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NEWS OF XU XIN'S UPCOMING TRIP TO THE U.S.

NOVEMBER 2010-FEBRUARY 2011

CHINA 2010: Building Bridges

 by Beverly Friend

Six times, over the past 25 years, I have stood on the Great Wall of China, each time filled with awe. But the Wall – magnificent as it is – is not what brings me back to China. I return each time not primarily to see what was intended to divide people – a wall – but to work on breaking down walls by participating in what unites them – a bridge. My particular bridge is the unique one provided by the China/Judaic Studies Association, furthering the study of Judaism in China.

This most recent visit fell into three neat divisions. We began with what might be termed the appetizers – sightseeing in Beijing with the Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Olympic Park, and the Temple of Heaven, and then moving on to the scenic wonders of Guilin and a Li River Cruise. We ended with what I consider the dessert -- bustling, thriving Shanghai, where we culminated our two weeks with an exhausting but exhilarating visit to the 2010 World Expo.

But to me, the best part was the main course – Nanjing, the city which had been my initial goal in 1985 when I visited my late husband, Jim Friend, who was teaching English at Nanjing University. There, I met the man who was to change all of our lives – Professor Xu Xin – then deputy chair of the English Department, now the leading Judaic Scholar in China. His meeting with Jim, the first Jew he had ever known, was the catalyst for all that followed, even though Jim did not live long enough to see the aftermath.

On trip number five, in 2006, my oldest daughter Tracy, her partner Lynn, and I stepped onto an official academic bridge between the Chinese and Jewish peoples when we attended the dedication of the Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University – the realization of Xu's dream. For Xu Xin, "not to understand the contribution of the Jews to world history is not to understand the world." For me, "not to understand another people is a failed opportunity to counteract hatred and bigotry."

Now I was returning with my younger daughter Marla, her husband Steve, their children, and my dear friend Irv Kaplan, to see what the Institute is achieving.

Nothing can compare with the thrill of sitting down with 15 graduate students to learn about their current studies. Several have spent a year in Israel, at Tel Aviv University, and for others this lies ahead. The depth of their dedication was evident as we proceeded around the conference table, each of them proudly announcing current projects. The varied studies are  impressive and range from historical to religious topics.

 On the MA level, students are working on topics that include an "Analysis on Medieval Anti-Semitic Cartoons," "The Rennes Court Martial and the Reaction of British Society," "A Survey on the Functions of Synagogues," "The Separation of Christianity from Judaism," and "A Study on Educational Ideology of Samson Raphael Hirsch: the Jewish Religious Education Facing Modernity."

 Doctoral dissertations deal with "The Status of Jewish Women in Medieval Europe," "The Creation and the Influence of the Promulgation of the Jewish Declaration of Vatican II of the Roman Catholic Church,"  "A Study of the Berlin Haskalah Movement," "A Study of Ahad Ha-am’s Cultural Zionism," "Sources of Ideology of the Reform Movement in Germany" and "The Battle Against the Opposition -- A Study of the Jewish Peoples’ Fight Against Holocaust Denial"

It was equally exciting finally to meet Professor Lihong Song – who will succeed Xu as Director of the Institute four years from now when Xu retires at age 65. I had not had the opportunity to meet him during Song's studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, last year, but had read several of his fine articles and knew he was preparing himself for the post. We also met Israeli Enav Sinshi, who has been teaching Hebrew at the Institute for the past three years while completing his MA at the University. Unfortunately, we were not able to meet Professor Zhenhua Meng who was currently attending a Hebrew Bible Conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

 Looking at the students and faculty of the Institute, I could see what they had accomplished and – even more important -- were planning to accomplish in the time ahead.  And I also saw the pride with which the University regards the Judaic Studies Program when university dignitaries Vice President Ren Lijian, Director Zuo Chengci, and Deputy Director Dai Zhehua, met with us formally and then informally at a banquet, to discuss these future plans.

It is so amazing to have watched the growth of the Judaic Institute from its seedling days, planted when Xu met Jim – and growing through such wonderful projects as the translation of the Encyclopedia Judaica into Chinese, and Nanjing's summer institutes held for professors of history and world civilizations from other Chinese colleges and universities in order for them to incorporate this information into their own classes. To continue the metaphor: the harvest is in this thriving Institute!

