AHC: Larger Jewish community in China

[Muwatalli']

AHC: Larger Jewish community in China

 

[Daylight Savings]

First thought: a longer lived Jewish Khazaria and Jews from Europe and the Middle east flocking there eventually setting themselves up as important merchants on the Silk Road.

 

[scholar]

First thought: a longer lived Jewish Khazaria and Jews from Europe and the Middle east flocking there eventually setting themselves up as important merchants on the Silk Road.

Its possible for a greater number of jews to travel to China this way, but I wouldn't expect them to be flocking there just because Khazaria lasts a little longer.

 

[Daylight Savings]

Its possible for a greater number of jews to travel to China this way, but I would expect them to be flocking there just because Khazaria lasts a little longer.

Like I said it was just a first thought. The idea behind Khazaria was to draw more Jews to a region that would be close to the silk trade making it more likely to have them get involved.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

There was a sizeable Jewish presence in Harbin (my Hebrew prof came from there), among the White Russian community.

I could see Russian Progroms being stick, and an active Chinese recruitment being carrot for a much larger Jewish presence in northern China around 1900.

 

[BlondieBC]

There was a sizeable Jewish presence in Harbin (my Hebrew prof came from there), among the White Russian community.

I could see Russian Progroms being stick, and an active Chinese recruitment being carrot for a much larger Jewish presence in northern China around 1900.

I can too. Many Russians under the late Tsars would have loved to have fewer Jews in the Pale of Settlement. All it would take is a POD where China wanted more Jews, and with such a centralized system, it probably only takes one fairly minor decision by an emperor to get the process going. It could start small, and with the initial communities working well enough, it could grow over time into a modest size city or farming region.

 

[00Zy99]

For a twist: The Fugu plan starts earlier and has more backing. Combined with a tsar, and the subequent soviets who want the Jews out, cue a Jewish settlement in Manchuria, or on Sakhalin.

 

[EternalCynic]

For a twist: The Fugu plan starts earlier and has more backing. Combined with a tsar, and the subequent soviets who want the Jews out, cue a Jewish settlement in Manchuria, or on Sakhalin.

...without significant butterflies in Europe, this still results in Stalin's invasion of Manchuria and the Communists moving there to launch their civil war against the KMT. The entire Jewish community flees to Europe or Israel as OTL.

In OTL, many Jews entered the Imperial Court through the exam system. Since scholar-bureaucrats were seconded throughout the empire, this created a dispersion and gradual assimilation process. The OP's scenario somewhat goes against the tendencies of Chinese society.

One POD could be the end of the Yuan Dynasty. One or more of Zhu Yuanzhang's trusted advisers is connected to many Jewish clans. Once the Ming Dynasty is established, it grants the clans of its advisers vast areas of Sichuan, which had been depopulated by plague and war. The Jews of Sichuan, who comprise 2% of its population, tend to incorporate Chinese folk religion in their life and tend to ignore Halakhic laws, yet are undoubtedly Jews today.

 

[NothingNow]

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One POD could be the end of the Yuan Dynasty. One or more of Zhu Yuanzhang's trusted advisers is connected to many Jewish clans. Once the Ming Dynasty is established, it grants the clans of its advisers vast areas of Sichuan, which had been depopulated by plague and war. The Jews of Sichuan, who comprise 2% of its population, tend to incorporate Chinese folk religion in their life and tend to ignore Halakhic laws, yet are undoubtedly Jews today.

You could have folk festivals and keep most of the halakhic laws in place without any real problems. You'd just have a part of Sichuan where beef and chicken are even more emphasized, and that has a rather odd set of languages, and a local language that mixes bits of Hebrew, Ba-Shu, and Mandarin together, possibly using Hebrew orthography instead of Hanzi.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

I would LOVE to see someone making an Hebrew Chinese ATL conlang... (And in a similar way, Hind-Hebrew or 'dradivian-hebrew' for a similar situation in India, like Parsis may have their own dialect maybe).

 

[NothingNow]

I would LOVE to see someone making an Hebrew Chinese ATL conlang... (And in a similar way, Hind-Hebrew or 'dradivian-hebrew' for a similar situation in India, like Parsis may have their own dialect maybe).

They existed. Seriously, a few people still speak Judeo-Malayalam, Judæo-Marathi was a thing, and there's a whole bunch of Judæo-Iranian dialects and languages, including Bukhori.

