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Jews of Two Worlds: Indians in India is one of the rare countries in the world where Jews have never experienced anti-Semitism. Indian Jews now living in their “fatherland” of Israel share nostalgic memories of their rich history and culture in India. By Robert Hirschfield “I am happy to have had the recog- nition in my life of my two countries, India and Israel, my motherland and my fatherland,” said eighty-two year old Eliyahu Bezalel, winner of India’s Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (2006) for overseas Indians. Remembering a day in Cochin when he was a boy of 10, he said, “I got up in class and shouted anti-British slogans. The teacher beat me and threw me out of the class.” The old man laughed, and in laugh- ing became a young man. The Indian- radio-technician-turned-Israeli-farmer, famous for his achievements in green- house flower gardening, marveled that his greenhouse in Israel was visited both by former Indian Prime Minis- ter H.D. Deve Gowda and Israeli Prime Minister and legendary first leader David Ben-Gurion. Eliyahu left Cochin in 1954, at age 25, excited by the thought of becoming a new man in the new Jewish state. There are an estimated 70,000 In- Eliyahu Bezalel, winner of India’s Pravasi Bharatiya The origins of the Cochini Jewish dian Jews living in Israel today (the great majority of them ), a little less Samman Award (2006) for community are said by some to date overseas Indians. back to the time of King Solomon’s spice than one percent of Israel’s population. trade. The Bene Israel of , In India, few remain. The Bene Israel washed ashore on the Konkan Coast as are now barely 5,000, if that, where once a result of a shipwreck that is believed they numbered upwards of 50,000. The to have occurred sometime between the Baghdadis, maybe 5,000 before Partition, first and the third century BC, are pre- have dropped to the low double digits in Fearful that the heritage of Indian will die out with the death of the last Jew in the subcontinent, Ruth Greenfield, 51, a Bene Israel, recently decided to collect, catalog, and digitize information on India’s Jews for future generations. sumed to belong to the tribe of Levi, be- Calcutta, with handfuls still hanging on ing oil pressers as the Levites were. in Western India. The Cochinis, also in The Baghdadis, India’s most recent the low double digits, totter on the rim of Jewish community, came from Syria, extinction. Never very large, virtually all Iraq, and Iran as traders in the late 17th 2,000 of them left for Israel in the years and early 18th centuries. Shalom Co- following its creation in 1948. hen, the first Jew of Calcutta, docked in Fearful that the heritage of Indian 1685 to become the court jeweler of the Judaism will die out with the death of Nawab of Oudh. A better known Bagh- the last Jew in the subcontinent, Ruth dadi was David Sassoon, builder of the Greenfield, 51, a Bene Israel, recently de- Sassoon Docks in Bombay in the 19th cided to collect, catalog, and digitize in- century. The Baghdadis settled primarily formation on India’s Jews for future gen- in Calcutta, Bombay, and Pune. erations. (Eventually, this will include >> CoverStory

Pakistani and Burmese Jews.) Her efforts together with the flag of Israel, dismisses led to the founding of the Indian Jewish the rabbinate’s historic rigidity with char- Heritage Center. acteristic Indian tolerance. “My father was an architect in Delhi “The Bene Israel may not have had who was working on preserving our peo- rabbis, but we also didn’t have divorce. In ple’s history in India. When he died in India, poor people don’t get divorced. In 2005, I was inspired to do the work that the rare case of someone wanting a di- he began.” vorce, they went before the elders to re- Sophie Judah, a 63-year-old Bene Is- solve the matter.” In time, the rabbinate rael author whose book of short stories, backed off, and today the Bene Israel mar- Dropped from Heaven, was published by ry freely with non-Indian , though Shocken (2007), is a gracious woman who they tend to do so to a lesser extent than with impeccable hospitality offers her either the Cochinis or Baghdadis. Mas- guest a chicken curry and something cold sil, president of the Central Organization to drink. Her book, a rare work of story- of Indian Jews, admits cheerfully that all telling about the Bene Israel in India, is of his four children have married out. unusual for yet another reason: the Bene “My associates tease me. They say, ‘You Israel (also the Cochinis) existed outside can’t be president anymore.’” the Jewish norm of a written tradition. Israelites have experienced cruel forms of anti-Semitism in many countries, but India has been an anomaly. Everyone you talk to will tell you, with voices that sometimes break with gratitude, that they have never known anti-Semitism in India, that there has never been anti-Semi- tism in India. Around the year 1000, the Jews of Cochin were granted the Copper Plates of Privilege by Mal- abar ruler Bhaskara Ravi Varman, which among other things, ex- empted Jews from taxation.

