“We are the last generation that can do it. Children that have grown up in Israel do not know India. People who grew up in India are 70 years old. They are dying out. There is no way you can do that in the next generation,” says Moses, a sprightly 73rd himself.
His mission: to document the tiny Jewish community that flourished in India until the middle of the last century, when many of them started to emigrate to the nascent state of Israel. The stuff of legend is how they came to India.
The tale is that a ship carrying an expelled tribe of Israel was sunk off the Konkan coast in 175 BC, leaving only seven men and seven women alive. The tribe decided to make India their home and Marathi their language after burying their dead in the village of Nawgaon. They called themselves the sons of the holy land, Bene Israel.
