Asian Jewish Life- The India Issue

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE A JOURNAL OF SPIRIT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE AUTUMN 2010

The India Issue Growing Up Jewish in India A photo essay

Rescuing Shipwrecked Ancestors A story in three generations

Cover photo: Š Richard Lord /courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

A JOURNAL OF SPIRIT, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

All Joking Aside The serious side of India’s Seinfeld interview with Samson Koletkar 4

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Backpacking to Enlightenment Lev Olam in India

by Jana Daniels 9 Poetry

by Nissim Ezekiel 12 Is There a Next Year in Bombay?

A film of great uncertainty

by Robin Jeffrey 15

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Growing Up Jewish in India A photo essay

by Meirah Bhastekar & Richard Lord 18 Rescuing Shipwrecked Ancestors A story in three generations

by Erica Lyons 23 Eating Falafel in Bangalore Finding a small taste of home

by Jessica MacKenzie Murthy 28

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Absence of Jewish Studies in India Creating a new awareness

by Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Ph.D. 31 In Search of Ecstasy Israelis and drug abuse in India

by Dr. Adam Cohen 36

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AUTUMN 2010

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Inbox

Dear Editor: I heard about your magazine after reading an Asian Jewish Life article on the Bnei Menashe that was republished on Aish’s website. I then had a look at the Asian Jewish Life site.

Although I am very happy to raise my children in an American center of Torah life and Orthodox Jewry, I am concerned that this leads them to believe that all Jews are exactly like them. Or worse, that anyone who is not exactly like them does not count. Therefore, I think it is important for them to learn of communities of Jews in different parts of the world: To learn that even today, kosher food is a challenge for many people. To learn that some people must work hard and travel to daven with a minyan and do not have 4 shuls in walking distance. To learn what unites us with Jews who do not look like us, how we are all dedicated to the same principles.

I feel this will make them feel how lucky they are to live in a community where it is easy to keep Torah. At the same time, it will give them a sense of responsibility to fully utilize the gifts they have been given and to share what they have with others in the spiritual sense. I want them to feel the joys and sorrows of far away Jews as the joys and sorrows of their brothers. I want them to feel connected.

Thank you! Is it possible to get a subscription to share with my children?

Esther Lakewood, New Jersey

Magen David Synagogue in Mumbai photo by Jordan Potash See your photos here submissions@asianjewishlife.org

Dear Esther: Thanks for the response. A subscription of the magazine will be provided with great pleasure. Connecting Jews from different communities throughout Asia, and throughout the world, is an important part of our mission. It is great to know our reach extends all the way to Lakewood!

All the best, Erica Lyons

Much love and success to all Micha Odenheimer

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COPYRIGHT Asian Jewish Life is the sole title published by Asian Jewish Life Ltd. © Copyright 2010. Written material and photographs in the magazine or on the website may not be used or reproduced in any form or in any way without express permission from the editor.

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Online http://www.asianjewishlife.org Email us: info@asianjewishlife.org

Dear Editor: Thanks for a beautiful article on Tevel b’Tzedek in Nepal. I have one correction however. We run two four month programs per year. The next open 4 month program is in February.

From the article you might not have known that we do two four month programs, along with the six 5 week programs a year.

How to reach us:

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

AUTUMN 2010

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/ Asian-Jewish-Life/183624201891 On Twitter: at AsianJewishLife Asian Jewish Life Suite 804, Winning House 10-16 Cochrane Street Central, Hong Kong Fax (852) 2868 4227

DISCLAIMER

AJL does not vouch for the kashrut of any product in this publication.

EditorMission

an Indian Jewish poet. He is India’s poet, an integral part of their culture. He is the poet all school children study, adults can still recite and writers aim to be.

Dear Readers: Welcome to the first themed issue of Asian Jewish Life and the one that I think I have always wanted to make the most. I grew up watching slideshows of my father’s business trips to India in the 70s and dreamed of India- the color, the contrasts, the extremes, the diversity. I was fascinated by all things connected to India: the food, the clothing, Bollywood, the music and especially the authors.

What I didn’t know about then was that there is over 2000 years of Jewish history in India. Despite this long history, Navras Jaat Aafreedi will argue in this issue of AJL in his piece Absence of Jewish Studies in India - Creating a new awareness, that few Indians are even aware of the Jewish presence and Jewish contribution to India.

Sadia Shepard in her book, The Girl from Foreign, and her film, In Search of the Bene Israel, sheds light on this history in the feature Rescuing Shipwrecked Ancestors - A story in three generations.

