In honor of Hanukkah, Jerusalem-based nonprofit Shavei Israel designed and produced hundreds of dreidels with Mandarin lettering for the Jews of Kaifeng, China, as well as for 20 members of the community who made Aliyah to Israel with the organization's assistance.
Kaifeng is a city in the central Chinese province of Henan, located southwest of Beijing. It is home to hundreds of descendants of a once-thriving Jewish community that resided there for well over a millennium. The dreidels are thought to be the first ones which have the following Chinese text on them:
伟大的 - Big; 奇迹 - Miracle, 发生过 - Happened; 这里曾 - here.
According to Shavei Israel Founder and Chairman Michael Freund, the first Jews to have settled in Kaifeng, one of the ancient imperial capitals of China, were Iraqi or Persian Jewish merchants who traveled along the Silk Road in the seventh or eight century C.E. According to him, there are currently an estimated 1,000 people in Kaifeng who are identifiable via family trees and genealogical records as descendants of the city’s Jewish community.
“The Chinese Jews of Kaifeng are a living link between China and the Jewish people,” Freund said. “Despite the severe restrictions imposed on them by the Chinese government in recent years, the Chinese-Jewish descendants are anxious to learn more about the heritage of their forefathers, and we hope these Chinese-language dreidels that we’ve prepared for them will give them a dose of happiness and light during Hanukkah.”
