Kaifeng Jews

I've always known that there have been recognized Jewish communities almost everywhere in the world, but I was never familiar with their histories and traditions specifically. I was thus pleasantly suprised to learn that there was a recognized Jewish community in China. The Kaifeng Jews have existed in Kaifeng, in Henan province, for hundreds of years. The Kaifeng Jews were not considered to be traditionally Jewish by the Han Chinese, who recognized the Kaifeng Jews by the term "tiaojinjiao", which means "the religion which removes the sinew." This is considered to be a reference to kashrut (kosher), the Jewish dietary proscriptions.

It's interesting to note that Europeans had no idea that Jews existed in China until 1605, when Matteo Ricci, a jesuit priest from Italy, was visited by a Jewish man from Kaifeng, who had come to Beijing to take examinations for his jinshi degree. Ricci recognized the man to be Jewish because when he saw an image of Mary and the Christ child, he believed that it was an image of Rebecca with Jacob. The priest learned from this man that there was a community of Jews that lived in Kaifeng, and they had a synagogue and volumes of textual and pictorial materials, as well as books. Ricci included this encounter in one of his accounts, "de Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu," or "on Christian expeditions to China undertaken by the Society of Jesus."

The following link is to a short video that shows the Kaifeng Jews arriving in Israel to study the Torah. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edhtdoPukk0