The many varieties of Jewish people throughout the world celebrate Hanukkah (the festival that begins tonight), with each group performing the celebration in different ways. A story recently published by NBC Asian America (December 11) tells the story of the growing population of Indian Jews in New York City, who gather each year to celebrate Hanukkah in the United States.
Rabbi Romiel Daniel is the first Desi synagogue leader in America, and he came from Mumbai’s millennia-old Bene Israel community. He leads the Rego Park Jewish Center in Queens, where he performs services for both the Bene Israel and Ashkenazi communities. To help him preserve Indian Jewish customs, nearly 100 of his Indian Jewish constituents in New York and New Jersey look to him.
“We are still working with the same processes that we did in India,” he says. “They are the same as we did in Bombay,” he says, employing a term that the British coined when they occupied Mumbai.
Source: https://www.colorlines.com/articles/indian-jews-work-maintain-identity-practices-united-states