Shepard’s film is a highly personal quest to memorialize the community of her grandmother’s childhood. Likewise, we also talk to film maker Jonas Pariente who documents the Bene Israel in his film, Next Year in Bombay. Pariente examines the very real conflict between the desire to live in Israel and the factors that influence some members to stay in India.

The photographs of Richard Lord introduce a glimpse at the future of Indian Jewry. The photos are part of a collection contributed to AJL by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and are presented as the cover story, Growing up Jewish in India - a photo essay.

The question was who held the rights to his work. In one e-mail to a leader within the Bene Israel community, I was then ‘virtually’ introduced to Ezekiel’s former student and cousin. She then connected me to his niece and nephew. To my surprise, it turns out that his nephew is Nandu Bhende, one of India’s great rock stars. The two collaborated and put Ezekial’s words to Bhende’s music - a story perhaps little known outside of India. The poetry section includes both a song and a poem.

With poet laureates and rock stars still on my mind, I tell my two degrees of separation story at a party. Upon hearing about AJL, there is a consensus among Indian guests that I must look into India’s Seinfeld, a Bene Israel comedian named Samson Koletekar. An interview was born!

Undoubtedly, India is a place of spirit and magic. It is a country that calls to people in search of something - adventure, release, enlightenment. As Dr. Adam Cohen explains, for many Israeli backpackers, the road to enlightenment in India ends in drug abuse in, In Search of EcstasyIsraelis and drug abuse in India.

To help redefine the image of a backpacker, the organization Lev Olam has drawn on their energy and directed it towards the positive and the opportunity to help India’s neediest. Lev Olam is our Best of Asian Jewish Life focus this issue.

Lastly, wandering the streets of Bangalore we find Jessica MacKenzie Murthy, a Jew married to an Indian who explains how a single bite of falafel brings with it the comforts of home.

To tackle 2000 years of history in one issue is impossible. It would take volumes to speak to, so I promise this will not be the last India issue.

Write in and tell us what you think.

Thanks for reading!

For the poetry pages, the late Nissim Ezekiel’s work needs to be highlighted.

Though Asian Jewish Life typically does not reprint, certainly this is an exception I was willing to make. He was more than

Erica Lyons Editor-in-Chief

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

AUTUMN 2010

Asian Jewish Life is a free quarterly publication designed to share regional Jewish thoughts, ideas and culture and promote unity. It also celebrates our individuality and our diverse backgrounds and customs.

Asian Jewish Life was granted tax exempt/charitable status from the Hong Kong SAR in April 2010.

Editor in Chief Erica Lyons Copy Editor Jeffrey A. Foxhorn Books Editor Susan Blumberg-Kason Design Director Edward Hanapole Designer Terry Chow Board of Directors Eli Bitan, Bruce Einhorn, Peter Kaminsky, Amy Mines

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Feature

Photo credit: Mohita Bhatnagar

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Feature

All Joking Aside The serious side of India’s Seinfeld

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etween shows and a day job in the tech world, AJL caught up with comedian Samson Koletkar for an interview and a few laughs. Koletkar, a Bene Israel, was born and raised in Mumbai, though he now calls San Francisco home. AJL definitely considers him one of the best Bene Israel, standup comedians currently living in the San Francisco area.

He is the producer of Comedy Off Broadway Oakland and also launched the Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour. Did you hear the one about an Indian, a Jew and an Indian Jew who walk onto stage?

He promises that some of this interview will make its way into his act.

Asian Jewish Life (AJL): Is there anything too serious to joke about?

Samson Koletkar (SK): Nope.

Although...timing is everything, not just in a joke, but also of a joke.

AJL: Wow, your accent? Do you think that this is part of what people in the US find to be funny? Does that insult you in any way?

SK: Sometimes I do think the accent is a barrier, but I have found smart audiences who appreciate what I say and not how I say it. Sometimes I will say simple things like, “If you are wondering when will I start speaking normally....I am!” Then the show just moves along.

AJL: Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour how did it come about?

SK: When I started doing standup in USA I did not know the nuts and bolts of the business. After doing standup for a few years and seeing myself stuck in a rut unable to break into the mainstream I had two choices - quit OR stand up for myself. I decided to launch the Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour on my own.

AJL: So, what does your Jewish mother think about her son as a comedian?

Wasn’t she hoping for a doctor or lawyer?

AJL: You appeared in the recent Panel Discussion on Asians in Standup.

Many interesting ideas surfaced. One participant said she refuses to make her ethnicity part of the shtick- your response?

SK: My mother is not the stereotypical Jewish mother as perceived by the west. She did want me to be educated and well-off, which I am in my software field. She also likes the comedian in me, because she likes to see me on stage making people laugh. At the end of it all, I think she is assured enough to know that I won’t make horribly bad career decisions.

