European knowledge of Chinese Jews began with Matteo Ricci’s 1605 letter.

Evidence

On July 26, 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci wrote to his superior Claudio Aquavia regarding his meeting with a Jew from Kaifeng in central China. This missive became available to a general reading public in Europe in 1615, and it laid the foundation for a European myth of the “Jews of China.” Although scholars today might argue that long before the time of Matteo Ricci various Arab travelers, as well as a Jew called Eldad ha-Dani (ninth century), had recorded that there were Jews in China, we are not certain whether some of these adventurers ever existed. Even if they did, the reliability of their written accounts is still questionable. In the case of Eldad, many medieval Jewish scholars, such as Abraham ibn Ezra and Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, had already challenged his credibility. Furthermore, most of those accounts did not become available until the end of the nineteenth century. The more widely read medieval travel accounts, for example that of Benjamin of Tudela (twelfth century), only mentioned in passing the existence of Jewish communities in regions where access to China was relatively easy, such as in India and central Asia. These were in general the accounts that were given more credence within and outside the Jewish community. The Western world at that time was certainly more interested in the luxury goods of the Orient than in exotic Jews. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 343

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the evidentiary basis of the ‘Jews of China’ as a European myth rather than a medieval discovery.