The Bene Israel, Jews From India 's Return to Israel and Other Indian Jews

 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.

Baghdadi Jews- The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Indo-Iraqi Jews. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.  Beginning under the Mughal Empire in the 18th century, merchant traders from Baghdad and Aleppo established originally Judeo-Arabic speaking Jewish communities in India, then in a trading network across Asia, following Mizrahi Jewish customs. These flourished under the British Empire in the 19th century, growing to be English-speaking and British oriented. 

Bombay-now Mumbai ,India is an Indian port.  European Jews, mainly associated with the London Sephardi community, settled there in the 17th century and apparently established a short-lived community by the 18th century. Bombay was also the greatest center of the Bene Israel Jews.  In the 19th century, Jews from Baghdad went to Bombay, forming their own community.  Many subsequently emigrated to Israel.  Their population in 1981 was 3,076.

Cochin, India is a port, former state on the Malabar coast in southern India.  Jewish refugees came here after the Portuguese in 1523 captured Cranganore, later called the Black Jews.  New immigrants from Syria, Turkey, etc. were called  the White Jews.  This is India's caste system having its affect.  Freedmen Jews were a 3rd group who were descended from converted native slaves.  They all suffered during the Portuguese incursions but flourished under Dutch and later British rule and many made military careers for themselves.  They maintained a vigorous Jewish intellectual life though isolated.  The Jews of Cochin preserved their own liturgy for marriage, Simchat Torah, etc.  Most of them have now immigrated to Israel.  About 100 were left in 1968 when Cochin Jewry celebrated the 400th anniversary of its synagogue at a special service attended by the Indian prime minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi .  In 1991 there were 25 "White Jews  and 50 "Black Jews"  left in Cochin.  

 

Jews visited Calcutta, India in the 17th century, a permanent community was formed only in the 19th century by Baghdad Jews who transplanted  themselves along with their traditions of Iraq.  Outstanding were the Ezra and Gubbay families, closely associated with the Sassoons of Bombay, India, a well known family descended from the IBN Shoshan family of the 12th century in Toledo, Spain claiming descent from King David.   There is now only a small Jewish community as of 1973.   

                                                       

                    A Jewish couple from Cochin after immigrating to Israel

We are living through the Times of Return, when Jews from all over the world have been returning to live in Israel.  It's an exciting time.  The USA has been known as a mixture of all nations, but Israel is really a little pot of every nation.  One of the more exotic groups are the Bene Israel.

Evidently there were several groupings of Jews who came to India.  Ancient History with India goes back to the time of King Solomon (I KIngs 9:26-8).  Later, a number of distinct strands can be traced back to the Cochin Jews who first established in Cranganore probably in the 6th century CE.  They moved to Cochin and its neighborhood in the 16th century and were later reinforced by immigration from Europe and Syria.  Iraqi Jews began to arrive in India in the early 19th century and established  Arabic-speaking communities in Bombay,Calcutta and other places.  European Jews which included German Jewish refugees who settled in some numbers during the later period of the British rule. They have never established any communal organization.  

Also, Jews came to India during the Middle Ages who settled in Calcutta and other places, and from the 16th century, Marranos (hidden Jews) and their descendants came to India via London or Amsterdam and appeared in many places, including Madras where there was an organized congregation.    

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. 

                                                    

In the 18th to 19th centuries, teachers from Cochin and Baghdad brought them into line with traditional Judaism as it was practiced then. An Indian Jew from Cochin named David Rahabi discovered the Bene Israel in their villages and recognized their vestigial Jewish customs. Rahabi taught the people about normative Judaism. He trained some young men among them to be the religious preceptors of the community. Known as Kajis, these men held a position that became hereditary, similar to the Cohanim. They became recognized as judges and settlers of disputes within the community.

                              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, India

When 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