Or with another  metaphor, it can all be can be likened to a pebble falling into a pond and generating concentric circles. Just as an example, when Xu taught his first classes in Judaic Studies to 15 students, they asked questions that dealt with Jewish identity, family values, anti-Semitism, the connection to Israel, and keys to Jewish success and contributions to science, medicine business and the arts. At that time, over 20 years ago, I solicited answers from clergy and laymen alike and sent them all off to Xu. Later, I listed the questions on the Association web site at www.oakton.edu/~friend/chinajews.html. Reading these questions online so many years later, American Jewish Physician Eric J. Friedman was inspired to answer. The result is the book "Seven Chinese Questions, Seven Jewish Answers," written in English and translated into Chinese by Xu Xin, and published in a provocative dual-language edition and one of the most recent of Xu's many projects. (I brought back several copies and can be contacted at friend@oakton.edu  for further information).

Xu has also just completed a translation of "The Years of Extermination" by Saul Friedlander and he is currently writing about the history and current state of Anti Semitism, a book which he hopes to finish this summer.

As time passes, however, both Xu and I are feeling our mortality: he, because of his recent death-threatening cerebral aneurism, and me simply because of advancing years. As he recovered, Xu decided to donate a considerable amount of his own earnings -- including all the royalties from his books – to the Institute. In addition, I have decided to establish a James Friend Memorial Endowment to provide the much-needed scholarships for worthy students. As the school has just created a Nanjing University (NUJUEF) Educational Foundation, tax deductable donations can be made and sent to a U.S. address:

NJUEF
2207 Concord Pike Suite 106
Wilmington, DE 19803
Please note Judaic Studies on your check

 Leaving Nanjing, we travelled through Jiangdu, Xu's hometown and Suzhou, home of his wife Kong Defang, and in each place experienced heart-warming moments with Xu's mother and many other family members. What a trip down memory lane – we are all one family!

During our final morning in China, we returned to our cultural bridge, visiting an important site where Xu takes all of his graduate students: the Jewish Refugees Museum in Shanghai. Located in the former Ohel Moishe Synagogue, the museum offers a well-conceived 8-minute video followed by exhibits about the history of and artifacts from refugees who were sheltered in the city during World War II. The synagogue is situated in the Hongkou ghetto district – which is now much smaller in area than in former years. Much has been torn down to make way for new buildings. According to Xu, 10,000 new apartments go up in Shanghai each month and a vast complex is currently being built to accommodate docking and shopping malls for those planning to enjoy future cruises into the city. What remains of the ghetto itself has been renovated and, while it gives some idea of what life must have been like for those fleeing Europe, it has been sanitized some and is not nearly as daunting as I recall it from earlier trips.

What lies next? I told Xu it was his turn now and he should plan to visit the U.S. I believe he may do so, possibly next October. And as for me? Will there be a seventh trip, or an eighth? Who knows what the future holds? But what I do know and hope for is the future success of the Institute. May it outlive all of us and thrive in future years to be a bridge between our two peoples.

MEET LIHONG SONG

"Jews are invisible in China." If Lihong song's assertion is true, why would this historian choose to specialize in Judaic Studies? The answer lies in his remarkable intellectual autobiography. To read his words is to take heart that the future of the Glazer Institute for Judaic Studies is assured and will rest in very good hands.

 Intellectual Autobiography

By Lihong Song

 How did I start my interest in Jewish subjects and eventually turn out a Jewish studies scholar in China? As you can imagine, I have been asked this question countless times. It always evokes a sense of hesitation—even an anxiety—in me. Part of the reason is that I try to piece together many of my fragmented experience into a meaningful whole. Which episode should I choose? Is this experience more meaningful or more fitting to recount in the current situation than that?

To select this or that, that is the question. Ultimately, I have accumulated many different answers over years. This assertion seems to put my intellectual integrity into question, but that is more apparent than real. Cecil Roth once explained that he became a historian “frankly for the pleasure of the thing.” Yet Lucy Dawidowicz was not convinced—for her, “no historian works only for the fun of it, no matter how much fun he gets out of it.” Obviously, the search for multifarious relevance, rather than an immutable and essential truth, which seems particularly problematic in light of the master narrative of post-modernism, is at least more instinctive.

