10 The Jewish Herald • Friday, March 22, 2013 O


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Protocols Portray Most Tense Jimmy Carter Visit To Israel


Israel State Archives releases cables,


protocols and minutes from Carter’s dramatic visit 34 years ago


Herb Keinon


In Israel, The Mandarin In The Mikveh L


Michael Freund


ast month, the small and unassum- ing mikveh (ritual bath) in Hod


HaSharon witnessed the unfolding of a remarkable scene in the annals of Jewish history. One by one, six young Chinese men, all descendants of the Jewish com-


munity of Kaifeng, China, immersed themselves in the warm and purifying waters before a three- man rabbinical court, thereby completing their long journey home to the Jewish People. It marked the first time that a group of Chinese-


Jewish men had undergone a formal return to Ju- daism in the Jewish State. And for Yaakov Wang, as well as the others, it


was the fulfillment of a life-long dream, one that had been passed down to them by their ancestors throughout the generations. As a young man in China, Wang first learned


of his family’s Jewish heritage from his grandfa- ther. And while he knew little about the details of Jewish practice, he instilled within Wang a strong sense of Jewish pride. Hence, whenever Wang went out for dinner with


his friends, he refrained from eating pork, despite the central role it plays in Chinese cuisine. And when he told his fellow students in school that


he was Jewish, many responded by saying to him, “now I know why you are more clever than me.” As Wang grew older, and began to delve more deeply into Kaifeng’s Jewish past, he learned that it was a community with a long and rich heritage, much of it unfamiliar to most of world Jewry. Scholars believe that Jews first settled in Kaifeng,


which was one of China’s imperial capitals, in the eighth century during the Song Dynasty, or per- haps even earlier. They were Sephardic-Jewish merchants from


Persia or Iraq who made their way eastward along the Silk Route and settled in Kaifeng with the bless- ing of the Chinese emperor. The Jews quickly established themselves in the


city, where they found an environment of tolerance and acceptance, in sharp contrast to much of the rest of the Diaspora. In 1163, Kaifeng’s Jews built a large and beau-


tiful synagogue, which was subsequently renovat- ed and rebuilt on numerous occasions throughout the centuries. At its peak, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-


1644), the Kaifeng Jewish community may have numbered as many as 5,000 people. By the 17th century, a number of Chinese Jews


had attained high ranks in the Chinese civil ser- vice, but along with success came the blight of as- similation, which took an increasingly heavy toll on the community and its cohesion. As a result, by the mid-1800s, the Chinese Jews’


knowledge and practice of Judaism had largely faded away. The last rabbi of the community is be- lieved to have died in the early part of the 19th cen- tury, and the synagogue building was all but de- stroyed by a series of floods which struck the city in the 1840s and thereafter. Nevertheless, against all odds, Kaifeng’s Jews


struggled to preserve their Jewish identity, passing down whatever little they knew to their progeny.


In the 1920s, a Chinese scholar named Chen Yuan


wrote a series of treatises on religion in China, in- cluding “A study of the Israelite religion in Kaifeng.” Yuan noted the decline the community had endured, but took pains to recall that the remaining descen- dants still tried as best they could to observe various customs and rituals, including that of Yom Kippur. “Although the Kaifeng Jews today no longer have


a temple where they can observe this holy day,” Yuan wrote, “they still fast and mourn without fail on the 10th day of the month.” Nowadays, in this city of over 4.5 million, there


are still several hundred people — perhaps a thou- sand at most — who are descendants of the Jew- ish community. Because of intermarriage in preceding genera-


tions, most if not all are no longer considered Jew- ish in the eyes of Jewish law. But in recent years, an awakening of sorts has taken place, especial- ly among the younger generation of Kaifeng Jew- ish descendants, many of whom wish to learn more about their heritage and reclaim their roots. It was this stirring which prompted Wang and


six other Jewish descendants from Kaifeng to make aliyah in October 2009. They were brought to Isra- el by Shavei Israel, the organization which I found- ed and chair. Previously, we had brought a group of four young


women from Kaifeng to Israel in 2006, all of whom successfully completed the conversion process with- in 12 months after their arrival. But in recent years, Israel’s bureaucracy grew


more taxing, necessitating that we wage a pro- longed battle of more than three years on behalf of Wang and the others. Suffice it to say that on more than one occasion,


