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.

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2010 A gripping story of a lone Jewish woman battling land sharks to keep her community alive Rachel lives alone by the sea. Her children have long migrated to Israel as have her Bene Israel Jew neighbours. Taking care of the local synagogue and preparing exquisite traditional Jewish dishes sustains Rachel's hope of seeing the community come together again at a future time. When developers make moves to acquire the synagogue and its surrounding land, Rachel's vehement opposition takes the synagogue committee and the town by surprise. Written with warmth and humour, Book of Rachel is a captivating tale of a woman's battle to live life on her own terms. Continuing the saga of the unique Bene Israel Jews in India, it adds to Esther David's reputation as a writer of grace and power.

* 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.

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.

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.