 

[EternalCynic]

You could have folk festivals and keep most of the halakhic laws in place without any real problems. You'd just have a part of Sichuan where beef and chicken are even more emphasized, and that has a rather odd set of languages, and a local language that mixes bits of Hebrew, Ba-Shu, and Mandarin together, possibly using Hebrew orthography instead of Hanzi.

A modern linguist would merely see it as a Sichuan dialect with Judeo-Persian vocabulary - in other words, similar to OTL Hong Kong Cantonese which contains English vocabulary. The Hui Muslims developed Xiaoerjing to write Chinese in Arabic script, but that was rarely used outside of religious purposes. A similar thing will happen with Sichuan Jews, who will face more pressure to assimilate than their Muslim brethren. By today they may not be Jewish enough to qualify under the Law of Return.

 

[BlondieBC]

A modern linguist would merely see it as a Sichuan dialect with Judeo-Persian vocabulary - in other words, similar to OTL Hong Kong Cantonese which contains English vocabulary. The Hui Muslims developed Xiaoerjing to write Chinese in Arabic script, but that was rarely used outside of religious purposes. A similar thing will happen with Sichuan Jews, who will face more pressure to assimilate than their Muslim brethren. By today they may not be Jewish enough to qualify under the Law of Return.

You might need a situation where the Jews accept converts, so they could reach critical mass. If the emperor saw good results from his Jewish civil servants, he might even encourage the religion. Once there is a Jewish base in China, it makes it a lot easier for more Jews to immigrate to China.

 

[NothingNow]

A modern linguist would merely see it as a Sichuan dialect with Judeo-Persian vocabulary - in other words, similar to OTL Hong Kong Cantonese which contains English vocabulary. The Hui Muslims developed Xiaoerjing to write Chinese in Arabic script, but that was rarely used outside of religious purposes. A similar thing will happen with Sichuan Jews, who will face more pressure to assimilate than their Muslim brethren. By today they may not be Jewish enough to qualify under the Law of Return.

Good points, but it's also been argued that pretty much anywhere else, Chinese wouldn't be classified as it's own language, but as a pretty massive family. I was thinking it'd be something like a Chinese version of Yiddish or Bukhori with a few more caryovers from Hebrew, less tonality (but with an unusually large number of adjectives, and general descriptions of everything,) and preserving some oddities from Ba-Shu, since it'd be more of a Creole (like Singdarin,) instead of being just another dialect.

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Good points, but it's also been argued that pretty much anywhere else, Chinese wouldn't be classified as it's own language, but as a pretty massive family. I was thinking it'd be something like a Chinese version of Yiddish or Bukhori with a few more caryovers from Hebrew, less tonality (but with an unusually large number of adjectives, and general descriptions of everything,) and preserving some oddities from Ba-Shu, since it'd be more of a Creole (like Singdarin,) instead of being just another dialect.

There was historicaly a Han'er, mixed Han language/dialect by example, from... mongol era?

 

[EternalCynic]

You might need a situation where the Jews accept converts, so they could reach critical mass. If the emperor saw good results from his Jewish civil servants, he might even encourage the religion. Once there is a Jewish base in China, it makes it a lot easier for more Jews to immigrate to China.

Jews accepting converts is ASB. And besides, there are plenty of distinguished Hui Muslim scholar-bureaucrats and generals, without causing any official sanction of Islam. The Jews will face even more pressure to assimilate than Hui Muslims. China is generally not a society which encourages religion-based divisions, and places great emphasis on unity. Given that Jews are already few compared to Muslims who settled down in China, they will still make a tiny proportion of the Chinese population. That might be one or two million today.

 

[NothingNow]

Jews accepting converts is ASB.

We've done it before. Never on a large scale, but we don't flat out ban it either.

 

[BlondieBC]

Jews accepting converts is ASB. And besides, there are plenty of distinguished Hui Muslim scholar-bureaucrats and generals, without causing any official sanction of Islam. The Jews will face even more pressure to assimilate than Hui Muslims. China is generally not a society which encourages religion-based divisions, and places great emphasis on unity. Given that Jews are already few compared to Muslims who settled down in China, they will still make a tiny proportion of the Chinese population. That might be one or two million today.

I had a friend convert to Judaism, and my understanding it was a sect officially recognized by Israel, and that she could become an Israeli citizen if she wanted too.

