ABSTRACT
China is the only country in the Far East where Jews have continually lived
for over a 1,000 years. Their religious beliefs and practices developed under
unique circumstances. Jews who came to China before 1840, that is to say
Jewish Persian traders, from the tenth to the eighteenth centuries, who settled in Kaifeng or stations on the Silk Route, had been assimilated into
Chinese society. In contrast, Jews who arrived after 1840, that is to say the
Iraqi-Indian migration, did not assimilate into broader Chinese society.
Chinese policy, especially since the 1950s, views these Jews as two separate
groups. This chapter addresses the difference in treatment between the
assimilated Jews of Kaifeng and the later immigrations from a historical
perspective, granting special consideration to those who settled in Kaifeng,
and how their conditions have changed over the last 50 years.
