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History in India

India Today, May 19, 2016

Moeena Halim

Jews are said to have first arrived on Indian shores 2,000 years ago, after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem. Fleeing the northern kingdom of Israel, they were left shipwrecked at Nagaon, a coastal village of Maharashtra, where a memorial still stands today. This community came to be known as the Bene Israeli. The Baghdadi Jews settled in India in the 19th century while the oldest surviving documents of the Cochin Jewish community date to 1000 CE (a merchant's charter) and it's safe to presume the community was present well before then. These were the three recognised Jewish communities in India, until 2005 when the chief rabbi of Israel acknowledged the Bnei Menashe in Mizoram and Manipur as a lost tribe of Jews and allowed their immigration according to Israel's Law of Return. Meanwhile, in Andhra Pradesh, a small community of Telugu-speaking Jews is claiming to be the lost tribe of Bene Ephraim and is hoping for similar recognition. Since Jews consider themselves God's 'chosen people', conversion in India is rare and only encouraged in the case of an inter-faith marriage. Perhaps this exclusion, as in the case of the Parsis, has helped them achieve peace and respect among other local communities. It has also meant that most Indians are unaware of the fundamentals of Judaism. "Many think we worship Jesus. They wish me on Christmas and Easter. The two religions are starkly different and the truth is I feel more connected to Islam than Christianity, and if it came to it I would rather pray in a mosque than a church. I sometimes wish I didn't have to explain my identity and my religion, but I've got used to the question now," says Mumbai-based Nathaniel Jhirad.

It isn't easy to practise Judaism in the country. Most jobs involve working on Sabbath or Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, and Jewish festivals like Yom Kippur, Hanukkah or Passover are not official holidays. "But being an Indian Jew has enriched me. If you stay in a country where everyone is Jewish, and everything works according to the Jewish calendar, then how do you make yourself different? Life would be easier, yes, but you would also value it less," believes Jhirad.

State-wise

Maharashtra

India Today, May 19, 2016

Moeena Halim

In Maharashtra, the influential Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon family's contributions have been far too valuable to go unnoticed. They built the David Sassoon library, the Sassoon docks, Mesina hospital, Sassoon hospital, a leprosy home in Pune and even set up the Bank of India. Several of the Sassoons, including Sir Jacob and Lady Rachael, are buried at the Eliyahoo synagogue cemetery in Chinchpokli, one of the better maintained. Those buried in the 19th century cemetery in Nagpada weren't as lucky. It's now a public garden with no trace of its former avatar except for a single gravestone from 1824. "Legend has it the person buried under it haunted the municipal workers and wouldn't let them lay cement over his grave," reveals Sharon. The Jewish community's population may be dwindling in India, but Moses insists it is very much "alive". Ben Frank, in his Scattered Tribe: Travelling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti and Beyond, writes, "I never once asked the question in India that I usually ask in all small, exotic Jewish communities: will there be Jews here in 25 years?" Marrying within the community may no longer be top priority, but it remains an important principle for many Indian Jews. "Of course, I would like to marry a Jewish girl,"says Jhirad. "I see it as a responsibility. How else will we continue the tradition in its purest form? Marrying someone from your religion and faith is not about racism or exclusion, it's about continuing a legacy."

The application for minority status was fuelled by a recommendation made by Maharashtra governor and BJP leader C.V. Rao in November 2014. Six months later, the ministry of minority affairs informed the community that the census showed no sign of a Jewish population in the country. "But that was easy to explain. After all, when people from the census department come to our houses they have no idea who Jews are. Rather than try and explain, we agree to being put down in the list as Christians," says Sopher.

West Bengal

Kolkata

By Moni Basu, CNN, March 29, 2010 </div>

CNN, March 29, 2010

Once a thriving community of 6,000, about 30 Jews are left in Kolkata, India

Jews began arriving in India in the 18th century from Syria, Iran and Iraq

Some 12,000 Jews began leaving when India gained independence in 1947

Story highlights

Kolkata, India (CNN) -- At 65, Ian Zachariah is one of the youngest ones left.

