Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Page 78

Baghdadi Jew from Kolkata, India, publishes first novel

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Baghdadi Jew from Kolkata, India, publishes first novel

GREATER NOIDA, INDIA — The release of the only work of fiction by a member of Kolkata’s Baghdadi Jewish community on June 19, 2013, was momentous. Kolkata’s Jewish community was the last to arrive in India and the first to depart, but the Baghdadis made substantial contributions to the city’s cultural and commercial life during their time there.

As “definitions of who is and who is not an Indian are becoming increasingly politicized, place identities are being essentialized, and secular forces are increasingly challenged,” Jael Silliman’s novel The Man with Many Hats becomes even more important. Minority narratives, such as this one, play an important role in this political climate. While working as a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Iowa, Silliman wrote in her book Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women’s Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope (2001) that “they resist efforts to communalize India’s past and present and contrast sharply with contemporary histories in India today that are being rewritten to serve communal politics.”

Jael researched the history of three generations of her Jewish female ancestors in Calcutta in her nonfiction book Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames. In fiction, The Man with Many Hats tackles comparable territory, primarily through the perspective of Rachel, the heroine. As Shashi Tharoor points out in his foreword to the work, the novel provides an in-depth look into Jewish and Bengali rituals, a tactile tour of Calcutta in all its splendor, and an evocation of what can be called “cross-cultural encounters” in non-fiction.

Source: https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2013/08/16/baghdadi-jew-from-kolkata-india-publishes-first-novel/

Jewish Communities of India

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Jewish Communities of India

Even though the Bene Israel community of western India, the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta, and the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast make up a small percentage of the Indian population, their long-term stay in a different society has always piqued people’s interest. Although India may be the only country in the world where Jews have never faced anti-Semitism, they have had to fight to keep their identity in the previous century as they faced two conflicting nationalisms: Indian nationalism and Zionism. Joan Roland discusses how identities formed under the Indian caste system evolved during British colonial control, and how the war for Indian independence and the establishment of a Jewish state presented even more challenges. She also talks about the experiences of European Jewish immigrants who arrived in India after 1933 and stayed till the end of WWII. Roland uses a variety of sources, including Indian Jewish magazines, official and private archives, and extensive interviews, to describe what it was like to be a Jew in India. This work will be of interest to historians, Judaic studies specialists, Indian region academics, postcolonialists, and sociologists. The position of the remaining Jews in India, as well as the condition of Indian Jews in Israel at the end of the twentieth century, is discussed in a new concluding chapter.

Source: https://www.routledge.com/Jewish-Communities-of-India-Identity-in-a-Colonial-Era/Roland/p/book/9780765804396

The Baghdadi Jews in India

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The Baghdadi Jews in India

This book looks at how the Baghdadi Jewish community changed dramatically overtime during their stay in India from the end of the 18th century until they moved on to Indian diasporas in Israel and English-speaking countries around the world after India became independent in 1947.

Chapters on schools, institutions, and culture show how Baghdadis in India were able to keep their communities together even though they had many different identities in a stratified and complicated society. Multiple disciplines are used to look at the Baghdadis’ super-diversity and how they were able to adapt to new situations during the Raj while still keeping some traditions and adapting to others. Contributors to the book give an in-depth look at the Baghdadi Jews, and they show that their legacy lives on for Indians and Jews today through landmarks and monuments in Mumbai, Pune, and Kolkata, as well as through memories woven by members of the community who live in different parts of the world.

Source: https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/the-baghdadi-jews-in-india-9780367203252

Article: Jewish graves vandalized in India freely

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Headstones of old Jewish graves smashed, remains disinterred, thrown into river in town of Panvel, where few dozen Jews still live. Majority of community moved to Israel. Yonatan Kandalar, whose grandparents are buried there, shocked to see destruction, disrespect during visit

Yonatan Kandalar’s private heritage trip to the city in which he was born in India turned into a living hell when he arrived at the cemetery where his family and members of the Jewish community are buried. Kandler was shocked to see before his very eyes how the old Jewish cemetery in Panvel had turned into a neighborhood for Muslim families and was destroyed to its very foundations.

One of the headstones had been transformed into a makeshift mosque. Another group of headstones is being used as a urinal and a shower. Dozens of remains had been disinterred and thrown into the nearby river.

