An impressive interdisciplinary effort by Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Western Sinologists and Judaic studies specialists, this book scrutinizes patterns of migration, acculturation, assimilation, and economic activity of successive waves of Jewish arrivals in China from approximately A.D. 1100 to 1949. While Jewish individuals and communities in China have been described in microhistorical, antiquarian, or nostalgic fashion, they have never been contrasted as a whole and in a scholarly way with other Jewish Diaspora communities.

Heinz Dawid, born in Dresden in 1913, earned a doctor of law degree at Berlin University in 1935 and emigrated to China in 1939. He practiced law in Tianjin until 1949, when he came to the United States Roger Des Forges teaches Chinese history at the State University of New York at Buffalo Albert E. Dien has been president of the Sino-Judaic Institute since 1989 and is professor emeritus of Chinese and Inner Asian studies at Stanford University Irene Eber is the Leo Friedberg Professor of East Asian Studies at the Truman Research Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel Epstein, a Russian Jew, reached Harbin at the age of two and went to Tianjin at the age of five where he was raised. His father was a leading Bundist, or Second International Menshevik. Adopting Third International Marxism-Leninism as a youth, Epstein assisted Anna Louise Strong in the founding of China Reconstructs magazine, of which he is editor emeritus. He is a citizen of the People's Republic of China and is one of five members of Jewish origin on the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Jonathan Goldstein is professor of history (East Asia) at the State University of West Georgia and research associate of Harvard University's John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research Ernest G. Heppner was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1921 and escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Shanghai. He was a member of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (British Army) from 1939 until its disbandment in 1942. He emigrated to the United States in 1947 Illo L. Heppner was born in Berlin in 1923 and fled with her parents to Shanghai in 1940. She was interned by the Japanese in 1943 and liberated by American troops in 1945. She worked as a civilian employee of the United States War Department for the Shanghai Port Command and for the U.S. Military Advisory Group to the Chinese Nationalist government in Nanjing. She married Ernest Heppner in Shanghai and immigrated to the United States with him in 1947 Steve Hochstadt, a descendant of Jews who passed through Shanghai, visited the city with Israel's General Yehuda Halevy and Ambassador Yosef Tekoah in 1989. Hochstadt teaches modern German history and Holocaust studies at Bates College Phyllis Horal, a director of the Sino-Judaic Institute, has made numerous research trips to Kaifeng "Alexander Menquez" is the pseudonym of an American academic who grew up in Harbin Marcia R. Ristaino is Asian acquisitions librarian at the Library of Congress Frank Joseph Shulman, a bibliographer, editor, and consultant for reference publications in Asian studies, is the author of several bibliographies of Chinese and Jewish studies Yosef Tekoah, born Josef Tukaczynsky in Perm in the Soviet Union, was raised and educated in Shanghai. He entered the State of Israel's diplomatic service at its inception. He rose to become Israel's ambassador to the United Nations and president of Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba Wang Yisha, who died in December 1996, was the curator of the Kaifeng Municipal Museum for over a decade. For twenty years he gathered oral histories of the Chinese Jewish descendants of Kaifeng. He was the founder of Kaifeng's Society for the Study of the History and Culture of the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng Wei Qianzhi is professor of Chinese history at Henan University and chair of the Association for the History of Kaifeng City Xian Xian is professor of Middle Eastern studies and director of the Southwest Asia Institute, Yunnan University, Kunming, China Xu Xin is professor of English at Nanjing University