SK: What every comic chooses to talk about is entirely up to them. It’s all about what matters to you. I talk a lot about my Indian and my Jewish background, because that is my past, and I am secure enough to laugh at its absurdities. It also matters where you are in your career.

When you are starting out you are trying to establish your identity, people don’t know you and you need to let them

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AUTUMN 2010

know who you are before you can tell them what you think about them. So it necessitates some background stuff in your routine. Once you have established yourself you don’t need to reiterate who you are, people know it, now they want to know what you think, feel, like, dislike!

AJL: How do you think you are perceived in the US as an Indian? What stereotypes have you encountered as an Asian comedian?

SK: Easterners are generally seen as introverts. I can see why that perception may have developed in the west.

AJL: You touched on the tendency of some American comics to rely on vulgarity in their routines, how do you stay original and true to yourself in a competitive industry?

SK: In my early days I used to talk about things that I had heard other comedians/ people talk about i.e. “regurgitating stereotypes”. But over time I started to find my own voice, I started talking about things that bother me, things I see wrong in the world. Every time I write a joke I ask myself - Is this funny to me? Has this been done before? Is it true? I also had to cultivate the habit of curbing the urge to use profanity.

I work with a lot of comedians and see a lot jokes and subconsciously am aware of what works and what I can reinstate to make people laugh, but I choose to differ and I like to make people think a little. I want my audience to put some effort into getting my jokes. I don’t like to serve it to

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Feature

Photo credit: Mohita Bhatnagar

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AUTUMN 2010

Feature them on a platter. It’s like this, I like to eat what my wife cooks for me but it tastes so much better if we cook together. I like to tickle the brain not the bum, and even if it doesn’t bring me a lot of popularity, it does bring me a lot of satisfaction!

AJL: What is the reaction of the Indian (Bene Israel) community to your routine?

SK: Fantabuloustic!! I performed at the Jewish Community Center in Mumbai in Oct 2009 and it was one of my best shows ever.

AJL: Mumbai Jewish Community Center aside, who are you finding you most appeal to?

SK: People that are thinkers, folks that prefer caffeine over alcohol. I have always gotten a lot of love from the immigrant population....be it Asians, Middle Easterners, Europeans, or South Americans. I also remember my first gig in Utah, where I did so well on the 8pm show that I was given extra time on the 10pm show. Somehow I haven’t figured out Virginians, although just to the east in Washington DC I thrived.

AJL: What has the American Jewish community’s reaction been to you? Are you at home there?

SK: The few Jewish gigs that I have done so far have been great. I am not the stereotypical Jewish comedian so my stories are totally different than most Jewish comics. Right now, a lot of Jewish folks are in the Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour audiences. I would love to do some shows exclusively for the American Jewish communities.

AJL: Could you go back home again?

SK: Yes! I have been seriously contemplating moving back to India for 2 reasons - One, standup is just establishing itself and I can see it exploding in India. Two, and more

importantly, my jokes are driven by common sense issues, which India has in abundance and I want to trigger a few minds to think in the right direction.

The boundaries in America and other Western countries are already pushed far. I want to push those boundaries in India. My wife thinks if I move back to India I will certainly get into trouble with the powerful (or what I like to call powerhungry) folks in society. Lenny Bruce & George Carlin went to jail for the art and she thinks I will too.

AJL: So Indian Seinfeld? If you could have chosen your own reference what would you have picked?

SK: When I told Indian folks that I do standup they’d mention “Oh…like Seinfeld”, and it seemed like that was the only comedian that Indians knew... through TV, because most had never seen any standup live. And somewhere along the way, a few of my comedian friends used to say that I could be like the Seinfeld of India...perhaps due to my Jewish background, perhaps my early day persona. But I have been highly influenced by George Carlin. I would rather be the Indian Carlin, although less cynical. My other favorite is Eddie Izzard from UK. Besides those two popular names there are a lot of local San Francisco comics that I really like.

AJL: Your Jewish background? Your Jewish education?

SK: I was raised very Jewish. I attended the only Jewish school in Mumbai, learned Hebrew as third language in school, was trained by the Chazzan and could conduct every Jewish prayer.

Later, as I became less and less religious, I was still involved actively in the Jewish community through the Jewish Youth Group for 5 years. I was even president of the group for 2 years. During my tenure we organized social/cultural/ educational/sporting events, organized festival celebrations for the community,

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started a monthly newsletter, provided a minyan for burials, conducted Shabbat services at the old age home and more. I was also sponsored to attend a community leadership program in Israel, and I started one of my own for the youth after I came back to Mumbai.

