India's Jewish Population Through The Ages

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

     Celebration at a wedding of Bnei Israel of Jews  in India.  Two days before Yamit Talker-Shefer’s wedding to her husband Elad, in traditional Indian custom her family donned colorful saris and gathered together for the henna ceremony, in which her ring finger was painted red in preparation for the wedding ring to come. Forty-eight hours later, in traditional Jewish custom, she and Elad stood under the chuppah – the Jewish wedding canopy – and recited ancient Hebrew vows before an Israeli rabbi.

While some Indian Jews state that their ancestors arrived in India during the time of the Ancient Kingdom of Judah, others identify themselves as descendants of Ancient Israel's Ten Lost Tribes who arrived earlier.

Actually, the relations of the Hebrew with India goes back in the time of Solomon as told in (I Kings 9:26-8).  "King Solomon made a fleet in Ezion-geber....Hiram (king of Tyre) sent in the fleet his servants, , shipmen who knew the sea, together with Solomon's servants;  they came to Ophir and took gold from there, 420 talents, and brought them to King Solomon."                         

Many areas of the Arabian Peninsula have been proposed as the site of Ophir; the principal alternative locations overseas are East Africa and India.  Earlier in the 19th century Max Müller and other scholars identified Ophir with Abhira, near the Indus River in modern-day state of Gujarat, India. According to Benjamin Walker Ophir is said to have been a town of the Abhira tribe.  Friedrich Max Müller(1823-1900)  was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of Indian studies and religious studies. Müller wrote both scholarly and popular works on the subject of Indology. 

The Jews of Cochin first established themselves in Cranganore in the 6th century. The Portuguese captured it in 1523, afterwards it became the Jewish center.  They were then called the "Black Jews."  When Jews from Turkey and Syria entered their world, they kept apart from these "White Jews" because of the caste system of India.   Then they moved to Cochin by the 16th century. It was a port and former state on the Malabar coast of Southern India. Later, their population was reinforced by Jews from Europe and Syria.  Ex-Marranos, probably from Spain or Portugal (Jews who pretended to be Catholics, then reverted back to Judaism), traveled from London or Amsterdam,  and appeared in many places, including Madras where there was an organized congregation.   The Jews of Cochin suffered during the Portuguese incursions.  Under  the Dutch and later, British rule, they flourished.  While living in Cochin, they preserved their own liturgy for marriages, etc.  About 100 Jews were left in Cochin by 1968 when they clebrated the 400th annibversary of its synagogue in a special service attended by the indian PM, Mrs. Indira Gandhi.  By 1993, there were 25 "White Jews" and 50 "Black Jews" left in Cochin.                     

CALICUT had Jewish communities as well as in other places in India during the Middle Ages.  Although the city's official name is Kozhikode, in English it is sometimes known by its anglicised version, Calicut.  Kozhikode is a town with a long recorded history.  Kozhikode is a coastal city in the south Indian state of Kerala, a southern port. It was a significant spice trade center and is close to Kappad Beach, where Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in 1498.                                                                                   

                     Ruby Meyers(1907-1983) in 1920, The Vamp from the community of Baghdadi Jews in India.  She was born in Pune, Bombay Presidency, British India, and died in her flat in Mumbai,(Bombay), India.  

  Shalom Bollywood; Ruby Myers aka Sulochana, was the first superstar of Indian silent cinema;  India's forgotten history of Jews who made it big in early cinema; Though they were outsiders, Jewish performers found it easy to blend in in Bombay cinema.  Hindi cinema, often known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is the Indian Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai (Bombay-renamed in 1995). The term is a portmanteau of "Bombay" and "Hollywood".

                                                

The Bene Israel Jews lived in the neighborhood of Bombay-now called Mumbai, a port.  Bene Israel (sons of Israel) claim to be one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.  It is a historic Jewish community in India.  This is in the central Westside of India. Ethnically Indian, their origin is uncertain.  In the 18th century, their Jewish observance was at a low ebb, but they have since returned to a whole-hearted observance of Judaism. European Jews, mainly connected with the Sephardi community of London, settled in Bombay in the 17th century and established a short-lived community in the 18th. In the 19th century, Jews from Baghdad went to Bombay, forming their own community. Bombay's population in 1981 was 3,076.  This was considered the greatest center of Bene Israel.  It is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-most populous city in the country after Delhi and the seventh-most populous city in the world with a population of roughly 20 million.  In contrast, New York City has 8,008,278.                                      

Members of India’s Bnei Menashe Jewish community (photo credit: LAURA BEN-DAVID/SHAVEI ISRAEL)  5 women will make aliyah to Israel by New Year of 2021.  

 Some Indian Jews claim descent particularly from Ancient Israel's tribe of Menashe and are referred as the Bnei Menashe. It is estimated that India's Jewish population peaked at around 20,000 in the mid-1940s, and began to rapidly decline due to their emigration to Israel after its creation in 1948.                                  

  There have been 4 Jewish Miss India.  Of these, Miss India,  3,000 lived in Bombay and the rest in 9 other communities. 

Fleur Ezekiel of Bene Israel was chosen as Miss World in 1959. She was a model.  