“Ever since the visit, I don’t sleep at night,” said Kandalar this week to Ynet. “I imagine a figure that died many years ago standing before me asking for help in the cemetery. We must solve this problem as soon as possible. It doesn’t hurt just the people lying there in the cemetery by desecrating their headstones, but all of Judaism.”

When the Jews left
It started a few decades ago when the community makeup of Panvel started to change after the State of Israel was established. The Indian Jewish community, which was divided into the Bnei Israel community and the Cochin community, gradually started moving to the Jewish state. When Israel was founded, the Jewish community in India numbered 25,000 people.

The city of Panvel was, until then, one of the Jewish centers with many of the city’s streets given Jewish names. In the 50s and 60s, many more Indian Jews made aliyah to Israel and settled in Ramla, Lod, and Ashdod. Today, only 20 Jewish families remain in Panvel.

When the Jews started leaving India in general and Panvel in particular, Muslim families moved into their neighborhoods, and, as it turns out, into their cemeteries as well.

Local Jews find it difficult to indicate an exact time when the invasion of their cemetery began, saying that it was a gradual process. The current building methodology there is simple: A decision is made where to build the new house, the area is “cleaned” of headstones, and, if needed, also of the graves themselves by throwing them into the river.

When Kandalar reached the cemetery together his wife, he tried to contact the local community to speak with them frankly, but the community leader answered him with no uncertainty: “What do you want from us? As long as no one tells us otherwise, we’re here.”

How does the remaining Jewish community respond?

“They are afraid to say anything. They are a minority, after all. A few of them told me about an incident in which they found one of the discarded bodies and wanted to bury it. An argument broke out between the Muslims and the Jews and they called the police. On that day, a few Jews were taken to prison.

“The local government supports this issue. This can be ascertained just from seeing that the houses there are legally connected to the electricity and water grids. I even saw a spigot attached directly to one of the graves there,” explained Kandalar.

“This cemetery is active until this day and people have been buried there at least until last year. My grandfather and grandmother, my uncles and many others from the family are buried there. We want a place that we can visit once a year in order to make pilgrimage to the righteous people of the community and our family who are buried there,” said Kandalar.

The Israeli Consulate in India reported, “After the situation was brought to our attention, we traveled to the village of Panvel in order to examine how we can help. As of now, the cemetery in its entirety is very neglected. The Jewish community claimed that it wishes at this moment to leave the situation as it is because if we were to clean up the area, it will become a juncture for another takeover. The consulate offered its help to the community, but because they are currently in the process of receiving authorization for putting up a fence, they do not need help at this point in time.”

To see the original source and author of this please go to this URL:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3880181,00.html

Article: India’s ‘Lost’ Jews Seek A Place In Israel

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Every year, Jews from around the world migrate to Israel, a process known as aliyah, a Hebrew word meaning “ascent.” But for the Bnei Menashe community of India, who believe they are descendents of one of the 10 lost tribes of ancient Israel, the road has been long and fraught with difficulty.

While almost 2,000 members of the group have been allowed to come to the Jewish state from their home near India’s border with Myanmar (formerly Burma), many more are waiting, their migration frozen by disagreement over whether or not they are really Jews.

Now an Israeli, Tzvi Khaute wears a kippa, or Jewish skull cap, but still greets his family in his native Kuki, a dialect spoken in the remote northeastern corner of India, where he is from.

Khaute’s family home in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba is decorated with both reminders of India and the symbols of his present life — Jewish religious books and framed sayings in Hebrew.

He remembers the feeling of awe when he arrived in 2000 at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv.

“It is a dream come true,” he says. “Not only my dream, it is the dream of our forefathers. There was the longing and the yearning always to make aliyah, to reach the Holy Land.”

The Bnei Menashe — also known as the Kuki or Shinlung people — are of Tibeto-Burmese origin and have come to believe they are the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, sent into exile by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C.

The story goes that when Christian missionaries encountered the tribe in the late 19th century, they found similarities between some of their own biblical stories and the Bnei Menashe’s mythology.

Most of the Bnei Menashe converted to Christianity. But in 1951, one of their leaders had a dream that his people’s ancient homeland was Israel. And some of the Bnei Menashe began embracing the idea that they were Jews.

Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization that works with “lost” Jews around the world, has been instrumental in bringing the Bnei Menashe to Israel.

