32
THE CHRONICLE
A short flight took my wife, Ophra, who was
now able to join me, and me to Xi’an, where
the highlights were an all-day excursion to
the monumental Qin Dynasty excavations
with over 6,000 life-sized terra cotta war-
riors unearthed from the 3
rd
century B.C.E.
In the evening – which happened to be our
anniversary – we attended a concert of Tang
Dynasty court music and dance.
For many years, the late Dr. I. O. Lehman,
Curator of Manuscripts, and I labored on
a project involving investigation of the
Biblical manuscripts of the Chinese Jews
of Kai Feng which are preserved in the
Dalsheimer Rare Book Room of HUC-
JIR’s Klau Library. (A debt is gratefully
acknowledged to Dr. Herbert Zafren and
Dr. David Gilner, for their support.)
Our project, which I am still continuing,
stemmed from our mutual interest in the
Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. Could
manuscripts from far-off China reveal hith-
erto unknown facts about the development
of the apparatus of the Torah? A careful
review of the features of these priceless doc-
uments might reveal new pathways in
Masoretic study.
All through this period, I had read about the
Jews of Kai Feng, the place of origin of these
rare Scriptures. However, for many decades,
it was only a dream to be able to visit that
city. The reason was that travel for American
citizens to the People’s Republic of China
was forbidden. Therefore it was a particular
pleasure and one of the highlights of the trip
to go there and see the museum and the set-
ting where Jews had flourished for so many
centuries. An unforgettable occasion was the
invitation to the home of the head of the
Jewish Community, Mr. Moshe Zhang, his
wife, and son.
Closing out this fabulous trip was a stay in
Beijing, including sightseeing at Tiananmen
Square and the Forbidden City. After pur-
chasing entry tickets our guide said to us:
the price of admission today was about
$1.50 – but back in the days of the empire,
it would have been our necks! The better
part of a day was spent at the Great Wall of
China, Mutianyu section, with its cable car
to the summit.
My thanks go to Dean Kenneth Ehrlich, Drs.
Edward Goldman and Peter Obermark,
Rabbi Sam Joseph, Sharon Crain, and spe-
cial love and gratitude to Cheryl and
Richard Weisberg.
From HUC- JIR to China:
Professor Weisberg
(
continued from page 14)
Catholic and a Jew work together, learn
together, and deeply respect each other’s
faith. They did not understand how we could
accept the truth claims of each other’s tradi-
tions. By exploring this with them we
attempted to help them understand what a
commitment to religious pluralism means.
For the faculty we constructed a learning
experience in which they confronted the
challenges of teaching toward the school’s
goal of preparing a religiously educated per-
son in terms of the school’s Christian roots
and its religious diversity. For parents we cre-
ated an interreligious learning experience,
and asked them about the value of the expe-
rience and what it might mean to create
such experiences at HKIS. At several meet-
ings with administrators they shared their
struggle of faithfulness to their identity as a
Christian school and a desire to promote
religious/spiritual pluralism. Based on the
exploration of educating for pluralism in our
work and our encounter with the realities of
HKIS we shared some insights about the
importance of teaching for pluralism from
the youngest grades. This always raises the
question of how we can teach for pluralism
before students are deeply grounded in their
own religious tradition. The exchanges we
had with all of the people we encountered at
HKIS were as educative for Mary and me as
they were for the groups and individuals
with whom we met.
We could help them identify the questions
and challenges in defining their school as
both particularistic as a Christian school
and yet ideologically committed to reli-
gious/spiritual pluralism. We learned from
them how dedicated educators who take
seriously the philosophical and ideological
identity of a school struggle with enacting
their commitments in the curriculum, cul-
ture, and all other aspects of the school on a
day to day basis. For our ongoing work in
educating for religious particularism and
religious pluralism, which will be located at
the Boston College Center for Christian-
Jewish Learning, the work we did at HKIS
provides us with a rich case study from
which we will continue to learn.
At the end of our visit to Hong Kong, Mary
and I were invited to join in
Shabbat
worship
and dinner at the Progressive Synagogue in
Hong Kong. We spoke with the congregation
about our work in general and what we had
been doing at HKIS, where some of their
children are enrolled. In my case as a Jew at
HKIS and in Mary’s case as a Catholic at the
Progressive Synagogue, each of us experi-
enced being the “religious other.” In both
situations, however, we were welcomed and
respected for the wisdom and insight that
each of us could bring about our own tradi-
tion, the deep interest we had in learning
about the tradition of others, and the com-
mitment to advancing religious pluralism as
an ideology. In the rich cultural mix that
characterizes Hong Kong, where the con-
frontation and synergy of diverse cultures and
religious traditions is so palpable, the impor-
tance of working toward genuine pluralism
in religious and cultural terms was reinforced.
I return to my work in interreligious learning
with greater energy and passion, and a debt
of gratitude to HKIS for having invited me
to be part of their struggle and search.
Professor Lee
(
continued from page 15)
A brief bibliography for the interested reader:
Bonavia, Judy,
The Silk Road
,
Chartwell
Books: Hong Kong, 1988.
Pan Guang, Xu Xin, et al.,
The Jews in
China
,
China Intercontinental Press, 2001.
White, William Charles,
Chinese Jews
,
Paragon: NY, 1966.
Xu Xin,
The Jews of Kaifeng
,
China, KTAV:
Jersey City, 2003.