Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
China and Its Jewish History
Summary
This lecture will cover several fascinating histories: the Kaifeng Jewish community during the Mongol Yuan period; the Baghdadi Jews in China and their merchant empires; and the Russian Jewish influx of 1905. We will end with the riveting history of the Holocaust refugees in Shanghai during World War II.
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite teaches Chinese History, Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and sometimes Jewish history, at NYU. He is author of The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Harvard, 2005); The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford, 2009); He is co-editor of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Culture, and Politics (Brandeis, 2013); The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (Columbia University Press, 2017), and Time and Language: New Sinology and Chinese History, (Hawaii University Press, 2023).