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.
Chinatowns in Asia are widespread with large concentrations of overseas Chinese in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and ethnic Chinese whose ancestors came from southern China — particularly the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Hainan — and settled in countries such as Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Korea centuries ago — starting as early as the Tang dynasty, but mostly notably in the 17th–19th centuries, and well into the 20th century. Today the Chinese diaspora in Asia is primarily concentrated in Southeast Asia; however, the legacy of the once widespread overseas Chinese communities in Asia is evident in the many Chinatowns found across East, South and Southeast Asia.
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.
Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews are historic terms for the former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Hata was an immigrant clan active in Japan since the Kofun period (250–538), according to the history of Japan laid out in Nihon Shoki.
Recorded Jewish history in the Philippines started during the Spanish period.
The history of the Jews in Indonesia began with the arrival of early European explorers and settlers, and the first Jews arrived in the 17th century. Most Indonesian Jews arrived from Southern Europe, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, the Middle East, North Africa, India, China, and Latin America. Jews in Indonesia presently form a very small Jewish community of about 500–1,000, from a nadir of about 20 in 1997. Judaism is not recognized as one of the country's six major religions, however its practices are allowed under Perpres 1965 No. 1 and article 29 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of Indonesia. Therefore, members of the local Jewish community have to choose to register as "Belief in One Almighty God" or another recognized religions on their official identity cards.
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.
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.
Hikawa Maru (氷川丸) is a retired Japanese ocean liner that Yokohama Dock Company built for the NYK Line. She was launched on 30 September 1929 and made her maiden voyage from Kobe to Seattle on 13 May 1930. She is permanently berthed as a museum ship at Yamashita Park, Naka-ku, Yokohama.
Tadeusz Ludwik Romer was a Polish diplomat and politician.
Arie Leo Hanin was a Lithuanian-American political activist.
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.