AJL: In your routine, you talk about having to validate your Judaism to other Jews in the face of comments like: Are you really a Jew? Were you born a Jew? Joking aside, does this bother you?

SK: Initially I thought it was all fun and jokes, because we (Indian Jews) are such a small community, no one knows about us; even most Indians themselves didn’t know that there were Jews living in India. But as I started talking more and more about it with people here I noticed that not all questions were out of astonishment and curiosity, some were out of disbelief, and some out of sheer disdain. One day I saw this video about an Indian Jewish kid wanting to emigrate to Israel. She visited an Indian Jewish official who told her that because she (or her mother, I don’t remember exactly) had converted to Judaism in India, Israel does not recognize it. The girl seemed so perplexed and helpless.

That really bothered me.

AJL: Future career plans? Still software tech by day & comic by night?

SK: I hope to switch to comedy full time, but until that happens software ain’t too bad by the day. Right now I have Comedy Off Broadway Oakland, a show I produce and host Thursdays/ Fridays/Saturdays.

The Mahatma Moses Comedy Tour, which I headline, has picked up well. We have done 10 shows so far with 6 more lined up for 2010. Besides these I am getting some exciting gigs across USA, am working on an hour-long-one-man-show, and I plan to do another round of shows in India around April 2011.

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Best of AJL

by Jana Daniels

Backpacking to Enlightenment Lev Olam in India

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n India, one third of the population is below the poverty line, earning under $1.25 a day. It is home to an estimated 42% of the world’s malnourished children, though this often exists behind the scenes. Yet for the nearly 60,000 Israeli backpackers that make their way to India, it is a place for adventure and excitement, exploration and experiment.

Lev Olam (Heart of the World) aims at tapping into this human resource by reining in Israeli enthusiasm and spirit to use as a force for good and change for India. In doing so, they are redefining Indian tourism for many young Israelis.

In major backpacking centers such as Hampi, Pushkar, Rishkesh

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

and Dharamasala, Lev Olam’s Head of Indian Team Bradley Cohen is hard at work spreading their message of LOVE (Lev Olam Volunteer Experience) by putting posters around town and in guest-houses, challenging Israelis to change their lives by volunteering to participate in a ten day program aimed at bringing much needed aid to some of India’s most vulnerable.

The volunteers are required to commit to a ten day program and the organization provides training, transportation, shelter and food.

Lev Olam teaches the Israeli backpacking volunteers the basics of cultural awareness and then places them in projects throughout the country, where they have an opportunity to work hands-on with locals. Volunteers see the real India as

AUTUMN 2010

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Best of AJL

by Jana Daniels

they hand out food to hungry children, help fit children with a new pair of shoes, rebuild schools, improve sanitation and help provide clean drinking water supplies. Lev Olam also focuses on education and women’s empowerment and stress the direct correlation between the literacy of women and child mortality.

Working with India’s neediest gives the backpackers a new appreciation for what they have. The experience also germinates the seed of the spirit of volunteerism and humanitarianism that they will carry and spread throughout their lives. Jacob from Bnei Brak says of his experience, “I never really thought about volunteering before I came across Lev Olam – now I want to make it a major part of my travels in the future.”

Lev Olam also works to help Israelis gain an understanding that the organization, and the very desire that compelled them to volunteer in India, are not grown there nor are they values they borrowed from Buddhism – these values are Jewish values and run to the core of Jewish belief. Assaf, a program participant explains, “I didn’t think I’d come all the way to India to find the meaning and spirituality of Judaism.”

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ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

It is clear that not only the recipients gain from Lev Olam, but the personal gain to volunteers is certainly not ‘incidental’.

As Cohen explains, “for me Tikkun Olam means not only improving the world around us but improving ourselves as well.” He continues, “It’s about identifying an area of need and then rectifying the problem in the most effective and efficient way. Tikkun Olam involves humility and being able to learn and grow. It means serving people in the way they need, not in the way you think is best. It’s about creating self-sufficiency, not reliance. “ Whether intended or not, Lev Olam is also helping to change the image Indians have of Israelis by countering some of the negative stereotypes that backpackers have earned for themselves.

The question, though, is what difference can be made in just ten days. Cohen explains that even a single day in a school, providing much needed materials, shoes and sports equipment, painting the walls, teaching English, running workshops in music and creative art and interacting with the kids has a very

AUTUMN 2010

Best of AJL

by Jana Daniels

real impact. That being said, they are also looking towards creating 3-4 month volunteer experiences.

Likewise, the basic infrastructure development work they are involved in does have lasting impacts. Lev Olam is partnering with local NGOs to better target the projects where need is the greatest and to insure the long term feasibility of their efforts.