Top: Sophie Judah, The Baghdadis alone author of Dropped from have sojourned in India Heaven, a book about the with a written tradition Bene Israel in India. brought with them from Right: Noah Massil, the crossroads of the president of the Central Middle East. Organization of Indian When the Bene Isra- Jews, dismisses the el began arriving in the rabbinate’s historic early 1950s, the Israeli rigidity regarding not rabbinate was reluctant having rabbis amongst to accept them as Jews, them, with characteristic as they had no rabbis. Indian tolerance. So how then was Jewish divorce and the Jewish lineage established, Judaism being matri- Linda Rivkind, a Baghdadi from Cal- lineal? Noah Massil, 65, on whose lawn cutta, is the rare Indian with a direct con- in the Indian tricolor waves nection to the Holocaust. Her father, a >> CoverStory

Polish refugee, wound The Jews of India, like everyone in India, up in Calcutta some- took their faith seriously. “We were al- time around 1940, ways facing Jerusalem in prayer,“ Ju- when his ship devel- dah said, “and praying, ‘Next year in oped engine trouble. Jerusalem.’” When the Jewish state was The Jewish community formed, we had to go.” of Calcutta took him in, One who did not go was Brigadier and he stayed on. “He David Abraham, Judah’s father. She re- bought a lot of books members him cursing her, saying, “Why about the Holocaust,” do you leave India? This is our country. Rivkind recalled over It’s given us so much.” coffee in Jerusalem’s The synagogues were the center legendary Smadar café of Cochini life. When the Bene Israel and movie theater, left for Israel, there were still no rabbis with its the dramatic and no rabbinical laws. They practiced posters appropriate to a pared down Judaism: they prayed the her story. “One book I Shema, the central prayer of Judaism, happened to pick up, practiced circumcision, kept kosher, and Linda Rivkind, a The Black Book of Poland, as mentioned before, kept the Sabbath. Baghdadi from Calcutta, was quite horrifying. I understood then There were more mundane issues is the rare Indian with a that this was what happened to my fa- involved in the Jews leaving India. A direct connection to the ther’s family. It was so grotesque, I was disproportionate number of Bene Is- Holocaust. completely unprepared for it. I think I rael served as officers in the British was 12 at the time.” Army. They had acquired a reputation Why did India’s Jews leave their na- for loyalty. As a result, according to his- tive country for a land born in warfare torian Nissim Moses, an Indian Jew, the and hemmed in by a hostile Arabia? Bene Israel were treated as a favored Why did India’s Jews leave their native country for a land born in warfare and hemmed in by a hostile Arabia? The Jews of India, like everyone in India, took their faith seriously. “We were always facing Jerusalem in prayer,“ Judah said, “and praying, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’” When the Jewish state was formed, we had to go.” A Cochini synagogue at Moshav in Israel. (Photo: Tirza Lavi)

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Left: Nissim Moses believes they were treated as a favored community in India.

Right: Ephry Yona comments on how the Baghdadis were the most insular and British-influenced of the three Jewish communities in India.

