The Jews of India

The Jews of India PDF Author: Orpa Slapak
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9789652781796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Jews of India, one of the lesser-known and perhaps most interesting of the Diaspora, comprise the three geographically and ethnographically distinct communities examined in The Israel Museum's unique and authoritative volume The Jews of India. The Bene Israel, the largest group at approximately 24,000 members, inhabited the Maharashtra State on India's western coast; its ties with mainstream Judaism were reestablished in the nineteenth century. The smallest and oldest of the Indian Jewish communities, the Jews of Cochin have been a presence on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India for at least a thousand years. They numbered about 2,500 in the mid-1950's, just prior to their immigration to Israel. The Baghdadi Jews migrated from Iraq and Syria to large commercial cities in western and eastern India in the late eighteenth century. Numbering about 5,000 at the population's peak, Baghdadi Jews were largely assimilated into British colonial society, did not develop a distinct material culture in India, and so are a relatively minor presence in this book. Esteemed editor Orpa Slapak spearheaded studies of all three Indian Jewish communities in Israel and in India, and has assembled a vivid and powerful portrait of these peoples. The text is profusely illustrated with striking color and black and white photographs of Indian Jews at home, work, prayer, and leisure, as well as a multitude of remarkable Indian Jewish artifacts, including illuminated manuscripts, lamps, clothing, jewelry, and household implements. Several maps, useful glossaries, and a selected bibliography complete the volume.

The Jews of India

The Jews of India PDF Author: Orpa Slapak
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9789652781796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jews of India, one of the lesser-known and perhaps most interesting of the Diaspora, comprise the three geographically and ethnographically distinct communities examined in The Israel Museum's unique and authoritative volume The Jews of India. The Bene Israel, the largest group at approximately 24,000 members, inhabited the Maharashtra State on India's western coast; its ties with mainstream Judaism were reestablished in the nineteenth century. The smallest and oldest of the Indian Jewish communities, the Jews of Cochin have been a presence on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India for at least a thousand years. They numbered about 2,500 in the mid-1950's, just prior to their immigration to Israel. The Baghdadi Jews migrated from Iraq and Syria to large commercial cities in western and eastern India in the late eighteenth century. Numbering about 5,000 at the population's peak, Baghdadi Jews were largely assimilated into British colonial society, did not develop a distinct material culture in India, and so are a relatively minor presence in this book. Esteemed editor Orpa Slapak spearheaded studies of all three Indian Jewish communities in Israel and in India, and has assembled a vivid and powerful portrait of these peoples. The text is profusely illustrated with striking color and black and white photographs of Indian Jews at home, work, prayer, and leisure, as well as a multitude of remarkable Indian Jewish artifacts, including illuminated manuscripts, lamps, clothing, jewelry, and household implements. Several maps, useful glossaries, and a selected bibliography complete the volume.

India's Israel Policy

India's Israel Policy PDF Author: P. R. Kumaraswamy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231525486
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
India's foreign policy toward Israel is a subject of deep dispute. Throughout the twentieth century arguments have raged over the Palestinian problem and the future of bilateral relations. Yet no text comprehensively looks at the attitudes and policies of India toward Israel, especially their development in conjunction with history. P. R. Kumaraswamy is the first to account for India's Israel policy, revealing surprising inconsistencies in positions taken by the country's leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and tracing the crackling tensions between its professed values and realpolitik. Kumaraswamy's findings debunk the belief that India possesses a homogenous policy toward the Middle East. In fact, since the early days of independence, many within India have supported and pursued relations with Israel. Using material derived from archives in both India and Israel, Kumaraswamy investigates the factors that have hindered relations between these two countries despite their numerous commonalities. He also considers how India destabilized relations, the actions that were necessary for normalization to occur, and the directions bilateral relations may take in the future. In his most provocative argument, Kumaraswamy underscores the disproportionate affect of anticolonial sentiments and the Muslim minority on shaping Indian policy.

Who Are the Jews of India?

Who Are the Jews of India? PDF Author: Nathan Katz
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520920729
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Of all the Diaspora communities, the Jews of India are among the least known and most interesting. This readable study, full of vivid details of everyday life, looks in depth at the religious life of the Jewish community in Cochin, the Bene Israel from the remote Konkan coast near Bombay, and the Baghdadi Jews, who migrated to Indian port cities and flourished under the British Raj. Who Are the Jews of India? is the first integrated, comprehensive work available on all three of India's Jewish communities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Nathan Katz brings together methods and insights from religious studies, ritual studies, anthropology, history, linguistics, and folklore, as he discusses the strategies each community developed to maintain its Jewish identity. Based on extensive fieldwork throughout India, as well as close reading of historical documents, this study provides a striking new understanding of the Jewish Diaspora and of Hindu civilization as a whole.

The Jews of India

The Jews of India PDF Author: Rachael Rukmini Israel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
History of Jewish people in India.

