TAIPEI, Taiwan (JTA) — Rabbi Akiva’s daughter was destined for demise on her marriage ceremony day, no less than in keeping with the star-gazers. So the early Jewish sage appeared resigned to his daughter’s destiny.
But on the marriage day, Rabbi Akiva’s daughter provided a poor old man her portion of the marriage feast. That evening, earlier than going to mattress, she eliminated her hairpin and caught it within the wall. In the morning, she found that the hairpin had pierced the attention of a toxic snake, which trailed after the pin as she pulled it from the wall.
“Charity saves from death,” Rabbi Akiva declared.
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Erica Lyons doesn’t bear in mind the primary time she heard this Talmud story, however she will’t neglect its many unusual omissions and inconsistencies. What rabbi listened to astrologers? Why wasn’t Rabbi Akiva nervous about his daughter’s destiny? And why didn’t Rabbi Akiva’s daughter have a reputation of her personal?
“It sort of made me think of Jephtha’s daughter, this other girl who is going to potentially be sacrificed for the sake of a story, of a lesson of some sort,” stated Lyons, referencing one other biblical character from the Book of Judges.
Lyons’ new kids’s e-book, “Zhen Yu and the Snake,” printed final week with wealthy illustrations by Renia Metallinou, seeks to fill in these gaps — with a twist. The story is ready in Twelfth-century Kaifeng, China, the town the place Persian Jewish retailers established China’s first Jewish neighborhood. Its essential characters are all Chinese Jews — Rabbi Akiva turns into Li Jian and his daughter lastly will get a reputation, too: Zhen Yu, which suggests “precious jade” in Chinese. The astrologer within the story turns into a fortune-teller from the Chinese metropolis of Chengdu, which was home to a number of well-known fortune-tellers on the time.
At the time, Kaifeng was China’s vibrant Song Dynasty capital. Its location on the Yellow River, not removed from the Silk Road, made it a industrial heart bustling with retailers. The Silk Road buying and selling route had attracted a whole bunch of Jews to China, who settled there across the ninth or tenth century and peacefully worshiped their very own god for hundreds of years.
In Lyons’ model of the story, Zhen Yu is the principle character, who lives a lifetime of advantage lengthy earlier than getting married. Common in Chinese tradition, the presence of the fortune-teller feels pure within the Kaifeng market, the place he reveals Zhen Yu’s destiny to Li Jian on a day earlier than Shabbat.
Lyons stays loyal to the supply textual content, highlighting the characters’ observance of Jewish legislation and the significance of Jewish values of their lives. But the setting and characters make the story extra accessible to non-Ashkenazi readers, she stated.
“The Talmud belongs to all Jews around the world,” stated Tani Prell, artistic director at Be’chol Lashon, a nonprofit devoted to elevating consciousness concerning the racial, cultural, and ethnic range in Judaism, primarily by way of training. Encouraging academics to incorporate various Jewish tales is “a hard thing to do” when these sources are restricted, Prell stated. “So I think it’s beautiful that Erica is creating the resources that do have such a direct impact on the lived experiences of young Jews of color.”
Lyons, who has been dwelling in Hong Kong for over 20 years, had at all times wished to be a author. In school, she majored in English and Jewish Studies however started her profession as a lawyer for an insurance coverage firm in New York. When she moved to Hong Kong along with her husband in 2002, she noticed the chance to get again to her undergrad roots.
Today, she is deeply concerned with Hong Kong’s historic Jewish neighborhood, whose foundations had been constructed by Baghdadi-Jewish dynasties such because the Sassoons and the Kadoories within the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The metropolis’s Jewish inhabitants has fluctuated over the years however stays about 3,000-4,000 sturdy in the present day with six congregations to select from. Lyons chairs the Hong Kong Jewish Historical Society and serves because the Hong Kong delegate to the World Jewish Congress.
As a Persian-Ashkenazi Jew who’s elevating Chinese kids, Lyons has prioritized the inclusion of Jews of various experiences in her work in Hong Kong. As a journalist and founding father of Asian Jewish Life, {a magazine} that spotlighted Jewish tales in Asia from 2008 till 2016, she has at all times been fascinated by “Jewish stories in the margins” — little-known bits of Jewish historical past or traditions which have gone neglected by the Jewish majority dwelling within the West.
Today, few households in Kaifeng nonetheless observe Judaism and people who do have been pressured underground as a part of the Chinese Communist Party’s coverage of repressing and limiting a variety of religions. Judaism is just not one of many nation’s 5 formally acknowledged religions (Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Daoism and Islam), and Kaifeng’s Jews are seen by the state as a part of the Han Chinese ethnic majority — not Jews. Little Jewish iconography stays on the old streets of Kaifeng in the present day, and a majority of the nation’s Jewish inhabitants are expatriates dwelling in industrial facilities reminiscent of Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.
Lyons’ e-book comes at a time when Jewish tales from Asia — particularly tales of Jewish escape and survival in China and Japan throughout World War II — are receiving a wave of consideration. In this yr alone, tales about Jewish refugees in Asia have been the topic of a number of novels, an exhibition in New York City, a musical and two high-profile symphony performances.
In these tales, China is commonly a brief backdrop towards which Western Jewish tales are set. There is much less consciousness of the historical past of the Chinese Jewish neighborhood in Kaifeng, Lyons stated.
“In this way, I was able to educate people without being didactic in any way. I didn’t just pick a random city in China and plop my characters into it. I picked a Jewish community, and I think a lot of people are not aware that [Kaifeng] was a historic community,” she stated.
Books for young readers about Chinese or Asian Jews, particularly, have been uncommon. But the widening availability of literature about various Jews in recent years is creating extra demand for these tales, stated Prell.
Nicholas Zane, a grasp’s scholar at Dartmouth University whose household immigrated to the United States from China with the assistance of a Jewish household within the Catskills, has been growing accessible details about the Kaifeng Jews by way of a web site, nonfiction books and movie books in Chinese and English. “Two New Years,” an image e-book printed final month by Richard Ho, tells the story of a household that celebrates each Rosh Hashanah within the fall and Chinese New Year within the spring.
“There’s these stories that people don’t know, and to be able to tell them and bring them to Jewish children, and children generally, is really incredible,” Lyons stated.
But there are nonetheless gaps, Lyons stated, and he or she has been busy attempting to assist fill them with a number of different forthcoming image books on the way in which. “Counting on Naamah,” additionally launched on Sept. 5, turns Noah’s spouse Naamah right into a mathematical genius. In the approaching yr, her different releases will inform the tales of an 1881 Yemenite aliyah journey, the Indian Bnei Israel Jews (illustrated by famend Indian-Jewish artist Siona Benjamin) and a Chinese-Jewish woman who should determine how you can have fun Sukkot and the mid-Autumn competition on the identical evening.
“Racial diversity amongst the Jewish people is not a new thing. It has been there. That’s another reason why I also think it’s very, very cool for Erica’s books, that with ‘Zhen Yu and the Snake’ and ‘Naamah,’ it’s these stories that have been part of Jewish tradition over time,” stated Prell. PJC