community. While they continued to duringly humbled by the fact that his serve in the Army of India, inevitably the grandfather’s cousin, Dr. Solomon Abra- plum jobs that had been given to them ham Erulkar, was Gandhi’s physician. By by the British went mainly to Hindus. and large, they wound up doing those The Baghdadis were the most insu- same jobs in Israel. Similarly, a number lar and British-influenced of the three of the English-speaking Baghdadis who communities. “Our first language was were clerks in India found themselves English,” laughed Ephry Yona, a 72-year- employed as clerks in the Israeli cus- old Jerusalemite in a multi-colored skull- toms offices, at the airport in Lod. cap, who in his working days was a char- With the Cochinis it was different. tered accountant. “We adopted British Townspeople who dealt in goods and customs. Some even took British names. services (and were less proficient in Eng- We of course felt our interests were with lish), they were sent to work as farmers the British.” in settlements in the South, the North, The wealthy Baghdadis, with a and by the Jordanian border near Jerusa- few exceptions, migrated to England, lem, where they replaced the Yemenites Canada, and the U.S. Only a few of the who had grown tired of the armed incur- wealthy went to Israel. The Baghdadi sions from Jordan. middle class did go, brought to Israel by The Cochinis were the darkest- the Jewish Agency in the early 1950s. skinned immigrants in Israel at the time. An understandable nostalgia The country was run by the Labor Party, Yona’s father owned a jute mill in Europeans with socialist tendencies, but a town close to . He was sent to questionable sensitivity to non-whites. England to study, then went to Canada, Yehuda Abraham, a second-generation before coming to Israel. He shares with Cochini married to an American, com- other Baghdadis an understandable nos- plained of hostile looks in the street as talgia for the old Calcutta. “The commu- a boy, of being made to feel different. nity was like one big family, which in one However, most Cochinis deny being dis- respect wasn’t so good. Everyone knew criminated against. And it can be argued everyone else’s business. But we had a that being sent to do rural labor was no big house, big grounds, a gardener, even indication of racism in a country that a security guard.” He also had a mother was still enthralled by the Zionist idea of who starred in silent films in Calcutta in the rural Jewish settler, the pioneer. the late-1920s and early-1930s under the In the three-story Sheva Cochavim name of Arati Devi. (Seven Stars) mall in Herzliya, a cathe- Over all, very few Indian Jews were dral of hyper Israeli consumption, Yit- affluent. The Cochinis, for example, in- zhak Ashkenazy, a middle-aged Bagh- cluded many small shopkeepers. The dadi businessman, and also an associate Bene Israel gravitated to the professions: at the Indian Jewish Heritage Center, teachers, lawyers, engineers, soldiers, talked politics between bites of his tuna and doctors. Daniel Reuven, an engineer fish salad. “Indian Jews in Israel tend from the seaside town of Bat Yam, is en- to be right of center. (Israel today is a >> CoverStory

right-of-center country.) Many tend to through which second- or third-genera- be religious. Also, like many Eastern tion Indian-Israelis re-connect with In- Jews, they associate the left with the dia. Children born to Indian parents in Labor Party that they feel neglected the 1950s or 1960s may still speak some them. But it is wrong to generalize about Marathi or . But that may not any community. I myself happen to be last long. Assimilation is inescapable in left of center.” a beleaguered country in need of unity. In his case, that is no small fact. Everyone learns Hebrew, serves in the Ashkenazy was in the Jamil Restaurant army, is imprinted with an Israeli-Jewish in Herzliya in 2002 when a Palestinian identity. An Indian who does not have terrorist detonated a pipe bomb killing a a single anti-Semitic memory will live young girl and shattering his son’s eye. within the emotional centrality of the His wife, an Argentine immigrant who Holocaust in Israeli life. until then voted for left wing Meretz, has Greenfield’s son Ari, in his early 20s, ever since voted for right-wing Likud. typically had little interest in India as a But Ashkenazy continues to hope for a young Israeli. “After the army, he went peace candidate, even though he is now to India. He saw the synagogue in Co- doubtful that the other side wants peace. chin that has the original Copper Plates. He takes in stride, like most Israelis, in- Something clicked. He said, ‘Mom, this is Yitzhak Ashkenazy, cluding Indians, the culture of risk that is what we have in our living room.’ He had an associate at a normal part of life here. been looking at our replicas of the Cop- the Indian Jewish Israel’s best-known and most per Plates all his life. All of a sudden his Heritage Center, controversial peace activist of the 1960s Indian heritage became real to him.” talks about political and 1970s, Abie Nathan, was a Baghda- Unlike Ari Greenfield, Rachel Yona, affiliations di who grew up in Bombay. In 1966, he 49, Ephry Yona’s daughter, was always of Indian flew solo to Port Said to talk peace with aware of her Indian roots. Canadian- Jews. Egyptian President Nasser. He was ar- born, she grew up with her “very Indian” rested in Port Said and returned to Is- grandfather in Hamilton, Ontario, and rael, where he was arrested again. In Jerusalem. “We ate only Indian food,” the ’70s he inaugurated his peace ship, said the yoga instructress. “My grandfa- aptly named Voice of Peace, in interna- ther lived in India for the first 60 years of tional waters, from which he broadcast- his life and always went back, returning ed lively music and peace programming with jewelry and artifacts.” to the Middle East. Cool to her father’s Jewish orthodoxy, Unknown to many outside Israel is Rachel Yona was a lot like the spiritually an ongoing cultural event that may be disaffected young Westerner that India called, for lack of a better term, the India normally attracts. She went to India for phenomena. Every year, Israeli soldiers, the first time at age 24, a few years after upon finishing military service, journey completing military service. She found to India to free themselves from the herself at the Rajneesh Ashram in Pune: pressure cooker of Israel, to lose them- “Very Western, very materialistic.” selves in India’s vastness and non-judg- Her encounter with Ram Surat Ku- mental chaos, its tolerance of what the mar in Tiruvannamalai, a few years later, stranger brings to its shores. Neverthe- had a much greater impact on her. “I sat less, these soldiers have little interest in with him every day. He would look at me the Indians living among them, possibly and say, ‘You have all this information because Israel’s Indian Jews tend to be in your (Jewish) books. You should be reserved, cooperative, model citizens. looking in your own books.’ Sometimes They don’t complain or draw atten- he would ask me, ‘What does Judaism tion to themselves. The large number of say about this?’” She was staying at the Indians in Israel often comes as a Ramana Maharshi Ashram across Even surprise to Israelis. the road with its big library. She began though Canadian born, Rite of passage reading its Jewish books. So, ironically, Rachel Yona was The sons and daughters of Indian in this advaita corner of Tamil Nadu always aware of her Jews join in the national rite of pas- she became a practicing Jew, lighting Indian roots. sage to India. It has become the vehicle candles on the Sabbath, saying the >> CoverStory

