Sara Cohen passes away in Cochin, India

Sara Cohen, one of the best known  Paradesi Jews of Jew Town, Cochin, India, passed away last month. She was 96 years old. Two other Jews remain.

Sara used to pray at the Paradesi synagogue, which celebrated its 450th anniversary in 2018.
This is a portrait of Sara in her home in Mattancherry in 2015.

The White Jews of Cochin (not to be confused with the much older community of Black Jews) are the descendants of Sephardi Jews expelled from Iberia in 1492. They became known as Paradesi Jews (Foreign Jews). In the 19th century, Baghdadi Jews joined the Paradesi community.

Abandoned synagogue in Cochin, less than  a five-minute walk from the Paradesi synagogue.

Reconstruction of the Paradesi synagogue at the Israel Museum.

(All photographs are the copyright of Shalva Weil, and reproduced by kind permission.)

BBC hypes up discrimination against Indian Jews

Timed to coincide with Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to India,  an article written by the BBC Hindi journalist Zubair Ahmed was published on the BBC News website’s ‘India’ and ‘Middle East’ pages under the title “Israel’s Indian Jews and their lives in the ‘promised land’“. See this report by BBC Watch, and my comment below.



The article relates to one of the communities of Jews who immigrated to Israel from India – Bene Israel – and readers are told that: [emphasis added]

“…the biggest crisis faced by the community was in 1962 when the chief rabbinate prohibited Bene Israelis from marrying Jews from other communities.

Dr Weil said the community was up in arms. “They used to conduct sit-in strikes outside the chief rabbinate’s office saying they were Jews for more than 2,000 years and had the right to marry who they wanted.”

It took two years, but they finally succeeded in seeing their demands fulfilled.”

But is that account accurate? Did Israel’s Chief Rabbinate really ban members of the Bene Israel group from marrying other Israeli Jews in 1962 ?
Here is an article published in the ‘Herut’ newspaper on October 20^th 1961 under the headline “The Chief Rabbinate rules: ‘Bene Israel’ from India are Jews and marriage with them is permitted”.

Read article in full


 Here's another extract from the BBC story:
"But for many families, the migration did not go as smoothly as hoped.
Mr Gudekar says that like many others of his community, his family were discriminated against because of their darker skin colour and because they could not speak fluent Hebrew.
They were allotted an inferior home, built of asbestos, and tin. Mr Gudekar says his father often regretted leaving their life in India.
But, he says, going back was not an option as they had burned all their bridges with Mumbai. "

My comment: No BBC report on Israel is complete without a dig alleging 'discrimination'. If the Indian Jews felt they were discriminated against for their skin colour, the Ethiopian immigrants arriving in the 1990s would be a notch darker.
Since when was fluent  Hebrew a requirement for newcomers to Israel? The BBC reporter is  most likely unaware that almost all immigrants to Israel in the 1950s or 60s had to live in tent camps or tin or asbestos huts.

Recalling the Baghdadi music of India

In the cosmopolitan culture of the 1930s, the Baghdadi Jews of India had  their own record labels: the Iraqi-Jewish tunes performed by the oud player  Isaac David even found their way into Bollywood musicals.  In 2009, Sara Manasseh, a Mumbai-born ethnomusicologist, put together 15 tracks on an album called Shir Hodu. Fascinating interview in the Scroll magazine (with thanks: Dominique): 

The dulcet ring of the oud is impossible to miss on the soundtrack of Yahudi, Bimal Roy’s unlikely Bollywood historical made in 1958 about the persecution of Jews in ancient Rome. The background score, composed by Shankar and Jaikishan, has a vaguely Middle Eastern feel to it and as the plot twists and turns, it often falls to the versatile Arabian stringed instrument to signal the swirling emotions. As massacres are ordered, betrayals ensue and Dilip Kumar falls in love with Meena Kumari, the oud sobs, sighs and sings to enhance the mood on screen. It could easily have descended into kitsch. Perhaps the reason it didn’t was the fact that the man plucking the strings, Isaac David, was well acquainted with Middle Eastern music.

David was Jewish himself and in the early years of the last century, he had polished his art by playing with an ensemble in Mumbai that recorded four discs of Iraqi Jewish tunes for the Hebrew Record label.

Some of those tunes can be heard on a collection called Shir Hodu: Jewish Song from Bombay of the ’30s, which offers a fascinating reminder of the city’s cosmopolitan heritage. Released in 2009, the 15 archival tracks on the album have been painstakingly put together by Sara Manasseh, a Mumbai-born Iraqi Jewish ethnomusicologist who now lives in London. During the 1930s, Mumbai was “a musical kaleidoscope”, Manasseh says in her liner notes, and the pieces included music and Jewish prayer chants in Hebrew.

In 2012, Manasseh explained the historical and theoretical context of this music in a book titled Shbahoth – Songs of Praise in the Babylonian Jewish Tradition: From Baghdad to Bombay to London.

Mumbai has long been home to three distinct Jewish groups. The largest is the Bene Israel, who believe that their ancestors were shipwrecked off the Alibaug coast in 175 BCE. From the nineteenth century, Iraqi Jewish traders – Manasseh’s ancestors – fleeing religious persecution began to settle in the commercial capital. This group came to be known as the Baghdadis. In the 1930s, a small number of Jews from Kochi, whose ancestors had arrived in Kerala in the 10th century BCE, also lived in Mumbai.

