In a controversial appearance at the recent American Jewish Committee centennial convention in Washington, author A.B. Yehoshua predicted that Diaspora Jews would move to China if it were to become a world power. Dr. Avrum Ehrlich, a professor at the Center for Judaic and Inter-Religious Studies at the University of Shandong, says that this process is actually already under way.
"The Jewish community in Hong Kong is thriving," he explains, "and there are at least 3,000 Jews now living permanently in Beijing alone."
There has been a continuous Jewish presence in China during the last 200 years, starting with Sephardi merchants who arrived there along with the British, and continuing with Russian Jews who settled in Harbin (one of whom was Ehud Olmert's grandfather). During World War II many German refugees sought shelter first in Shanghai - one of the only places in the world that was open to Jews at the time.
China's modern history is dotted with Jewish figures like Morris ("Two-Gun") Cohen, a Polish-born adventurer who served as a liaison between the Taiwanese government and China's communist leaders. Another was Israel Epstein, the Warsaw-born Marxist author, who died last year after being honored by all Chinese presidents from Mao to the present Hu Jintao.
Ehrlich says he regrets the fact that current relations between Israel and China are limited to the military and economic spheres, without any significant cultural dialogue. Among the many Israeli and Jewish businesspeople he has encountered recently in China, he says, are ultra-Orthodox kashrut supervisors. "It appears that the whole kashrut industry, the manufacturing of chemicals and raw materials, has moved to China," he explains.
Ehrlich himself owes his current position to the economic boom in the world's most populated country. In 2004, the 38-year-old Australian-born Israeli was on a trip to visit his brother, who runs a factory owned by the family near Shanghai, when he heard about the university center for Jewish studies in the province of Shandong, relatively close by. Ehrlich made contact with the staff and offered to lecture on Messianism.
"I was offered a full professorship right after I finished," he says proudly. The unexpected move to China was not so drastic in light of Ehrlich's somewhat chaotic life beforehand: He immigrated to Israel at the age of 16, studied at four different yeshivas and was ordained a rabbi at the Tomchei Tmimim yeshiva in Kfar Chabad. Later he altered his course in life and studied at the pluralistic Shalom Hartman Institute and at Bar-Ilan University. He finished his doctorate, on Hasidic leaders, at the University of Sydney.
"I found there's great disempowerment in Israel," he explains. "That's why I looked for a place where I could make a difference."
The center in Shandong was established 10 years ago by one of the local professors. According to Ehrlich, in 2004 the center was given a mandate by the Chinese government to set up a curriculum for Jewish studies in China. "It means bringing scholars from all over the world, translating all the Jewish classics and organizing seminars and other activities," he says.
Ehrlich made up a list of 25 Jewish classics for translation, including the Mishna, the Kuzari and the Zohar, as well as writings of such notables as Maimonides, Herman Cohen, Rabbi Kook, Ahad Ha'am and Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan. He smiles when asked about the quality of the work, which was done by local students.
"I could say my job is to try and limit the damage," he says ironically. "They (the Chinese students) have been ordered to do it, so they do it, even if they'll be correcting these translations for the next 20 years."
At least eight of China's 300 universities are now offering courses in Jewish studies. Ehrlich estimates about 100 students nationwide study Hebrew each year in comparison to five a year in the 1990s. He says the Chinese see studying the Jews as essential to understanding the underpinnings of Western thinking.
"They see the Jews as mavericks of Western thinking and ideology," he says. But the strongest driving force behind the interest in Jews is not cultural or intellectual, he says, and he noticed it when he first came to China, while looking at the books on the airport book stands. "I saw many books with titles like 'How to be a Jewish millionaire.' I later understood that when most Chinese speak about 'Jewish wisdom,' they mean what they see as the phenomenal Jewish prowess in making money. I don't see this as a negative thing, because I hope it might be an entree for them into other areas as well."
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