Posted by:
Amyjo
(
)
Date: May 18, 2017 10:22PM
Tevai,
Here's a link to a book review on Marvin Tokayer's book, "Pepper, Silk and Ivory," with a summary description here of the chapter that discusses Jewish settlements in China going back literally centuries:
"Some of Rabbi Tokayer’s stories go back many centuries. In discussing the story of the Jews of Kaifeng, China, he tells the story of a Jesuit Missionary, Father Matteo Ricci, who arrived in Kaifeng in 1605, not knowing that a colony of Jews had settled centuries previously in Kaifeng, with written records dating back to the twelfth century. One Chinese man asked him if he had come to teach about the “One God.” Father Ricci immediately assumed that the man was a descendant of Christians who had made their way to China in the distant past and then disappeared, perhaps by assimilation. Meanwhile his questioner, Ai Ten, having never heard of Christianity, assumed that Fr. Ricci was a fellow Jew. When he saw a painting of the Last Supper, he mistook it for one depicting Jacob and his 12 sons. As the story went, Father Ricci then showed Ai the figurines of John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary and the Baby Jesus, asking him to kneel with him in prayer. At that point, Ai realized the priest was not a Jew because Jews do not kneel in front of statues. Father Ricci caught on to Ai’s identity when Ai recognized the Hebrew words in one of his Bibles."
http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2014/10/25/rabbi-tokayer-chronicles-many-jews-asia/