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Siona Benjamin, a greater New York City artist, hangs her “very typical” Indian Jewish Mezuzah, a prayer scroll in an engraved casing, on her door to remind her of her cultural roots. “Every time I walk through my main door, it reminds me of my Indian Jewish background,” especially so during Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights that began Dec. 6 and stretches over 8 days.
Originally from Bombay, Benjamin’s art is a blend of her background growing up in a Hindu and Muslim society, educated in Catholic and Zoroastrian schools, raised Jewish and now living in America. She is among the barely 100 or so Bene Israelis left in the Tri-state area, and the 350 or so around the U.S. according to Rabbi Romiel Daniel, rabbi and president of the Rego Park Jewish Center who since 1995, has tried to keep his flock together and raise awareness among the second and third generation Bene Israeli youth.
Some of the history of this small and unique community is captured in the exhibit “Baghdadis & the Bene Israel in Bollywood & Beyond” that opened in early November at the Center for Jewish History in New York City and will be on till April 1. Presented by the American Sephardi Federation, most of the items at the exhibit come from the Joyce and Kenneth Robbins collection, and highlight how Indian Jews, women in particular, were leaders in Bollywood and beyond at a time when ccustom and tradition kept many other Indian women out of Bollywood.
In exploring the largely forgotten history of the Bene Israel of India, the exhibition showcases the careers of Pramila (Esther Victoria Abraham), (Florence Ezekiel) Nadira, Sulochana (Ruby Myers), Abraham and Rachel Sofaer, Ezra Mir, RJ Minney, and Joseph David Penkar, each of whom played multiple roles in front of and behind-the-scenes in Bollywood.
“We are always trying to reach out to different communities (of Jews),” Jason Guberman-Pfeffer, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation told Desi Talk.
Since 70 percent of the Jews in America are Ashkenazi (from Europe), the Bene Israel are virtually unknown to them, he said. But the Bene Israel have many similarities in the rituals of the Sephardi (non-European) Jews, according to Rabbi Daniel. Guberman-Pfeffer indicates that his organization uses a loose definition of Sephardi, one that could encompasses more non-European Jews including the possible ancestors of Bene Israel – Jews who according to some accounts, were expelled or chose to leave Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition in 1492 because they would not convert to Catholicism. Elizabeth Stevens, co-curator of the exhibition says very little is written on the Bene Israel academically. “We rely on the community,” she told Desi Talk.
Benjamin is one of the member’s of that community trying to record the history of Indian Jews and has traveled widely in India interviewing as many of them as possible, putting them into her art work and making a 30-minute documentary that opened the exhibition. For her this journey into the past has defined her experience of assimilation into American society and the art world here.
“For many years it was very difficult to use my Indian-ness and my Jewish-ness, or to explain that Jews have been in India for 2,000 years,” she says. She began by making works that were more about nostalgia, about her Jewish mother’s Mazza, of Indian Jewish Passover. Later her paintings were a search for identity — Indian, Jewish, American. “My work has become my religion,” she told Desi Talk, and she says she was always quite religious.
Sam Daniels, a retired school social worker with the New York Board of Education, came to the U.S. in 1955 for his graduate degree from Howard University. Born in Assam, schooled in undivided Bengal, and finally settling in Bombay with his parents and 10 siblings, Sam Daniels estimates there are some 90 Indian Jewish families in the tri-state area.
According to oral history among the Bene Israel, their forefathers arrived in India before the destruction of the second temple, around 2nd century B.C. escaping persecution in Galilee.
A commercial ship from the “Land of Israel” was wrecked near the coast of Konkan. Fourteen survivors made it to Navgaon, about 30 miles south of Bombay, where they began working on the land and producing oil. Hence the name “Shanwar Telis” indicating people who did not work on Saturdays and were cooking oil producers. They carried on several Jewish traditions such as circumcision, not eating fish which had no fins or scales, observing Israeli festivals but giving them Indian names, and not knowing about Hanukkah which became part of the Jewish tradition after they purportedly left their holy land.
This oral history is not certain, according to Kenneth Robbins, collector, author, and co-curator of the exhibit whose love of India began in 1968 with Rajput paintings and grew to engulf stamps, and other artifacts including the items now on display in the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews exhibit in New York City. So much about India is not known, he says. The earliest documentary evidence of Jews in India is in 1000 or 1100 A.D., he notes, as traders, but not as a settled community.
He says recorded information shows it was only in the early 17th Century that there is clear evidence of Indian Jews when an “African” ruler in Ahmednagar, Malik Ambar, gave certain rights to a particular Jewish family. In this context, “Shanwar Telis” are mentioned. They lived in several villages but were not a majority in any, according to his research.
“We haven’t really put together the whole history of India,” Robbins says. “We only get negative news. But it’s a society where all sorts of people have done all sorts of amazing things,” among them of course, the Bene Israel, he says, who made fine soldiers during the East India Company, and were in administrative positions, and in a free India made quite a name for themselves. Robbins is finishing a book of history of the Bene Israel in the armies in India, to be released next year. “I’ve located hundreds of pictures of 19th century Bene Israel soldiers fighting in East India Company and around the world.” He reels off the names of an admiral, a general, poet and writer Nissim Ezekiel, and other famous names in post-independence India.
Robbins estimates that at its height, there were some 60,000 to 80,000 Bene Israel in India. Starting in the 1950s, Indian Jews began moving to Israel. Now barely a few thousand remain in the Thane suburb of Mumbai. Benjamin estimates about 120,000 Indian Jews live in Israel. Her own parents settled there. Her memories and her art however, is grounded in India, where her two best friends were a Muslim and a Christian. “Where in the world except in India can you have this.” Her art she says, shows how unique it is to be born in an Indian, Hindu and Muslim country. “It has allowed so many religions to flourish. There is no other country than India where no Jews have ever suffered any anti-Semitism. I am proud of it.”
Rabbi Daniel says Indian Jews are not concentrated in any one place in the tri-state area so it is “virtually impossible” to get together for Sabbath on a weekly basis. So he started a newsletter which keeps everyone informed of important festivals and celebrations as well as other community news. Activities have thinned however as the rabbi, now 72, says only Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are celebrated at his Rego Park Jewish Center, though in the past there were more activities and some were celebrated in even at City Hall.
When Rabbi Daniel arrived in 1994 he found there was no Indian Jewish “community” to speak about. Integration was all very fine, but “We didn’t want our people to lose their identity,” he said. Services stick closely or exactly to those rituals practiced in India. At the same time, the services are not so different from the Sephardi ones, he says, and encourages Indian Jews to overcome isolation and learn more about the Ashkenazi and Sephardi even as they preserve their Bene Israel culture.
It was not so difficult to connect with the first generation of Indian Jews settled in the tri-state area, Rabbi Daniels says, They have memories of their upbringing. But as for the 2nd and 3rd generation, “We keep trying.”
The post Bombay To Brooklyn: New York’s Indian Jews Strive To Preserve Heritage appeared first on News India Times.