East Asian Jewish communities have existed for centuries. Even as the majority of the Jewish people settled in the Holy Land, Europe, and America, some traveled East Asia and settled. Today, due to the increasing ease and decreasing price of communications and transportation, as well as other effects of globalization, the Jewish communities in China, Japan, and other places continue to grow.[ citation needed ]
Jewish settlers are documented in China as early as the 7th or 8th century AD, but they may have arrived during the middle of the Han dynasty, or even as early as 231 BC. Relatively isolated communities developed from the Tang and Song dynasties (7th to 12th centuries AD) to the Qing dynasty (19th century), the Kaifeng Jews comprised the most notable of these communities (in a restricted sense, the term "Chinese Jews" is often used in reference to these communities). By the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, few if any native Chinese Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, some international Jewish groups have helped Chinese Jews rediscover their heritage.[ citation needed ]
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigrants from around the world arrived in China with Western commercial influences, particularly in the commercial centers of Hong Kong, which was for a time a British colony, Shanghai (the International Settlement and French Concession), and Harbin (the Trans-Siberian Railway). In the first half of the 20th century, thousands of Jewish refugees escaping from the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Holocaust in Europe arrived in China. However a majority of them immigrated to Israel and various western countries after the communist takeover in 1949.[ citation needed ]
Jews may be considered one of the officially undistinguished ethnic groups in China. The current number of Jews residing in the country is 2,000.
The Jewish presence in South Korea effectively began with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. At this time a large number of Jewish soldiers, including the chaplain Chaim Potok, came to the Korean Peninsula. Today the Jewish community is very small and limited to the Seoul metropolitan area. [1] There have been very few Korean converts to Judaism. In North Korea however, the presence of a Jewish community remains unknown.
The first confirmed contacts between the Japanese and people of Jewish ancestry began during the Age of Discovery (16th century) with the arrival of European travelers and merchants (primarily the Portuguese and Dutch). However, it wasn't until 1853, with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry following the Convention of Kanagawa ending Japan's "closed-door" foreign policy that Jewish families began to settle in Japan. The first recorded Jewish settlers arrived at Yokohama in 1861 establishing a diverse community consisting of 50 families (from various Western countries) as well as the building of the first synagogue in Japan. By 1957 there were only 15 Jewish families left in Yokohama. [2]
During World War II, Japan was regarded as a safe refuge from the Holocaust, despite being a part of the Axis and an ally of Germany. During World War II, Jews trying to escape Poland could not pass the blockades near the Soviet Union and the Mediterranean Sea and were forced to go through the neutral country of Lithuania (which was occupied by belligerents in June 1940, starting with the Soviet Union, then Germany, and then the Soviet Union again).
Presently, there are several hundred Jewish families living in Tokyo, and a small number of Jewish families in Kobe and Yokohama. A small number of Jewish expatriates of other countries live throughout Japan, temporarily, for business, research, a gap year, or a variety of other purposes. There are occasionally Jewish members of the United States armed forces serving on Okinawa and in the other American military bases throughout Japan.
Ethnic groups in Chinese history refer to various or presumed ethnicities of significance to the history of China, gathered through the study of Classical Chinese literature, Chinese and non-Chinese literary sources and inscriptions, historical linguistics, and archaeological research.
Kaifeng is a prefecture-level city in east-central Henan province, China. It is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China, having been the capital eight times in history, and is most known for having been the Chinese capital during the Northern Song dynasty.
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "For two centuries – wrote Zvi Gitelman – millions of Jews had lived under one entity, the Russian Empire and [its successor state] the USSR. They had now come under the jurisdiction of fifteen states, some of which had never existed and others that had passed out of existence in 1939." Before the revolutions of 1989 which resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, a number of these now sovereign countries constituted the component republics of the Soviet Union.
Jews and Judaism in China are predominantly composed of Sephardi Jews and their descendants. Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented, including Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews and a number of converts.
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who served as vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania. During the Second World War, Sugihara helped thousands of Jews flee Europe by issuing transit visas to them so that they could travel through Japanese territory, risking his career and the lives of his family. The fleeing Jews were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland and Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania.
Shortly prior to and during World War II, and coinciding with the Second Sino-Japanese War, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were resettled in the Japanese Empire. The onset of the European war by Nazi Germany involved the lethal mass persecutions and genocide of Jews, later known as the Holocaust, resulting in thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing east. Most ended up in Japanese-occupied China.
Kaifeng Jews are a small community of descendants of Chinese Jews in Kaifeng, in the Henan province of China. In the early centuries of their settlement, they may have numbered around 2,500 people. Despite their isolation from the rest of the Jewish diaspora, their ancestors managed to practice Jewish traditions and customs for several centuries.
The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Recorded Jewish history in the Philippines started during the Spanish period.
The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately one square mile (2.6 km2) in the Hongkou district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue. Shanghai was notable for a long period as the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews escaping from the Nazis. After the Japanese occupied all of Shanghai in 1941, the Japanese army forced about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees to be restricted or relocated to the Shanghai Ghetto from 1941 to 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food, and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, surrounded the ghetto with barbed wire, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave. By 21 August 1941, the Japanese government closed Shanghai to Jewish immigration.
Israeli–Japanese relations began on May 15, 1952, when Japan recognized Israel and an Israeli legation opened in Tokyo. In 1954, Japan's ambassador to Turkey assumed the additional role of minister to Israel. In 1955, a Japanese legation with a Minister Plenipotentiary opened in Tel Aviv. In 1963, relations were upgraded to Embassy level and have remained on that level since then.
Jews were among the first settlers after Hong Kong became a British colony in 1841. The first Jews arrived in Hong Kong from various parts of the British Empire as merchants and colonial officials. Among the first wave, the Baghdadi Jews stood out especially, including representatives of the influential families of Sassoon and Kadoorie. The construction of the Ohel Leah Synagogue in 1901 marked the beginning of a fully fledged religious life for the city's local Jews.
The history of the Jews in Kobe, Japan, is recorded from the 19th century onwards.
Jews in Taiwan, also known as Taiwanese Jews, comprise the Jewish community residing in Taiwan, a country located in East Asia. While the Jewish population in Taiwan is relatively small compared to other communities around the world, it has a rich and diverse history that spans several decades. The first sizable presence began in the 1950s, when religious services were held in the United States military chapel, to which civilians also had access.
Tadeusz Ludwik Romer was a Polish diplomat and politician.
Arie Leo Hanin was a Lithuanian-American political activist.
The history of the Jews in Japan is well documented in modern times, with various traditions relating to much earlier eras.
Immigration in Guatemala constitutes less than 1%, approximately 140,000 people, and most come from neighboring countries. Guatemala's historic ethnic composition is mostly immigrant stock from Europe and as well as Asian and Africans brought during the era of slavery. Currently, the composition of Guatemala consists mostly of mestizos, Amerindians and Europeans, and to a lesser extent, Garifuna. In recent decades, immigration to Guatemala has led to an increase in desire for more businesses and tourist attractions, after there had been a considerable drop from 1950 to 1980.
The history of the Jews in Central Asia dates back centuries, where Jews have lived in countries which include Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Although Japan was a member of the Axis, and therefore an ally of Nazi Germany, it did not actively participate in the Holocaust. Anti-semitic attitudes were insignificant in Japan during World War II and there was little interest in the Jewish question, which was seen as a European issue. Furthermore, Nazi Germany did not pressure Japan on the issue.