Indian Jews

The study delves upon the shaping of the identity of the Paradesi Synagogue situated in the Jew Town of Fort Kochi. Across time, the Jewish Community (White Jews) of Fort Kochi have duly claimed that they were a part of the larger Yehuda Legacy or Judaica Diaspora in India. The Paradesi Synagogue was built in 1568 by the leaders of the White Jewish community (Timberg: 1986) who claims to be the oldest functioning Jewish synagogue not only in this area of India but also in the whole country and the rest of the British Commonwealth. It is the only functional synagogue of the Jews of Cochin and conducts religious services albeit.

This article examines the synagogue-centered “yogam” organization as a governing system for each of the eight Jewish communities in Kerala up to the mid-20th century, when most of the Kerala Jews emigrated to Israel. It includes our English translation of excerpts from a 1958 Hebrew article by Israeli scholar Naphtali Bar-Giora, based on his documentary research and interviews  in India and Israel with Kerala Jews from different yogam-centered communities.

Around 1750 in Cochin, India, two remarkable manuscripts were produced: a rabbinical Hebrew translation of the New Testament, Cambridge Library Manuscript O0 1.32 and O0 1.16, and a Hebrew translation of the Quran, now in possession of the Library of Congress in Washington.
Franz Delitzsch explained in 1870 the link between the Cambridge manuscripts and established the commissioner of the New Testament. Myron M. Weinstein showed in 1972 the link between the New Testament and the Quran. He identified the copyist of the manuscripts, David Cohen, and the translator of the Quran, Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort. By comparing the evidence of Delitzsch and Weinstein and adding recent acquired insights about van Dort and from the Tranquebar mission, I found out that the commissioner of all manuscripts was Ezekiel Rahabi. The purpose of both commissions was to understand trading and diplomatic partners. I proof with biographical data that van Dort is a translator of all manuscripts. With the dates of van Dort’s visits to Cochin, I established the age of the Hebrew New Testament O0 1.32 (1741-1756), O0 1.16 (1757-1760), and the Hebrew Quran (1757-1760).

The monograph examines how Jews and Muslims relate to each other in a place where, in contrast to Europe, their perceived attitudes towards one another do not often make headlines. In the European imagination, Jews and Muslims have both been seen as the ultimate "other." At the same time, Western politics and media construct Jews and Muslims in opposition to each other and see their relationship as unavoidably polarized due to the conflict in the Middle East. In this book, Yulia Egorova explores how South Asian Jews and Muslims relate to each other outside of a Western and Christian context, and reveals that despite some important differences this relationship is still intrinsically connected to global narratives about Jews and Muslims. She also shows that the Hindu right have turned South Asian Jewish experiences into a rhetorical tool to deny the existence of discrimination against religious minorities, and that this ostensible celebration of Jewishness masks not only anti-Muslim, but also anti-Jewish prejudice. She argues that South Asia inherited these notions of racial and religious difference from the British during the colonial period, which continue to cause stigmatization and oppression to this day. Jews and Muslims in South Asia is a fascinating new contribution to the academic discussion on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and their overlapping histories.

Focusing on the aesthetic, moral, and affective economies of one-day multisite pilgrimage tours of Indian-Jewish Israelis to the tombs of tzaddikim (“righteous persons”) as well as venerated sites of biblical figures in Israel, the article explores how the neoliberal idea of entrepreneurial competitiveness assists in mobilizing and sustaining culturally valued moral and aesthetic inclinations. Furthermore, it foregrounds the “multisensoriality” of religiously defined practice, emotion, and belief and their role in the production of an Indian-Jewish ambiance and the narratives that it elicits. Clearly, throughout their pilgrimage, Indian-Jewish Israelis carve out their own spaces in which they author the sacred sites and cultural landscapes that they visit through aesthetic engagement, embodied ritual, and, more generally, sensory enactment. However, in order to achieve the desired ambiance, Indian-Jewish pilgrims must to some extent become entrepreneurs or consumers in Israel’s flourishing market of folk veneration both with regard to homegrown and imported saintly Jewish figures.