Related Reading
- The Four Communities of Indian Jews: An Overview
- The Bene Israel of Maharashtra
- The Jews of Cochin
- The Baghdadi Jews of Mumbai and Kolkata
- Books on the Jews of India
For most travelers who visit India, Jewish heritage is not on the itinerary. India’s extraordinary religious diversity, its famous temples, its Mughal architecture, its Himalayan monasteries, all of these draw millions of visitors each year without any awareness that the subcontinent is also home to some of the world’s most remarkable Jewish historical sites. But for the traveler who looks beyond the standard tourist circuit, India offers a Jewish heritage experience unlike anything available elsewhere in the world.
Kochi: The Jewel of Jewish India
The city of Kochi in Kerala is the starting point for any serious exploration of Jewish India. The Mattancherry neighborhood, known locally as Jew Town, contains the Paradesi Synagogue, built in 1568 and one of the oldest active synagogues in the Commonwealth of Nations. The synagogue’s interior is extraordinary: its floor is covered with hand-painted Chinese tiles brought from Canton, its ceiling is hung with Belgian glass chandeliers, and its walls are lined with Dutch brass lamps. The synagogue stands at the end of Synagogue Lane, a narrow street that was once the heart of a thriving Jewish community and is now lined with antique shops selling the detritus of Kerala’s Jewish history.
Nearby, the Jewish cemetery contains graves dating back several centuries, and the colony’s streets still bear witness to the architectural legacy of the White Jewish community that built and maintained this neighborhood for four hundred years. The last few remaining Jews in Kochi are elderly, and the survival of Jew Town as a living community is genuinely uncertain, making a visit feel both historically rich and elegiac.
Mumbai: The Heart of Bene Israel Life
Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is the center of contemporary Jewish life in India and home to several of the country’s most important Jewish heritage sites. The Sha’ar Harahamim Synagogue in Mandvi, also known as the Sha’re Rahamim or Gate of Mercy Synagogue, is the oldest synagogue in Mumbai and was the spiritual center of the Bene Israel community for generations. The building, completed in the nineteenth century in an eclectic architectural style that combines European neoclassical elements with Indian ornamentation, is a vivid expression of the Bene Israel community’s integration into Bombay’s cosmopolitan culture.
The Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue in the Fort area of Mumbai is the most prominent synagogue associated with the Baghdadi Jewish community. Built in 1884, it served the Sassoon family and their associates and remains one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century Jewish colonial architecture in Asia. The synagogue continues to hold regular services and is one of the few remaining active Jewish congregations in Mumbai.
Pune: A Living Community
Pune, the Bene Israel’s traditional center of cultural and religious life, is home to the Ohel David Synagogue, one of the largest synagogues in Asia. Built in 1867 with funding from Sir David Sassoon, the synagogue’s soaring Gothic tower dominates the neighborhood and is visible from considerable distance. The synagogue is maintained by a small but active Jewish community and holds regular Shabbat services, making it a living rather than merely historical site.
Pune also has a Jewish community center and several other synagogues that serve the city’s remaining Jewish population, estimated at a few hundred families. The city has a more compact and manageable Jewish heritage circuit than Mumbai, and the warmth of the small community that remains makes a visit particularly rewarding.
The Villages of the Konkan Coast
For the more adventurous traveler, the villages of the Konkan coast between Mumbai and Goa offer a completely different kind of Jewish heritage experience. These were the original settlements of the Bene Israel community, and many still contain Jewish cemeteries and the ruins or remnants of synagogues that served these small communities before the urbanization of the community in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The village of Ali in Raigad district is the traditional heartland of the Bene Israel, and its cemetery and oil pressing history connect the traveler to the most ancient layers of Jewish life in India.
Visiting Jewish India
Visiting Jewish heritage sites in India is an experience that rewards patience and curiosity. Many of the sites are not on standard tourist maps and require some research and local assistance to find. The communities that maintain them are small and sometimes have limited resources for interpretation or visitor services. But for the traveler willing to make the effort, Jewish India offers an encounter with one of the world’s most remarkable diaspora histories in the physical settings where that history actually unfolded.