Both the Bene Israel and the Baghdadis had vibrant musical traditions in the 1930s. The Bene Israeli repertoire was in Marathi, drawing its themes from the Psalms and other Biblical sources. Among the prominent community musicians was Nathan Solomon Satamkar, a dashing silent movie actor whose family established two musical schools to provide instruction in such instruments as the sitar and the dilruba, Manasseh said.

To Mumbai’s ears, the music of the Baghdadis must have seemed far more exotic. Shir Hodu includes tracks by Silman Museri, whose group included “dancing girls who would balance candelabras on their heads”, Manasseh said in an email interview. Also popular was Mnashi Abu Moshe, a blind singer who sometimes entertained at parties thrown by Manasseh’s grandparents. “He would sing popular Arabic songs from Baghdad, and also improvise songs…about people who were at the party,” Manasseh said. “My grandmother would sit by him and tell him who was there.”

Read article in full

BHL discovers Baghdad-Jewish war hero

 The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, writing in The Tablet, has only just discovered the fascinating story of General Jack Jacob, but his name will be familiar to Point of No Return readers.

It’s quite a story.
This story may seem unlikely in this era of generalized war between cultures, civilizations, and religions. And I am grateful to British journalist Ben Judah for having brought it to light in an article that appeared in the Jewish Chronicle the day after the visit to Israel of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The time is December 1971. The place is the territory then known as East Pakistan. Separated by 1,600 kilometers from West Pakistan, this Bengali part of Pakistan has been in rebellion since March.

The central government in Islamabad, rejecting the secession of what will eventually become Bangladesh, is engaged in a merciless repression, the cost of which, in lives, remains unknown even today, almost a half-century later. Half a million people may have died, of perhaps a million, 2 million, or more.
On Dec. 3, India decides to enter the conflict, to “interfere,” as one would put it today, in the domestic affairs of its neighbor so as to stop the bloodbath. The fighting rages.

The Bengali freedom fighters, known as the Mukti Bahini, now supported by India, become increasingly daring.

New Delhi’s strategy is to build up slowly and gradually, a decision. This strategy seems to many ill-suited to the Bangladesh of the day, a terrain of few roads, major rivers, and innumerable marshes. Thirteen days into the new phase of the war, with the Pakistanis having massed 90,000 troops around Dacca, the capital, against the Indians’ 3,000, New Delhi appears to be stuck and has hardly boxed itself into the beginnings of a siege. And it is at this moment that a high-ranking Indian officer, without notifying his superiors, takes a plane, lands in Dacca, presents himself to General Niazi, head of the Pakistani forces and pulls off one of the most spectacular bluffs in modern military history: “You have 90,000 men,” the Indian officer tells Niazi. “We have many more, plus the Mukti Bahini, who are full of the vengeance of their people and will give no quarter. Under the circumstances, you have only one choice: to persist in a fight that you cannot win or to sign this letter of surrender that I have drafted in my own hand, which promises you an honorable retreat. You have half an hour to decide; I’ll go have a smoke.”

Niazi, falling into the trap, chooses the second option. To the world’s amazement, 3,000 Indian soldiers accept the surrender of 90,000 Pakistanis. Tens of thousands—no—hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides are spared.
And Bangladesh is free!

The story might have ended there.

Except that the general behind the masterly coup that makes him godfather to a new Muslim country is Jewish. His name is Jack Jacobs.

Read article in full

Baghdadi sophisticate who survived Japanese camp

Helen Reuben Bekhor died in May 2017 aged 91. Her peripatetic family history - born in Bombay of Baghdadi parents, she was interned in a Japanese PoW camp during WWII - is uniquely preserved in the meticulous records she kept in her Australian home. Here is a potted biography in the Earthy Report by her relative Carola C. Reuben, written seven years before Helen's death.

 Helen Reuben Bekhor: cleared rubble with long, manicured nails

The first member of my extended family who found a home in Australia is the keeper of family records that date back for centuries in Iraq.

Australia became home some 60 years ago to Helen Bekhor ( bottom photo), born Habiba Helen Reuben in Bombay, India to Iraqi Jewish parents in 1925. She picks stories to tell from the meticulous records she keeps in her Melbourne home.

For instance, she might tell you about a relative, Reuben Battat, who froze to death in 1950 when he tried to escape from Iraq to Iran, hidden inside a freezer on a truck. That was during the mass exodus of relatives from Iraq after Israel became a nation (1948) when the Muslims in Iraq persecuted Jews.

Meanwhile for Helen the post World War II years were good. She drank Coca-Cola and sang, “drinking rum and Coca-Cola, working for the Yankee dollar.” It was a time of celebration for her in Shanghai, China. Helen and her sister, Florence, (now Florence Ovadia of Chicago, USA ), were working as mail sorters in a U.S. army base.

They had just been freed from a Japanese Civilian Internment Center in China along with their sister, Grace, brother, Felix, and mother, Naima. World War II was over (top photo, Helen, after the war). During the war, the Japanese had imprisoned Helen and her family as “enemy subjects” because they were British. They had become British citizens while living in India under British rule.

When Helen first became a prisoner, she went to work clearing rubble with her long, manicured nails. Before camp she had been living in a Shanghai she called “a shopper’s paradise” with an elegant social life among foreigners.

Asia became home to the Reubens since before her birth when her father, Sassoon Reuben (my great-uncle), opened an office in Bombay to export textiles and other goods to Iraq. Then, in 1932, my grandfather, Salim Reuben, left Baghdad with his wife and children to open a Reuben Import Export Company office in Kobe, Japan.

