SEMINAR: Asian Studies Public Seminar

From the ninth century on, there was an indigenous Jewish community in the city of Kaifeng in north-eastern China. Largely cut off from contact with the main centres of Jewish life, the Kaifeng Jews developed a distinctive culture that was unquestionably Jewish, but progressively absorbed Chinese elements. Their greatest problem in perpetuating their cultural identity was not separation from other Jews so much as the openness and tolerance of Chinese society. Intermarriage occurred frequently, and Jews were fully accepted as merchants, government officials and neighbours. Over time, they were so assimilated that few of their descendants carry any memory of Jewish ancestry and physically look much like other Chinese. The story of the Kaifeng Jews is dramatic and colourful, and offers many profound lessons in the study of both Jewish and Chinese history.

XU XIN, is Dean of the Institute of Jewish Studies at Nanjing University and President of the China Judaic Studies Association. He is Editor-in-Chief of and a major contributor to the Chinese edition of Encyclopaedia Judaica and author of Anti-Semitism: How and Why; A History of Western Culture; and The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture, and Religion. He teaches undergraduate courses on Jewish history, culture and religion and conducts postgraduate programs at Nanjing University. In 1995 he served as a Fellow at Hebrew Union College and as a visiting scholar at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University in 1996 and 1998. He has lectured at universities in Israel, the US, the UK and Canada and has launched twelve Nanjing testimonies at the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, an organization dedicated to producing audio-visual interviews with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides. In 1995 he was conferred the James Friend Memorial Award, and in 2003 Bar-Ilan University awarded him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa in recognition of the significant research he has undertaken on the Jewish presence in historical and contemporary China.