I peeked inside and was greeted by a giant Israeli flag, hung right along side a familiar burst of red on the Chinese flag. Way cool. “Don’t see that every day,” someone said, echoing everyone’s thoughts. We all took our seats and scattered around the parallel long tables under the flags. On each table lay abnormally large bananas, abnormally small plums, and bowls of vegetarian 包子. Standing up to explore a little, I looked up at the tablets hanging above us. There were two columns of five lines written in Chinese. As soon as I read the first line, “不可杀人,” I realized it was the Ten Commandments in Chinese! This sparked a strange feeling that I knew was about to build up as the night progressed. Something felt all too familiar about this little house, though I had obviously never been to Kaifeng, let alone in this school. I felt a burning curiosity about these people, feeling so excited I was getting dizzy. But I kept my cool. No one I was with could probably understand what I was feeling. There was no point in explaining it to anyone.
My feet led me to the adjacent room where I saw another pair of side-by-side images – one of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and one of the Great Wall in Beijing. These juxtapositions were too much. I couldn’t help but smile in disbelief. A gentle voice entered the room and said, “Shalom…你好.” Next to me stood a smaller, older woman dressed in a floral dress with a v-neck cut that drew my eyes to her dainty silver-chained necklace. In the center of her bosom hung the Star of David. Her rosy face wrinkled into a smile that felt so genuinely welcoming. She had been waiting for us.
I could hear by now that others had arrived in the main room. I glanced through the open door and saw older Chinese men wearing kipah and more older women with Star of David necklaces. The feeling inside of me was glowing with further curiosity. I snuck away up the stairs to explore some more before greeting everyone. With every step I climbed I was granted a photograph that hung on the stairwell wall. Dozens of photographs rich with their unique history hung along that wall. I’ve never climbed stairs so slowly – I couldn’t leave any photograph unstudied. There were many group portraits of the old Kaifeng Jews from the 1800s, most of whom looked like Persian Jews, wearing tefillin and talit and of course kipah. Some looked Chinese and wore their kipah along with a silk robe. Most portraits divided Persian Jews on one side and Chinese on the other, but some were standing mixed together.
I stopped at the third stair from the top. One face wouldn’t let my eyes turn away. The handsome young man in the photograph was looking down. He had a long Chinese braid and the rest of his head was shaved. He had dark eyebrows and sharp cheekbones. His nose stood tall and had a slight bump at the bridge. His eyes…oh, I so wish he hadn’t been looking down! There was no caption on this photograph that could have indicated who he was. He had to have been 混血, I just knew it. My mind was racing about him with a million questions a minute. Maybe he was half-Chinese, half-Jewish like me! Maybe he could relate to my life. Was his father Jewish, or his mother? Did the rabbi consider him Jewish, if he had only a paternal linkage? Did people call him a half-breed? Did he secretly not feel Jewish enough sometimes? I snapped out of my mental interrogation with the long-deceased man in the photograph by the sound of laughter from downstairs. More people had arrived for Shabbat services.
Pushing through a sea of dresses came running in a little boy with his kipah sliding off, followed by his two little sidekicks. “Lu Xiang! 回来啊!” A blur of yellow and pink dresses ran passed me with flailing ponytails that trailed behind. Seeking refuge behind me was 7 year-old Lu Xiang, baiting the chasing little girls to my side, aggressively trying to tickle their friend. When the little one in pink was tired of trying to reach around my legs, she looked up and realized that their obstacle to Lu Xiang was in fact a human. She looked up at me and smiled a mischievous smile. “你好,你叫什么名字呀?” I asked her. “WOOO-WOOO-WOOO!!!!!” she growled like a little puppy. Lu Xiang came out of hiding and laughed with the older girl in the yellow dress at their silly barking friend. “哦,你是一只小狗狗! 怪不得…” The little one clapped with delight and threw her whole body into roaring laughter, pleased with my acknowledgement that she was a little dog, not a human. I later learned from their mothers that the girls had Hebrew names. The little one had a name translated into Chinese phonetics, Da Fen Da. Perhaps it translated from the Hebrew name Daphnah? The older girl’s name was Amita.