And with a radically different POD, different religious practices could develop, actually redevelop. They are absorbing Chinese culture, so they just have to absorb the "people allowed to convert to Buddhism" part.

I was not so much talking active evangelicals like Mormons do so well, but something simplier such as the Emperor preferring his civil administrators to be Jewish because of some perceived virtue. It would not even need to be a long time, if for 75 years, it provided societal benefits, and there was a concentration of the these Jewish Civil administrator wantabe's, it is easy for me to see see a small Jewish area in South or Central China. I can't do the POD, but it does not seem outlandish to me.

 

[EternalCynic]

I had a friend convert to Judaism, and my understanding it was a sect officially recognized by Israel, and that she could become an Israeli citizen if she wanted too.

And with a radically different POD, different religious practices could develop, actually redevelop. They are absorbing Chinese culture, so they just have to absorb the "people allowed to convert to Buddhism" part.

I was not so much talking active evangelicals like Mormons do so well, but something simplier such as the Emperor preferring his civil administrators to be Jewish because of some perceived virtue. It would not even need to be a long time, if for 75 years, it provided societal benefits, and there was a concentration of the these Jewish Civil administrator wantabe's, it is easy for me to see see a small Jewish area in South or Central China. I can't do the POD, but it does not seem outlandish to me.

These ideas aren't ASB, but are counter to the basic worldview of Chinese civilization. Since the Han Dynasty, *any* adult male was free to join the civil service through exam, no matter his background. In practice this favored the rich who afforded education, but the Emperor will not (unless his gentile bureaucrats were complete eunuchs) favor one group over another. As an example, a disproportionate number of elite bureaucrats came from the Yangtze Delta, yet no formal, official favoritism towards that area ever occurred. Bottom line, Jews (or any other Chinese) would (at least in theory) enter the civil service based on merit alone.

As in OTL, the Kaifeng Jews did enter the civil service in dis-proportionally large numbers. They were dispersed across the empire and intermarried - and assimilated - into the wider Chinese Buddhist/Taoist population. More Jews entering the civil service will if anything speed up the disappearance of China's Jewish population.

Even if a Jewish bureaucratic elite eventually developed, it still faces great pressure to assimilate into the population. That is exactly the fate of the Manchus. At most, we'd have Jewish communities living alongside much larger Muslim communities in all of China's major cities, both of whom perceive themselves as Chinese first. Both would also be denounced as heretics by their foreign orthodox brethren.

There is an ancient proverb, allegedly by Confucius, about barbarians becoming Chinese by entering China, but it doesn't translate well.

 

[Roger II]

I don't think there is any sect that refuses to convert non-Jews although some do make it more of a pain in the butt than others. Certainly there are a considerable number of converts recorded during the classical and late antique eras. Moreover, the primary motives for discouraging conversion seem to have been the fact that Jews generally lived in societies were apostasy was illegal and the principle that all righteous people who do not practice idolatry merit a share in the world to come. The first is likely butterflied for a Jewish community that is not reguarly under siege and the second may also be butterflied if there are enough people who enough rabbis consider idolators around, although this seems somewhat unlikely.
One other interesting way would be for rabbis to focus more on promoting observance of the Noahide laws more than on converting(but while accepting converts nonetheless), resulting in a situation where there is a core group of strictly practicing Jews surrounded by a larger group of sympathetic non-Jews with varyingly close ties to the Jewish community.
EDIT: The above secenario would likely entail an emperor coming under substantial Jewish influence or possibly even converting if there is a way to reconcile Judaism and heaven-worship, with ancestor-worship somewhat absorbed into the practice of yarezheit, with Judaism gaining a foothold thanks to A) enough people converting to give enough major cities some Jewish presence and B) royal sponsorship extending to rabbis and the establishment of proper communal institutions. This would reduce assimilation among Jews who entered the civil service at least somewhat. It's also worth noting that Jewish law gives quite a bit of weight to local customs as they develop, so if the community is established after the basic outlines of Talmudic Judaism are set I see no reason why Chinese Jews would not be seen as simply a different minhag. By analogy, Sephardi Jews have somewhat different customs(most notably the fact that they generally permit the eating of certain seeds and legumes during passover that are not permitted by Ashkenazi rabbis) but nobody considers Sephardi Jews heretical.