Posted on 04/03/2010 11:08:19 PM PDT by nickcarraway
THROUGH a locked door in the coal-darkened boiler room of No. 1 Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Kaifeng, there’s a well lined with Ming Dynasty bricks. It’s just a few yards deep and still holds water. Guo Yan, 29, an eager, bespectacled native of this Chinese city on the flood plains of the Yellow River about 600 miles south of Beijing, led me to it one recent Friday afternoon, past the doormen accustomed to her visits.
The well is all that’s left of the Temple of Purity and Truth, a synagogue that once stood on the site. The heritage it represents brings a trickle of travelers to see one of the more unusual aspects of this country: China, too, had its Jews.
Ms. Guo, who identifies herself as a Jew, says she hears it from scholars, visitors and Chinese people alike: “ ‘You Chinese Jews are very famous,’ they say. ‘But you are only in the history books.’ “
That seemed a good enough reason to come looking, and I quickly found that I was hardly alone. Ms. Guo and I were soon joined by a 36-year-old French traveler, Guillaume Audan, who called himself a “nonpracticing Jew” on a six-month world tour of “things not specifically Jewish.” Like me, he’d found Ms. Guo by recommendation, and made the detour to see what the rumored Kaifeng Jews were all about.
Earlier, Ms. Guo had brought us into a narrow courtyard at 21 Teaching Torah Lane — an alley once central to the city’s Jewish community, and still home to her 85-year-old grandmother, ZhaoCui, widow of a descendant of Chinese Jews. Her one-room house has been turned into a sort of dusty display case, with Mrs. Zhao as centerpiece.
“Here are the Kaifeng Jews,”Ms.Guo said, a little defiantly. “We are they.”
(Excerpt) Read more at travel.nytimes.com ...
My uncle used to have Orange County Jewish Heritage newspaper mailed to him from California. I was shocked to see old pictures of Chinese Jews with long ques. That is why it still surprises me when anyone says Jews are a “race.” We are all races.
(Some) Jews flip back and forth between designating themselves as an ethnic group, religion and nationality, depending on which designation serves their purposes at the moment.
None of the three really fits all people who call themselves Jews.
It’s well-known many Jews don’t consider converts to be “real Jews.” And there are a great many people considered by themselves and others to be Jews who are open atheists. So religion doesn’t define who is a Jew, at least not in the same sense as it does being Catholic or Muslim.
Jews are obviously of a great many nationalities, so that doesn’t seem to work as an overall definition.
Ethnic group (the term race hasn’t worked since Hitler) doesn’t fit too well either, as it’s obvious by appearance that Jews incorporate many ethnic strains.
So what do you think is, or should be, the definition?
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Ha Ivri
The People of G-d.
We are a People.
Thanks.
Not very responsive, but thanks anyway.
If you read The Hebrew Scriptures, it tells you flat out who and what we are. My explanation to you is from the Old Testament. Before there were “Jews,” which only references the tribe of Judah, there were Hebrews.
After the Exodus, all of the races and ethnicities that left with the Hebrews were shaped and reshaped as ONE People. HaIvri. The People.
It includes ALL the tribes and ALL those who gave their oral, verbal commitment to HaShem, ONE G-d, ONE people, while wandering in the desert. They included people from all over the world who left Egypt with the Hebrews.
There were NO Jews then.
Oh, I agree, but I will assume you agree there are Jews now. Or at least people who view themselves as and whom others view as Jews.
It’s not a big deal, but I just find it interesting that Jews just don’t fit easily into any one of the three common ways of grouping “peoples” today: religious group, ethnic group, nationality. They are all three at different times and from different perspectives.
The term ‘Jew’ is strictly unofficial, indicating the tribe of kingship to whom allegiance is owed.
The technical category is ‘ben Yisroel’ or ‘ben Yaakov’ (’son of Israel’ or ‘son of Jacob’).
The idea that there is a difference between Jews and the ‘true Israel’ is a Christian fantasy.
Like Barbara Streisand and George Soros- like those
“Jews = true Israel” fantasy?
We know this. Most people don’t. The question continues to be asked...and answered...but they still ask.
“Jew” was a term used by our enemies to distinguish ALL of us from themselves.
Why WE adopted it for ourselves has never been answered to my satisfaction. I might be strange, but I don’t put myself in that category.
I am, and will remain, a Daughter of Israel, a Zioness.
If you were here in person, I’d smack you for calling Soros a Jew. He is more Nazi than Jew, and its not an exaggeration. He is a third generation non-practitioner. His parents were atheists who got the Hungarian government to declare them Magyars (ethnic Hungarians). Little Gyorgy spent WW2 in the Arrow Cross, ransacking the property of actual Jews who were on their way to camps. He is an utterly unrepentant war criminal. And now he spends his money on screwing Jews.
Maybe, but the Israelites, which were/are a race, were God’s “chosen people” according to any interpretation of the Old Testament. This implies that all others are not God’s people. I think this doctrine of the faith is what not only drove people to Christianity instead of Judeism in droves back in ancient and medieval times, but also limits the rate of Jewish converts today. The early Catholic church spun Christ’s purpose of existance to be God’s new covenent to all people, not just the Israelites. I myself walk a line between Catholic and agnostic (I believe in the history as taught by the Catholic church, but struggle to find the faith to believe in the hocus pocus side), but I can certainly see why people perceive the jews as a race.
That is an extremely convoluted leap of illogic. Israelites were not a race. Never.
The entrance into the CULTURE required circumcision and a belief in one true G-d.
The advent of Christianity was not because of Jesus. It was because of Paul who deliberately perverted the laws of the Sabbath, Baptism, Circumcision, and “created” a new “covenant” which was based on a Roman lie and an abberant adaptation of Jesus’ own words and deeds.
It was because Paul offered forgiveness and redemption of the worst sins under the original Commandments and made the discipline of the Mosaic Laws and Torah irrelevant to gentiles.
Paul was a mass murderer...of Hebrews. He hated them because he could not live up to the tenets of the faith. He sold his soul to Rome and sought converts who never knew anything about the faith he denigrated.
He was self-loathing. NONE hate so much as those who hate themselves.
I was unaware that Streisand and Soros are Jewish legal scholars.
Tell yourself what you want, but mainstream jews do not believe non-jews are God’s people. That is why they do not accept converts as legitimate. I personally don’t see how anyone could enter the jewish faith without being of jewish blood.
Paul certainly earned masses of converts, mostly former dirt worshipers, but he hardly shaped the Christian faith, although he did shape some of the rituals to bring in some of the dirt worshippers and allow them to continue some of their traditions. His writings are only part of the New Testament and the basis of the faith are on the gospels. You bring up some interesting ideas on Paul’s character, which I have never heard before, but he was human and his character has nothing to do with the faith.
Legal scholars? Who said anything about legal scholars?
I commented about the “Christian fantasy” of
Jews vs. “true Israel”. Why change the subject?
Are Soros and Barbara Jews? Are they “true Israel”?
That was my question? That’s all. Just wanted clarity.
Streisand and Soros are born of mothers that were themselves Jewish, so they are indeed b’nei Yisroel - children of Israel. Being a bad Jew does not revoke one’s Jewish status.
See number 12.
Do you attend the Jeremiah Wright Church of Hating?
Let’s see, you don’t like Christianity.
You don’t like the Apostle Paul. A mass murderer, really?
You put no stock in the New Testament. Those are all
okay with me, those are your choices.
Jesus Christ died for you sins.
All you have to do is believe, Romans 10:9,10.
I think the word of the day is “stiff-necked”.
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