Discussing Chinese history and Confucius with the Lubavitcher Rebbe

[@Y1836Y]

Thank you for sharing your Rebbe moments with us.

[@Y1836Y]

Baruch Hashem for giving us the Rebbe, of righteous memory, to learn from and to be inspired by his devotion to the Aibishter, to the Jewish people, to Israel and to humanity.

[@Y1836Y]

Very interesting story.

[@ylazerson]

Great story - thanks!

[@elainedeoliveira5375]

Gratidão Rebbe ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

[@---tx9xx]

They also don't have the same language, although there is some continuity on the written characters, whereas Hebrew is unchanged enough that a secular youth with no religious training can read the Bible and Mishna as easily almost as the newspaper

[@pkoven]

can you explain more in detail how Chinese is not the same language?

[@PanikStudios]

Mao and the CCP introduced a literary reform in the mid 20th century to “simplify” the language by changing many of the characters in Chinese to make universal literacy easier. The other more nefarious motive was to create a break with past China which had endured the Centuries of Humiliations, but also produced the great ancient literature of Confucius, Laozi, Mencius, Sun-Tzu etc. So for instance character for “east” was simplified from 東 to 东. And the grammar of the language was standardized to be mostly based on the Beijing dialect. This changed how the language was written such that without education in Classical Chinese, someone literate in modern Mandarin Chinese cannot easily read the old texts in the older scripts. Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalists in Taiwan and the British in Hong Kong did not change the written script of the Chinese dialects, retaining most of the Traditional Chinese, such that the Classical texts are easier to read without as much additional instruction. This linguistic reform is a major factor in the loss of knowledge and awareness the China of antiquity such that I as a secular scholar agree with the Rebbe’s assessment that the Jewish people are the only extant group with continuous literary connection to texts written 2500-3000 years ago.

[@zev3143]

​@@pkovenAncient Chinese is different structurally and grammatically from modern Chinese. Native speakers of Chinese can't just pick up writings from ancient Chinese and understand it. They have to study ancient Chinese.

[@IHBERWIUHBDSAJ]

Another big difference between China and Am Yisroel: China didn't have The Rebbe.

[@Shaul770]

What is this person's name?

[@JewishMedia]

Thank you for your question! His name is Mr. Yosef Shandling. JEM had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Shandling in 2018.

[@yosefzee572]

@@JewishMedia is he related to Gary?

[@FionaBatNoach]

As a Chinese, I would say my people have changed a lot, plus China had many ethnicities, only the people who have Turkish descent(I forgot what their ethnicity is call but they are still maternally Chinese), they live in tents and follow Islam. I would say they are the only people in China who is monotheistic. The rest were polyetheistic. The easiest thing about Polytheism, is that it isn't hard to change to another religion, because they will somewhat acknowledge other idols. Confucius screwed up the monotheism in China, smh. Jews stay consistent in their language and views on the world.

[@tac7826]

A standard of truth only because of the age of a people is certainly an invalid standard. Moses laws are highly questionable because they include death penalty for absurd things like working on Saturday. Therefore, I am no fan of Moses laws.

[@Evergreenandmyrtle]

Whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, says matters, is the only thing that matters. Only for Jews, G-d said we must observe the most holy day of the Sabbath. Non-Jews are required to follow the original laws given to all of mankind at Creation, which were reiterated after the flood, and of which Abraham worked tirelessly to remind mankind since they had forgotten them. Due to Abraham’s great efforts at this, and since he passed G-d’s 10 tests, G-d gave his grandson, Jacob’s descendants many more laws to follow at the Giving of the Torah. The rest of mankind are still required to follow the original, also divine Laws which are detailed in the book, “Path of the Righteous Gentile” by Clorfene and Rogalsky.