The idealized image of Kaifeng Jews became ammunition for Jewish emancipation in Europe

Evidence

The Han Mandarins’ benevolence toward the Kaifeng Jews was used by some literary and educated Jewish figures, as well as some Enlightenment thinkers, including d’Argens and Voltaire, to challenge the intolerance of the Catholic Church toward the Jews in Europe. And the Jews of Kaifeng became the example par excellence in the call for the emancipation of the Jews in Europe. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 351

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how a tiny, obscure diaspora community in China became a political weapon in European emancipation debates — ‘the strangest rhetorical prop in the history of Jewish civil rights.’
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the logic in ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — distant/exotic practices deployed rhetorically against one’s own society’s norms.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 351