A Mishkan—Made in China

The historic Jewish community in China has a unique resonance with this week’s parsha.

The Sinew-Removers

In the past, when people heard that Chabad has emissaries in China, the first question was almost always: “Wait—are there Chinese Jews?”

For a long time, the simple answer was: not really. The Chabad houses in China mainly serve Jews who came from the West—businesspeople, travelers, and families who moved there from Israel, the United States, and other countries. Today, that’s already well known. There are large Jewish communities in multiple Chinese cities.

But the deeper answer is more surprising: even if you don’t really find “Chinese Jews” in that sense today, there were Jews in China for a very long time.

There’s an old city in China called Kaifeng, in central China. Some historians connect the Jewish community there to the era of the Silk Road, when the Far East began doing more business with the West. Others place their arrival later—roughly a thousand years ago. Either way, the story goes that when these Jews arrived, they were welcomed warmly. A local governor invited them to settle, and he even made them an offer: since he struggled to pronounce their family names, he suggested a list of seven Chinese surnames they could choose from. And that’s what they did—they took on Chinese names.

In those days, anyone who came from outside of China was basically labeled “Western.” But as locals realized that these “Westerners” were actually many different peoples with different customs, they began giving groups more specific nicknames—often based on how they lived.

That’s how the Jews ended up with one of the most fascinating nicknames of all.

One name they were given was basically: “the group that removes the sinew.” Why? Because Jews avoid eating something called gid haNashe—the sciatic nerve.

In Chinese cuisine, certain parts of an animal—especially the legs and feet—have long been considered a delicacy. So imagine what it looked like from the outside: here’s this distinct group of people, and whenever that specific sinew that runs from the hip down toward the thigh came up, they avoided it completely. The locals saw it as a defining practice, and they nicknamed the Jews accordingly: the “sinew-removers.”

So why don’t Jews eat it?

The source is in the Torah, in Genesis, in the story of Jacob. The Torah describes Jacob wrestling through the night with a mysterious figure—the angelic representative of Esau. When the struggle reaches its peak and the opponent can’t overpower Jacob, the figure strikes Jacob in the hip, injuring him. Jacob ultimately prevails, but he walks away limping.

And the Torah concludes with a reminder: because Jacob was struck there, the Jewish people do not eat the gid haNashe, the sciatic nerve, “to this day.” (Source: Genesis 32:25–33; read as part of Parashat Vayishlach.)

The Other Names

Another name that was given to the Jews was “the sect that carries the Torah.” Why?

The Jews of Kaifeng offered two reasons for this.

First: a story they received from their ancestors—that when the first Jews arrived in China from the West, they brought Torah scrolls with them. That is why they were called by that name.

The second reason, and the main one: Jews have a custom to dance with the Torah one day a year—Simchat Torah. On that day, the Jews there would hold a procession, carrying the Torah in their hands, singing and dancing with it. Therefore, they received the name “the sect that carries the Torah.”

Over the generations, the Jews of Kaifeng received another nickname, which they did not like very much. Among the groups that came to settle in China were also Muslims. One nickname given to them was “the sect with the white caps.” The Muslims would wear white caps on their heads.

The Chinese, who noticed that the Jews with caps were different from the Muslims with caps, called the Jews “the Muslims with the blue caps.” The Jews greatly disliked this name. They claimed that their ancestors made a strong effort to distinguish themselves intentionally from the Muslim community, and yet they were being called Muslims.

In addition, they argued that the caps were not only different in color, but also in their cut. The Jewish cap was made of seven pieces of fabric—one in the middle and six surrounding it—in order to symbolize the six days of the week, and Shabbat separately.

For hundreds of years, the Jewish community in Kaifeng existed, but the Jewish world did not know about it. There were a few testimonies that there were Jews in China, but the Jewish world did not accept this. The discovery burst onto the world in 1605.

A Jew from Kaifeng encountered in Beijing a group of settlers from Europe. He heard that they believed in one G-d, Who created the world and watches over it, and the Jew was moved to discover that believers like him had come from the West.

