One of the most evocative details in Bene Israel history is the nickname that their Maharashtra neighbors gave them: “Shanwar Teli” — Saturday oil pressers. This name, which the Bene Israel community itself accepted and used, encapsulates in two words the essential quality of their presence in India: they were people who pressed oil for a living, like other oil pressers, but who would not work on Saturdays. In a world where the Jewish Sabbath was otherwise unknown in India, this single observable difference was enough to mark them as a distinct community.
How the Bene Israel Came to Press Oil
According to Bene Israel oral tradition, their ancestors were shipwrecked on the Konkan coast of Maharashtra around 175 BC, losing most of their possessions and all of their religious texts in the disaster. The survivors settled in villages in the Konkan region and gradually integrated into local economic life. Oil pressing — using sesame and coconut — was a viable occupation that required no special skills or capital beyond a press and labor, and it supported the community for many generations. Unlike some other occupations in Indian society at the time, oil pressing was not caste-restricted in a way that would have prevented newcomers from taking it up.
Sabbath Observance as Identity
Throughout this period of economic integration and cultural adaptation, the Bene Israel maintained their observance of the Jewish Sabbath. They would not press oil — or do any other work — from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. This was remarkable enough to their Hindu and Muslim neighbors that it became their defining characteristic, the thing that marked them as different from all other oil pressers. “Shanwar Teli” was not a term of contempt but of identification: these are the oil pressers who rest on Saturday.
The Significance of the Name
The “Shanwar Teli” nickname is historically significant for several reasons. It confirms that Sabbath observance was maintained by the Bene Israel even during the long centuries when they had lost contact with other Jewish communities and had forgotten much of Jewish law and practice. It shows that their Hindu neighbors accepted and remembered this difference without hostility. And it provides historians with indirect evidence of the antiquity of the Bene Israel settlement in Maharashtra, since such a deeply embedded communal identity and nickname would not have developed in a short period of time.
Source: Bene Israel: Shanwar Teli – Wikipedia