Who Are the Jews of India? PDF
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Title Pages Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 Title Pages (p.i) Who are the Jews of India? (p.ii) (p.iii) Who are the Jews of India? (p.iv) This book is a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2000 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Katz, Nathan. Who are the Jews of India? / Nathan Katz. p. cm.—(S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies) Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 0–520–21323–8 (cloth:alk.paper) 1. Jews—India—History. 2. Jews—India— Identity. 3. India—Ethnic relations. 4. Bene- Page 1 of 2 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 Title Pages Israel. I. Title. DS135.16 K38 2000 954′.004924—dc21 00–042617 Manufactured in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.4–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). ♾ Access brought to you by: Page 2 of 2 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies BY THIS ENDOWMENT THE S. MARK TAPER FOUNDATION SUPPORTS THE APPRECIATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE RICHNESS AND DIVERSITY OF JEWISH LIFE AND CULTURE Access brought to you by: Page 1 of 1 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 [UNTITLED] Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 [UNTITLED] The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the S. Mark Taper Foundation. Access brought to you by: Page 1 of 1 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 Dedication Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 Dedication (p.v) for E.S.G. (p.vi) Access brought to you by: Page 1 of 1 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 Illustrations Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 (p.ix) Illustrations Map of India xi 1. Sattu Koder addressing His Highness Rava Varma, the maharajah of Cochin, 1949 16 2. The copper plates granting autonomy to Joseph Rabban, leader of the Jews of Cranganore 34 3. View from a window in the maharajah of Cochin's palace, 1986 39 4. Interior of the Cochin Synagogue, 1986 41 5. Shalom Cohen praying in the Cochin Synagogue, 1987 43 6. The eternal light (ner tamid) before the Holy Ark in the Cochin Synagogue, 1986 44 7. Yechezkel Rahabi, Jewish merchant-prince of Cochin 51 8. Jewish men of Cochin, early twentieth century 56 9. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi greeted in the Cochin Synagogue, 1968 58 10. Jewish funeral in Chendamangalam, circa 1940s 66 11. Yosef Hallegua sounding the shofar for Rosh Hashanah in the Cochin Synagogue, 1986 83 12. Different styles of Bene Israel male dress, Bombay, early twentieth century 92 13. Bene Israel family pressing oil in Revdanda, 1992 94 14. Malida ceremony at Khandala, 1987 104 (p.x) 15. Bene Israel couple, Karachi, 1902 117 16. Lal Dewal (Red Tempie) Ohel David Synagogue, Pune, 1987 127 17. Beth-El Synagogue, Calcutta, 1987 134 18. Moses Elias in his home in Calcutta, 1986 137 19. Shaikh David Sassoon 138 20. Kenesseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, Bombay, 1987 140 Access brought to you by: Page 1 of 1 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 [UNTITLED] Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 [UNTITLED] (p.xi) (p.xii) Map of India Access brought to you by: Page 1 of 1 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 Acknowledgments Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 (p.xiii) Acknowledgments My deepest and loving thanks to my wife, Ellen S. Goldberg, coauthor of The Last Jews of Cochin and coresearcher not only for that book but also for much of what is found in this one. The study of Indian Jews has led us both on an unanticipated spiritual journey into Judaism. My thanks to those of my teachers who encouraged my interest in Indo-Judaica long before it became fashionable—the late Bibhuti S. Yadav, Maurice S. Friedman, Elie Wiesel, Daniel J. Elazar (zichron lʼbaracha [zʺl], of blessed memory), and Zalman M. Schachter. I am indebted to the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and the United States Educational Foundation in India for a senior Ful-bright research grant, 1986–1987, which enabled us to visit Jewish communities in Kochi (Cochin), Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Calcutta, Yangon (Rangoon), and Chennai (Madras). We first visited Cochin in 1984, and again in 1997, the last time with our son, Rafael Yehiel. Friends/informants in India made this work meaningful as well as possible, and I thank Jacob (zʺl) and Sarah Cohen, Sattu Koder (zʺl), Gladys Koder, Sammy and Queenie Hallegua, Gamliel and Reema Salem, Raymond Salem (zʺl), Jackie Cohen (zʺl), I. S. Hallegua, Kenneth Salem, Pearlie Simon Hallegua, Elias Koder (zʺl), P. M. Jussay, and Dr. Blossom Hallegua of Cochin; Prem Doss Yehudi of Trivandrum; Dilip Patwardhan, Ben and Sally Affif, Ralphy and Yael Jhirad, Clement Aron, Nissim Ezekiel, and Sophy Kelly of Mumbai; Ezra Kohlet (zʺl), (p.xiv) Ezekiel Isaac Malekar, and Sharada Nayak of New Delhi; the late Ashin Dasgupta, Uma Dasgupta, and Norman Nahoum (zʺl) of Calcutta; Jack Samuels of Yangon; and Ranjeet Henry of Chennai. My sincere thanks to Douglas Abrams Arava, who first suggested writing this book, and to Reed Malcolm, who saw it through the publishing process. My thanks also to my friend and neighbor, Erica Meyer