When the first Miss India beauty pageant took place in 1947, it was no surprise that a stunning Bollywood starlet named Pramila won. She was a natural beauty, with wide, sparkling eyes and a warm smile. She was also a Baghdadi Jew, born Esther Victoria Abraham.

Jews have always been a religious minority in India – currently hovering around 5,000 in a total Indian population of 1.3 billion. But when Pramila accepted the Miss India title at age 31 – while pregnant with her fifth child – she blazed a trail for future Jewesses, starting with her own daughter, Naqi Jahan. Jahan was crowned twenty years after her mother, and was the first to represent India in Australia’s Queen of the Pacific Quest beauty pageant.   They are the only mother and daughter to have both won the Miss India title. Esther Victoria Abraham died on 6 August 2006.

Today's Sassoon family, Rival Iraqi  Jewish clans in Shanghai

Iraqi Jews began to arrive from Baghdad in the early 19th century established Arabic-speaking communities in Bombay, Calcutta.  Some of them, such as the SASSOON family, have attained great prominence. The Sassoon family, known as "Rothschilds of the East" due to the immense wealth they accumulated in finance and trade, is a family of Baghdadi Jewish descent. Originally based in Baghdad, Iraq, they later moved to Bombay, India, and then spread to China, England, and other countries. They numbered about 3,000 in 1948.

European Jews, including German refugees, settled in groups during the later period of British rule.  they have never established any communal organization.               

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just left India after a six-day official visit during which the two countries heralded a "new era" in ties. BBC Hindi's Zubair Ahmed travelled to Beersheba in Israel to meet a community of Indian-origin Jews who migrated there soon after the nation's creation.

Most Indian Jews have settled in Israel and by 1990, only 5,600 were left in India.  Of these, 3,000 lived in Bombay and the rest in 9 other communities.  Over 70,000 Indian Jews now live in Israel (over 1% of Israel's total population).                 

Let's not forget that Pashtuns also live in India,  particularly in the Rohilkhand region of the state of Uttar Pradesh, and in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan. We now believe that Pashtos/Pashtuns, at least some of them, are from the 10 lost tribes of Israel, Israelites who were captured and taken away by the Assyrians in 721 BCE.  Since many are living in India, it's been easier to study them for this historical research and DNA studies.  The Pataudis were of Afghan descent, whose ancestors arrived in India in the late 15th century as mercenaries of the Pashtun emperor Bahlul Lodi, during the latter's reign. According to Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, the family are "basically Afghans with a bit of Turkish blood."  The Turks had an empire called The Ottoman Empire.  The Ottoman Empire ruled a large portion of the Middle East and Eastern Europe for over 600 years. It first formed in 1299 and finally dissolved in 1923, becoming the country of Turkey.  They had lost the empire by losing in WWI on  November 11, 1918.  

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_M%C3%BCller

https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20171113-indian-silent-cinema-ruby-myers-jewish-telephone-operator-1077155-2017-11-05

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-rival-iraqi-jewish-clans-who-changed-the-face-of-shanghai-1.8999365

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassoon_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Myers

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2013/06/four-jewish-beauties-in-indias-beauty.html

Shanghai, China's History of a Jewish Haven Now Micro Chip Capital?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

                                        A place to save a Jewish Life;  Shanghai

                            Back in 1841, Shanghai became a treaty port. 

                                                                         

              Harbin's Old synagogue.  Harbin is very far from Shanghai.  Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang, China’s northernmost province. The city grew in the late 19th century with the influx of Russian engineers constructing the eastern leg of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Perhaps those Russian engineers were Jewish?  As it happened, the chief engineer of the building board of the Chinese Eastern railway was Alexander Yugovich. Born into a Jewish family that converted to Orthodox Christianity, he was a civil engineer and specialist in constructing of railways in deserts and highlands.  

A Jewish community had existed in Shanghai since the late 1800s, but that population exponentially grew as Russian Jews fled the Bolshevik Revolution and tens of thousands more fled Europe as Hitler rose to power in the mid-20th century. As one of the only places in the world that was continuously open to Jewish refugees, Shanghai was a popular destination. In the 1930s, “20,000 or so European Jews found their way to the city.”                                                                

                                                                       

      Sephardim of Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai established themselves there--largely under the aegis of the SASSOON  FIRM---SHORTLY AFTER IT BECAME A TREAT PORT.  

The Sassoon family, known as "Rothschilds of the East" due to the immense wealth they accumulated in finance and trade, is a family of Baghdadi Jewish descent. Originally based in Baghdad, Iraq, they later moved to Bombay, India, and then spread to China, England, and other countries.  From the 18th century, the Sassoons were one of the wealthiest families in the world, with a corporate empire spanning the entire continent of Asia.

Sephardim Jews, mainly of the Baghdadi origin, established themselves by 1841 in Shanghai.  They were followed after 1917 and World War I by Russian Jews.  For a time, Shanghai was among the most prosperous Jewish communities in the world.  

                                                                 

           Sassoon House, Shanghai, China
                                                                                                

Between the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai became known as "The Paris of the East, the New York of the West".  Economic achievements included the city becoming the commercial center of East Asia, attracting banks from all over the world. When movies and literature depict the golden days of by-gone Shanghai, it is generally associated with this era.                           

