Behind the Jewish renaissance

A LITTLE-known chapter in the history of China's Old Silk Road tells of a group of medieval Jewish traders who settled in the Song dynasty's imperial capital of Kaifeng. They prayed in Hebrew, observed Jewish dietary laws, circumcised their newborn boys and built a synagogue facing west - towards Jerusalem.

The presence of Jews in China is recorded as early as 960 AD, when an imperial charter granted Jews from the Gulf region the right to bring carpets to trade for silk. Some of the Jews who chose to settle in China brought their families with them, but most inter-married with locals. Within a few generations they came to look more Chinese than Jewish, but retained their religious heritage.

The community, which at its peak numbered in the thousands, survived until late last century.

Today, more than 1,000 years after their first arrival, and 100 years since the sad, final stages of the community's disintegration, descendants of Kaifeng's Jews are trying to rekindle a renaissance.

''We consider our ancestral home to be Israel,'' says Professor Zhao Xiangru, a staff-member at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a descendant of the Kaifeng Jews.

''We are Israelites. We had a temple and, like the one in Jerusalem, it has been destroyed.'' As president of the Society for the Study of the History and Culture of the Kaifeng Jews, Professor Zhao is spearheading a drive to preserve the few remaining relics of the community, to revive a sense of identity in its descendants, and to re-establish contact with Jews around the world.