"Can you believe it?" he says, adjusting a borrowed yarmulke in a now-empty synagogue. His eyes scan the glittering stained glass, the blue-domed ceiling and the rows of dark wood and wicker benches, still arranged the way they were when, decades ago on the Sabbath, Maghen David was teeming. His mind races back to his childhood, when he occupied a seat in the back left-hand corner and much to his father's chagrin, gazed upward to the second floor gallery where the girls and women sat.

But a hush has fallen within Maghen David's walls. There have not been prayers said here in a long time, for the lack of 10 able-bodied men needed to form the minyan, the quorum required for a Jewish service. Zachariah's heart feels empty like the synagogue's pews. He knows the end is near for the Jews of Kolkata. Once a thriving community of 6,000, their numbers can be counted on fingers now. Zachariah says fewer than 30 Jews are left in this bustling eastern Indian metropolis.

Many Jews began leaving Kolkata, the city formerly known as Calcutta, after Indian independence in 1947; those who remained are slowly dying off.

Zachariah, a stalwart of the dwindling community, serves on practically every Jewish administrative board. There are simply not enough people left to go around. "Things have to be kept going," he says of the cultural burden weighing heavy on his shoulders. "We're not lying down and waiting for the sunset." He runs his fingers over the cold outdoor oven at Maghen David that once turned out fresh unleavened bread. He peers through a window into the basement where vats of wine were stored.

Things have to be kept going. We're not lying down and waiting for the sunset

--Ian Zachariah, 65, one of about 30 Jews left in Kolkata, India From a wooden box, he picks up a book of prayer, the pages eaten with precision by bookworms. "I always thought someone should take these away. Too late now. They are all in terrible shape."

Zachariah's ancestors arrived in India in the 18th century from the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Damascus. Others came from Iraq and Iran. All of them came to be known as Baghdadi Jews in India.

They came to British India to trade -- in jewels, spices, textiles, tobacco, tea. They made a name as exporters and real-estate dealers and bakers. India, said Judaism scholar Nathan Katz, was one of the few places in the world that was inherently hospitable to its Jews. In Kolkata, Jewish families settled in what was known as "gray town," the central city neighborhoods that separated the whites from the "coloreds." They built graceful buildings that lined Brabourne Road in the heart of what is today Badabazaar, Kolkata's largest wholesale market.

Jewish settlers to Kolkata eventually built five synagogues, at least two schools and a hospital. The schools are still operational, though not one student is Jewish. The Beth El and Maghen David synagogues exist today more as memorials to a former era than as functional Jewish temples. They established a landmark bakery, Nahoum and Sons, in New Market, a favorite among Jews and gentiles alike who craved its fruit cake, cream rolls and lemon tarts. It, too, like every other Jewish institution, faces a perilous future -- the last of the family in Kolkata, David Nahoum, is 84 and frail.

"They were so well integrated into the upper class of Bengali culture," said Katz, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University who has done extensive research on the Jewish communities of India. But then came Indian independence and the birth of Israel the following year. The Jews began their exodus.

"A new social and economic order came to into being and their prospects began to dry up," Katz said. By his estimate, the 12,000 Baghdadi Jews in all of India in 1947 have now dwindled down to less than 100. In a nation of 1.1 billion people, they don't even qualify as a minority group anymore -- barely a blip.

Katz said Jewish communities have died violent and forced deaths in other places. Ironically, in India, where they did not face persecution, they left of their own accord.

That's what makes the tale more poignant. It's not that someone forced the clock on the Maghen David tower to stop -- it just did one day. At 3:30. No one knows the date, though the typewritten notices posted for a board meeting give a clue. The paper is yellow and frayed. "21st May, 1989."

It was probably that way when Rahel Musleah journeyed back to Kolkata in 1997 to cement the shadowy images of a way of life she had heard about. Her father, Ezekiel Musleah, 82, was a rabbi at Maghen David who saw prospects for his family dry up.

"It was very difficult to leave. But what can a rabbi do in a community that was dying?" he asked. He began a new life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1964, determined to carry on the music, the food, the spiritual norms that had taken root from a mix of Middle Eastern and Indian traditions.

