Nadene Goldfoot
Jewish ladies of India also have entered and won in Miss India contests.Four beautiful Jewish women have represented India in beauty contests.
Bene Israel (Sons of Israel) are an ancient Jewish community in India whose origin is unknown. Their own tradition holds that they came from the North and were shipwrecked on the Indian coast, settling near Colaba, adopting Marathi dress and language, and engaging principally in agriculture and oil-pressing. This happened in the 1st or 2nd century CE. They are the largest and oldest of several groups of Jews of India. Believed by tradition to have shipwrecked on the Konkan coast of western India more than 2,100 years ago, they were absorbed into Indian society, maintaining many Jewish observances while operating within the caste system. Of some 67,000 Bene Israel at the turn of the 21st century, less than 5,000 remain in India, the great majority having immigrated to Israel.
Bene Israel teachers of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission School and the Jewish English School in Bombay, 1856
Their presence in India is and may remain a mystery, and Bene Israel tradition itself varies. Some claim descent from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who disappeared from history after the northern Kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians in 721 BC. Others believe that their ancestors fled by sea the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, a theory that explains the absence of a Hanukkah tradition in Bene Israel practice. Whatever the case, the survivors—by tradition seven men and seven women—settled in Konkan villages, adopted Hindu names (with surnames usually ending in -kar), and took up the profession of oil production. They were known in Marathi as shaniwar teli (“Saturday oil pressers”), because they abstained from work on the Jewish Sabbath. They also practiced circumcision, recited the Shema on ceremonial occasions, celebrated several major festivals, and observed Jewish dietary laws.
For many centuries, they were without contact with the rest of the Jewish world, and their religious observances deviated considerably from accepted Jewish practice. The medieval Spanish Rabbi, Jewish philosopher and doctor known as Rambam, Maimonides, (Moses Ben Maimon (1135-1204) mentioned in a letter that there was a Jewish community living in India: he may have been referring to the Bene Israel.
It has been suggested that Bene Israel is made up of descendants of one of the disputed Lost Tribes and ancestors who had settled there centuries ago.
Jews of India during Simcha Torah
David Ezekiel Rahabi (1694–1771) was, from 1726 on, the chief merchant of the Dutch East India Company and negotiated on their behalf with the surrounding local rulers. The Paradesis started to decline in the 19th century.
Jewish lady from Cochin, IndiaWhen the existence of a Jewish community in India first attracted public attention—from David Rahabi, who according to Bene Israel tradition may have arrived as early as AD 1000, but who may have been David Ezekiel Rahabi (1694–1772), of Cochin on the Malabar Coast, south of Konkan—the group still followed these practices. Rahabi was instrumental in revivifying Judaism among the Bene Israel. The Cochin Jews acted as cantors, ritual slaughterers, and teachers for the Bene Israel. Many Bene Israel migrated toward Bombay (now Mumbai) during this period. The first of numerous Bene Israel synagogues, all following the Sefardic (Spanish) liturgy, was built in Bombay in 1796.
In search of better economic prospects, Cochin Jews also called Cochini or Kerala Jews, Malayalam-speaking Jews from the Kochi (formerly Cochin) region of Kerala, located along the Malabar Coast of southwestern India. The Cochin Jews were known for their division into three castelike groups—the Paradesis (White Jews), the Malabaris (Black Jews), and the Meshuchrarim (Brown Jews). Whereas they once numbered in the thousands, only about 50 Cochin Jews remained on the Malabar Coast in the early 21st century. The Cochin Jews have a written history that dates from about 1000 CE. Among the earliest-known Hebrew inscriptions in Kerala are those on a gravestone dated to 1269.
Another group picture of Bene Israel
Under the British rule of India, the Bene Israel began to concentrate in Bombay, also serving in the British Maratha regiments. Later, they began to enter the liberal professions of trades and "white collar" occupations. In the early part of the twentieth century, many Bene Israel became active in the new film industry, as actresses and actors, producers and directors.
In the early 19th century, Christian missionaries introduced Marathi-language versions of the Hebrew Bible (their Old Testament) to the inhabitants of the Konkan coast and set up English-language schools. This revelation, together with the model of normative Judaism provided by contact in the last half of the 19th century with Arabic-speaking Jews of Baghdad (late 18th-century migrants to India), finally broke their isolation from the rest of the Jewish world. After India gained its independence in 1947, and Israel was established in 1948, most Bene Israel emigrated to Israel, Canada and other Commonwealth countries and the United States.
There are 4 Bene Israel synagogues in Bombay and several in other centers; with a few Bene Israel also living in Pakistan.
Their estimated number was 17,000 to 18,000 in India. Most have made aliyah to Israel.
The Report of the High Level Commission on the Indian Diaspora (2012) reviewed life in Israel for the Bene Israel community. It noted that the city of Beersheba in Southern Israel has the largest community of Bene Israel, with a sizable one in Ramla. They have a new kind of transnational family. Generally the Bene Israel have not been politically active and have been of modest means. They have not formed continuing economic connections to India and have limited political status in Israel. The community despite being in Israel for many generations has maintained many of their traditions from India such as Malida and wedding rituals such as mehndi. Jews of Indian origin are generally regarded as Sephardic; they have become well integrated religiously with the Sephardhim community in Israel.
Religiously, the Bene Israel adopted the devotional singing style Kirtan from their Marathi Hindu neighbors. A popular Kirtan is one based on the Story of Joseph. Their main traditional musical instruments are the Indian Harmonium and the Bulbul tarang.
Bombay, became Mumbai, India in 1995 and happened when the regional political party Shiv Sena came into power in 1995. .By 1990 only 5,600 Jews were left in India. Of these, 3,000 lived in Bombay and the rest in 9 other communities.
There was an attack on Jews in Bombay-Mumbai in 2008. The Nariman House, designated as a Chabad House (Hebrew: בית חב"ד Beit Chabad), is a five-storey landmark in the Colaba area of South Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. The building was home to a Chabad house, a Jewish outreach centre run by Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who had owned the building since around 2006. The centre had an educational center, a synagogue, offered drug prevention services, and a hostel.
The building was attacked during the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and six of its occupants, including Holtzberg and his wife, who was six months pregnant, were killed. Their two-year-old son Moshe survived the attack after being rescued by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel, and Zakir Hussain.
Some of the other hostages were killed by the attackers on the first night and the following day. Rivka Holtzberg and Yocheved Orpaz had been killed many hours before Nariman House was retaken.
A handout provided by Indian police identified the two attackers killed at Nariman House as Nasir (alias Abu Umar) and Babar Imaran. Nasir alias Abu Umar from Faisalabad and Babar Imran alias Abu Akasha from Multan are the two terrorists who attacked the Jewish community centre in Nariman house in the Colaba area.
Pakistan was created for Muslims of India by the Republic in British Commonwealth. Isolated Jews lived in the area in the Middle Ages, but organized settlement began only in the 19th century under British rule. The small Jewish community has now disappeared.
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/06/four-jewish-beauties-in-indias-beauty.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bene-Israel#ref222427
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdadi_Jews
https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/bh/search?gclid=CjwKCAjw07qDBhBxEiwA6pPbHvVb0VRx28YA4q8d4pvdsgFNgCgD2FwFXmOkzO4TLCpEAGLFPDqI0hoCk1sQAvD_BwE#query=India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nariman_House
http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/mumbai-attacks-police-reveal-names-of-terrorists/396298/
Finding Our Fathers by Dan Rottenberg
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