Unveiling a Jewish Selichot Manuscript from China: An Ancient Journey

The dawn of history witnessed trade routes stretching from the Far East to the Near East. Chinese goods were found from Persia to Turkey. Over the years, these trade routes evolved and peaked with the silk trade, earning them the nickname "Silk Road." In fact, several routes transported silk from China's Xi'an region to the Middle East, and from there onward to Europe or Africa. The famous traveler Marco Polo from Italy traversed the entire Silk Road about eight hundred years ago.

The Silk Road crosses the Gobi Desert, Asia's largest desert, with the majority located in northern China and a smaller part in Mongolia. "Gobi" means "desert" in Mongolian. Crossing the desert, the significance of any supply source was immense, hence the importance of the city of Dunhuang. It served as a pivotal stop for caravans and traders, attracting people from around the globe en route for silk trade and other goods from China to the rest of the world.

Near Dunhuang lies a massive rock cliff, several kilometers long. Buddhist monks traversing the Silk Road for religious pilgrimages carved out caves to avoid mingling with the city's bustling crowds. This excavation started about 1,700 years ago and continued for many generations. Over time, around five hundred giant caves were carved, adorned with various creations and wall paintings. These efforts continued for about a thousand years, covering 42,000 square meters of wall paintings.

About a hundred years ago, Taoist caretaker Wang Yuanlu discovered an artificial wall at the end of one of these caves. He carefully opened it, revealing tens of thousands of documents left behind by monks and travelers. Research expeditions flocked to the site, unveiling new insights into the history of China, Tibet, and Mongolia.

Amidst these pages, written in multiple languages, a Hebrew page surfaced on Chinese paper from the eighth century, about 1,200 years ago, during the Gaonic period. The page is a Selichot text, adorned with Babylonian vowel points. It is one of the oldest Hebrew manuscripts on paper (Babylonian notation was used before the adoption of the Tiberian notation, known to us today).

What is intriguing about the Selichot page from China is that it appears to have been written from memory by a Jewish traveling merchant. Seeking to inscribe Selichot for the High Holy Days, he penned the text as it sounded, possibly without fluency in Hebrew writing, such as "Mile kamochah nosi avon" ("Who is a God like You, forgiving iniquity"). You might notice this merchant was Ashkenazi...

Currently, the page resides in the National Library in Paris. It serves as a memento of a solitary Jewish man who journeyed thousands of miles from home for his livelihood, yet did not forget the Selichot, jotting them down on paper. Perhaps he paused to rest in the Mogao Caves, or maybe the page was left somewhere and a Buddhist monk archived it with his documents; this we do not know.