Book Review- Kaifeng Haggadah

The Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews of China by Fook-Kong Wong, Dalia Yasharpour Brill 2011, Hardcover 216 pages, EUR 99-/US $135

Reviewed by Tiberiu Weisz 
Published Sephardic Horizons Vol. 4 No 3. Summer 2014

 The Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews of China (herein Haggadah) by Fook-Kong Wong, an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Theological Seminary and Dalia Yasharpour, an Instructor of Persian language and literature at Harvard is a scholarly study of the Hebrew Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews. The book is divided into five chapters. In addition, the book contains a short introduction, the reproduction of the Haggadah Hebrew text with extensive annotations, the English translation and the Plates. The first five chapters would be of interest to the general reader and scholars alike, while the reproductions of the manuscripts would more likely be of interest to scholars and researchers. The methodology followed a logical pattern. The authors stated their objective “to analyze all the languages …and to gain an understanding of the Kaifeng Jews’ liturgy as represented in their Passover Haggada” (pg 5), followed by the body of the evidence. Often included were the authors’ own observations, and each chapter ended with a short conclusion. The authors scrutinized every page, every sentence and every letter of the Haggadah; they analyzed the handwriting pinpointing similarities and differences in styles. They went over the vocalization and showed “that they were produced locally rather than brought over from abroad” (pg 11). Another valuable inclusion was the side-by-side table of Hebrew words from the three manuscripts for comparison (pg. 13-16). There are some inconsistencies and assumptions that the authors left unexplained. For example, the authors quoted from Gabriel Brotier that the Chinese scribers wrote with “sharpened bamboo like quill pens…” (pg 8). Later on the authors quoted Israel Lehman, the Curator of manuscripts of the Klau Library, Hebrew Union College that “both [manuscripts] appear to have been written with Chinese ink brush” (pg18). The authors provided no explanation to this inconsistency. In another chapter the authors discussed at some length the “degree of Hebrew knowledge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” of the Kaifeng Jews (pg 25). The authors quoted a letter from Father Domenage who wrote in 1724 that “the Community had lost its tu-ching-pen” guide for studying the Bible. As a result no one applied himself to the study of the Hebrew Bible by this time” (pg 30), and in the conclusion of the chapter the authors wrote “ They had in possession a tu-ching-pen to assist them in reading the Bible” (pg 32). Again the inconsistency was not explained. The authors made the assumption that: “Apparently, they [Israelites] were traders because they mentioned that they came bearing western clothing” (pg 3). They paraphrased the original statement leaving out the word “tribute” without any further explanation. Scholars will also wonder why the latest research and literature of the religious practices (including the Haggadah) of the Kaifeng Jews, were not included in the bibliography? On the positive side, such inconsistencies and assumptions did not detract from the value of this work. The authors accomplished a monumental task: they reconstructed a fragmented Hebrew text, clarified the misspelled Hebrew words, and explained the Chinese side notes, translated the text into English, and finally they determined the origin of the liturgy of the Haggadah and the manuscripts. They concluded that the “archaic feature of the [Hebrew] language” pointed to a Passover liturgy of the Kaifeng community that originated in the Persian Passover rite (pg 63), and “the lack of additional songs in the Haggadah is once again consistent with the supposition that the source of the Haggadah is an early Babylonian tradition” (pg. 75). The authors achieved their goal. To their credit, Wong and Yasharpour showed that the Kaifeng Haggadah was an important primary source of Hebraic literature cherished by the Kaifeng Jews and the authors elevated an old Hebrew manuscript to an invaluable primary source for future studies. Tiberiu Weisz, has a Master Degree in Chinese and is a scholar of China and Judaism; He is the author of two books: The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions (2006) and The Covenant and the Mandate of Heaven (2008). His articles are published in several countries. He taught Classical and Modern Chinese, and is translator from Chinese. http://www.sephardichorizons.org/Volume4/Issue4/Weisz