Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor

Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor
by Matthias Messmer
Lexington Books

German intellectuals, and their books, seem to come in two flavours. There are the big thinkers, theorists and philosophers whose broad scope and skills of synthesis are a wonder to behold. Then there are the 'detail men': the cataloguers, small-bore analysts, compilers and annotators whose fastidious meticulousness is impressive in its own way, but does not set the heart racing.

Jewish Wayfarers in China is, indeed, panoramic: the book profiles a fascinating array of personalities whose only unifying characteristic is Jewish ethnicity. They come mostly from Europe, but also from Baghdad via India, from the Americas, and other spots besides. They are capitalists and communists, businessmen and revolutionaries, lawyers, doctors, journalists, poets, vagrants, soldiers, and in the colourful case of Morris 'Two-Gun' Cohen, a personal bodyguard to Dr Sun Yat-sen.

Matthias Messmer, an academic and researcher, has vacuumed up details from newspapers, memoirs, academic archives, interviews, and other sources, and stitched them together into life narratives in an impressive feat of coordination and stamina. But it is a 'details' book comprising mini-biographies of Jews who passed through China in the 20th century, with their backgrounds and achievements briefly sketched but not deeply contextualised or analysed. The young Aaron Avshalomov was introduced to Chinese opera and legends by his caretaker before studying Hebrew, marinating in Russia's operatic traditions, and eventually, while living in Peking and Shanghai, composing plays and operas based on traditional legends and featuring a blend of Western and Chinese instruments.

Erwin Reifler was a Viennese Jew and academic who wrote comparative linguistics studies of classical Chinese and Hebrew. Jakob Rosenfeld earned a medical degree, finagled release from Dachau and Buchenwald, and opened a private practice in Shanghai before going behind communist lines to 'Red' areas and serve the revolution. Victor Sassoon built Shanghai's skyline over the Bund, much as we see it today.

Many others populate the book, and their stories are interesting as well, but Messmer would have been better advised to cut out those for whom documentation is too scant, or whose careers in China were short and less substantive.

For those who left behind a large body of work, a more in-depth analysis would have brought out common strands of Jewish identity that shape and animate the book's subjects. Some individual biographies do meditate on aspects of Jewish identity - 'outsiderness', 'Orientalness', emphasis on family and scholarship - but we are left with many smaller data points and little thematic synthesis.

As a reference volume for China through diverse Jewish eyes, then, this book succeeds. And it may serve as a blueprint for future writers seeking to articulate the depth and complexity of the 'Jewish experience' in China. Jewish Wayfarers is an excellent start, but as a project, it does not feel complete.