Political upheaval then blew Reubens to other lands. In 1939, Japan became Germany‘s ally; all foreign schools closed down in Japan, and the Reubens sailed to Shanghai.

Read article in full

Why don't Jews remember their Sephardi heroes?

 We need to  restore Sephardi heroes to Jewish history, argues Ben Judah in the Jewish Chronicle. Heroes like the Baghdadi Jew General Jacob, who was both Indian military hero and diplomat:

 General JFR Jacob, pictured at a Kolkata rally in 2012.

There are many unsung heroes of the Jewish people. I just feel most of them are Sephardic. The further south and east you go from the shtetl in our collective memory the less the warrior-queens, rabbis, commanders of amazing deeds are remembered.

Sephardic history is not properly taught in Jewish schools. It is given little respect in our yeshivas. Even in Israel, when designs for new banknotes were proposed in 2013, they omitted any Sephardic heroes — even though Jews whose roots lie in North Africa and the Middle East make up nearly half of Israeli Jews.

Sephardic Jews are not without heroes. Ignoring them leaves us poorer. Our story is so much richer — and unexpected. Who remembers General J.F.R. Jacob? Outside of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — no small place — the story of one of the greatest Jewish generals of the 20th century is practically unknown. It was the tactical genius of a Jew that liberated Muslim Bangladesh. Yet Israel and the Diaspora barely took notice of him as he did it.

Born in Calcutta in 1924, at the heart of the Baghdadi Jewish community, streets away from my grandfather, Jacob Farj Rafael (“J.F.R.”) Jacob signed-up in the Second World War when news of Holocaust first reached him. The Jacob family, which like the Judah family, left Iraq for India in the 18th century, sheltered Ashkenazi refugees in Calcutta in 1942. Their stories from Germany and Poland spurred the young man into the war against Hitler.

Devoted to the British Indian Army, which in 1947 became the army of the new India, J.F.R. was the mastermind of the Indian invasion, which liberated the 65m Muslims of what was then known as East Pakistan and later became Bangladesh.
Convinced that victory lay in fighting through the monsoon and in circling the big Bangladeshi cities, Jacob spread his forces through the marshes and riverine swamps which form the Ganges delta and secured a total victory. The 93,000 Pakistan forces surrendering to him in Dhaka marked the largest military surrender since the Second World War.

Across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, General Jacob is seen to this day as a military hero and a Jew unflinching in his devotion to India. Why have we done so little to remember his memory for ourselves?

Read article in full

More about General Jacob

Indian-Israeli star sings for Indian leader

  Liora Itzhak's Mala Mala made her popular in Israel


Greeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his groundbreaking visit to Israel was singer Liora Itzhak, who has spent eight years in India, but has now returned to Israel. She was chosen to sing both the Israeli and Indian national anthems. India Today has the story:

Indian-origin Israeli singer, Liora Itzhak, flew to India at the age of 15 to learn Indian classical music at Sur Sarvadhan Insititue in Pune. She tried to get a break in Bollywood, sang for a movie -- Dil ka doctor -- but things didn't pan out well.

Liora, homesick, left Pune and returned to Israel in 1990s. Now, years later, Liora Itzhak has been chosen to sing the national anthems of Israel and India to welcome Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Liora was also selected by the Israeli President's office in 2015 to sing at the banquet dinner hosted in honour of President Pranab Mukherjee during his visit.

 Liora Itzhak now wishes to re-live her Bollywood dream. Liora has sung with famous singers like Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan and Sonu Nigam while she was in India. Between 1991 and 1997, she learned to sing bhajans and ghazals. "I was 23 and terribly homesick having spent eight years away in difficult conditions from my parents and siblings. I love India but I just could not bear this separation anymore", Liora told PTI when asked about leaving India.

 Mala Mala, what she calls it her "Israeli Bollywood number", made her popular in the Israeli music industry. Liora's Tu Hai Mera Pyar Pehla was a fusion of Hindi and Hebrew words and the song made her a household name in Israel.

Read article in full

'Minority status' has not benefited Indian Jews

A year after India passed a law giving minorities enhanced status, nothing much has changed for the 5,000 Jews of India. The Hindustan Times reports: 

Young Jews visiting Israel from India do a Bollywood flashdance in Jerusalem

Exactly a year ago on June 24 , the Jews of Maharashtra embraced the minority status hoping to find wider recognition in the society with better opportunities. While the provision has successfully made its way to the official records, not much has changed in the lives of the people from the quaint community.
As per the census of 2011, there are 4,650 Indian Jews in India with Maharashtra still holding 53% of it with 2,466 Jews. In Pune, which houses two prominent synagogues (building where Jews meet for religious worship), the Ohel David Synagogue and the Succath Shelomo Synagogue, their numbers dwindle to less than 200.

Dr Irene Judah, who has recently released her book - 'Evolution of the Bene Israels and their Synagogues in the Konkan' - expressed, “A minority status like this affects every section of the community from the most basic level, recognition of our religious holidays being one of them. The fact that we don’t even get optional leaves on the days of our religious festivals is not very pleasing. We have to attend them by using casual leaves, which we could have preserved and used in case of an urgency. This, especially, when other religions in the country are not devoid of that privilege is disheartening.” 

She further adds how the thought of this provision in India, is not a new concept, and existed some decades ago, rather successfully. “It’s surprising now because in the olden days till the 60s almost, optional holidays on Jewish festivals were given. I don’t know why it all stopped,” Irene said.

