Download or read book The Jews Indian written by David S. Koffman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Social Science, Anthropology, and Folklore Honorable Mention, 2021 Saul Viener Book Prize 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. These two groups’ exchanges were numerous and diverse, proving at times harmonious when Jews’ and Natives people’s economic and social interests aligned, but discordant and fraught at other times. American Jews could be as exploitative of Native cultural, social, and political issues as other American settlers, and historian David Koffman argues that these interactions both unsettle and historicize the often triumphant consensus history of American Jewish life. Focusing on the ways Jewish class mobility and civic belonging were wrapped up in the dynamics of power and myth making that so severely impacted Native Americans, this books is provocative and timely, the first history to critically analyze Jewish participation in, and Jews’ grappling with the legacies of Native American history and the colonial project upon which America rests.
Download or read book Jewish Portraits Indian Frames written by Jael Miriam Silliman and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting family portrait of four generations of Jewish women from Calcutta.
Download or read book The Jews of India written by Orpa Slapak and published by UPNE. This book was released on 1995 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Bene Appetit written by Esther David and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2021-04-24 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jewish community in India comprises a tiny but important part of the population. There are around five thousand Jews and five Jewish communities in India, but they are fast diminishing in number. Intrigued by the common thread that binds the Indian Jews as a whole despite their living in different parts of the country, Esther David explores the lifestyle and cuisine of the Jews in every region, from the Bene Israelis of western India to the Bene Menashes of the Northeast, the Bene Ephraims of Andhra Pradesh, the Baghdadi Jews of Kolkata and the Kochi Jews. She discovers that while they all follow the strict Jewish dietary laws, they have also adapted to the local cuisine. Some have even turned vegetarian! Extensively researched, with heartwarming anecdotes and mouthwatering recipes, Bene Appetit offers a holistic portrait of a little-known community.
Download or read book Who Are the Jews of India written by Nathan Katz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-11-18 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Being Indian Being Israeli written by Maina Chawla Singh and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Jewish Communities of India written by Joan G. Roland and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1989 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Members of the Tribe written by Rachel Rubinstein and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of representations of American Indians in Jewish literature and popular media. In Members of the Tribe: Native America in the Jewish Imagination, author Rachel Rubinstein examines interventions by Jewish writers into an ongoing American fascination with the "imaginary Indian." Rubinstein argues that Jewish writers represented and identified with the figure of the American Indian differently than their white counterparts, as they found in this figure a mirror for their own anxieties about tribal and national belonging. Through a series of literary readings, Rubinstein traces a shifting and unstable dynamic of imagined Indian-Jewish kinship that can easily give way to opposition and, especially in the contemporary moment, competition. In the first chapter, "Playing Indian, Becoming American," Rubinstein explores the Jewish representations of Indians over the nineteenth century, through narratives of encounter and acts of theatricalization. In chapter 2, "Going Native, Becoming Modern," she examines literary modernism’s fascination with the Indian-poet and a series of Yiddish translations of Indian chants that appeared in the modernist journal Shriftn in the 1920s. In the third chapter, "Red Jews," Rubinstein considers the work of Jewish writers from the left, including Tillie Olsen, Michael Gold, Nathanael West, John Sanford, and Howard Fast, and in chapter 4, "Henry Roth, Native Son," Rubinstein focuses on Henry Roth’s complicated appeals to Indianness. The final chapter, "First Nations," addresses contemporary contestations between Jews and Indians over cultural and territorial sovereignty, in literary and political discourse as well as in museum spaces. As Rubinstein considers how Jews used the figure of the Indian to feel "at home" in the United States, she enriches ongoing discussions about the ways that Jews negotiated their identity in relation to other cultural groups. Students of Jewish studies and literature will enjoy the unique insights in Members of the Tribe.
Download or read book Growing Up Jewish in India written by Ori Z. Soltes and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * 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.
Download or read book The Unconverted Self written by Jonathan Boyarin and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-05-14 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Unconverted Self proposes that questions of difference inside Christian Europe not only are inseparable from the painful legacy of colonialism but also reveal Christian domination to be a fragile construct. Boyarin compares the Christian efforts aimed toward European Jews and toward indigenous peoples of the New World, bringing into focus the intersection of colonial expansion with the Inquisition and adding significant nuance to the entire question of the colonial encounter."--Publisher description
Download or read book Jews and India written by Yulia Egorova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-02-22 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the image of Jews in India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book looks at both the Indian attitudes towards the Jewish communities of the subcontinent and at the way Jews and Judaism in general have been represented in Indian discourse. Despite the fact that the Indian Jewish population constitutes one of the country’s tiniest minorities, the relations of the local Jews with other communities form an integral part in the history of Indian multiculturalism. This has become increasingly apparent over the last two centuries as Judaism and its image have been incorporated into the discussions of some of the most prominent figures of different religious and nationalist movements, leaders of independent India, and the Indian mass media. Furthermore, recent decades witnessed mass adoption of Israelite identity by Indians from two different regions and religious groups. Being a topic that has received little attention, Jews and India seeks to rectify this situation by examining these developments and providing a fascinating insight into these issues. This volume will be of interest to scholars of Jewish and Indian cultural studies.