“Initially I didn’t believe the whole lost tribe bit,” says Michael Freund, chairman of Shavei Israel. “But I was very taken by them on a personal level, on a human level, by their sincerity, by their desire to become part of the Jewish people. So I thought we should help them. So I became involved, through the bureaucracy then, in arranging for groups to start coming in an organized fashion.”

He says he is now convinced that the Bnei Menashe are Jews who were sent into exile 2,700 years ago.

“I think we have a historical responsibility, a moral responsibility, to reach out to them and to facilitate their return,” he says.

But some say the Bnei Menashe’s historical narrative is far from clear cut.

Shalva Weil, an anthropologist at Hebrew University and one of the world’s leading experts on the Bnei Menashe, says its members are not a cohesive group.

“It’s a very new kind of religion that is developing in northeast India which combines elements of Israelite identity,” Weil says.

“But some people who are in correspondence with me say they are Christians, but they believe they should go and live in the state of Israel. Some people say they are Jewish. Some people believe they are both Christian and Jewish at the same time. Many don’t believe they are the tribe of Menashe at all,” Weil says.

All the Bnei Menashe who come to Israel undergo an orthodox conversion.

Freund says he is trying to bring around 7,000 of them to Israel.

Still, Weil says there could be millions of people who could claim they are Bnei Menashe and who ultimately would want to come to Israel. Allowing the group to come in based on their link to a lost tribe could also pose a larger challenge for the Israeli government’s immigration policy.

“There might be billions of lost tribes out there by now. Because 28,000 were dispersed by Sennacherib and Shalmaneser, kings of Assyria. Through natural increase, this could be half the world today,” Weil says.

The project has also run into criticism, because during the initial wave of their immigration many Bnei Menashe were sent to Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The previous Israeli government under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stopped the Bnei Menashe migration. Advocates say they are hopeful the current government of Benjamin Netanyahu will allow in a new wave.

To see the original source and author of this please go to this URL:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127241410

Article: India’s Jews

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There’s no question that India’s secularism is under strain. Militant Hinduism remains as much a potent force as extremist Islam. The ongoing bloodletting in Kashmir is an open sore, and the periodic spasms of communal violence in Gujarat, combined with memories of the Mumbai bombings of 2006, have led to undeniable tensions. Just have a chat sometime with a Kashmiri Pandit–a Hindu displaced from that war-torn region–and you will know what I mean.

Yet this country of 1 billion largely impoverished people, home of the second-largest Muslim population in the world, still manages to maintain a sturdy system of democracy based on respect for religious and ethnic diversity. In the U.S., diversity is a politically correct slogan. In India it is a historical fact. Much as we in the West may resent it, India has a lot to teach us when it comes to religious tolerance.

To my mind, the best example of that can be found in the remarkable story of a tiny minority–India’s Jewish community. India may be the only country in the world that has been free of anti-Semitic prejudice throughout its history. As the Jewish genealogical journal Avotaynu recently observed in an article on one Indian Jewish group, “The Bene Israel flourished for 2,400 years in a tolerant land that has never known anti-Semitism, and were successful in all aspects of the socio-economic and cultural life of the people of the region.”

That’s really a bit astonishing, if not ridiculous, when you think about it. Compare that with any Western nation, be it France or Russia or even the U.S., where discrimination against Jews in housing was a fact of life as recently as the 1950s. But in “backward” India, from the beginning, the Jewish communities have not only been free of discrimination but have dominated the commercial life of every place where they have settled–something that has fed traditional European anti-Semitism.

Why has India remained free of this scourge? Various reasons have been advanced for that–such as, the Hindu religion does not seek to convert those from other faiths. What we do know is that anti-Semitism seems alien to the Indian character. And if you don’t believe me, I suggest you take a trip to a southern Indian town called Kochi, in the state of Kerala. There you can find the physical evidence of this glaring historical anomaly.

Kochi, formerly called Cochin, is a former European settlement with a large Christian population and a seafaring heritage. It is a town of enormous charm that reminds some visitors of the Caribbean more than India. On a shabby lane in Kochi you can find a complex of four 439-year-old buildings–the Paradesi Synagogue.

There you have Exhibit A for India’s tradition of secularism and day-to-day tolerance of religious diversity: the fact that this synagogue exists at all.

Kochi’s Jews trace their descent back to 700 B.C., and lived in harmony with their Muslim and Hindu neighbors until–well, I guess I’ll have to backtrack a bit on my claim that there was never anti-Semitism in India. There was quite a bit in the 16th century.

