Ruby of Cochin

Ruby of Cochin PDF Author: Ruby Daniel
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society of America
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Ruby of Cochin is the first book written by a Jewish woman from Cochin. It is a rich description of Jewish life on the Southwest Coast of India, spanning many centuries. It is the story of one woman - yet it is also the story of all the Jews of Cochin, from the earliest settlements, when the Maharajah granted the Jews their land and privileged status, until today, when a transplanted Cochin community is finding new life in Israel. The book is written with a distinctive storyteller's voice and contains historical legends, ghost tales, colorful renditions of Jewish celebrations in Cochin, and translations of Jewish women's songs from Malayalam, the language of the Cochin Jews.

Ruby of Cochin

Ruby of Cochin PDF Author: Ruby Daniel
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society of America
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ruby of Cochin is the first book written by a Jewish woman from Cochin. It is a rich description of Jewish life on the Southwest Coast of India, spanning many centuries. It is the story of one woman - yet it is also the story of all the Jews of Cochin, from the earliest settlements, when the Maharajah granted the Jews their land and privileged status, until today, when a transplanted Cochin community is finding new life in Israel. The book is written with a distinctive storyteller's voice and contains historical legends, ghost tales, colorful renditions of Jewish celebrations in Cochin, and translations of Jewish women's songs from Malayalam, the language of the Cochin Jews.

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 Last Jews of Kerala

The Last Jews of Kerala PDF Author: Edna Fernandes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1626369356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Two thousand years ago, trade routes and the fall of Jerusalem took Jewish settlers seeking sanctuary across Europe and Asia. One little-known group settled in Kerala, in tropical southwestern India. Eventually numbering in the thousands, with eight synagogues, they prospered. Some came to possess vast estates and plantations, and many enjoyed economic privilege and political influence. Their comfortable lives, however, were haunted by a feud between the Black Jews of Ernakulam and the White Jews of Mattancherry. Separated by a narrow stretch of swamp and the color of their skin, they locked in a rancorous feud for centuries, divided by racism and claims and counterclaims over who arrived first in their adopted land. Today, this once-illustrious people is in its dying days. Centuries of interbreeding and a latter-day Exodus from Kerala after Israel's creation in 1948 have shrunk the population. The Black and White Jews combined now number less than fifty, and only one synagogue remains. On the threshold of extinction, the two remaining Jewish communities of Kerala have come to realize that their destiny, and their undoing, is the same. The Last Jews of Kerala narrates the rise and fall of the Black Jews and the White Jews over the centuries and within the context of the grand history of the Jewish people. It is the story of the twilight days of a people whose community will, within the next generation, cease to exist. Yet it is also a rich tale of weddings and funerals, of loyalty to family and fierce individualism, of desperation and hope.

Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality

Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality PDF Author: Ellen M. Umansky
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584657309
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
The only comprehensive volume of Jewish women's spiritual writing from the sixteenth century to the present

Jewish Communities of India

Jewish Communities of India PDF Author: Joan G. Roland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135130982X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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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.

Writing Indians and Jews

Writing Indians and Jews PDF Author: A. Guttman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137339691
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Writing Indians and Jews examines discursive practices surrounding the representation of Jews and Jewishness in Indian literature in English. These investigations make an important contribution to the study of contemporary South Asian and diasporic literature, and understandings of anti-Semitism, religious fundamentalism, and globalization.

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.

From India to Israel

From India to Israel PDF Author: Joseph Hodes
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077359051X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Between May 1948 and December 1951, Israel received approximately 684,000 immigrants from across the globe. The arrival of so many ethnic, linguistic, and cultural groups to such a small place in such a short time was unprecedented and the new country was ill-prepared to absorb its new citizens. The first years of the state were marked by war, agricultural failure, a housing crisis, health epidemics, a terrible culture clash, and a struggle between the religious authorities and the secular government over who was going to control the state. In From India to Israel, Joseph Hodes examines Israel's first decades through the perspective of an Indian Jewish community, the Bene Israel, who would go on to play an important role in the creation of the state. He describes how a community of relatively high status and free from persecution under the British Raj left the recently independent India for fear of losing status, only to encounter bias and prejudice in their new country. In 1960, a decision made by the religious authorities to ban the Bene Israel from marrying other Jews on the grounds that they were not "pure Jews" set in motion a civil rights struggle between the Indian community and the religious authority with far-reaching implications. After a drawn-out struggle, and under pressure from both the government and the people, the Bene Israel were declared acceptable for marriage. A detailed look at how one immigrant community fought to maintain their place within a religion and a society, From India to Israel raises important questions about the state of Israel and its earliest struggles to absorb the diversity in its midst.

Dharma and Halacha

Dharma and Halacha PDF Author: Ithamar Theodor
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498512801
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In recent decades there has been a rising interest among scholars of Hinduism and Judaism in engaging in the comparative studies of these ancient traditions. Academic interests have also been inspired by the rise of interreligious dialogue by the respective religious leaders. Dharma and Halacha: Comparative Studies in Hindu-Jewish Philosophy and Religion represents a significant contribution to this emerging field, offering an examination of a wide range of topics and a rich diversity of perspectives and methodologies within each tradition, and underscoring significant affinities in textual practices, ritual purity, sacrifice, ethics and theology. Dharma refers to a Hindu term indicating law, duty, religion, morality, justice and order, and the collective body of Dharma is called Dharma-shastra. Halacha is the Hebrew term designating the Jewish spiritual path, comprising the collective body of Jewish religious laws, ethics and rituals. Although there are strong parallels between Hinduism and Judaism in topics such as textual practices and mystical experience, the link between these two religious systems, i.e. Dharma and Halacha, is especially compelling and provides a framework for the comparative study of these two traditions. The book begins with an introduction to Hindu-Jewish comparative studies and recent interreligious encounters. Part I of the book titled “Ritual and Sacrifice,” encompasses the themes of sacrifice, holiness, and worship. Part II titled "Ethics," is devoted to comparing ethical systems in both traditions, highlighting the manifold ways in which the sacred is embodied in the mundane. Part III of the book titled "Theology," addresses common themes and phenomena in spiritual leadership, as well as textual metaphors for mystical and visionary experiences in Hinduism and Judaism. The epilogue offers a retrospective on Hindu-Jewish encounters, mapping historic as well as contemporary academic initiatives and collaborations.

"Our Crowd"

Author: Stephen Birmingham
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504026284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestseller that traces the rise of the Guggenheims, the Goldmans, and other families from immigrant poverty to social prominence. They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of “the 400,” a register of New York’s most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite “100,” a privileged society as opulent and exclusive as the one that had refused them entry. “Our Crowd” is the fascinating story of this rarefied society. Based on letters, documents, diary entries, and intimate personal remembrances of family lore by members of these most illustrious clans, it is an engrossing portrait of upper-class Jewish life over two centuries; a riveting story of the bankers, brokers, financiers, philanthropists, and business tycoons who started with nothing and turned their family names into American institutions.