the young men from Kaifeng were pushed to the breaking point, wondering whether the Jewish People truly wanted them back. Fortunately, they did not give up, and that persis-


tence was rewarded at the Hod HaSharon mikveh last month, where Wang and the other five young Chinese Jews completed their conversion (the sev- enth member of the group, Hoshea Tony Liang, did so previously). It should not be this way. It should not be so dif-


ficult and draining for descendants of the Jewish People to return to their roots. Wang and the other young men are serious about


their Judaism. They spent two years studying in yeshiva, pray three times a day, observe the Sab- bath and the dictates of halacha. Wang now wants to study to become a rabbi —


the first Chinese rabbi in two centuries! — to help other Kaifeng Jewish descendants learn more about their heritage. “They deserve a chance to become more knowl-


edgeable Jews,” Wang said, adding, “That is what our ancestors would have wanted.” Another member of the group plans to learn


how to be a shochet (ritual slaughterer) and open an authentic kosher Chinese restaurant in Isra- el, while a third, who trained as a dentist in Chi- na, hopes to qualify to work in his profession in the Jewish State. After nearly disappearing more than a century


ago, China’s Jewish descendants are reaching out to us, looking to re-embrace their Jewishness. A way must now be found to enable them to do so. o


Likud Israeli prime minister and his government that touch on Iran, a settlement freeze, and poisonous anti- Israeli articles in Egypt’s press, among other issues. Is this a reference to President Barack Obama’s vis-


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it to Israel in four days time? No. Rather, it is among the tidbits culled from a cache of documents released Sunday by the Israel State Archives relating to the March 1979 visit of former President Jimmy Carter, then only the second sitting American president to vis- it Israel following Richard Nixon in 1973. The documents portray a tense and dramatic visit


that Carter paid the country beginning on March 10, after spending three days in Egypt. The purpose of the trip, made soon after the overthrow of the shah in Iran in January 1979, was to finalize the peace treaty be- tween Israel and Egypt. The framework for that trea- ty was signed at Camp David some six months earlier, but the drawing up of the actual treaty had stalled and both Egypt and Israel stiffened their positions. Carter’s frustration, however, was directed more at


then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin than at Egyp- tian President Anwar Sadat, as he said during a brief- ing with U.S. congressmen in the White House soon after his return to the United States. According to a declassified cable of that meeting writ-


ten by Zvi Rafiah of the Israeli Embassy, Carter praised Begin, Sadat and even Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, but said it was much easier doing business with Sadat. “It is possible to finish within half-an-hour all the


most difficult problems with Sadat,” Rafiah quoted Carter as saying. “Sadat deals with the general problems, deals with the


wider issues and leaves the details to his foreign minister. “Begin, on the contrary, is a semanticist who wants


to go over the details himself.” Unlike this week’s Obama visit, the background to


Carter’s trip was the signing of a framework peace deal — between Begin and Sadat at Camp David in Sep- tember 1978. This was followed by talks on the draft peace treaty in Washington in October, but those talks did not lead to a speedy conclusion. According to an explanation on the Israel State Ar-


chives’ blog of the documents released Sunday, “after the initial euphoria of Camp David, the differences between the parties again began to emerge. The an- gry reaction of the Arab world forced Sadat to prove that he was still committed to the Palestinians and to an overall peace treaty. Begin, under attack by his friends and supporters for abandoning all of the Sinai, was determined to make no more concessions.


O’Tourist, Up Close J


Julie Pace and Josef Federman


ERUSALEM — President Barack Obama has per- mitted TV crews with live microphones to accompany


him at virtually every stop in Israel, giving a rare and fascinating glimpse at the joking and small talk that takes place on the sidelines of official visits: n In Jerusalem Thursday, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the Israel Muse- um, where they examined the Dead Sea Scrolls. Read- ing a passage from Isaiah from a facsimile of a scroll, Netanyahu explained: “It says, ‘Nations should not lift swords unto nations and they shall know war no more.” Obama marveled that the Hebrew language had not


changed much over the centuries. n As Obama prepared for his meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah Ab- bas, Israel’s president delivered a stern warning: Don’t ruin your appetite. Obama was taking his leave from President Shimon


Peres during the technology tour when he made note of the state dinner planned at Peres’ residence later Thurs-


ERUSALEM — A Democratic U.S. president arrives in Israel and holds tense talks with a suspicious


Illustration Camille Weber


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