Kochi’s Jews were indeed persecuted–not by Indians but by the Portuguese, following in the glorious traditions of the Inquisition. With the help of the Hindu maharaja and the Dutch, Kochi’s Jewish community rebuilt its synagogue, burned by the Portuguese, in its current location near his maharajah’s palace. It has remained there, unmolested, ever since.

The Jews of Kochi are largely gone now, mostly emigrated to Israel, but it remains a very Jewish landmark in a very non-Jewish country. The synagogue, at least when I last visited it, had none of the heavy security that is common in large New York City synagogues. A short distance away is a Jewish cemetery, and again the distinction is in what you don’t see–there’s none of the overturned headstones and vandalism that have been sadly common in Jewish cemeteries in the U.S. Yes, even in Brooklyn.

It’s pretty much the same story elsewhere in India. Separate Jewish communities were established over the years in Mumbai, where the Bene Israel arrived over 2,000 years ago, and in Kolkata, where a more recent community of Middle Eastern “Baghdadi” Jews became established. In the northeast of India is the Bnai Menashe, who trace their origins to the Israelite tribe of Menasseh.

The Indian Jewish community has never been very large, with the Bene Israel numbering just 35,000 at its peak in the 1950s. Yet Indian Jews have achieved distinction far beyond their numbers. A great many chose to make a career in the military under the Raj (British rule that ended with independence 60 years ago this week)–a phenomenon that, believe me, is certainly foreign to the Eastern European Jewish experience.

Indeed, the most well-known Indian Jew is an eminent soldier: Lt. Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, who commanded Indian forces in the invasion of East Pakistan in 1971. Other Indian Jews achieved distinction in Bollywood, such as the pioneering actress Sulochana, queen of the Indian silent movies. It would probably surprise most Seinfeld fans to learn that Brian George, who played the sad-sack Pakistani restaurant owner Babu Bhatt, is an Israeli of Indian descent.

To be sure, the small size of the Jewish community has meant that the Jews of India never rose to become a political force. As a community it has never exerted any influence on Indian politics, and certainly not on the rabidly anti-Israel foreign policy that has marked much of India’s modern history. In other countries, the absence of Jewish communal influence–or even the absence of Jews–has not prevented rulers from using Jews as scapegoats. Poland of the late 1960s, the era of “anti-Semitism without Jews,” is a good example.

All this has a way of mystifying Indians. I’ve always had difficulty with Indians when we’ve discussed anti-Semitism. They don’t understand it, and to tell you the truth, I’ve had difficulty explaining it myself.

Indians are sometimes accused of being condescending toward Westerners, and of being excessively preachy in their attitude toward other nations. That accusation is sometimes correct. But when it comes to India’s treatment of one of its smallest and most vulnerable minorities, there is ample reason to be both condescending–and proud.

To see the original source and author of this please go to this URL:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/05/india-jews-antisemitism-oped-cx_gw_0813jews.html

Article: White Jews of India?!?

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I just got back from India two weeks ago. INDIA! For those of you who have not been following the blog, I just finished staffing a gap-year program called Kivunim: New Directions. Kivunim seeks to explore Jewish history, and to that end travels to over 10 different countries to learn about different communities in the Jewish Diaspora. That’s right. I just went to India because there were and are Jewish communities there.

I can’t possibly tell you in one blog post everything that was India. So I’ll share one story with you. On our last day there we took a three hour bus ride from Mumbai to the small village of Panvel to see the Beit El synagogue of the Bene Israel community. The Bene Israel have been in India for thousands of years. The origins of the community are hard to pinpoint with historical evidence, but the legend and tradition is that they were part of the lost ten tribes of Israel who escaped Samaria in 722 BC, though some believe that they were sea traders who escaped the Galilee in 175 BC, prior to the events of Chanukah. Regardless, the story is that, the Bene Israel forefathers were shipwrecked on the Konkan coast, south of Mumbai, and proceeded to settle in the small villages there, where they became oil pressers.

The Bene Israel are said to be the only Jewish community never to have experienced anti-Semitism. They were fully integrated by their Indian neighbors, adopting their language, customs, and style of dress. Nonetheless, though outwardly indistinguishable from the non-Jewish Indians, they had a clearly distinguishable status and identity because of their Jewish observance. They were called Shanwar Telis, or “Shabbat-observing oilmen”, because they refused to work on the Sabbath. Isolated from the rest of the Jewish world for many years, the Bene Israel lost a lot of the liturgical and religious traditions, that is, until they once again made contact with other Jews around the 17th and 18th centuries. Nonetheless they always observed the Sabbath, circumcised their sons and celebrated the major festivals.

