Members of the Bene Israel, the ancient Indian Jewish community, claim they are the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, that they escaped persecution in the Galilee in the second-century BCE, and that their ancestors were shipwrecked on the southern coast of India. Like many remnant communities, subsequent generations practiced dietary laws and celebrated holidays without a direct knowledge of the Torah. The first reliable reference to the Bene Israel dates back to the 11th century, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that traders from Baghdad recognized them as fellow Jews and identified some of their practices — such as circumcising their sons at 8 days old — as distinctly Jewish. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Bene Israel completely identified as Jews, spoke a Judeo-Arabic and observed traditional Judaism. In fact, Jewish history in India has been marked most starkly by the absence of antisemitism. Jews practiced their religion freely throughout the centuries, without fear of persecution. Though India was always tolerant of its Jews, the establishment of Israel led to the mass exodus of a community that once numbered 20,000. Today there are fewer than 5,000 Jews in India.Read More
As it is said, in Genesis 28:16: “And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.’”Read More
When I recited the Sh’ma as a child, the words evoked another world. It was my rabbit hole, my looking glass, my wardrobe. When I said the Sh’ma, I pictured the large block Hebrew letters as the ultimate portal to God.Read More
A Woman of Uncertain Character: The Amorous And Radical
Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted To Be a Respectable Jewish Mom),
by Her Bastard Son By Clancy Sigal Carroll & Graf, 288 pages, $26. * * *I n the past few years, there has been an impressive list of memoirs that triumphantly defy the stereotype of theRead More
Now You See It… Stories from Cokesville, PA By Bathsheba Monk Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 240 pages, $22. * * *Cokesville, Pa., is a gritty fictional American shtetl. It is populated by Polish-Catholic émigrés and anchored by the steel mills in which they are employed. It is a place both defined and defeated by the customs of the OldRead More
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