Rahel Musleah, a 52-year-old freelance writer who lives in Great Neck, New York, recalled her parents speaking Hindustani at home and celebrating birthdays with rasagollahs, a sugary Bengali confection. Women in the synagogue taught her mother -- who had relied on a cook in Kolkata -- to prepare Ashkenazic dishes including chopped liver, brisket and matzo balls. She also learned to replicate the Baghdadi-Indian specialties that her family craved.

The stories Musleah heard about Kolkata finally drew her back to the house at 11 Bowbazar Street that bore her grandfather's name: I.S. Musleah. Her great-aunt Ramah was the only one left in the house. Musleah wandered around the dark rooms of the ancestral home, filled with heavy rosewood furniture and photographs of generations gone by. There, among the wedding pictures of her grandparents and aunts, she found her own.

Rahel Musleah sipped tea from butter-yellow cups with her aging Aunty Ramah and feasted on deep-fried kachuris and heart-shaped "queen cakes" from Nahoum's. On the Sabbath, she sat in dim morning light at Maghen David, closed her eyes and tried to imagine her grandparents and all the people who had come before her.

She tried to picture what was still vivid in her father's mind. "What sadness for my father to sit and walk where in his bones, in his heart and soul, he felt the closeness of everyone he loved. ... All dead now," she wrote in an article about her trip.

Rahel Musleah returned to Kolkata one other time with her sister several years ago. Two months after that trip, her Aunty Ramah died, severing her last link to that culture. She retrieved the wooden sign from the house bearing her grandfather's name. It now hangs in her home, above her grandparents' portraits.

The Jews who are left in Kolkata can do little but watch a way of life disappear. Zachariah thinks he might devote time to establishing a museum showcasing Jewish history; he wants to ensure that the Archaeological Society preserves standing synagogues.

"I don't think there will be a next generation," he says. Kolkata, he says, was the kind of place that absorbed everyone. Evidence of that tolerance can be found on the same corner as Maghen David, where land is shared by a Christian church, a Hindu shrine and a Muslim mosque. "Time marches on. People come. People go. When it was over here, they left," Zachariah says.

It is 1 p.m. And at that hour, Zachariah's voice gives way to the muezzin's call to prayer.

Nahoum’s Calcutta

By Bachi Karkaria, The Times of India, 2013/03/21

The Times of India

A Jewish biscuit crumbles and, with it, another slice of the ethnic pie

David Nahoum, 87, passed away [in March 2013], reducing the number of Kolkata’s Jews to 24. While, it was difficult to muster the ‘minyan’, the male quorum needed to recite the ‘kadish’ burial prayer, all of the city mourned. He was literally synonymous with the 111-year-old bakery in iconic New Market. Yes, a younger kinsman arrived to perform the last rites. But he lives in Israel, and is unlikely to leave that land of milk and honey to make the milk bread and honeyed cakes on which so many Calcuttans were hooked.

Would it be unkind to say that Nahoum’s was the poor man’s Flury’s? Yes, the latter, as totemic patisserie licked off Park Street’s upper-class icing, and without its Sacher Torte cake, no baba-log birthday was complete. But, Nahoum’s location was more egalitarian, and since everyone went to New Market, it made up in numbers what it lacked in Swiss finesse. When you shopped there, you dropped in here for a quick resuscitator of a brownie or chop. And they let you stand right there and eat it, like the shondesh or shinghara in a mishtir dokaan.

Diehard Flury’s customers, those who were not frequenters of New Market, too bowed to the torah of Nahoum’s, going there to personally pick a skein of ‘chotli paneer’, the seasonal plaited cheese. Or ask David or his brother Solomon when they were next making ‘aloo makkala’ – the signature chicken dish with crisp-fried little potatoes; we called them savoury rosogollas since they dripped oil when you sunk your teeth into their golden crust.