I was trained a historian. Historians are also instinctive to contextualize, which makes me more hesitant. In this respect, I am aware that there is a profound chasm stretching between my Jewish inquirer and me. That is, Jews are invisible in China. Of course, there are descendents of Kaifeng Jews, but they physically are indistinguishable from other Chinese and are not halakhaklly sanctioned. True, there is organized Jewish life in big cities of Beijing and Shanghai, but it is accessible only to Jewish sojourners in China. For ordinary Chinese, the only way to learn the Jewish people is by reading books.
Alas, there are numerous books on this topic. The shelves of Chinese bookstores have been lined with bestsellers on Jewish subjects, with such eye-catching titles as Talmud: The Greatest Jewish Bible for Making Money, Unveiling the Secrets of Jewish Success in World Economy… In my opinion, this voyeuristic interest in the Jewish success reflects that most Chinese are not so much interested in real Jews as the Jew as tropes. The most prevalent trope of this kind in China is that the Jew is anyone who is smart, wealthy and successful. As a matter of fact, some non-Jewish celebrities are widely regarded as Jewish in China, for example, Rockefeller.

In retrospect, I myself was not impervious to this trope. In my college years, I was a student in the department of history, majoring in the history of the West in general and the Roman Empire in particular. It’s natural for a Chinese to be attracted to the Roman Empire. The parallels are self-evident: the geographical expansion, the relations between a central government and numerous local communities, the tensions between individual political freedom and the totalizing momentum of an empire, the multi-ethnic society and the consequent negotiation of cultural and religious identities. My concern with these issues brought my attention to the works of Fergus Millar, then the Camden Professor of Ancient History of Oxford University and a towering figure in today’s Roman studies. I took notice that his The Emperor in the Roman World, the work that had earned him international reputation, was inspired by his reading in Josephus.

This was a new name for me. I had read Tacitus, Suetonius, Appian and some Livy. But who was Josephus? A Jewish renegade—this fact impressed me most, because it completely subverted another “fact” I gathered from the popular Chinese fantasies about the Jewish success. It goes like this: “Why Jewish people have survived so many persecutions while those persecutors themselves disappeared in historical dustbin? The secret lies in the fact that you cannot find a single Jewish traitor throughout whole Jewish history.”

To Chinese sensibilities, the overtone of this assertion is “Why has Modern China declined? Because there were so many Chinese renegades who sold our national interests to western and Japanese colonial powers.” I was struck not by Josephus’ magnum opus on Jewish ancient history and Jewish War against the Romans, but by his slim books: firstly Against Apion, in which he refuted with eloquence and great skill various anti-Jewish slanders by pagan authors; and secondly his Vita, in which several creative tensions—between Eretz Israel and diaspora, between Talmud Torah and secular learning, between "tradition" and "modernity"—can be sensed. I think I was attracted by a fundamental tension in Josephus: he was a traitor, yet he had a burning feeling for the tradition inherent in him. Anyway, Josephus was the first Jewish traitor I discovered, hence the commencement of my credentials as a Jewish studies scholar.

After I got my PhD, I went to Tel Aviv University, doing a post-doctorial research on Jewish diaspora in the Roman Empire. When I finished my stay in Israel, my friend Prof. Samuel Heilman asked of me a question: “What’s your gain from your experience in Israel?” I understand he was trying to inquire whether there had been a sort of chemical reaction within me. I did not know the answer, but the question has lingered on my mind. Two years ago, I returned to Jerusalem to improve my Hebrew. After spending three additional months in Israel, after visiting many people and places old and new, and after some unexpected experience—for example, when I returned from my first trip to the downtown for an errand, all buses were suspended by a gay parade. The street of King David was full of sound and fury. The haredim, blocked outside of the street, shouted in English “Gay Pigs, Get Aids”; while the people on the street responded with waving the billboards in Hebrew “אלוהים שונא שנאה”.

 On my last trip to the downtown on the eve of Yom Kippur, I walked into a שוק כפרות. Having waved the live roosters around their heads and recited verses, the religious cut the roosters’ throats and inverted them into special containers that are smaller in bottom and larger on top so that the roosters, while bleeding, cannot move but stretching their legs, as if dancing their last ballet. The protesting secular crowd screaming ”כפרות בכסף לא במוות” was blocked outside this time—after all these, my answer to Sam’s question emerged clearer and clearer. I am more and more interested in living Judaism. Judaism is becoming more and more tangible and concrete, and I am increasingly curious, with my nose pressed to the glass looking in, to its colors, smells and breath.

 In addition to the exposure to the lived Jewish experience, this transformation is also materialized by my teaching experience. In China, I need to instruct a course of Jewish civilization. Open to all university students, it usually attracts four hundred students every year. This course was challenging in at least two respects. Firstly, how to cram the long drama of Jewish tradition from Abraham to Ben-Gurion into one semester? This is a universal challenge for anyone. Secondly, and uniquely, my students are neither Jewish—hence without any Jewish literacy—nor monotheistically minded—hence they seemed not very interested when I talked about the Bible’s different theological implications for Jews and Christians, though they do have an interest in getting to know why Jews were persecuted throughout history. This entails another basic question—how to impart the Jewish tradition in a meaningful way to a specific audience? Practically, I cannot afford bad evaluations from the students. I am progressively aware that there is a persistent tension looming largest behind these two questions, a tension, to put simply, between erudition and specialization, or as I would venture to suggest, between “Judaism as Culture” and “Judaism as Science.”

