This month, India celebrates 75 years of independence. The country is home to three historic Jewish communities, including Baghdadi Jews, who are Iraqi merchants. India is now home to a very small number of people. Source: https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/hu/videos/jewish-world/the-baghdadi-jews-of-india
The 13th anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks, which murdered 166 people, including six Jews at the city’s Chabad House, was remembered in numerous events by Indians in Israel, including authorities, foreign students, and Jewish citizens of Indian descent. The Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba organization carried out coordinated attacks around Mumbai on November 26, 2008, injuring over…
There is no doubt that India’s secularism is in jeopardy. Militant Hinduism is still a powerful force, much like extremist Islam. The ongoing bloodshed in Kashmir is an open wound, and Gujarat’s recurrent outbreaks of religious violence, mixed with memories of the 2006 Mumbai attacks, have heightened tensions. Just talk to a Kashmiri Pandit—a Hindu…
Only from the second or European phase in the annals of the India-Jewish alliance can the research of India’s place in Jewish history or the role of Jews in Indian history be set on a firmer foundation and based on more trustworthy data. This period began with the arrival of Europeans in India at the…
The founder of Florida International University’s Program in the Study of Spirituality is retiring, and the classroom will go “mobile” next. After more than 40 years of college teaching, Nathan Katz, who has been with FIU since 1994, will retire on July 31. Katz’s next step will be to lead a 13-day Jewish interest trip…
The Jews’ Indian delves at the history of Jewish-Native American interactions, both in the arena of cultural imagination and in real-life meetings. The interactions between these two groups were numerous and varied, proving to be harmonic at times when Jews and Native Americans shared economic and social objectives, but discordant and contentious at other times….
David S. Koffman, J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry and Associate Professor in the Department of History at York University in Toronto will deliver a virtual lecture on April 27, 2020. Prof. Koffman’s recent book, “The Jews’ Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America,” is the center of the discussion.
It begins on the 25th day of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar, which can fall anywhere between late November and late December in the Gregorian calendar. It will begin on November 28 this year. For eight days, the celebration is marked by some rites. Hanukkah is an eight-day celebration of lights commemorating the Maccabean insurrection…
In the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, a roundabout named after Mahatma Gandhi was erected in 2016. 2,000 Bene Israel Jews live in the arid Biblical village. Despite being Israeli citizens, these Jewish immigrants from the Indian subcontinent nevertheless hold Gandhi in high regard as India’s austere political and spiritual leader during the country’s…