ICS Symposium: China and the Jews in the Modern Era

 

While Jews never constituted more than a tiny fraction of a percent of the Chinese population, their presence in the country and relationship with Chinese culture have been significant. This relationship has occurred in a number of contexts.

 

 

While Jews never constituted more than a tiny fraction of a percent of the Chinese population, their presence in the country and relationship with Chinese culture have been significant. This relationship has occurred in a number of contexts.

 

There was a Chinese Jewish community in Kaifeng during the late Middle Ages whose remnants have remained until the present. Jews from Baghdad came to China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to trade in opium and other merchandise. Russian Jews came to Harbin and other Chinese communities to escape violence in Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, and a large number of Jews came to live in Shanghai during World War Two, where they were saved from death at the hand of the Nazis.

 

More recently there has been a considerable interest in Jews and their culture in Chinese academia, where several specialists in Jewish studies now have faculty appointments. Finally, a highly disproportionate number of Jewish families—including a number in Central Ohio—adopt Chinese children, creating another context of relations between Jews and China.

 

This one-day symposium, featuring a distinguished international group of scholars, will explore aspects of the relationship between Jews and China in modernity. Invited speakers include: Dr. Noam Urbach (Bar-Ilan University, Israel), Dr. Moshe Bernstein (University of Western Australia, Australia), Dr. Jonathan Goldstein (University of West Georgia), and Dr. Bei Gao (University of North Carolina Wilmington). In addition, there will be a poster session for graduate students and recent Ph.D.'s to present their research.

 

Melton Center for Jewish Studies

Institute for Chinese Studies

 

Our special thanks for support from the Melton Center’s Thomas and Diann Mann Distinguished Symposium Fund, the Sino-Judaic Institute, and a U.S. Department of Education Title VI Grant to OSU’s East Asian Studies Center.

 

College of Arts and Sciences

East Asian Studies Center

Middle East Studies Center

Center for the Study of Religion

Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Department of History

Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Jewish Studies Student Association (JSSA)

Graduate Students of East Asian Languages and Literatures (GREALL)