As Cohen explains, “Lev Olam offers the manpower, funding and inspiration they need to make a huge difference in the lives of the poorest and weakest in society.” Lev Olam often gives money directly to locals to complete the work themselves, creating a feeling of self-reliance. Projects like collaboration with I-india to fund the building of dormitories and schools for street kids have helped open access to education, in turn breaking cycles of poverty, drug abuse and illiteracy.

For his personal wish list, Cohen says, “ultimately I would like to have a world-wide network of drop-in volunteer centers where any tourist could get involved in giving back to the local community and learn more about the real lives and culture of the locals – creating meaningful tourism.... The centers would be places to come to find meaning and empowerment and direction in life as well.” Not a small goal but a definite start at repairing the world through Jewish values, belief in basic human rights, the desire for personal growth, the spirit of volunteerism and an individual’s power to become a force for change.

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

For more information, please see the Lev Olam website: www.levolam.org. Lev Olam can also be reached by email at office@levolam.org (Israel) or levolam@ymail.com (India).

AUTUMN 2010

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Poetry

by Nissim Ezekiel

Night of the Scorpion I remember the night my mother was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

Parting with his poison - flash of diabolic tail in the dark room he risked the rain again.

The peasants came like swarms of flies and buzzed the name of God a hundred times to paralyse the Evil One. With candles and with lanterns throwing giant scorpion shadows on the mud-baked walls they searched for him: he was not found.

They clicked their tongues.

With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother’s blood, they said.

May he sit still, they said May the sins of your previous birth be burned away tonight, they said.

May your suffering decrease the misfortunes of your next birth, they said.

May the sum of all evil balanced in this unreal world against the sum of good become diminished by your pain.

May the poison purify your flesh of desire, and your spirit of ambition, they said, and they sat around on the floor with my mother in the centre, the peace of understanding on each face.

More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours, more insects, and the endless rain.

My mother twisted through and through, groaning on a mat.

My father, sceptic, rationalist, trying every curse and blessing, powder, mixture, herb and hybrid.

He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.

I watched the flame feeding on my mother.

I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation.

After twenty hours it lost its sting.

My mother only said Thank God the scorpion picked on me And spared my children.

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ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

SUMMER 2010

Poetry

by Nissim Ezekiel

Acceptance Lyrics: Nissim Ezekiel Music : Nandu Bhende-Ezekiel I am alone and you are alone.

So why can’t we be alone together?

Why can’t we talk, and why can’t we go for a walk?

Nissim Ezekiel Nissim Ezekiel (16 December 1924- 9 January 2004) was born to a Bene Israel family of educators in Bombay. He is often referred to as the founder of India’s postcolonial English literary movement.

He was a poet, playwright, editor, literary critic and lyricist. His first collection of poetry, A Time to Change and Other Poems, was published in 1952. He was a prolific writer and went on to publish over ten collections as well as a body of work in other genres.

I needn’t say more.

You can ring me up when you are alone.

I can ring you up when I am alone. Then we won’t be alone any longer, my dear.

We won’t be alone any longer.

Ezekiel received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for Latter Day Psalms and the Padma Shri from the President of India in 1988.

He was professor of English and reader in American literature at University of Mumbai during the 1990s as well as the secretary of the Indian branch of PEN.

Need I say any more?

Yes, I understand my dear, I understand... you can’t be alone together with me.

We can’t meet to talk, we can’t meet to go for a walk.

Later in his career he began to write song lyrics for his nephew Nandu Bhende produced in a collection called Songs for Nandu Bhende.

A later collection, More songs for Nandu Bhende, included the song “Acceptance”. As Usha Bhende, the wife of nephew Nandu, proudly explains, “The words of this particular song are often quoted by the President of Israel Mr. Shimon Peres and he quoted them last year at the Maccabiah Games.”

You’re afraid to ring me up even when you are alone.

They will suspect you...

They will be angry.

Somehow they will know that you and I were alone together.

And that’s not allowed.

When you are alone, you have to be alone.

And when I am alone, I have to be alone We can’t be alone together, my dear, we can’t be alone together.

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

Nandu set this song to music and performed it live at the Israel Independence Day function in Mumbai in April 2010. It was recorded in his studio, Insync Studio, and the CD was sent to President Peres personally.

SUMMER 2010

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Film in Focus

by Robin Jeffrey

Sharon and Sharona smiling

Is There a Next Year in Bombay?