“In India,” recalls Nissim Moses, “religion was a minor factor in building relations with a friend. Everyone in India celebrated everyone else’s festivals. In Israel, on the other hand, you will rarely find Jews and Arabs mixing with each other.”

traditional Sabbath prayers. call the respect and tolerance Muslims From Puttaparthi, intoxicated had for their religion. with openness, she mentioned to her “In India,” recalls Nissim Moses, Lahava Silliman, owner of parents that Sai Baba used the same “religion was a minor factor in build- Ichikidana, an Indian restaurant words as Jesus in his talks. “That wor- ing relations with a friend. Everyone in in West Jerusalem. ried them. They thought she is Hindu India celebrated everyone else’s festi- and Christian now!” vals. In Israel, on the other hand, you will Avishai Judah, 21 and just done with rarely find Jews and Arabs mixing with military service, has no desire to go to each other.” India. “I have India in the house. I don’t Being mainly a middle-class com- need to go there.” munity, Israel’s Indians have not ben- Indian Jews for the most part are efited directly from the boom in India- adaptable émigrés. They have adapted Israeli trade relations since the two well to Israel, but there have been diffi- countries established diplomatic rela- culties. Greenfield, arriving in 1984, went tions in 1992. Trade has grown since then from affluence to poverty. “I had six or from $ 200 million a year to $ 5.5 billion seven servants in Delhi. I moved into im- a year at the end of 2011. Diamonds are migrant housing in Ramat Aviv. I had to India’s biggest export to Israel, while share a flat with a Russian roommate. military equipment is the most promi- Even going to bathroom in the morning nent item Israel exports. was a problem. It was very hard.” Eliyahu Bezalel exported something Lahava Silliman, in her late 40s, and more important than his flowers to In- the owner of Ichikidana, an Indian res- dia in the nineties: he exported his suc- taurant in West Jerusalem, had a problem cessful greenhouse technology that in- with the aggressiveness of Israeli society, cluded drip irrigation, making seedlings a problem she still wrestles with. “When compatible with particular kinds of soil, I first arrived in Israel,” (her mother im- gauging the tension between soil and migrated with her from Calcutta when water. He imported this technology per- Silliman was 17) “it took me a half hour sonally, charged nothing for it, and was to board a bus because I wouldn’t push.” happy merely to do his part to help In- Judah, 23 when she emigrated, re- dian agriculture along. flected, “Adjusting to new country can be “I traveled to horticultural conven- compared to the Indian bride leaving her tions in India, and Indians traveled to mother’s house to live with her husband. Shachar to visit my greenhouse.” Eliyahu You have to change. There are things you wears his Indian skin more boisterously have to forget.” than most Indian-Israelis. Even before The good relations enjoyed by Jews he was honored with the Pravasi Award, and Muslims in India is something they he received an honor that seemed remember. The Bene Israel often ate at to thrill him more. He was invited to Muslim homes, and had Muslims come sleep in the bed Prime Minister Nehru to eat at their own homes. In Calcutta, had slept in when the latter visited the Muslims became the caretakers of the Hirakud Dam in Orissa. “My parents three synagogues, no longer in use, and would have been so proud!” the Jewish Cemetery of Calcutta, very much in use. It is mainly Muslim girls Robert Hirschfield is a New-York based free- who attend the private Jewish Girls lance writer whose work has appeared in Outlook, School, where they must remove their Sojourners, Matador, and other publications. hijabs before entering. Cochini Jews re-