Bene Israelis, Jews in India, Jews in bene Israeli dishes, bene Israeli cuisine. “It’s Bene Israel, not Bene Israel,” says the narrator. As she plucks tender branches from a curry leaf plant flying happily in her balcony, Zimra whispers to me, “That’s the first thing I say to you.” Raymond Israel’s ancestral home from the…
“This work shows how genetic analysis may be a helpful and powerful tool for furthering our understanding of human history,” researcher Yedael Waldman remarked. TEL AVIV, Israel (UPI) — TEL AVIV, Israel (UPI) — Bene Israel is a historically Jewish community in India. Its beginnings are unknown, and its oral history is sketchy at best,…
Pune (Maharastra) is a city in Maharashtra, India. 26th of January (ANI): On the occasion of India’s 70th Republic Day, the Bene Israel community flew the Indian national flag at its synagogue here on Saturday. According to Yosef Nowgaonkar of the Bene Israeli group, who spoke to ANI, “We are an India because our forefathers…
The congregation of Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai dedicated the newly completed structure that will house the Ohel Rachel Synagogue on January 23, 1921. It was built in the Greek Revival style of London’s Bevis Marks and Lauderdale Road synagogues and was named after Lady Rachel Sassoon, Sir Jacob Elias Sassoon’s late wife. It is located…
Baghdadi came to refer to all Jews from Iraq, Syria, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, as well as Jews from Aden, Yemen, and even Persia and Afghanistan. Baghdad, on the other hand, was always viewed as their spiritual center, and when Jews immigrated to India, their proud rituals were preserved. After the city’s…
Did you know that the first migrating Jew to the Indian subcontinent came in Cochin (now Kochi) some 1,500 years ago? Furthermore, the Indian Jewish population is a unique mix of Indian and West Asian genetic origin, with South Asian forebears accounting for the majority of its genes. These findings were published in Nature’s online…
India is a land of stark contrasts and inconsistencies. “Anything you say about India, the reverse is equally true!” our local Indian guide told us right away. During our two-week trip to India, we discovered this to be true. In March, my husband, John Crouch, and I traveled to India with the Prime Minister’s Council…
Around Cochin at the turn of the twentieth century, the pardesi and Malabari Jews were a happy bunch. However, as time passed and the only country in the world that had never mistreated Jews gained independence from the British, the entire Jewish community of the region began to leave on their Aliyah, or call. There…
In 1919, at a public meeting on the subject of Zionism, an Indian Jew named David Erulkar argued that “forming the Jewish nation from peoples who were widely divergent in their civilizations, ways of thinking, and economic conditions…would be to set back the world’s progress by several centuries.” The diversity he felt was threatened is…
This cookbook piqued my interest, and I thought you might be interested. Calcutta, India, released it in 1922. This book was given to me by my father-in-law, a Calcutta Jew. Calcutta’s Jewish community has a rich and colorful history. Over two hundred years ago, they made their home there. Barry scanned and emailed me a…