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A film of great uncertainty

smiling bride, an ecstatic groom, jubilant guests, vibrant colors, joyous Jewish music: the start of a future of uncertainty? Next Year in Bombay is a film of questions as co-director and producer Jonas Pariente explains. “Rather than a message, our film carries questions. Questions about a people’s identity, and the dilemma that migrating communities have to face: how to cultivate two cultures at once?

Where should I live and where is the right place to raise my kids? How do I

maintain the culture I’ve left and blend in the culture welcoming me?”

The film doesn’t answer these questions but rather strings together a series of portraits that create a picture of India’s contemporary Jewish community and the challenges they face as individuals and as a community.

The creative impetus behind the film, Pariente explains, “started with a very random detail; I was traveling in India with my best friend, who keeps kosher. After a

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AUTUMN 2010

month in Rajasthan where he didn’t have any meat, we were heading to Mumbai.

He tried googling “kosher+Mumbai.”

Doing that, we ended up at the Chabad House which at the time was run by the late Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife...

They were the ones that brought us to a synagogue in south Bombay.” Pariente explains that this was the first time he ever met Indian Jews.

For Pariente, himself from a halfEgyptian, half-Polish Jewish family in France and co-producer Mathias

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Film in Focus

by Robin Jeffrey

Sharon praying on his own

Mangin who is not Jewish, but from a bi-cultural background, French and Brazilian, the ideas of identity, assimilation and migration are universal themes. According to Pariente, “These are questions which we believe are not only typical of the Jewish people, but more and more common in this century of migrations and diasporas.”

This global, multicultural view runs throughout the film. The Indian Jews in the film speak to the point that Jews have peacefully coexisted with other religions in India for 2000 years. The question again becomes at what cost? What is left after the majority of the community migrates or entirely assimilates?

The film makers speak with Aadiyel Wakrulkar who at 15 years old is the

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youngest Bene Israel of the Konkan region, south of Bombay. He comments that he is the only Jew in his school. He is unusually mature for his age and talks about how he is accepted by his peers without question. Though his father runs a family business and Aadiyel is in line to take it over, even with an economic opportunity, the question remains what future is left for him there? How can he not feel some degree of social isolation?

How can he remain there and not entirely assimilate? Is there another choice?

Also caught in an internal conflict between family/India and Judaism, the filmmakers focus on Sharon and Sharona Galsulkar. Sharon and Sharona have both returned to India from Israel with a sense of duty to revitalize the Jewish future of their country. As

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AUTUMN 2010

Pariente summarizes, “in Sharon and Sharona’s case the tension is whether they sacrifice their kids’ education to stay with their decreasing community, or basically abandon the community to bring up their kids in Israel.”

Both Sharon and Sharona, whose wedding opened the film, are portrayed without the joyful music and colorful clothing, stripped down to their real world selves, caught between their sense of communal responsibility and their responsibility to their own children. The two ideals are seemingly incompatible. As observant Jews, they are socially isolated within the remaining community in Mumbai. Like Aadiyel in Alibag, they coexist with their Muslim neighbors but what will their children think of their choices and the isolation

Film in Focus

by Robin Jeffrey

Mr. Dandekar in the Navgaon cemetery

they will face? Sharon and Sharona struggle to revive traditional Judaism - a battle that it seems might be over.

obligation to the Jewish community of India, the question becomes: if not them, then who?

So, is there a next year in Bombay?

Pariente believes that the Bene Israel community will continue to maintain a presence in India. They don’t foresee the Bene Israel that settled in Israel or the United States returning to India.

Pariente says that he and Mangin do not see the community “maintaining the level of religiousness that Sharon and Sharona are hoping for.” They expect that the community “will rather evolve towards a more secular and cultural community, like the one we see in the Western world, based on the fact that young, urbanized Indians seem to move away from religion or at least religious traditionalism, a trend in India not unique to the Jewish community.” Likewise those that are religious, unlike their grandparents’ generation, have a vibrant

The film ends with Sharona, the more pragmatic of the two, and Sharon, the idealist, essentially in agreement that the lack of Jewish educational opportunities for their two daughters will drive them away. They are inextricably attached to the land of Israel. As for their sense of

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AUTUMN 2010

Bene Israel community in Israel waiting to take them in.

Interestingly, Pariente reports that Sharon and Sharona are still in Mumbai and have since filming had a third daughter. Presumably were Pariente and Mangin to remake the film today, little will have changed with respect to their internal conflict between communal obligation and familial responsibility. They will continue to try to create a Jewish world for their daughters that will be compatible with their religious ideals.

So this year in Bombay, yes. Next year in Bombay is still uncertain.

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CoverStory A Photo Essay

Growing Up Jewish in India The photographs that appear in this article are part of a larger series taken by photographer Richard Lord. In recent articles examining the contemporary Bene Israel community in India, words such as diminishing, fading and vanishing are often evoked.