The Jews’ Indian

The Jews’ Indian PDF Author: David S. Koffman
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 197880086X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The Jews' Indian investigates the history of American Jewish relationships with Native Americans, both in the realm of cultural imagination and in face-to-face encounters. This book is the first history to analyze Jewish participation in, and Jews' grappling with the legacies of Native American history and the colonial project upon which America rests.

Growing Up Jewish in India

Growing Up Jewish in India PDF Author: Ori Z. Soltes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789389136814
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
* A comprehensive historical account of the primary Jewish communities of India, their synagogues, and unique Indian Jewish custom* The essays and over 150 images in the book explore how Indian Jews retained their unique characteristics, as well as became integrated into the larger society of India* Includes the memoir of growing up Jewish in India by Siona Benjamin, and an analysis of her trans-cultural artGrowing Up Jewish in India offers an historical account of the primary Jewish communities of India, their synagogues, and unique Indian Jewish customs. It offers an investigation both within Jewish India and beyond its borders, tracing how Jews arrived in the vast subcontinent at different times from different places and have both inhabited dispersed locations within the larger Indian world, and ultimately created their own diaspora within the larger Jewish diaspora by relocating to other countries, particularly Israel and the United States. The text and its rich complement of over 150 images explore how Indian Jews retained their unique characteristics as Jews, became well-integrated into the larger society of India as Indians, and have continued to offer a synthesis of cultural qualities wherever they reside. Among the outcomes of these developments is the unique art of Siona Benjamin, who grew up in the Bene Israel community of Mumbai and then moved to the US, and whose art reflects Indian and Jewish influences as well as concepts like Tikkun olam (Hebrew for 'repairing the world'). In combining discussions of the Indian Jewish communities with Benjamin's own story and an analysis of her artistic output - and in introducing these narratives within the larger story of Jews across eastern Asia - this volume offers a unique verbal and visual portrait of a significant slice of Indian and Jewish culture and tradition. It would be of interest to Jews and non-Jews, Indian and non-Indian alike, as well as to history enthusiasts and the general reader interested in art and culture.

The Jewish Communities of India

The Jewish Communities of India PDF Author: Joan G. Roland
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412837484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Although the Bene Israel community of western India, the Baghdadi Jews of Bombay and Calcutta, and the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast form a tiny segment of the Indian population, their long-term residence within a vastly different culture has always made them the subject of much curiosity. India is perhaps the one country in the world where Jews have never been exposed to anti-Semitism, but in the last century they have had to struggle to maintain their identity as they encountered two competing nationalisms: Indian nationalism and Zionism. Focusing primarily on the Bene Israel and Baghdadis in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Joan Roland describes how identities begun under the Indian caste system changed with British colonial rule, and then how the struggle for Indian independence and the establishment of a Jewish homeland raised even further questions. She also discuses the experiences of European Jewish refugees who arrived in India after 1933 and remained there until after World War II. To describe what it meant to be a Jew in India, Roland draws on a wealth of materials such as Indian Jewish periodicals, official and private archives, and extensive interviews. Historians, Judaic studies specialist, India area scholars, postcolonialist, and sociologists will all find this book to be an engaging study. A new final chapter discusses the position of the remaining Jews in India as well as the status of Indian Jews in Israel at the end of the twentieth century.

India's Bene Israel

India's Bene Israel PDF Author: Shirley Berry Isenberg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description


Being Indian, Being Israeli

Being Indian, Being Israeli PDF Author: Maina Chawla Singh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788173048395
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The story of the Jews of India has often been told by historians, anthropologists and sometimes by Indian Jews themselves recounting their family histories in India, the land of their birth over many generations. We know that Indian Jewish communities: the Bene Israelis in Bombay, Poona, Ahmedabad and Jabalpur, the Baghdadis in Calcutta and Bombay and the Kerala Jews in Cochin, Parur or Chendamangalam lived peacefully in pluralistic neighbourhoods experiencing no anti-semitism. However, when Israel was established, thousands of Indian Jews were inspired and like their cousins from other parts of the globe, migrated to the Jewish Homeland. Yet, today 60 years since the first Jewish families made aliya and migrated to Israel (1949), little is known about this community of 70,000 Indian Jews scattered across Israel. This book, for the first time, presents a deeply researched analysis of all three Jewish communities from India, studying them holistically as Indian-Israelis with shared histories of migration, acculturation and identity in the Jewish Homeland. Based on extensive fieldwork and ethnographic research conducted among Indian Jews across Israel between 2005-8, the book reflects the authors deep engagement and familiarity with Israeli society and the complexities of ethnicity and class that underlie the cleavages within Israeli Jewish society. The volume vividly captures the immigrant experiences of first-generation Indian Jewish men and women. The tapestry of these narratives and lived experiences is skilfully woven into theoretical insights illustrating how ethnicity, gender and class intersect with Jewish-ness to create complex identities of Being Indian and Being Israeli. The authors deep engagement with the Indian-Israeli community and her accessible style enrich this book for readers across a wide range of interests.

India and Israel

India and Israel PDF Author: P. R. Kumaraswamy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description