Growing up Jewish in India is a book on India’s Jews told from a range of perspectives, including history, culture, art, and religion. Ori Z. Soltes, the editor, is a Georgetown University professor of art history, religion, philosophy, and political history. He is fascinated with Indian Jew’s”material culture,’ and he paints compelling depictions of synagogues and communities throughout the centuries.
Much of the book is devoted to Siona Benjamin and her miniature paintings. Ori Soltes’ life is “paradigmatic of the Jewish Indian experience,” and her art is “a complicated and unique tool of synthesis” of that experience, according to her.
In many respects, the Jewish experience in India differed from that of Jews in the European-Christian and Muslim-Arab worlds. The absence of religiously sanctioned anti-Semitism was not the only distinguishing feature of Indian Jewish life. Because of Hinduism’s ecosystem, particularly “its embrace of multiple ideas regarding how, exactly, one could approach and treat god,” Indian society has embraced multi-religiosity, interfaith discourse, and cultural blending more than other religious or traditional communities.