Perhaps the photos in this part of the collection suggest something different. These photos capture the faces of the future for the Bene Israel.

They carry 2000 years of history in a country virtually void of anti-Semitism. Their stories can’t be summarized by a single word or label. It is still up to them to write their narratives.

I

I am an Indian Jew

t is a startling reaction that I often face whenever I meet someone outside India who is confused or even doubtful of the existence of Indian Jewry. “There are Jews in India?” they ask. For many people, we’re a hard fact to digest simply because we do not look different from other Indians and seem outwardly to be completely assimilated.

Although we have adopted the culture of our nation, our religious beliefs as Jews have remained unaffected.

The Jews of India have a long history here which many people don’t know. We are made up of different communities: the largest one is the Bene Israel from Maharashtra (which I’m a part of). For over 2,000 years our community has lived in harmony with the local Indian population, especially since Hindus (the majority religious population in India) are a tolerant bunch. Their polytheistic beliefs have ensured that they warmly accept that our God is different.

In that spirit, as a Jew in India I’ve never felt an identity crisis.

I can be Indian and Jewish at the same time. In school and college the fact that I’ve had friends from different religious backgrounds, together with our diverse faiths, has never been a matter of apprehension. I feel free and safe to practice my

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religion. It is a well known fact that Jews have faced very little or almost no anti-Semitism in India.

And though they say there is strength in numbers, it’s important to note that we are just a few thousand Jews in a population of over a billion people. The Bene Israel community, for instance, is mostly spread over the large city of Mumbai whose population alone is around 13 million. And although that makes getting together quite hard, our Jewish Community Center helps facilitate our sense of community.

Located in the center of the Mumbai --and accessible from all parts of the city -- the JCC is where I attended camp and Gan Katan (a Jewish Sunday school) as a child. It is also where I now actively participate in the youth group called the Jewish Youth Pioneers (JYP). Being associated with the JCC and JYP is a big part of my Jewish identity.

India is a magnificent country, and has much to offer to its people, including its Jewish citizens. I have the best of both worlds. As an Indian and a Jew, I know I am right at home here!

Meirah Bhastekar, 20 years old, is a resident of Mumbai and an active Jewish community member.

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CoverStory A Photo Essay

In that spirit, as a Jew in India I’ve never felt an identity crisis. I can be Indian and Jewish at the same time.

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CoverStory A Photo Essay

India is a magnificent country, and has much to offer to its people, including its Jewish citizens. I have the best of both worlds. As an Indian and a Jew, I know I am right at home here!

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CoverStory A Photo Essay

All photos in this article and the photo on the cover are © Richard Lord/courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

About JDC The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization. JDC works in more than 70 countries and in Israel to alleviate hunger and hardship, rescue Jews in danger, create lasting connections to Jewish life, and provide immediate relief and long-term development support for victims of natural and man-made disasters. To learn more, visit www.JDC.org.

For more information about JDC’s programs in India, contact Antony Korenstein at AntonyK@jdc.org.il.

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Feature

by Erica Lyons

Rescuing Shipwrecked Ancestors A story in three generations

I

t started with a promise to rescue a memory. Nana’s voice and the story replay again and again, “A very long time ago, your ancestors left Israel in a ship – a big, wide wooden ship – and they were shipwrecked in India. They were Jews, but they settled in India. In the shipwreck they lost their Torahs, and they forgot their religion.”

When Sadia Shepard made the promise to her grandmother, Nana, to go to Nana’s birthplace, she had no idea where the journey would take her.

Nana died just after Sadia made that promise. Nana had Jewish last rites and an unveiling ceremony, as is customary in the Jewish faith, but the fact that she did is quite extraordinary give that she lived the majority of her life (ages 16-82) as a Muslim. For Sadia Shepard, her grandmother’s connection to Judaism was the starting point for her journey to rescue the memory of shipwrecked ancestors from oblivion. The end result is a story in three media (photo essay, film and memoir) that span across three faiths and three generations.

ASIAN JEWISH LIFE

Sadia Shepard

Shepard resolved to make a film “to represent Nana and the community (the Indian Jewish community) that Nana left behind. I hope that I have saved her Jewish life from becoming a mere footnote in our family history… that the path she walked would not die with her.” She wanted to search out the Bene Israel community of today for her

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Feature

by Erica Lyons

grandmother, fearing that one day it would be no more. With reports of mass emigration to Israel and intermarriage, it seemed the community was possibly at risk of becoming not only a footnote in Shepard’s family heritage but in Jewish history as well.

