Mira Jacob is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, but it’s her most recent work, an astonishing graphic memoir called Good Talk, that we’re resharing with you this week in this “rewind” episode of Call Your Mother. Mira’s book is about assessing ourselves and our roles in our families,…
Take some of the blood, and hit it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses where they’ll eat it. This is what my mom remembers from when she was young. When she went to see her Bene Israel friends in Virjoli, a village south of Mumbai, she saw…
The Society for Social Regeneration & Equity (SSRE), a group that wants to break down stereotypes about religious minorities, honored Sheela Rohekar, the only Jewish novelist writing in Hindi, on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. She was given an award for her portrayal of Indian Jewish life in her new book, Miss Samuel: Ek Yahudi Gatha…
“Wow, the ladies here go to synagogue in saris!” “Does that have a Hindu flavor to it?” This is a question Nathaniel Jhirad, a 23-year-old Indian Jew of Mumbai’s Bene Israel group, is frequently asked. “You wear skirts; that is not an antique clothing from the Mythical Land of Authentic Judaism!” he wants to say…
Shobha (“Fori”) Nehru was an aristocratic Indian lady who married BK Nehru, a former Indian ambassador to the United States and the nephew of India’s first prime leader Jawaharlal Nehru. She was born and raised a Hungarian Jew, despite being a member of the Indian nobility. Learn how she met Martin Gilbert, a young British…
Nissim Ezekiel’s biography has a familiar feel to it. He returned to his native city after a sojourn in the metropolis, bound to his city by complex ties: work, loves, family, and intimate knowledge of a culture to which he would always be to some degree an outsider. He was the son of a modestly…
Bombay Brides (HarperCollins) is a new book by Jewish author and artist Esther David, who is 73. It’s about 18 stories of love and loss set in a flat in Ahmedabad, India, that is rented out to people from the Bene Israel community. David, who won the 2010 Sahitya Akademi Award for The Book of…
In Meera Mehadevan’s Shulamith, a recent Sakti novel, the dominant Hindu culture is shown to have an effect on Indian Jewish women. Shulamith, the main character in the book, has a “sense of dual fidelity” between her love for her husband and her way of life. When her husband goes to Israel, she stays in…
During the turbulent 1940s, Baghdadi Jews, as well as many European Jews fleeing Nazi oppression, fled to the ‘City of Joy’ and found refuge there. They settled down and finally excelled in all of their endeavors, contributing significantly to the city’s commercial and cultural activities. Kolkata (formerly “Calcutta” until 2001) became their ‘home,’ and the…
It is true that a significant number of Indian Jews have emigrated to Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom since 1947, but the reasons for this population decline remain controversial. The literary works that have emerged from the Indian Jewish community, including fiction, drama, poetry, and young adult literature, tell many…