MUMBAI, India (Reuters) – Protests by India’s small Jewish population caused star actor Anupam Kher to drop out of a film about Adolf Hitler’s final days, a rare subject for a Bollywood film. Following an outpouring of messages on social networking sites and protests, Kher, who was set to play Hitler, told Reuters that he…
Hindu nationalists in India and the Israeli right share a surprising kinship. “Prime Minister Modi, we have been waiting for you for a long time, over 70 years,” Binyamin Netanyahu said in welcoming Narendra Modi to Israel while 2017. We see you as a like-minded individual.” The two premiers, who are both up for re-election…
Tertullian, who attempted to draw a false distinction between Greek philosophy and Jewish faith. However, Hazony’s objections are not limited to the Father of the Latin Church. The author also criticizes German research universities and their teachers for jointly perpetuating the notion that the Hebrew Bible is a work of unreason and irrelevance, based on…
In Hellenistic and Medieval times, Indians and Jews met in person, communicated through trade, or “imagined” each other (discussed more fully in the next chapter). In the nineteenth century, Hindu Indians first heard of Judaism as a world religion. 74 Respect for and rejection of Judaism can be seen in texts from the time. What…
The history of Jews in India dates back thousands of years. In documented history, Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to enter India. Indian Jews are a religious minority who have lived in India for centuries without encountering anti-Semitism from the non-Jewish majority. Many of the local traditions have been incorporated by the…
Nearly 5000 members of an old Indian Jewish community with unique rituals and culture live in and around Mumbai. Their narrative encompasses the British Raj, the independence movement, Zionism, and the formation of contemporary India in recent centuries. They describe being Jewish in a country free of antisemitism, proudly Indian. This film is part of…
This book explores the contributions of both foreign and Indian Jews to India’s national art project, posing questions such as: Does the title “Indian artist” apply to any artist born into an Indian family? What role may foreigners and members of Indian minority groups have as researchers, critics, or artists in the Indian National Art…
Over the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the music of India’s Jewish community. Indeed, the formation of a close-knit community of Indo-Judaic Studies in academia as a whole roughly paralleled the rise in interest in Indian Jewish music. Sara Manasseh, an ethnomusicologist in the vanguard of this movement, has partnered…
Michael Rakowitz was hunting for Kubba, an Iraqi food booth in London’s Borough Market. The weather was fickle: between spells of drizzling rain, a cool-mist clung to hair. Rakowitz had flown in from Chicago on red-eye, where he operates a nine-person studio that produces sculpture that is routinely exhibited on the international art circuit. He…