With apologies to Charles Dickens, I’d like to tell you about A Tale of Two Cities: West Bloomfield, Michigan, and Ramla, Israel, whose Rotary clubs just signed an “Agreement for Partnership.” They have now been designated as sister clubs. Geebee Thimotheose of the West Bloomfield Rotary Club says, “Our comparable sentiments regarding the beneficial influence…
The Cochinis, the Bene Israel, and the Baghdadis are the three primary Jewish communities in India, each with its origins and peculiarities. They have not been persecuted, but their numbers are dwindling owing to emigration to Israel and other countries. Cochin Jews maintained economic and religious relations with Middle Eastern Jewish communities, although emigration to…
This twelve-minute film looks at how young people’s religious identities can be linked to their practice of the visual arts, and how this can change over time. When Sonia Narang made this film for Practical Matters, an Indian Jewish visual artist worked with high school students at the SAR Academy, a Modern Orthodox day school…
WASHINGTON, D.C., 10 MAY 2011 – The Asia Society Washington Center held a screening of the documentary Next Year in Bombay, which shed light on a little-known subcontinental subculture. The film tells the tale of the Bene Israel Jewish community, which arrived in India around 2000 years ago and presently has a population of around…
How long would you wait to make a dream come true? If the dream was to narrate a life tale, how long would it take? Sarath Kottikkal had to wait seven years for his turn. After seeing the premiere of his documentary Sarah Thaha Thoufeeq at Beit Hatfutsot, Israel’s Museum of the Jewish People in…
Danny Ben-Moshe, an Australian academic, is working on a documentary on the forgotten Indian Jews who established the world’s largest film business. Danny Ben-Moshe, hundreds of miles away in Melbourne, came across her obituary the same week. It prompted an 11-year investigation that resulted in a documentary about Hindi cinema’s once-heralded — and now-forgotten —…
More than half a century ago, the magnificent synagogues of Kolkata were packed with members of a vibrant Indian Jewish community. The congregations are no longer present—less than two dozen remain—but the mosques are still maintained by numerous generations of Muslim families. In 1798, a Syrian jewel salesman named Shalom Cohen became the first Jew…
Migrant communities of Middle Eastern Jews arose throughout the enormous region between Shanghai and Port Said in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Bombay and Aden are two essential knots in the formation of these far-flung Jewish diasporas, according to this essay. These rising port cities of the British Raj served as the first stop…
Danny Ben-documentary Moshe’s focuses on Indian Jewish actors as forerunners who paved the way for other women to break into the Hindi cinema business. She’s still referred to as the Dream Girl. However, when Hema Malini decided to pursue a career in the film industry at the age of 16, her father was not pleased….
Rachel Jacobs, who is she? The question consumes Sadia Shepard from the minute she uncovers the name-inscribed pin in her grandmother Rahat’s wardrobe. Years ago, Rachel changed her name to Rahat, lived as a Muslim in Pakistan, and buried her ancestry as a member of the Bene Israel, a fast diminishing minority of Indian Jews,…