 By “culture” and “science,” I am thinking of the Latin roots of the two words: colere, “to cultivate,” and scire, “to know.” To my superficial understanding, many western historians’ ideal is to write an exhaustive and scientifically rigorous monograph that, to adapt the phrasing of Mark Twain, at least appears to know more and more about less and less, thereby increasing the amount of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. In contrast, the superlative model cherished by most Chinese historians is to write a general history whose ethos was set by Sima Qian about two thousand years ago, that is, “investigating the relations between the Heaven and human beings, perceiving the changes running through ancient to present, and forming one’s own insights.” Nourished by this tradition, and driven by my instinct to contextualize and to seek for relevance, I am inclined to objectively conceptualize Judaism more as culture, thinking the knowledge of Judaism is important in cultivating a sophisticated perspective by seeking common ground while reserving differences between the two civilizations, Jewish and Chinese, in cultivating an open-minded approach to and respect for the unlikeness, and thus in helping my students fully understand themselves and their own position in the world.

 My teaching experience has broadened my horizon. And I no longer resolve to remain an expert in a specialized field. I am currently still working on a monograph on Jewish identity in the Roman world, which tries to explore the self-perceptions of Josephus, Herod the Great, Bar-Kokhba, and the Jews as reflected in inscriptions and synagogue mosaics. After this project, I hope to write more on the Marranos and their homecoming to what inherently they were, and the exile of European Jewish Intellectuals to the New World before the Second World War and how they made a lost world regained. Here in the US, many Jewish friends ask my political view on Tibet. Our exchange of ideas usually made me feel both frustrated and sympathetic.

 I am frustrated because it seems to me that under the spell of the beguiling smile of Dalai Lama they are not interested in Tibet in its historical existence but in Tibet as a trope: Tibet is the incarnation of those who are oppressed, persecuted, and marginalized. However, it is precisely the same trope that testifies a bond of intellectual sympathy that I—a Chinese who translated Burkhardt’s The Age of Constantine the Great, in my eyes a nostalgic elegy to the lost world of the pagan individualism, who also translated Sam’s teacher Ervin Goffman’s Stigma, and who is above all a professor of Humanities working in Jewish Studies in a Chinese university—may personally feel with Jews and Judaism.

 Finally, in antiquity autobiographical works were entitled apologia or confessions, implying a sort of self-justification, self-documentation, or in the parlance of Ervin Goffman, self-presentation. According to Michael Stanislawski, the basic lesson he learnt from the study of Jewish autobiographies is “If we were to sit down to tell the stories of our own lives, we would necessarily not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but a highly selective account that historians of later generations would be well advised to treat skeptically.” Ironically, there is some truth in his assertion, but to which I would hasten to add that what I just presented is the most sincere and candid one I have ever made.

 BEYOND XU XIN    

 Although I am on the board of the Sino Judaic Institute, I was unable to attend their annual June 27 meeting in San Francisco, having just returned from China myself on June 24. However, I got a fascinating email from them – centering on a report made by Treasurer Steve Hochstadt, of Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL, about his recent China trip. While I know much of what is happening with Xu Xin and the China/ Judaic Studies Assn., and have shared this with you, Steve's report also focused on other sites dealing with Judaic Studies in China that I thought would be of interest.. 

 The Institute Of Jewish Studies At Henan University In Kaifeng

 This is not as old as the Glazer Institute (1998), but currently has more faculty (5) and more students (about 30). Director, Professor Zhang Ligang, and faculty member, Professor Hu Hao, were both Xu Xin’s Ph.D students at Nanjing. Only the MA is offered here and the best students are sent to Nanjing for the Ph.D. The library at Henan is much smaller, although they just received $1,000 donation to buy books.

 Zhang runs an annual paper competition for Chinese university students on any topic in Jewish studies, with a 1000 RMB prize. This year students from 10 universities participated and nearly 100 papers were submitted to be judged by a panel of scholars.  Zhang would like to expand this competition and make it the signature activity of his Institute.