Upstairs, we congregated in a smaller room where we joined in prayer for Shabbat. For however long we were in that room, I'll admit I spent more time observing in awe rather than actively participating. The chants had begun so suddenly that the richness of the joined voices startled me for a moment. My Dad and I exchanged smiles at the sound of the familiar prayers. There I was sitting in a room of people who looked sort of like me speaking and singing in what sounded like near-fluent Hebrew - it took me a minute to internalize everything. The prayerbook in my hands alternated between Chinese and Hebrew, something I had never seen in the synagogue in Shanghai. In between prayers, a brief silence in the room allowed for me to hear Da Fen Da barking in the stairwell. It eventually got louder and louder until I could hear her at the door scratching like a little puppy. I couldn't help but laugh at that point. Her father stood up and walked out the door sternly, scooping her up and sending her back downstairs. Everyone giggled at her struggling barks.
My mind flashed back to a moment I wouldn't forget at the synagogue we occasionally attended in Shanghai. Orthodox Jewish synagogues and some Conservative ones, too, separate men from women during services. I remembered the first time sitting on the women's side excitedly. I sat in the front row, hoping it would increase my engagement and that maybe others would see that I really wanted to be there. I was sitting in a whole row by myself. That's strange. I turned around and saw all of the other European Jewish women sitting three rows behind me. A good number of them too. I quickly turned back around and looked down. I felt a pang in the bottom of my stomach and suddenly felt so disconnected from everyone in the room. I wondered what my brother was feeling like on the other side of the floral trellis that divided us. At least Dad was sitting next to him. I chanted extra loudly that service, hoping someone would care that I could read Hebrew too.
How different this setting felt. So warm…so inviting. A middle-aged woman, Neta, smiled at me from across the room. She memorized everything and didn't need to look down at her book anymore. People wanted me to be there.
Dinner was served with chopsticks and consisted entirely of Kosher Chinese food. I reassured Neta that everything was wonderful, nodding with the taste of familiarity on my tongue. We ate with a side of Tsingtao beer and 白酒 to wash down/burn the food down our throats. I steer clear of 白酒 pretty much…always. It tastes like gasoline. I preferred watching everyone else gradually get drunk throughout dinner. With alcohol comes more singing, guaranteed.
We ate in the room with the Chinese and Israeli flags, sitting tightly shoulder-to-shoulder on little stools. Our voices filled the room and resonated everyone's excitement and love. Love was so prevalent in the room. We were eight nationalities brought together to celebrate our common values and beliefs. Neta, the confident singing leader looked around her and began to sing Hine Ma Tov. The sound of her voice surprised me and triggered tears that filled up in my eyes. I couldn't help it! I grew up on this song. I looked over at my Dad sitting across from me, who was waiting for me to look over at him. We both joined in and sang together. I remembered him lying next to me as a child trying to put me to sleep with this lullaby. I would end up singing it with him until he fell asleep next to me. This repeated for years. That moment was so beautiful - the environment, the people we were with, and the fact that I was sitting across from my Dad, whom I love so dearly. I'll cling to it for a long time.
Translations:
1. 电瓶车 = Diànpíngchē; an electric-powered car
2. 包子= Bāozi; a steamed; stuffed bun
3. 不可杀人 = Bùkě shārén; Though shalt not kill
4. 你好 = Nǐ hǎo; hello (this was written next to "Shalom")
5. 混血 = Hùnxiě; "hybrid" is the literal translation, but is commonly used to describe people of mixed-race descent
6. 回来啊 = Huílái a; come back!
7. 你好,你叫什么名字呀 = Nǐ hǎo, nǐ jiào shénme míngzì ya; Hello, what is your name?
8. 哦,你是一只小狗狗! 怪不得 = Ó, nǐ shì yī zhǐ xiǎo gǒu gǒu! Guàibùdé; Oh, you're a little dog. No wonder!
9. 白酒 = Báijiǔ; white rice spirit