While it has been a year since Maharashtra bestowed this status to the Jew community, West Bengal with only a Jewish population of 43, had presented the minority status to them almost a decade ago.

Read article in full

BBC radio tells a Calcutta family's story

 With thanks: Avril

 The Maghen David synagogue in Calcutta

There is just under a month left to listen to Ben Judah's family story on BBC Radio 4. It's a Jewish story with a difference, lyrically told; sad, yet offering some hope.

Ben's ancestors - the Judahs, the Ezras, the Belilios and the Sassooons  - settled in Calcutta from Baghdad, beginning in the 18th century. Today, there is little trace of these great trading families except in sepia-coloured photos and on the gravestones that lie behind a paddy field in the Calcutta Jewish cemetery .

Trading - in jute, spices, opium - ran in the Judahs' blood. They were part of the Baghdadi community, who 'spoke Arabic, prayed in Hebrew, and longed to be English'. Calcutta was the jewel in a necklace of bustling ports established by the British in India and the Far East.

The Calcutta Jewish story, founded by Shalom Cohen from Aleppo,  is almost over, says Ben. From 4,000 Jews, only 20 remain to light a forlorn candle on Friday nights. No rabbi, no weddings, no children, only funerals. Their descendants have moved to Britain, to Israel, to Australia.

So far, so lyrical. Ben goes into romantic overdrive when he claims that Jews felt close to Muslims - 'faiths destined to live together' whether in India or in Israel.

(It is true that Jewish households employed Muslim cooks and trained them in the culinary arts of Baghdad. The reason, according to Mavis Hyman in 'The Jews of the Raj', was not so much 'disgust at pork', but  that high caste Hindus would not  cook in non-vegetarian households. On the other hand, Jews could go out to Hindu shops to  purchase vegetarian pastries, in the certain knowledge that these foods met 'kosher' standards.)

Ben Judah's programme does not emphasise enough that the rigidly-stratified communities of India remained hermetically separate. Hyman quotes an Englishman in the early 20th century describing Calcutta as 'a city of gulfs where nobody knew anybody outside their particular sphere.'

But Ben does explain that the British sphere was perhaps the most impenetrable. No Jews were ever admitted to British clubs. He describes how an uncle, wishing to escape the impending strife between Hindus and Muslims in the 1940s, attempted to convert his British subjecthood into citizenship, by arguing that he was of 'European culture': he failed. He was too 'dusky' to cross the colonial barrier.

Unlike Jews who escaped the Holocaust and pogroms of Europe, the Baghdadi Jews who left Calcutta 'arrived and left happily'. The Jews of India had never experienced persecution. (But this does not mean that the 'white' Baghdadi Jews did not discriminate against the 'brown' Bnei Israel, who traced their history back 2,000 years.)

The authorities in Calcutta are busy restoring three synagogues. Ben Judah concludes his programme with the moving and important point that these buildings, though destined to remain silent, will be lasting memorials to a culture now lost in the places where the founders of the Calcutta community came from. The Great Synagogue in Aleppo has been destroyed; the Great Synagogue of Baghdad is inaccessible.

Another important difference:  Jews will continue to be able to visit the graves of their ancestors. 

Destiny and the Migrant by Ben Judah, BBC Radio 4 (15 mins)





 

Burial chambers attest to ancient Jewish presence

 

A Kerala farmer has discovered ancient burial chambers attesting to a pre-Christian, Jewish presence in India. Report in India 101 (With thanks: Jas)

A historian and conservationist, fittingly named Abraham Benhur, made a startling discovery on his farm in Kerala.

Hidden underground were ancient burial chambers unlike anything he had ever seen before. A little bit of digging, both physical and academic, revealed that the tombs on his property could be carbon dated back to the year 300 BC.

The burial chambers were arranged in an East-West direction, meaning these could only have been the tombs of ancient Christians or Jews. Since the tombs predated Christianity by a few hundred years, Abraham surmised that these were the remains of one of the Lost Jewish tribes of Israel, which had travelled to India so many centuries ago.

Read article in full

Bene Israel will benefit from official minority status

The state of Maharashtra is the second in India to confer official minority status on the Jewish community.  This will help preserve the community's legacy and protect its synagogues and property. Sifra Lentin reports for F. India in the second of a two-part series :

Mumbai's oldest Bene Israel synagogue (photo Jamshed Lentin)

For generations of Indian school students, especially those from the ICSE stream, Indian English poet, Nissim Ezekiel’s poem ‘Night of the Scorpion’ will always be fondly remembered. Not only is the poem simply written but its multiple themes of good versus evil, superstition versus rationality, and love conquers all ( “My mother only said/Thank God the scorpion picked on me/And spared my children”) were not just easy to learn but easy to score marks on.

What escapes most readers though is the vivid imagery of village life that Ezekiel conjures (“I remember the night my mother/ was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours/of steady rain had driven him to crawl/beneath a sack of rice.”), drawn from Ezekiel’s childhood memories and his community’s roots in the villages of the Konkan coast.

Nissim Ezekiel (b. 1924-d. 2004) belonged to the largest Indian Jewish community on the subcontinent – the Bene Israel (children of Israel) – who are better known in the villages of Raigad district (which includes the north Konkan coast) as shanwar tellis or Saturday oil-pressers. This is a reference to this community’s traditional village occupation as oil pressers who abstained from work on Saturday – the Jewish sabbath.