So there I was in the small town of Panvel. As with everywhere else we went in India, my senses were overwhelmed. I don’t think I know enough words to accurately describe what India is like. Even the most extreme poverty is distinguished by radiant colors. The streets are usually complete chaos. Crowds upon crowds of people, swerving cars and motorbikes, cows leisurely strolling down the dusty alleyways, incessant (and in my opinion useless) honking. Though Panvel is a small town by India’s standards, there was no shortage of people, colors, smells, and sounds. And right there, in the midst of this beautiful chaos, our bus stopped. We had arrived to the Beit El synagogue. Just visualize that image for a second. Two huge buses full of American 18 year olds and their cameras, sticking out like raisins in a bowl of peanuts, in this rural Indian village. Anyways, back to the synagogue. It was a small dirty facade, no different from the rest of the houses on the street, save for a small wooden Star of David at the top, which’s surface was enlivened by different color light bulbs.

The initial shock of there being a synagogue in that village, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, was nothing compared to the shock of seeing a community there! During the year, Kivunim became accustomed to visiting desolated synagogues, places that no longer housed an active Jewish life. In the back of my mind, I’d expected Panvel to be something of the sort. A place of ghosts, maintained maybe by an old Jew. But as soon as we passed the door, we were greeted by a community of around thirty people. Men, women, old people, small children. They were all gathered outside in the courtyard to celebrate the festival of Lag B’omer. They looked completeIy Indian, just like the people of the town. Same skin color, similar features, same dress. The only difference was that the men were all wearing kippot, and indeed some of the women had also placed napkins on their heads.

After the initial greeting, and after taking off our shoes, we were allowed to step into the synagogue. It was absolutely magical. Small and quaint, with little oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, and true to its Indian heritage, radiating with color. Deep, passionate reds, and vibrant yellows. After a few minutes of acquainting myself with the place, sitting down, and checking out some of the Hindi and Hebrew writings, I came across the most fascinating thing. Above the Torah ark, as in many other synagogues around the world, was an engraving of the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. Yet, they were not the domed rectangles I was used to, but two squares side by side! Let me explain why this was so fascinating…

Just the night before, Rabbi Dov, director of our program, had told us about the tradition behind the depiction of the Tablets of the Ten Commandments, one of the most salient symbols in the Jewish tradition. Apparently even though Talmudic sources describe the shape of the tablets as two squares side by side, in the vast majority of cases the tablets are depicted as two rectangles with arched domes at the top. The image of the arched rectangles, stems from the Roman and Christian traditions. The Romans, and later the medieval Catholic kingdoms would use the two leaves with curved tops as a kind of registrar, to list names of magistrates or of important people. The shape of the domed arch also became a mainstay of the Gothic architecture that characterized Christian Europe during the Middle Ages. Thus, one of the most recognizable symbols of our tradition is profoundly influenced by Christian civilization.

Every synagogue I have ever been to that depicts the tablets on its wall, shows them in the shape of the domed rectangles. Except the one in Panvel. Here I was, standing with Rabbi Dov in this tiny synagogue in the middle of India, and for the first time in both our lives we were seeing an image of the tablets that stayed true to the Talmudic interpretation; two squares side by side!

The tablets at Panvel epitomized one of the recurring themes throughout our travels. It highlighted the ability of the Jewish people to deeply immerse themselves in their surrounding culture, to adopt so many new ideas and practices, and yet still remain powerfully committed to maintaining their own cultural and intellectual heritage. Each community to its own extent, depending on the circumstances, developed a dual identity, on the one hand profoundly Jewish and on the other hand deeply embedded in the surrounding environment. The community in Panvel kept the traditional imagery of the tablets, but I was forced to take off my shoes before entering their place of worship.

I realized something funny this year. Every Jewish community from Morocco, to Germany, to India, seems to think of itself as representing the norm for Jewish life. Even my community in Colombia, a tiny one of maybe 3,000 people sees itself as the center of the Jewish world. Obviously nowadays we have the State of Israel, so everyone sees that as grand central. But usually that is it. It is Israel and your home community. Growing up, my conscience of a Jewish world extended mainly to Colombia and Israel. That was it. When I began to find out about Jews in places like Sweden, Morocco, Bulgaria, India, and even the United States to some extent, I saw them as exotic. I couldn’t believe that there were Jews in those countries. As if my identity as a Colombian Jew wasn’t a bizarre thing in and of itself.