In the period immediately preceding World War II, Shanghai was one of the few places to which access was possible without a passport, and very large numbers of refugees settled there.  

In 1936, Shanghai was one of the largest cities in the world with 3 million inhabitants. Of those, only 35,000-50,000 were of European origin, but these controlled half the city under the unequal treaties that provided extraterritoriality until 1943.                                                      

End of Old Shanghai (1937–1945)  World War II started.    The Japanese Navy bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932, nominally to crush Chinese student protests against the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The Chinese fought back in what was known as the January 28 Incident.                                         

The Polish Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai along the port.  1941-1945.  

                                                                        

Shanghai in WWII, Chinese and Jewish girls playing in ghetto on left; on right in Harbin, China with a Jewish and a Chinese girl playing together

During the Japanese occupation in 1934-1945, modified anti-Semitism was introduced and most Jews were interned.  The community later re-established itself but after the Chinese occupation, Shanghai's special status ended and its Jews emigrated to other safe places. 

The ghetto was officially liberated on September 3, 1945. The Government of Israel bestowed the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations to Chiune Sugihara in 1985 and to Ho Feng Shan in 2001.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and China in 1992, the connection between the Jewish people and Shanghai has been recognized in various ways. In 2007, the Israeli consulate-general in Shanghai donated 660,000 Yuan, provided by 26 Israeli companies, to community projects in Hongkou District, in recognition of the safe harbour provided by the ghetto. The only Jewish monument in Shanghai is located at Huoshan Park (formerly Rabin Park) in Hongkou District. Note:  Favorite names seem to come and go, depending on who's in and who's out.  So much for remembering history of the Jews of Shanghai.  

                                                                

Today, Shanghai wants in in the micro chips manufacturing business.  "As China charges forth to achieve "semiconductor independence" in the face of punishing global sanctions, the city of Shanghai is vying to be the place where Chinese chips get made.                                                 

On April 7, the Shanghai local government held a Global Investment Promotion Conference at which 16 semiconductor deals were signed. The deals include companies that manufacture critical materials for chipmaking, like photoresists or silicon wafers.

 In March 2021, the Lin-gang government released a 5-year plan that pledged to build a local semiconductor industry that by 2025 would be worth more than $15 billion and host 5 world-leading chip manufacturing companies. In the inter-provincial race to dominate China's domestic semiconductor industry, Shanghai is mostly competing with its neighboring province, Jiangsu, which has long produced the most chips among all Chinese provinces. Shanghai, a city whose government has the status of a province, ranked 4th in 2020.

                                                             

Microchip Technology Inc. has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. (SHIC) of Shanghai, China. The suit, filed in the Shanghai Number 1 Intermediate People’s Court, alleges that SHIC has made unauthorized copies of the microcode embedded in Microchip’s proprietary PIC16CXXX microcontrollers, and the datasheets that detail the use and operation of those microcontrollers. Microchip’s datasheets and microcode are copyright-protected in both the U.S. and in China.Concurrently, Microchip has filed a related legal action against Linkage Technology Co. Ltd. of Hsinchu, Taiwan. Linkage Technology is noted as the Taiwanese distributor for SHIC.

According to the China Internet Information Center (described as the "authorized government portal site to China"), a senior manager with the Haier Group, commented, "...so-called intellectual propriety protection is a tool for multinational companies to lambaste others in order to retain their technology monopoly. This tool is more lethal than trade barriers and 60% of Chinese export companies are suffering this kind of technical barrier set by foreign countries."         

                      US President Joe Biden has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping.  US President Joe Biden has warned that China will “eat our lunch” if America doesn’t “step up” its infrastructure spending.  Mr Biden was speaking on Thursday with a group of senators about the need to upgrade infrastructure in the US.

A quiet trade war is going on between China and the USA.  "In addition to traditional espionage, China partners civilian Chinese companies with American businesses to acquire technology and economic data and uses cyber spying to penetrate the computer networks of U.S. businesses and government agencies; an example is the December 2009 Operation Aurora. U.S. law enforcement officials have identified China as the most active foreign power involved in the illegal acquisition of American technology. On May 19, 2014, the United States Department of Justice announced that a Federal grand jury had indicted five People's Liberation Army officers for stealing confidential business information and intellectual property from U.S. commercial firms and planting malware on their computers.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Shanghai#:~:text=End%20of%20Old%20Shanghai%20(1937%E2%80%931945),-Battle%20of%20Shanghai&text=The%20Japanese%20Navy%20bombed%20Shanghai,as%20the%20January%2028%20Incident.

https://www.protocol.com/china/shanghai-china-chip-capital

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassoon_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States

https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e204683/Place/Harbin?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=jews%20in%20harbin&utm_campaign=g&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAjwq7aGBhADEiwA6uGZp4bBhbSmMUG9YA9-cYECGqthuSja_DJHwJKp6xbW43OERQbjvteM4hoCV7YQAvD_BwE

https://www.eldridgestreet.org/blog/jewish-communities-in-china-harbin-and-shanghai/