The Bene Israel Jews of Maharashtra (part of erstwhile Bombay State) will be the major beneficiaries of the Maharashtra state government’s announcement last week notifying Indian Jews as a minority community. Although community numbers have dropped from their peak in the 1951 census (Bombay state 20,135 versus all India 26, 512) to the last census (2011) figures of 2466 (Maharashtra state) versus 4650 all India, the fact remains that Maharashtra is still home to 53 percent of Indian Jews today.

Read article in full 

Bene Israel have Jewish genetic markers

A new genetic study presents valuable information about the origin of the Indian Bene Israel community, connecting it to other Jewish communities. Haaretz reports:

Bene Israel family. Photo taken in 1961 (Eliyahu Herkovitz)

 The new study, which was published about two weeks ago in the scientific journal PLOS ONE asserts that the community originated in one of the Jewish communities in the Middle East. According to the researchers, they arrived in India 19 to 33 generations ago — 600 to 1,000 years ago — much later than estimates of community members. Over 70,000 members of the Bene Israel community live in Israel today, making it the largest Indian Jewish group in the world.

The researchers scanned the genetic markers of 18 community members and with the use of advanced tools compared them to those of 486 people from 41 different population groups, including Indians, Pakistanis and Jews from many diasporas (Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Ashkenaz — northern France and western Germany — Libya, Djerba, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria) along with several samplings from all over the world, including non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations.
The rich representation of Indian populations demonstrated that although genetically there is great similarity between the Bene Israel and other Indian groups, its members have a genetic component not found on the Indian spectrum, hinting a different origin. Other analyses demonstrated that this origin is apparently Jewish.

Read article in full (subscription required)

India's Jews apply for minority status

 The Maghen David synagogue, Mumbai (Photo: A Spellman)


India’s approximately 5, 000-member Jewish community is renewing its request for official government recognition as a minority group, submitting an application to the country’s minority affairs ministry.The Times of Israel reports:

Official recognition would make it easier for Jews to register marriages, establish educational institutions and “practice and promote our culture,” Rabbi Ezekiel Isaac Malekar, the Delhi Jewish community’s head, told IANS, which reported on the application Tuesday. The news service did not say when the community’s previous application was made or why it was unsuccessful. 

India has six official minority communities: Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis and Jains.

“Jews have been part of the Indian society for 2,300 years now. But post independence, we have not been recognized as a minority,” Malekar said.

In recent years, dozens of Jews from northeast India claiming to be the descendants of a lost biblical Jewish tribe emigrated to Israel after years of controversy over their connection to Judaism.

Read article in full

The fractious Jews of Cochin

 The white Jews of Cochin are relatively recent immigrants from Iraq and Syria. They don't recognise the Malabari (black) Jews, who in turn call the white Jews 'idiots'. Depending on whom you define as Jewish, there are either six Jews, or 26, left in the Indian city. Danna Harman reports for Haaretz:

Sarah Cohen's wedding photo
 
At 93, Sarah Cohen is Cochin’s oldest Jew. Depending on what time of the day one catches her in her little home-turned-embroidery-and-trinket-store in Jew Town, she can sometimes seem a little confused.

But when asked how many Jews remain in Cochin today, she doesn’t hesitate: “Six,” she says. This is because she doesn’t count the Malabari Jews downtown. She does count herself and the members of the Hallegua family three doors down — not enough for a minyan at the famous 1568 Paradesi Synagogue down the street.

“But we come together and sing songs,” she says, putting on her glasses to see who she is speaking with.

“Those Jews [in Mattancherry] are idiots,” snorts Josephai Elias, known to all as Babu, who is the unofficial leader of the Malabari Jewish community in Ernakulam. Babu, 60, owns the Ernakulam pet fish and flower shop and single-handedly cares for the Kadavumbagam Synagogue behind it, which has sat at this spot since the 16th or 17th century and has not been used since the 1970s.
Josephai Elias, known as Babu, the unofficial leader of the Malabari Jewish community in Ernakulam.

A trained kosher butcher, he says he refuses to “cut chicken” for the tiny white Jewish community, referring to Cohen and her neighbors. They reject him; he rejects them.

Relations between Babu and the other Malabari Jews — most of them his own brothers — are not perfect either, he admits with a shrug. He is ready to pack up and leave.

“Twice I wanted to move to Israel,” he says. Once, his grandmother begged him to stay. The next time, his mother made it clear she couldn’t do without him. Of his nine siblings, four have made aliyah, and the rest have stayed in Kerala, but either married non-Jews or are no longer interested in Jewish community issues.

Babu prays alone most Shabbats, he says, sitting on one of the wooden synagogue benches, with orange, blue and green lamps lighting the room from above. “What can I do?” He asks. “At least I pray from the heart.”

Read article in full

The hidden Jewesses of Indian cinema

Most of the actresses of the silent Indian cinema were Jewesses, claims Kenneth X Robbins in News Minute (referring to an earlier article). The identity of some actresses is contested even today. But the careers of these westernised girls was cut short with the advent of 'talkies': none could speak Hindi or Urdu. (With thanks: Michelle; Tom)

The actors were mostly Baghdadi Jewish women and the rest were from the Bene Israel community, not the Cochini community. That community was small, did not speak Hindi or Urdu, and lived far from the film making cities of Bombay and Calcutta. A single Baghdadi family contributed greatly to Indian films, by giving us the actress-producer Pramila (Esther Victoria Abraham), her sister the actress Romila (Sophie Abraham), and her cousin the starlet Rose (Rose Musleah). Pramila’s son Haider Ali is an actor, who is best known as the co-writer of the blockbuster film Jodhaa Akbar.

