jewish-privilege:

[December 12, 2020] – For this year’s Hanukkah, Amir is lighting menorah candles and reciting blessings to celebrate the holiday’s eight nights, as many Jews are around the world.

But he does so in secret, worried that Chinese officials will come around – as they often do on religious occasions – to enforce a ban against Judaism, pressuring him to renounce his faith. Sometimes, he’s even called in for interrogations.

(…)

Since 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has waged a harsh campaign against foreign influence and unapproved religion, part of a push to ‘Sinicise’ faith – ripping down church crosses and mosque onion domes, and detaining more than a million Muslims in the western Xinjiang region.

As well as Christians and Muslims, Mr Xi’s suppression has hit
China’s tiny congregation of Jews, whose ancestors settled more than a
millennium ago along the Yellow River in Kaifeng, then the capital of
the Northern Song Dynasty.

That such a small group can attract the
Communist Party’s ire shows how far the crackdown has spread. Only
about 1,000 people in Kaifeng claim Jewish heritage, and of those, only
around 100 or are practising Jews, experts say – barely a splash in
China’s sea of 1.4 billion. Even at its peak in the 1500s, the community
only numbered around 5,000.

“It’s government policy – China
doesn’t want to recognise us as Jews,” one man, who dreams of training
as a rabbi in Israel, told the Telegraph. “Their goal is to make sure
the next generation doesn’t have any Jewish identity.”

At home, he
teaches everything he knows to his child, just as his forebears – most
likely merchants from Persia – did for generations.

In that way,
Kaifeng’s Jewish heritage survived dynasties, wars, natural disasters
and the Cultural Revolution, when many destroyed genealogical records to
hide their lineage. It has also helped them manage without a rabbi for
more than 150 years.

They are fighting to keep their history
alive, even though “asserting their desires to be connected with their
Jewish heritage falls afoul of the official [Chinese] position on
unauthorised religions,” said Anson Laytner, a retired rabbi and
president of the Sino-Judaic Institute.

(…)

Chinese
authorities are also concerned about undue foreign influence if the
Kaifeng Jewish community is allowed to build links with Jews abroad.

“In
terms of numbers, it’s so insignificant, but in terms of potential
attention, it’s much, much bigger,” said Noam Urbach, an Israeli
academic who has studied the Kaifeng Jews. Their existence can “raise a
lot of attention among the international Jewish community.”

In
Kaifeng, stones engraved as far back as 1489 with the community’s
beliefs and ancestry that used to mark a 12th-century synagogue have
disappeared from a public exhibit.

An ancient well, believed to be
the synagogue’s last ruins, has likewise vanished under a cloak of
cement. The authorities have also torn down the city’s few Hebrew signs
that once marked the Teaching Torah Lane.

In that same lane, a
spot where a few dozen Jews – some of whom were government officials –
used to meet for services is now plastered in propaganda about China’s
“management of religious affairs.” They include reminders that Judaism
is prohibited. A security camera is directed at the entrance.

(…)

The crackdown is so intense that Kaifeng residents are
afraid to dine together in public. “It’s a small place,” one Jewish man
said. “Restaurant managers know that we are the Jews, and they will
report us to the authorities.”

Across the city, the remaining trace of Jewish heritage appears to be
two tombstones with the star of David and epitaphs in Chinese and
Hebrew – but even this, they fear, will soon be gone.

Yet the Jews in Kaifeng are remarkably resilient, and have found ways to keep their faith alive underground.

Each
week, meetings are held in secret to celebrate Shabbat, the Jewish day
of rest.  Many don’t eat pork, though keeping fully kosher is risky and
expensive. But for holidays, they pool money for kosher meat and wine
procured through a network of friendly intermediaries.

At home,
residents decorate with photos of Israel, stars of David and traditional
Passover seder plates, and serve guests tea in jars that used to hold
yahrzeit candles lit in memory of the dead.

(…)

Groups
like Mr Laytner’s Sino-Judaic Institute and Shavei Israel had
previously set up centres to teach Hebrew and Jewish history and
traditions, and helped some to emigrate. But both groups were expelled a
few years ago, among the first targets of the government crackdown.

Mr
Laytner does not consider the suppression to be specifically
anti-Semitic – a sentiment experts say is unusual in China. The country
sheltered thousands of European Jews fleeing the Nazis, and today, many
Chinese view Jews favourably, typecasting them as an affluent bunch in
influential positions – bankers, politicians, lawyers, doctors, film
directors.

“In fact, the history works in their favour, because
Jews were treated like garbage all over the world, but the Chinese
accepted them,” said Moshe Yehuda Bernstein, a researcher in Australia
who has written on the Kaifeng Jews.

“It’s something the Chinese
could be proud of, yet recently in this clampdown on unofficial
religions, they’ve taken away all historical evidence of a Jewish
presence in Kaifeng, which is absurd.”

China’s ministry of foreign affairs denied the “so-called
suppression,” instead highlighting that it had once welcomed Jewish
refugees in a written response to the Telegraph.

Kaifeng Jews hope
Israel will support them, though they aren’t considered Jews under
Israeli law – after generations of inter-marriage, Judaism has not been
consistently passed down the maternal line. Mr Laytner also doubts that
Israel wants to jeopardise Sino-Israeli relations “for the sake of a
couple of thousand people.“

Indeed Israel has deepened trade ties
with China over recent years. The Israeli embassy didn’t respond to
multiple requests for comment.

But while those in Kaifeng insist
they’re proud to be Chinese and only want to preserve their history and
traditions, the crackdown has been very painful.

“We love our
country; we’re not criminals; we just don’t eat pork,” said Amir,
blinking away tears. “Why do we have to practice our faith in secret,
and live floating on the fringes of society? It’s really hard to bear.”