The Center Of Jewish Studies Shanghai At The Shanghai Academy Of Social Sciences In Shanghai

  Directed by Professor Pan Guang, the Center was founded in 1988 and is purely a research site. The Center is well funded by the government and Guang is better known around the world as an authority on Jews in China. He is Director of the Shanghai Center for International Studies and holds a UN appointment to the Alliance of Civilizations. There is less focus on the Jews of Kaifeng in Shanghai and more interest in the modern history of Jews in China.

 Guang will initiate a Young Scholars Conference on Jewish Studies in Shanghai in August 2010. So far, about 40 young scholars from many universities have signed up to participate. He has also organized international conferences on Jews in China and on the Holocaust. Guang has edited collections of photographs of refugee Jews in Shanghai and papers from his conferences.
            
Yiceleye School In Kaifeng

 Hochstadt was introduced to some descendants of a  Jewish  family in Kaifeng. They identify themselves as Jewish and proudly display a large sign above their front door that says a Jewish family lives here.  Students have been learning Hebrew prayers for almost a year to more in the “Yiceleye School.” For Hochstadt's benefit, they held a Shabbat service on a Tuesday, singing many prayers from a Hebrew Siddur. The students had made great progress and were very pleased with what they had learned and the social contact within the class. They were mainly middle-aged, although a few youngsters apparently also come to the class every week.  While there have been volunteers, the Yiceleye group needs teachers in order to continue their progress and maintain their cohesion. They have a solid structure through a council which makes financial decisions, but Hochstadt was not sure that they will be able to maintain cohesion over the long term without a teacher.

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Annual report 2008: Institute of Jewish Studies, Nanjing University .

 The year 2008 witnessed further growth at the Nanjing Institute.

I. Students and Faculty

• The Institute has officially welcomed on board Dr. Zhenghua Meng, fresh out
• of his Ph.D. program from the Chinese University of Hong Kong as its youngest faculty member to date. Dr. Meng’s academic field focuses on the studies of the Hebrew Bible.    
• The Institute bid farewell to 5 students who have completed their degrees while 5 new arrivals, 2 in the Ph. D. program and 3 in the Master’s program, have been enrolled to continue their academic pursuit;
•  A mini-Ulpan was run to teach basic Hebrew to our graduate students. The class was taught by an Israeli student who is pursuing his MA degree in sociology at Nanjing University.
• Dr. Lihong Song, Associate professor and Deputy Director of the Institute, has been spending his Sabbatical in the US. While doing research at Temple University, sponsored by Dr. William fern and his Foundation. Dr. Song has been invited to visit and lecture at various universities and colleges across the US.
• Professor Xu Xin, Director of the Institute, visited foundations and friends in London and Los Angeles this past June and August respectively. He was also in attendance during a summer Board meeting of the Sino-Judaic Institute in Seattle. 
• 12 scholarships, established by many individuals, were awarded to 12 students, most of them are currently studying at the Institute.

II.                Visitors to Nanjing   

• Mr. Jakie Eldan, newly appointed Israeli Consul General to Shanghai, visited and lectured at the Institute on September 25.
• Fulbright professor Samuel Heilman of The City University of New York visited from Oct. 17 to Nov. 18. He gave a number of lectures on various topics at the Institute and two public lectures at the university level.
• Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, and Prof. Avram Hershko, both named as 2004 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry from Technion University in Israel, visited and met with faculty and students of the Institute while attending an international conference in Nanjing in October.
• Mr. Ze’er Boim, Minister of Construction and Real Estate of Israel and his delegation visited the Institute on Nov. 12.

III. Sponsored by Skirball

 

Two scholars from overseas were invited to serve as the Skirball Lecturers of 2008.

1.     Rabbi Aaron D. Panken, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives of Hebrew Union College, visited during Nov. 20-25. He gave two lectures, held discussion with faculty and students, and met with Prof. Shi Jianjun, Executive Vice-President of Nanjing University.

2.     Prof. Wayne Horowitz of Hebrew University of Jerusalem from Dec. 9-11, lecturing on ;

Skirball Translation/ publication Projects  

 Two books on Jewish themes have been translated into Chinese and published in China:

a)     American Judaism by Jonathan Sarna

b)     Why Jews Are So Successful by Jack Rosen

The Training Program
Rao Benzhong and Zhou Haiyan, two Ph .D. candidates from our Institute, completed their research and study at Tel Aviv University and received their degrees in 2008. Both went on to become faculty members at other universities in China.

 
All of the above programs would not have been possible without the generous underwriting from the Skirball Foundation and the Diana and Guilford Glazer Fund. We would like to express our sincerest thanks to them in record.