The actress-producer Pramila was also the first Miss India.

Baghdadi Jewish actresses were known by single Western names (Lillian, Rose), Hindu names (Arati Devi, Pramila, Sulochana) or Muslim names (Firoza Begum, Nadira) rather than the ones identifying them as Jews. Lillian’s birth name was Lillian Ezra.

In India, the Bene Israel often referred to themselves in two ways. They used one or two “Biblical” names or “Biblical” names followed by a “Maharashtrian” surname identifying their ancestral Konkani village. In the movies, they were billed as David or David Abraham rather than David Abraham Cheulkar or Joseph David rather than Joseph David Penkar.

Simply identifying Jews has not been easy. Asha Bhende (once Lily Ezekiel) and Pearl Padamsee (whose mother was a Baghdadi Jew) are actresses who have used the last names of their non-Jewish husbands. Asha Bhende was also a prominent academic, whose works include Demographic and Socio Economic Characteristics of Jews in India.

Actresses like Zeenat Amat and Helen were not Jewish as some think. The backgrounds of Azurie, Leela Chitnis, Patience Cooper, Ermeline, Rinku Jaiswal, Kitty Kelly, Kamlesh Kumari, and Sabita Devi are contested even today and I seek more information about them. Was Vimala, whose birth name was Marcia Solomon and who is never mentioned in the discourse on Jewish actresses, Jewish?

Read article in full 

The Iraqi-Jewish vamps of Indian cinema

Prominent Baghdadi-Jewish women in India

General Jacob, Bangladesh war hero, dies (updated)

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 With thanks: Maurice and Shaul

Update: Sam Marshall, an industrialist and President of the Indian Jewish Heritage Center, attended General Jacob’s funeral, together with some 700 others who gathered to pay their last respects. All three Chiefs of Staff,  the Minister of Defence, the former President of India, ambassadors and fellow officers ‘who recounted many anecdotes of Jack’s past history’, the Gurkha regiment, and about 12 other regiments, were represented. Marshall, a friend of General Jacob for the past 25 years, delivered a eulogy:

 Jack Jacob:'a straight arrow'

 “Here lies a man who has served his country with distinction. 

 “A man who devoted his life to his beloved India with dedication, commitment and integrity.

 “A man who spoke his mind fearlessly even though it got him into trouble at times with the Politicians and his superiors.  Jack did not care.  He was what you call a ‘straight arrow’.

 “Many a time he would counsel or admonish me.  We had an unspoken almost spiritual bond.

 “We shall miss you dearly Jack.  You were a wonderful human, an inspiration to us all.  Recognized wherever – Bharat India, Bangladesh, Israel and amongst your many friends worldwide.

 You were a unique human being.  You have done enough dear friend. Now is the time to sleep.”

Here is Sam Marshall’s description of the funeral:

“Jack’s body was placed on a Gun Carriage with full Military honours traversing the streets of Delhi and ending up at the Military Centre at ‘BRAR’ Square.

His body was put in full view and accorded the highest honour which only Heads of State or Royalty would normally receive.

Israel Danny Carmon and the Military Attaché Zeev Mivtzari were also in attendance and remarked that this was an extraordinary felicitation and very gratifying for Israel and India-Israel relations.

“It was indeed a privilege for me to be an integral part of the whole process with interviews, assisting the Rabbi, the Kaddish, made one feel truly humble to have played even a small part - very emotional the whole affair.

We can all be proud of the heritage we have of this Legend who is no more.  I am in discussion with Israel at various levels to see how we can perpetuate his Name and his Legacy.”

Retired Indian Army Lieutenant General JFR Jacob passed away this morningin his 93rd year. The descendant of Baghdadi Jews who came to India in the 18th century, he is best remembered for his role in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, and the liberation of Bangladesh, reports India Today.

Born in Kolkata (then Calcutta) in 1923, Jack Farj Rafael Jacob grew up in a conservative Baghdadi Jews household under the British rule. His family had originally come from Iraq and settled in Bengal in the mid-18th century.

Jacob did his schooling from Victoria School in Kurseong, West Bengal. Living in the boarding school, he visited home only during school holidays as a boy.
As a teenager, Jacob was strongly influenced by wartime poetry. In his interview to The Times of Israel, he said that his family had taken in a family of Jewish refugees from Hitler's Europe.

Unmarried and childless, Jacob wrote a moving open letter to the youth of Delhi at 93, addressing them as his "sons and daughters".

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Indian PM pays tribute to General Jack Jacob (Times of Israel)

More about General Jacob

Bangladesh has almost no trace of Jews left

 Ezra Barook


Although the Jewish general, JFR Jacob, played a major part in winning Bangladesh's battle for independence, the country has discouraged Jews from remaining there, wiping out remembrance of almost everything Jewish, including the synagogue. Shalva Weil writes in The Jewish Chronicle:

A piece on Jews in Bangladesh may raise some eyebrows. Bangladesh is officially a parliamentary democracy, but 90 per cent of the population is Muslim. There are no diplomatic relations with Israel, and Bangladesh has discouraged Jews from remaining there, wiping out remembrance of almost everything Jewish, including the synagogue. Yet once it was different, and East Pakistan - today Bangladesh - boasted a thriving, if small, Jewish community.

The East Bengal Jewish community was established by Shalom Cohen (1762-1836), the founder of the Calcutta (today Kolkata) Jewish community in West Bengal, who migrated from Surat to India in 1798.