Rauzin, for copyediting, and to Danielle Sharon, Hebrew instructor at Florida International University, for checking over the romanized Hebrew. The author is grateful to the following publishers and individuals for permission to quote from published and unpublished materials: To Sattu S. Koder for permission to quote from his many articles; to Judith Elias Cooper for permission to quote from The Jews of Calcutta: The Autobiography of a Community, 1798–1982, coauthored with Flower Elias; to Joan G. Roland for permission to quote from Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Age; to Esmond D. Ezra for permission to quote from Turning Back the Pages: A Chronicle of Calcutta Jewry; to Orient Page 1 of 2 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 Acknowledgments Longman Limited of Hyderabad, India, for permission to quote from Benjamin J. Israel, The Bene Israel of India: Some Studies; to Shalva Weil for permission to quote from “Bene Israel Jews in Lod, Israel: A Study of the Persistence of Ethnicity and Ethnic Identity”; to Oxford University Press for permission to quote from Stanley A. Wolpert, A New History of India, 4th edition; to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University for permission to quote from Holly Baker Reynolds's article “The Auspicious Married Woman,” in Susan S. Wadley, editor, The Powers of Tamil Women; to Rabbi Ezekiel N. Musleah for permission to quote from On the Banks of the Ganga: The Sojourn of Jews in Calcutta; to Indiana University Press for permission to quote from David Mandelbaum, “The Jewish Way of Life in Cochin,” in Jewish Social Studies 1/4; to Shirley Berry Isenberg for permission to quote from India's Bene Israel: A Comprehensive Inquiry and Sourcebook; to Barbara C. Johnson for permission to quote from both her M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation. I am also most grateful to the following individuals and institutions for permission to use photographs of or by them: To Ellen S. Goldberg for permission to use her photographs, which are identified in the book; to Frederic Brenner for permission to use the photograph of Moses Elias; to the Israel Museum's ethnography department for photographs of turn-of-the-last- century Cochin Jews and of an early-twentieth-century Bene Israel family, for Joan Roth's photograph of oil pressers of the (p.xv) Konkan, for the photographs of the Bene Israel couple from Karachi and of the statue of David Sassoon, all of which appeared in the catalogue The Jews of India; to Sattu and Gladys Koder for the photographs of himself and the maharajah of Cochin, of Mrs. Gandhi in the synagogue, and the portrait of Yechezkel Rahabi; to Tova Sofer and Reuven Sofer for the photograph of turn-of-the-last-century Cochin Jews; to R A. Aron for the funeral photograph; and to my friends who appear in the photographs and gave permission to have them published in this book. (p.xvi) Access brought to you by: Page 2 of 2 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020 Introduction Who Are the Jews of India? Nathan Katz Print publication date: 2000 Print ISBN-13: 9780520213234 Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520213234.001.0001 Introduction Nathan Katz DOI:10.1525/california/9780520213234.003.0001 Abstract and Keywords This book investigates the three major Jewish communities in India: the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast, the Bene Israel Jews of greater Bombay, and the “Baghdadi” Jews of India's port cities, especially Calcutta and Bombay. It concentrates on questions of identity—how these three distinct communities came to their individual senses of self, how historical and social forces mediated the Jewish and Indian poles of their identity, and how this identity is demonstrated and expressed in historical legend and religious ritual. The Jewish experience in India modifies the understanding of Jewishness and of immigrant identity. Keywords: Cochin Jews, Bene Israel Jews, Baghdadi Jews, Calcutta, Bombay, identity My uncle was the kosher butcher in Camden, New Jersey, where I grew up. I remember so clearly how he would take me aside and, with more seriousness than his jovial personality generally allowed, tell me, “Always remember. Always remember that you are a kohen.” I wasn't altogether sure what a kohen was, but I remember that at my grandfather's funeral my father, uncles, brothers, and I had to stand outside the cemetery gate as he was interred. The mourners then walked toward us and the memorial prayer was intoned. I felt pained at being excluded from the grave site but proud to be among an elite. Later, I learned that a kohen is a hereditary priest in Judaism and that kobanim are said to be descendants of Aharon, the brother of Moshe (Moses). The combination of story and ritual has always fascinated me. The story of Aharon and his sons makes the rituals of the kohanim—Judaism's attenuated priesthood—real and intimate. Many generations have passed this secret of kohenite ancestry along to the next just as my uncle did. A whisper, a knowing gaze convey the sense that this is an important secret, so important that it has been safeguarded orally for three thousand years. Page 1 of 7 PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use. Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 19 June 2020
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