Erusha Newman is certain of three things: she is Indian, she is Jewish, and she eats food only Indian Jews eat. Beyond that, the specifics get hazy.
Newman is one of only a few dozen known Bene Israel residents in the Chicago region, one of India’s five native Jewish communities. She is the group’s designated matriarch and one of the few people who have both the experience and the patience to create the time-consuming recipes that are unique to her culture.
“We (the Bene Israel) don’t know where we came from because we only have the oral history for many years,” Newman says. One of the most prevalent ideas is that they are descended from Galilean oil pressers who survived a shipwreck in the Arabian Sea. They are said to have landed near Mumbai on the west coast and then moved interior, establishing in towns such as Pune and Ahmedabad.