Cohen came to Dacca (today Dhaka) to trade in cloths, silks and muslins, and established business with Jewish employees in the capital. In 1817, Moses Duek, a businessman married to Cohen's eldest daughter, Lunah, left Calcutta to reside for five years in Dacca, during which time he established a prayer hall there.
Throughout the 19th century and first part of the 20th, Baghdadi Jews continued to run businesses in Dacca, but most resided in Calcutta. They traded textiles, pearls and opium, on which they became rich.

At the time of Partition of Bengal and India in 1947, there were some 4,000 Jews in West Bengal, primarily in Calcutta but only about 135 Jews were actually residing in East Bengal. East Bengal later became East Pakistan, a part of the new nation of Pakistan, but separated geographically from it by 1,600 kilometers of Indian territory.

Ironically, a Jewish architect from Philadelphia, Louis Kahn, designed the most important building in East Pakistan, the Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, the National Assembly building. Ranked as the world's largest legislative complex, this National Assembly was begun in 1961 and was only completed in 1982, eight years after Kahn's death.

In 1971, the Bangladesh Liberation War took place. Interestingly, it was another famous Jew, Lieutenant General J F R Jacob, who liberated East Pakistan during this war. General Jacob, as he is known, was formerly governor of the Punjab and Goa; today he resides in New Delhi. He was born into a Baghdadi Jewish family in Calcutta, and never hid his Jewish ancestry.

On the contrary, when I first reached India in the late 1970s, Lt General Jacob was an active member of the well-known New Delhi prayer hall, the Judah Hyam Synagogue, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in January 2007. He reached the highest ranks in India, which traditionally promoted co-existence and lived in harmony with its Indian Jewish minority. His finest hour was in 1971 when, as Chief of Staff of the Indian Army's Eastern Command, he defeated Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War in two weeks, and successfully liberated East Pakistan. As fighting raged, he flew to Dhaka and negotiated with Pakistan's military commander an unconditional surrender of 90,000 Pakistani soldiers to the Indian Army. This public surrender, enacted under the auspices of the United Nations, is the only one in history. East Pakistan then became the independent state of Bangladesh.

There is no synagogue today in Bangladesh, although a few expatriates do meet up on the eve of the Jewish New Year and on the Day of Atonement. A posting on Trip Advisor by a tourist asking where the synagogue is in Dhaka for Yom Kippur received no serious response and a few months later, the blog was closed by the Trip Advisor staff "due to inactivity". On a blog relating to the Jews of Bangladesh, one blogger writing from Brooklyn, New York, told that he was of mixed ancestry, his father being Yemenite Jewish and his mother Bangladeshi; he himself went through a full Orthodox conversion. Other people have written into the same blog saying they do business with Bangladesh, visit there, and a few even stay for a while. As one person wrote: "The only Jews you will find in Bangladesh are those merchants with extensive business reasons to stay in Bangladesh."

Joseph Edward of Ontario, Canada, wrote to me the history of his family and gave me permission to quote him. Joseph was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and moved to Canada in 1986. In Chittagong, there is a Second World War British and Commonwealth cemetery, the War Cemetery. There one can find the grave of an RAF sergeant from England with the Star of David on it. Joseph Edward's father, Rahamim David Barook and his older brother Ezra Barook, were born in Calcutta, and moved to what was then East Pakistan. They adopted the surname Edward; his brother Ezra was known as Eddy Edward. Rahamim David Edward (formerly Barook), Joseph's father, worked in the shipping industry, and married a Catholic of Portuguese descent, who was a school teacher. His uncle married a tribal Chakma king's daughter from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. She died during childbirth and Joseph Edward's uncle gave his son up to a Muslim family for adoption.

Joseph Edward's great-grandfather, Ezra Barook or Hacham Reuben (pictured left), came from a distinguished Rabbinic family from Baghdad; he was buried in the cemetery in Calcutta in 1900. In recent years, Joseph Edward has been in contact with Jewish cousins living in Arad and Beersheba, Israel. Other members of the family live in Sydney, Australia, in the UK and in Toronto, Canada.


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The fading history of Jewish India

 With thanks: Lisette

It's the land which prides itself on its lack of antisemitism.

 India has had a Jewish community for about 2,000 years, but its more recent Baghdadi community, dating back to the 18th century, is almost extinct.

 This 28-minute TV report gives an interesting overview through the eyes of one of the last Jews of Calcutta, the quaintly-named Flower Silliman, and her daughter Jael.

The community was founded in 1784 by a Jew from Aleppo, Shalome Cohen. The Jewish cake shop and bakery, Nahoum has a faithful following among the locals. Jewish Calcutta has less than 30 Jews still living. The cemetery, with its traditional rounded gravestones, will not be expanding much more.

 The Jews set up trading networks across Asia and made an important economic contribution to India. There is a rare interview with General Jacob, who fought for an independent Bangladesh.

The choice of images is a pot-pourri of photographs, not necessarily of Indian Jews, and the music soundtrack is from the classic film Exodus.

Muslims care for Kolkata synagogues

From its peak of 3, 000, the Jewish community of Kolkata in India is down to just 20, mostly as a result of a policy of Indian nationalisation. Yael Silliman is compiling a digital archive of the city's Jewish landmarks.  The Baghdadi Jews of Kolkata had more affinity with the Muslims than the Hindus: today Muslims are the caretakers of Kolkata's three remaining synagogues. Article in Al-Jazeera (with thanks: Tom Gross)

One of Kolkata's three synagogues. It takes a week to clean, say the Muslim caretakers [Priyanka Borpujari/Al Jazeera]

According to Professor Amlan Dasgupta from Jadavpur University, the realities of daily life are very different from the politics being played out, especially in Kolkata, which has always welcomed immigrants.