He went to visit the spiritual leader of the community in Beijing. He entered the room and noticed a large picture of a mother and her son. He asked the leader if this was Rebecca and her two sons, Esau and Jacob, and added that “among us, we do not worship images.” The Jews of Kaifeng had never heard of Christianity. After a few minutes, the two of them understood that they were not dealing with the same religion…

Through this group in Beijing, it became known to the world that there were Jews in China.

In a letter from 1800, the Jewish community in Shanghai writes to the Jews of Kaifeng that they heard from residents of Kaifeng that the synagogue in the city was destroyed, and that the community was selling the Torah scrolls: “Our heart broke within us, and grief and sighing filled our hearts when we heard this bad news.” They offered to send a teacher to Kaifeng to teach Torah to the locals, and also to send money to build a synagogue.

In practice, the rescue efforts failed, and the Jewish community there gradually declined. Interestingly, until 1996, the Chinese ID cards of descendants of the Jews of Kaifeng said “Yu Tai”—Jew.

Why Do We Need a Mishkan?

In this week’s Torah portion we read about the Mishkan—“They shall make for Me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). Right away, the Torah starts describing the furnishings of the Mishkan. The most important items were the Ark of the Covenant, where the Tablets were kept; the Table, where they placed the showbread (lechem hapanim); and the Menorah, where they lit the lamps.

It’s interesting that the three “names” the Chinese gave the Jews over the course of a thousand years line up with these three items. The first, “the sect that carries the Torah,” corresponds to the Ark of the Covenant, where the Tablets were placed and the Torah scroll was kept alongside them. “The sinew-removers” corresponds to the Table—meaning, all the laws of kashrut. And “the Muslims with the blue caps” corresponds to the idea of the Menorah—that we are meant to light up the world with spiritual light, to be “a light to the nations.” Walking down the street with a kippah is a declaration to everyone that you’re Jewish, and then you have to behave like a Jew—because the kippah represents the entire Jewish people.

But let’s pause for a moment and think: what was the purpose of the entire Mishkan? Why did G-d command us to build a Mishkan, if “the whole earth is filled with His glory”?

There is one detail in the Mishkan that seems to shine light on the entire purpose of building it. On the Ark of the Testimony, G-d commanded that two keruvim be made. These were faces of babies—male and female—with wings, a form similar to angels. And from there, from between the two keruvim, G-d spoke to Moses (see Exodus 25:18–22).

Where else is the word keruvim mentioned in the Torah (aside from the Mishkan)? The only other place it appears is at the beginning of Genesis. When the world was created, we read: “The L-rd G-d planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and He placed there the man whom He had formed” (Genesis 2:8). Then He commanded them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. In the end, they could not control their impulse and they ate, and then the Torah says: “He drove out the man, and He stationed at the east of Garden of Eden the keruvim and the turning, flaming sword, to guard the way to the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:24).

The keruvim in Eden and the keruvim in the Mishkan teach us about the connection between Eden and the Mishkan. In Eden, the first man was together with G-d—“They heard the voice of the L-rd G-d walking in the garden” (Genesis 3:8). But because he sinned, he was expelled from Eden—and in a sense, he expelled G-d from this world: as the Midrash says, through the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, the Divine Presence withdrew from earth to the heavens (Midrash).

Many generations passed, and G-d says: “They shall make for Me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). He wants the human being to create a Garden of Eden here in this world—to make a place for the Divine Presence in this physical world, where the voice can be heard from between the two keruvim.

And this is what the Rebbe brings in the maamar Basi LeGani (5711), from Midrash Rabbah: “I have come to My garden—My bridal chamber—to the place that was My main place at first… and through the sin of the Tree of Knowledge the Divine Presence departed… until Moses, who was the seventh—and all sevenths are beloved—brought it down below to the earth… and the main revelation of G-dliness was in the Holy Temple, as it says: ‘They shall make for Me a Sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.’” (Midrash Rabbah; quoted in Basi LeGani 5711.)

Meaning, in simple words: G-d is asking us to build a Garden of Eden for Him here, in this world—a place where a person can connect, and hear the voice of G-d coming from between the keruvim.

And that is our job today: to make every Jewish home into a “Mishkan” for G-d, to make every Jewish home into a “Garden of Eden”—a pleasant and good place, filled with joy, peace, and love, a place where you hear the voice of G-d.