This study examines novelist Esther David’s restorative fictional creations, The Book of Esther (2000) and The Book of Rachel (2001), through partial historical recovery (2006). David, a renowned writer from India’s Bene Israel Jewish community, utilizes fiction to redefine Indian Jews’ link to a past that is Jewish, Indian, and global, as well as ancient,…
The Nazis staged the largest art theft in history from 1933 until 1945. Many of the works plundered from Jewish art patrons are now housed in major museums, raising troubling considerations. Few people realize that numerous European Jews, notably those fleeing Hitler and Fascist Europe, were instrumental in the development of Indian art in the…
Jael Silliman, an Indian Jewish writer, has a dazzling collection of epic fiction, moving memoirs, and cultural histories. Jael Silliman, an Indian Jewish writer, is a scholar, academic, activist, novelist, anthropologist, and archivist. (Perhaps a few more than Morris, the title character of her odd debut novel, The Man with Many Hats.) While her latest…
It’s the month of March 1984. When Sarah Cohen and Ellen S Goldberg were at the Cochin Paradesi Synagogue, Cohen overheard temple prayers next door. “We can hear their prayers, and they can hear us,” adds Cohen, who is now known as Kochi’s “grand dame of the Jews.” In his book Who Are The Jews…
NEW DELHI: Dr Kenneth Robbins and Rabbi Marvin Tokayer have presented a collection of writings detailing the presence of Jews in India, which has been molded into two books: “Jews and the Indian Art Project” and “Western Jews in India.” Dr. Kenneth Robbins, a psychiatrist by training, says he set out with the goal of…
The amazing differentiation of the Baghdadi Jewish community in India from the end of the eighteenth century till their dispersal to Indian diasporas in Israel and English-speaking countries around the world following India’s independence in 1947 is explored in this book. In chapters on schools, institutions, and culture, the author shows how Baghdadis in India…
This book examines both Indian sentiments toward the subcontinent’s Jewish populations and the way Jews and Judaism have been represented in Indian discourse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite the fact that India’s Jewish population is one of the country’s tiny minorities, local Jews’ interactions with other communities are an important aspect of the…
Indian Jews have the distinction of being the world’s only Jewish community to have never endured any sort of racial persecution in their two millennia of existence on the Indian subcontinent. Last Monday, the Maharashtra state government granted Indian Jews minority status, despite the fact that they are a small and old group. This official…
Esther David, a Sahitya Akademi Award recipient, has written a new book about Jewish life in India. She examines the gastronomic history of this tiny group, whose 5,000 members live in scattered locations across the country. ‘Bene Appetit,’ a brief, simple book with recipes, historical anecdotes, and drawings, is every bit as appetizing as its…
In the late 1940s, India’s Jewish population numbered around 26,000 people. The entire population was split into four groups. At Mumbai’s Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue, I had my first taste of Indian Jewish cuisine. It was Passover, and we were fed a basic but delicious communal lunch in a large dining area beneath the prayer hall….