogue (which, confusingly, early visitors described with a word which also means ‘mosque’) had fallen into disrepair, and there was nobody who knew enough Hebrew to read the Torah. Recent reports suggest that several hundred Chinese in today’s Kaifeng still claim to be Jewish. Like all their recorded predecessors, they have standard Chinese surnames. A new synagogue has been co