Download or read book Indian Jewish Cooking written by Mavis Hyman and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Mother s Spice Cupboard written by Elana Benjamin and published by ReadHowYouWant. This book was released on 2014-05-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In My Mother's Spice Cupboard, Elana Benjamin has produced a warm and detailed account of her family's story, as they moved from Baghdad to Bombay (now Mumbai) and finally to Sydney, Australia. With loving strokes, she has created a detailed picture of everyday life for Jews living in Bombay during the British rule, followed by the disintegration of the community post - independence. By the early 1960s, when her family left, the majority of India's Jewish community had emigrated. Thus, she has managed to recreate a world that no longer exists, whilst there were still family members around to tell her the stories.
Download or read book The Baghdadi Jews in India written by Shalva Weil and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the extraordinary differentiation of the Baghdadi Jewish community over time during their sojourn in India from the end of the eighteenth century until their dispersion to Indian diasporas in Israel and English-speaking countries throughout the world after India gained independence in 1947. Chapters on schools, institutions and culture present how Baghdadis in India managed to maintain their communities by negotiating multiple identities in a stratified and complex society. Several disciplinary perspectives are utilized to explore the super-diversity of the Baghdadis and the ways in which they successfully adapted to new situations during the Raj, while retaining particular traditions and modifying and incorporating others. Providing a comprehensive overview of this community, the contributions to the book show that the legacy of the Baghdadi Jews lives on for Indians today through landmarks and monuments in Mumbai, Pune and Kolkata, and for Jews, through memories woven by members of the community residing in diverse diasporas. Offering refreshing historical perspectives on the colonial period in India, this book will be of interest to those studying South Asian Studies, Diaspora and Ethnic Studies, Sociology, History, Jewish Studies and Asian Religion.
Download or read book The Last Jews of Kerala written by Edna Fernandes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Burnt Bread and Chutney written by Carmit Delman and published by One World. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “From the outside, no matter what the gradations of my mixed heritage, the shadow of Indian brown in my skin caused others to automatically perceive me as Hindu or Muslim. . . . Still, I trekked through life with the spirit of a Jew, fleshed out by the unique challenges and wonders of a combined brown and white tradition.” In the politics of skin color, Carmit Delman is an ambassador from a world of which few are even aware. Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent. They met while working the land of a nascent Israeli state. Bound by love for each other and that newborn country, they hardly took notice of the interracial aspect of their union. But their daughter, Carmit, growing up in America, was well aware of her uncommon heritage. Burnt Bread and Chutney is a remarkable synthesis of the universal and the exotic. Carmit Delman’s memories of the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors living in the Indian-Jewish community. As rites and traditions, smells and textures intertwine, Carmit’s unique cultural identity evolves. It is a youth spent dancing on the roofs of bomb shelters on a kibbutz in Israel—and the knowledge of a heritage marked by arranged marriages and archaic rules and roles. It is coming of age in Jewish summer camps and at KISS concerts—and the inevitable combination of old and new: ancient customs and modern attitudes, Jewish, Indian, and American. Carmit Delman’s journey through religious traditions, family tensions, and social tribulations to a healthy sense of wholeness and self is rendered with grace and an acute sense of depth. Burnt Bread and Chutney is a rich and innovative book that opens wide a previously unseen world.
Download or read book The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess Race Religion and DNA written by Jeff Wheelwright and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant and emotionally resonant exploration of science and family history. A vibrant young Hispano woman, Shonnie Medina, inherits a breast-cancer mutation known as BRCA1.185delAG. It is a genetic variant characteristic of Jews. The Medinas knew they were descended from Native Americans and Spanish Catholics, but they did not know that they had Jewish ancestry as well. The mutation most likely sprang from Sephardic Jews hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The discovery of the gene leads to a fascinating investigation of cultural history and modern genetics by Dr. Harry Ostrer and other experts on the DNA of Jewish populations. Set in the isolated San Luis Valley of Colorado, this beautiful and harrowing book tells of the Medina family’s five-hundred-year passage from medieval Spain to the American Southwest and of their surprising conversion from Catholicism to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1980s. Rejecting conventional therapies in her struggle against cancer, Shonnie Medina died in 1999. Her life embodies a story that could change the way we think about race and faith.