What this implies is a profound ignorance of our history as a people. Nowadays most Jews’ knowledge of their history extends to the Holocaust and the formation of the State of Israel, with maybe a few Biblical stories and narratives to spice things up. Most Jews are unaware of the fascinating tales of the Jewish Diaspora. It is a unique history, one that tells not only the stories of Jews and their tradition, but gives us glimpses and insights into other great cultures and civilizations. Moroccan Jewish history is part of Moroccan history. Indian Jewish history is part of Indian history. German Jewish history is part of German history.

In many communities around the world, Judaism has become stale and dormant. People, especially young people, are less and less interested in exploring their Jewish identity. As we face the challenge of assimilation, as we seek to revitalize our culture and tradition, especially among the youth, we should delve into our diverse and fascinating history. It is in the chants of Indian Jews, in the philosophies of German Jews, in the music of Moroccan Jews, that we will find the tools to make Judaism funky.

To see the original source and author of this please go to this URL:
http://rejewvenator.com/?p=685

Article: Rare Jewish-Indian Haggadah found in Salford

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Dr Wise said the Haggadah gives an insight into the community’s life

A rare Jewish text, published for the “Black Jews of India” in the 19th Century, has been discovered in a garage sale in Salford.

The 137-year-old Poona Haggadah, used by the Bene Israel community at Passover, was found by University of Manchester historian, Dr Yaakov Wise.

He said he paid a “substantial” fee after recognising it at the sale.

“I knew it was a very rare book – in fact, it may be the only copy of it in Britain,” he said.

The Prestwich-based historian said he was a regular at second-hand book sales as far away as Hay-on-Wye in Powys.

He said he had come across the Haggadah, which features text in both Hebrew and Marathi, an Indian language, in a pile of books at a local sale in Salford’s Higher Broughton area.

“A man had passed away and his family were selling his library,” he said.

“There were hundreds and hundreds of books for sale, but as soon as I saw it, I knew what it was.”

Dr Wise said he recognised it because he had given a lecture on the book’s original audience, the Bene Israel, in Liverpool a few years before.

The Bene Israel are known as “the Black Jews of India” because of their Indian appearance, as opposed to the “White Jews of India”, who he said were of Middle Eastern descent and had settled in the country much later.

‘Primary source’
The historian said he believed that the book had come to England during the post-colonial turmoil in India, when many Jews, who had British passports because of their work with the Imperial government, moved to the safety of London.

He said the book then probably came to Salford “by sale or inheritance”.

“The format and illustrations give an insight into the Black Jews,” he added.

“The illustrations, in particular, are fascinating, as the major Biblical figures, such as Moses and Abraham, look Western, while the people celebrating Passover are very Indian.”

He said he had yet to check with the British Library in London and Oxford’s Bodleian Library as to whether the book was unique in Britain, but that it was certainly a very rare text.

“There are very few books that have translations from Hebrew into any Indian language,” he said.

“As far as I know, there is only one of these in the whole of North America and that is in the Library of Congress in Washington DC.”

To see the original source and author of this please go to this URL:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-13907225

Jews street Mattanchery Cochin

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Jews street Mattanchery Cochin

There is a painting of the two-thousand-year-old Mattanchery Jews Street in Cochin, which is in the Indian state of Kerala, Street with few people out in the sun. It’s just like any other street in India, no matter where it is in the country.

Source: https://www.indianartideas.in/artwork/jews-street-mattanchery-cochin/8467

Documentary pays homage to Jews victimised during World War II

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Discovering the Passover Traditions of India’s Largest Jewish Community

A lot of people need to think about what happened to the Jews by the Nazis, which is why it’s important to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.

To remember how many Jews and other people were killed by the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler, a day called International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held recently.

With this year’s event in mind, the DW DocFilm The Warsaw Ghetto: Memories of Horror is a heartfelt film about the hardships that Jews had to go through at the hands of the Nazis, and it’s a good match. The India International Center, in New Delhi, showed the film online.

Source: https://www.thehansindia.com/hans/opinion/news-analysis/documentary-pays-homage-to-jews-victimised-during-world-war-ii-673216

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