In this story, we’ll learn about the rise and fall of Jews in the world’s biggest movie business. Bollywood makes a thousand movies a year, three times more than Hollywood does, in twenty different languages that are seen by three billion people around the world. This is three times more than Hollywood does. Few people…
“For over 2,000 years, Jews have lived in India and have never faced discrimination. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” (Yona Metzger, rabbi) The film depicts Jewish life in Kochi, a seaside city in Kerala, India, today. The Kochi Jews are India’s oldest Jewish community, with suspected roots dating back to King Solomon’s reign. The majority…
Sadia Shepard’s new book, The Girl from Foreign, opens with the thwack of slapping chapattis (Indian flatbread), the swish of her sari, and anecdotes of life in Bombay from her Indian grandmother. But hold on a second. Rachel Jacobs was the grandmother’s maiden name. Did you know that India has Jews? “Go to India, study…
Kolkata: A new documentary about the city’s dwindling Jewish population is on its way to show it through the eyes of the city’s youngest resident. This documentary will be directed by directors Jaydip Mukherjee and Aloke Banerjee and will follow Shalom Israel, the caretaker of the city’s Jewish cemetery. “I selected Shalom, as he is…
The Mumbai International Film Festival will broadcast Subha Das Mollick’s film “Dwelling in Travelling.” Are you in need of another reminder of how hospitable India has been to immigrants, and how this openness may reshape a city and a culture? Dwelling in Travelling, a documentary by Shubha Das Mollick, follows the experience of Kolkata’s Jewish…
A single falsehood may not harm a civilization, but a continuous stream of thousands does, and history has taught us how destructive this can be. In terms of modern history, Israel and India have a lot in common. They were both created in the fires of British colonization. To rule both, colonial rulers used a…
The story of the Cochini Jews has been told and replayed so many times that it has been reduced to anecdotal, tourist-friendly clichés. Documentary: Rohan Sabharwal’s film on the Cochini Jews looks at the group from the perspective of individuals However, Mumbai-based Punjabi director Rohan Sabharwal was not interested in this story. “How far can…
Oren Rosenfeld, a Jewish filmmaker, and producer, is accompanying Moshe Holtzberg, 11, on his three-day trip to Mumbai, where he is filming a documentary about the city’s Jewish community. Moshe, his nanny Sandra Samuel, and the 26/11 terror assault, which killed 166 people in Mumbai in 2008, are featured prominently in his documentary. Rosenfeld has…
Danny Ben-Moshe, a documentary filmmaker, focuses on India’s Jewish community and their contributions to Indian cinema. Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema is his most recent project. The documentary is light and airy, with music, dance, and melodrama, which were popular at the time. It was difficult for him to find archival footage…
A. I’ve been interested in the Jewish communities in India for over a decade. There are several, each with its history and experience, spread across India from Mumbai and Surat to Kolkata, Manipur, Cochin, and Andhra Pradesh. While I was in Mumbai, I did a lot of reading and study about the Bene Israeli Jews…