Parsis and Jews. The Armenians who had built the grand mansions. The shady mystique of China Town. And most of all the partying Anglo-Indians; as ‘Uncle Puri’ of Trinca’s would later say, “The day they went ‘back home’ was the day the city’s music died.” Each ‘minuscularity’ proudly serviced its cultural identity without battening down the hatches of a ghetto. Each worked in its unique threads to create a cloth of many colours – till varying developments frayed that tapestry.

Presence of Jewish diaspora in Israel

The Times of India, Jan 15 2016

CCMB’s DNA tests prove all three Jewish communities are Diaspora

Mystery of 10 lost tribes of Israel solved?

In what could hold the key to unlocking the mystery behind the fabled 10 lost tribes of Israel, scientists of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), after months of painstaking research, claimed to have firmly established the presence of the Jewish Diaspora in the country . They also asserted that the first Jews arrived on Indian shores about 1,500 years ago. In a study titled `Genetic Affinities of the Jewish Pop ulations of India' published on Tuesday , the scientists said the Diaspora in India was concentrated in three pockets: Cochin (now Kochi), the Bene Israel in Mumbai and the Baghdadi Jews of Kolkata. To arrive at the conclusion, CCMB scientists first acquired DNA from individuals thought to have belonged to this Diaspora. Using a technique known as high resolution genetic marking, the DNA was then compared with the DNA of the native Indian populations and then with that of people from other parts of the world. Further, scientists said the analysis of “disease history“ of the Jewish Diaspora suggested remarkable resemblance to Indians. “This means that many of the Jews who travelled to India found domestic spouses, rather than looking for a mate within their own community ,“ he added.

CCMB principal scientist Dr K Thangaraj explained that blood samples from 305 Jews in Cochin, and 302 samples from seven local populations were tested. “When we compared the DNA samples, we found that there were certain similar were certain similarities in the markers that distinguish the Jewish DNA from the rest of the world,“ Thangaraj told TOI. “Due to the lack of proper written records or inscriptions, the origins of Indian Jews remained moot,“ he added.

The study suggests that the Indian Jewish community possesses traces of Middle Eastern ancestry when compared to the contemporary Indian population, he explained.

The study also noted the presence of a fourth group called, `Paradesi Jews', who are supposed to have migrated from Portugal and Spain in the 15th or 16th centuries.

2016: Minority report

India Today, May 19, 2016

Moeena Halim

India's ancient and dwindling Jewish community looks set to receive official minority status.

Only one in every 2,47,269 Indians is of Jewish origin. The community, which makes up only about 0.0004 per cent of the entire population, is minuscule but it doesn't get the benefits that come with the government-issued tag issued to many other minorities. It's something Ezra Moses, honorary secretary of the Indian Jewish Federation and Solomon Sopher, president of the Indian Jewish Congress, are determined to change. In April 2016, the Union Ministry for Minority Affairs announced that the government was considering granting official minority status to the 5,000-member community. The ray of hope comes almost two years after Sopher first wrote to the ministry following a recommendation made by Maharashtra governor C.V. Rao, a prominent BJP leader, in November 2014. The final decision lies with the Union Cabinet and Moses has his hopes pegged on the NDA government.

Matzo, post-mortems and other challenges

Minority status will mean little to the Galsurkars, not just because they hope to eventually emigrate to Israel, but because they aren't sure how much it will affect everyday challenges for Indian Jews. A day before Passover, there is mayhem at their third-floor home in Byculla, once a hostel for Jewish children making their way to Israel. They are expecting 53 guests, both friends and family, for Passover seder, and the meal must be homemade. The menu includes chicken gravy, potatoes and peas curry, and similar Indian kosher delicacies. A goat too has been slaughtered (according to kosher law) so that a shank bone can be plated as a ritual offering. The Israeli consulate has decided against importing the matzo, special unleavened bread, for the community this year. But they have managed to stock up on the Baghdadi-style matzo made at the makeshift tent behind the Magen David synagogue nearby. Meanwhile, the house has been undergoing a spring cleaning of sorts all day long.

See also

Bnei Menashe <> Cochin – The Dutch Portuguese and Jewish Influences <> Jew: South India <> Jewish beauty queens of India <> Jews of Bombay <> The Religions of the Indian sub-continent