It gives me great pleasure and a sense of Jewish contribution to Indian cinema achievements when I read about Ms. Pramila, Born Esther Victoria Abraham ,the first Miss India 1947. She passed away recently at the ripe old age of 90 years. Bollywood said goodbye on August 6th 2006 to the first ever Miss India, Pramila (born Esther Abraham). Crowned in…
Ruby Myers (1907 – 10 October 1983), better known by her stage name Sulochana, was an Indian silent film star of Jewish ancestry, hailing from the community of Baghdadi Jews in India. In her heyday she was one of the highest paid actresses of her time, when she was paired with Dinshaw Billimoria in Imperial…
Lena Gurr (1897–1992), was an American artist who made paintings, prints, and drawings showing, as one critic said, “the joys and sorrows of everyday life.” Another critic noted that her still lifes, city scenes, and depictions of vacation locales were imbued with “quiet humor,” while her portrayal of slum-dwellers and the victims of warfare revealed a…
Bettina Ehrlich, née Bauer, (10 March 1903 – 10 October 1985) was an Austrian painter and illustrator of children’s books, many of which she also wrote. She lived briefly in Berlin and Paris, and from 1938 in England. Life Bettina Bauer was born in Vienna on 10 March 1903. She studied for three years at the…
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (7 May 1927 – 3 April 2013) was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. After moving to India…
Samson Kehimkar was a Jewish violinist and sitar player from India. One of the pioneers of ethnic and world music in Israel. Before emigrating in 1976, he played in Indian classical orchestras, film and pop bands. One of the founding members of “Habrera Hativit” (literal translation: The Natural Selection, known in English as The Gathering)….
Samuel Bak (born 12 August 1933) is a Polish-Jewish painter and writer who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel in 1948. Since 1993, he has lived in the United States. Biography Shmuel Bak was born in Vilna – Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), Bak was recognized from an early age as possessing extraordinary artistic…
Title: Sephardic Cooking: 600 Recipes Created in Exotic Sephardic Kitchens from Morocco to India Author: Copeland Marks Published: September 1, 1994 Country Published: USA Publisher: Plume ISBN-10: 1556114192 ISBN-13: 978-1556114199 Description: Writer and food historian Copeland Marks uses his unique mix of talents to make exotic Sephardic cuisines accessible to the American cook. The hundreds of…
In east India in the States of Manipur and Mizoram exists a community which sees itself as descendants of the Menashe Tribe (which is one of the 10 lost tribes). These people have Chinese appearance and they claim that after their forefathers were exiled and enslaved by the Assyrians they somehow escaped from slavery and…
In the late 18th century, Jews from Arab countries and Iran arrived in India. And they are called collectively ‘Baghdadi Jews’. Most of ‘Baghdadi’ Jews did arrive from Baghdad but there were among them Jews who arrived from Syria, Iran, Yemen and other places in Iraq. Sometimes these Jews are collectively called ‘Iraqi Jews’. And…