Chabad’s Rabbi Shimon Freundlich marks Chanucah at the Great Wall of China near Beijing Erica Lyons runs Asia’s brand-new Jewish magazine, Asian Jewish Life, from a small office in central Hong Kong. It is the region’s “Jewish cultural headquarters”, she jokes with her office mate, a journalist who presides over Hong Kong’s Jewish Film Festival….
A Hudson wedding unites a couple and their Indian and Jewish traditions HUDSON — It was a typical romance: The couple, now in their mid 20s, met at Tufts University, where they lived in the same dorm. They fell in love. And on a sultry Saturday in July, with families and friends in attendance, they…
This story is really going to irritate some people. An Israeli, Tzvi MiSinai, has accepted upon himself the mission of investigating the Jewish roots of the Palestinians. He believes that many Palestinians have Jewish ancestors: “In our search for the lost Ten Tribes in India and Afghanistan, we seem to have forgotten to look for…
A ritual for Rosh Hashanah that goes far beyond dipping apples in honey. When it comes to Rosh Hashanah, families of Sephardic and Mizrahi origin–like mine from Calcutta, India–have a secret to share with the rest of the Jewish world: a distinctive New Year’s seder far beyond apples dipped in honey. On the first night…
Jewish-Indian author, sculptor and art critic, Esther David writes in English and Gujarati. Her novels include The Walled City (Syracuse University Press, 2002); The Book of Esther (Penguin Global, 2003); The Book of Rachel (Penguin Global, 2007) and Shalom India Housing Society (Feminist Press, 2009). Her work has also been featured in anthologies that include…
When Tzvi Khaute landed at Tel Aviv for the first time, he wanted to kiss the earth. Alas, the modern airport was all tarmac and stone, so he kissed the first soil he came across, in a flowerpot. Thousands of diaspora Jews from around the world make aliyah — the migration to Israel — every…
In the lobby of San Francisco’s opulent Fairmont Hotel, Ephraim Isaac wasn’t hard to spot. He was the one wearing the white djellaba (robe), natalah (fringed scarf) and gobah (wedding cake-shaped head covering). He looked like a Yemeni prince. Isaac was there, along with Jews from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, to participate in…
Shoshana M. Landow ’91 (Anthropology 302, Princeton University, 1989) Meera Mehadevan’s Shulamith (copyright 1975) exemplifies a recent novel in the sakti tradition that has the effect of showing the effect of the dominant Hundu culture upon the Jewish women of India. The novel’s main character, Shulamith, experiences a “sense of dual fidelity” between her devotion…
In the midst of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, Samson Talkar did something he had never done before on Shabbat: He packed a pistol before leaving for synagogue. Talkar, a retired chief of homicides with the Mumbai police, was not frightened. But as last week’s terrorist siege on his city entered its third day, the unflappable…
Kochi (formerly Cochin) is a city on the South Indian coast, in the State of Kerala boarding the Arabian Sea. There in fact two Kochis, the fabled spice city of the Malabar Coast on Fort Cochin Island, and a newer modern city across the channel. These two cities lie at the mouth of a natural…