The city, he said, "is a product of the resulting multiethnicity and multiculturalism".

"Communal coexistence has been common across India and hence we don't think of it as important. Yet, there is also a problem in becoming conscious about it," Dasgupta told Al Jazeera. His students collaborated in the creation of the digital archive.

According to Silliman, the Jews and Muslims have a common history because of their roots in the Middle East.

"In Kolkata, Jewish families hired Muslim cooks because they ate only halal meat. Hindu families would not want to work in Jewish homes because of the meat being cooked. Our music, food habits are also very similar and people tend to forget that the Arab world is the seat of the Jewish community. Even the early immigrants looked like present-day Arabs, before they began to reflect a Judeo-British identity," she said.

It is no wonder then that the Jewish Girls' School's students are mostly Muslim.
According to Silliman, the area around the Jewish Girls' School, in its original location on Pollock Street, was where the affluent Jews once lived.
Today, the only remnant of a Jewish heritage in the school is the "Star of David" on the school uniforms, and having holidays on three Jewish festival days.

The Jews in Kolkata came from Baghdad about 220 years ago, and established themselves as successful businessmen. They were also major exporters of opium.
The Beth El synagogue was built in 1856 on Pollock Street to meet the needs of, at the time, a rapidly expanding community. Its construction was funded by two of the wealthiest men in the community - Ezekiel Judah and David Joseph Ezra.

In the 1940s, Kolkata's Jews began to leave because of the violence preceding the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. Fearing the loss of their businesses as India began to nationalise its banks after independence, they emigrated to western countries in large numbers. Today, there are just about 20 Jews left in Kolkata - the oldest resident died last month at the age of 97.

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Few Jews remain in Calcutta

The Calcutta Jewish community was founded by Jews from Syria and Iraq in the 18th century; today pupils at the Jewish Girls' school are mostly Muslim, BBC religious correspondent Rahul Tandon reports (with thanks: Lily):

It is a busy time for pupils at the Jewish Girl's School in central Calcutta. Many of them are taking their final exams. They are all smartly dressed in uniforms which have the Star of David on their blouses, but their nervous mothers waiting outside are wearing the 'salwar kameez', or 'burkas'. 

Most of the students are now Muslims and few can remember the last time a Jewish pupil was studying at the school. Like many in one of the world's largest cities, they know little about the Calcutta Jews.

In her late 50s, writer Jael Silliman is trying to change that. Before the community completely disappears, she - one of its youngest members - is compiling a digital archive that will record their history. Her inbox is full of photos and materials sent by members of the Calcutta Jewish diaspora who are now scattered across the world.

 

Jael Silliman's mother, Flower, returned to Calcutta after settling in the USA and Israel

 

This was once a thriving community. The first Jew, Shalom Cohen, arrived in the city in 1798 from Syria. His financial success encouraged others to follow from Iraq and by World War II more than 5000 lived here. Now, less than 25 Jews call Calcutta their home.

Jael says: "Many left when it became clear that the British were about to leave India as they were worried about the direction the country was heading in and, once a few started to go, others quickly followed."

They left behind one of the largest synagogues in Asia. The Magen David was built in the mid 1880s and used to be crammed full of families, with the men sitting downstairs and the women upstairs, on its wooden pews. Heavily influenced by the design of the British churches that were being constructed in Calcutta at the time, it has a steeple, which is unusual for a synagogue.

Jael Silliman says that "the community had to write to the Jewish leaders in Baghdad to get permission. When it was finally given, there was a caveat that the steeple must be higher than all the buildings that surrounded it."

The synagogue, which was the centre of this once vibrant community, now lies empty.

Outside its gates, most of the street vendors think it is a church. When I tell them that it is actually a Jewish place of worship they look confused. One of them asks me: "Are you sure?" But then his friend adds: "He is right. This is the building that is looked after by Rabul Khan."

Once you walk through its gates, you will be met by the Synagogue's Muslim caretaker. Rabul Khan's family have been looking after the Magen David for generations.

Whilst handing me a 'kippah', a Jewish cap to cover my head, he smiles as he remembers the days when it was full for prayers, or 'namaaz', as he calls it.
As I am about to leave, he gestures to me to stop. He asks me a question: "Do you think they will come back?"

Not sure of how I should respond, I shrug my shoulders.

"Well, until they do, I will be here to look after this place for them," he says.
  
One of those who did return was Flower Silliman, Jael's mother. She is in now in her 80s but has more energy than most 40 year olds. She left Calcutta to set up home in the United States and then Israel. But she always missed the city of her birth, because for her being Indian is as important as being Jewish.

She describes her early life as "claustrophobically Jewish". Except for her servants, all the people she knew were Jewish as her parents were scared about assimilating into local life.

But Flower was ashamed of that, so she started to rebel. She insisted on learning Hindi, not French, and when she was at college in Delhi she joined the Indian independence movement.

She still vividly remembers the day she arrived back at Howrah station wearing Indian clothes: "My mother was horrified, " Flower tells me.

"To her it was like her daughter had gone to hell, and she made it clear to me that I would never wear these clothes whilst I was living under her roof."

Joe Cohen, secretary of Calcutta's Jewish Girls' School

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Esther David, Bene Israel writer  (with thanks: Malca)