Who Are the Jews of India?
by Nathan Katz

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Book Review: Jews of India: A Happy Diaspora
Summary: 5 Stars

It's fitting that the University of California Press is the publisher of the first comprehensive scholarly study of all three of the Jewish communities in India. It was a UC Berkeley professor of history, Walter J. Fischel, who pioneered the study of the Jews in India in his 1962 article, "Cochin in Jewish History: Prolegomena to a History of the Jews in India," published in The Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research. Inspired by his article, several monographs soon appeared on each of the three Indian Jewish communities.

In the introduction to this truly engrossing book, Nathan Katz writes: "Indian Jews lived as all Jews should have been allowed to live: free, proud, observant, creative and prosperous, self-realized, full contributors to the host community. Then, when twentieth century conditions permitted they returned en masse to Israel, which they had always proclaimed to be their true home despite India's hospitality. The Indian chapter is one of the happiest of the Jewish Diaspora."

The three Indian Jewish communities have a distinct history: the Cochin Jews arrived as early as the first century; the Bene Israel Jews of greater Bombay arrived, they claim, 1600 years ago; and the Baghdadi Jews of the port cities of Bombay and Calcutta arrived in the middle of the eighteenth century.

The largest section of the book is on the Cochin Jews. The connection between Cochin and the Jews goes back to the time of King Solomon (992-952 B. C.): teak, ivory, spice, and peacocks were exported to Palestine. The Cochin Jews claim their ancestors arrived in Shingly, near Cochin, on the southwest coast of India in 72 A. D., fleeing the destruction of the second temple by the Romans. They were allowed to settle in Cochin by the local maharaja, where many of them prospered as merchants, government officials and soldiers. Katz quotes from Mandelbaum's article in the Jewish Journal of Sociology: As late as 1550 "the Raja of Cochin refused to fight a battle on Saturday because on that day his Jewish soldiers would not fight; and they were the best warriors he had raised." Katz comments: "Probably India is the only country on earth so civilized that in war, out of deference to its esteemed Jewish soldiers, no battles were fought on the Sabbath."

The Bene Israeli community, which numbered 50,000 before emigration to Israel, 90 percent are gone to Israel, claims its origin to some sixteen or eighteen hundred years ago, they say, "when their ancestors were shipwrecked on Indian shores.... They came as refugees from persecution and political overthrow." Katz dismisses this as pseudo-history without elaborating. The Bene Israel divided themselves into subcastes: Gora, or White, and Kala, or Black.

On the harmonious history of the Jewish diaspora in India, Katz analyzes: "A crucial distinction between India and the rest of the Diaspora, however, is that in India acculturation is not paid for in the currency of assimilation. By acculturation I mean fitting comfortably into a society while retaining one's own identity, whereas by assimilation I mean that the loss of that identity is a perceived condition for acceptance. The study of Indian Jewish communities demonstrates that in Indian culture an immigrant group gains status precisely by maintaining its own identity. Such is the experience not only of India's Jews, but also of local Christians, Zoroastrians, and recently, Tibetan Buddhists. This striking feature of Indian civilization is reflected by each of these immigrant groups."

Although Katz is right in ascribing Hinduism's acceptance, even encouragement, of differences, I would point out that the Hindus extend hospitality to the outside groups to the extent that the outsiders refrain from proselytizing Hindus. For example, Christian missionaries are vigorously opposed by most Hindus. Even Gandhi was completely against Christian missionaries in India: "If I had the power and could legislate, I should stop all proselytising.... It is the deadliest poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth." The major cause of conflict between the Muslims and the Hindus for more than a thousand years has been the Koranic injunction to convert all infidels and to slay those who refuse [Koran, 9.5]. Unlike the Muslims and Christians, the Jews in India never engaged in proselytizing activities. The greatest of the Jewish strategies for living and prospering in India lay in what the Jews did not do!

As part of the project for writing this book, Nathan Katz, professor and chair of Religious Studies at Florida International University, interviewed many people in India and in Israel to provide the reader an understanding of "how these two great and ancient civilizations, Indic and Judaic, interacted within the very being of India's Jews.

In Calcutta, Norman Nahoum, one of the small number of Baghdadi Jews who remain in India, tells him: "We are taught to abhor idolatry to prevent its assimilation into Abraham's family of religions, but if you look closely you will see that Judaism and Hinduism have so much in common. In India, we are accepted totally, at the same time we are treated with kid gloves, like special guests." Referring to Hindus, Nahoum says, "These people are civilized; the others are barbarians, bent on proselytization. If you ask any Jew who has lived in India, from Cochin to Calcutta , you will find that although the Hindus are called idolaters, they are more accepting of Jews than those so-called new religions that grew out of Judaism." In Cochin, interviewees tell him: "Anti-Semitism doesn't exist in our Indian dictionary."

Katz has written a heart-warming, scholarly book on the Jewish diaspora India.

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