Shepard was India-bound on a Fulbright scholarship to make the film, In Search of the Bene Israel, when the photo essay and the book, Girl from Foreign, grew out of the same creative process, delving into different aspects of the same story.

Shepard explains that Girl from Foreign, in a narrative format, was less linear and gave her the ability to express a much more personal side to the story.

Her grandmother’s story began in India, where she was born into a Bene Israel family. She was known as Rachel Jacobs, a part of her life locked away.

Sadia Shepard knew her as Nana, others by the name Rahat Siddiqi. When she secretly married a Muslim man who was both a friend to the family and her father’s business partner, at the age of 16, she left her family, her faith and her name behind. Soon, just prior to the partition, she was to leave her country behind as well. To modern sensibilities it may seem impossible to imagine marriage completely divorcing a person from her prior life. Shepard explains that this needs to be understood within the historical context, a woman in her grandmother’s time and culture and in native India often left her own family to join that of her husband.

To Shepard this was a great love story unlikely to occur today because of many factors including the political climate in India/Pakistan and the growing tension between Muslims and Jews. Likewise she also indicated that due to the decline in the Jewish population in India, the community is placing a greater importance on marrying within the faith.

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Nana and Sadia in Denver, 1975

She explains that in her grandmother’s world, Muslims and Jews were friends, neighbors and business partners. It was a moment of great social mixing.

When Nana married she agreed to raise her family as Muslim but her husband promised her a Jewish burial. In her final years, Shepard says, “Nana worried endlessly about the decision she had made to marry outside her faith…about whether life as a Muslim meant she could not die as a Jew as her husband had promised.” She began to reconnect with the American Jewish community and attend synagogue services in her adopted home in Florida.

The title of the book, Girl from Foreign, rings throughout the narrative. As Shepard explains, ‘from foreign’ is a common phrase used in India to describe outsiders. Nana, returning to Judaism in her final years, a woman originally from India’s ancient Jewish community that had migrated to raise her Muslim family in Pakistan and

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then emigrated to the United States to be near her Muslim daughter with a Christian husband and mixed children, would have been quite foreign sitting in her southern Florida synagogue.

As is clear, Nana would have been that ‘girl from foreign’ several times throughout her life, including in the Boston suburb where she helped raise Sadia Shepard and her brother and in Pakistan where she was a Jewish Indian member of a large Muslim household.

Shepard herself, the product of a mixed race marriage and mixed faiths, was perhaps ‘that girl’ in Boston and certainly was ‘that girl’ as she wandered around India in search of her grandmother’s Bene Israel roots. As she says of the experience in India, “I can be pegged for an outsider right away…I am invisible.”

This is a sentiment that could have been shared by her grandmother as well.

The concept of ‘from foreign’ on so many layers, Shepard explains, “is a reference to myself, my grandmother, my mother,

Feature

by Erica Lyons

was not bound by such restrictions.

Modern time, place and culture allowed her to travel throughout India to make her film, freedoms that would never have been possible for her grandmother and likely not her mother either.

Sadia & Nana in Newton, 1977

our cultural confusion – being lost in translation.” Shepard’s own mother, a Pakistani, Muslim exchange student was ‘that girl’ in the 1970s in the United States.

That being said, Shepard’s mother and father, in a very 70s manner, were able to fashion their wedding by choosing parts from both of their faiths. She was not a product of her own mother’s, Nana’s, generation forced to leave her girlhood self behind. Their marriage was a great blend of both cultures.

When Shepard first discovered that her grandmother was Jewish, she remembers, “being fascinated by this idea.” The fascination was perhaps more with the discovery that someone you love had an entire identity that you know nothing about. This new layer of identity led Shepard to ask how alike and how different the three religions were. She often refers to her grandmother, who helped raise her, as her third parent and speaks fondly of interfaith discussions at her kitchen table with three parents representing

three faiths. She remarks that it was the America of the 1970s where people were embracing multiculturalism that made this type of dialogue and blended family possible.

Shepard acknowledges that she asked herself at one stage, “Can I choose between these faiths and traditions?

Did I need to? Did I have a choice?”

She grew to appreciate the “blessing of being accepted by multiple traditions.”

Today she asserts, “I no longer feel the need to define myself as one thing. I am equally tied to multiple traditions.”

Reflecting on arriving in modern Mumbai, Shepard now proudly states, “Bombay has become a home to me. I can feel Nana’s presence. Her house is still there. It is part of the iconic architecture. Bombay is a reminder that these aren’t just stories.”

She remarks on the fortune of having had the opportunity to take the journey. She acknowledges that even though time, culture and place defined the course of her grandmother’s life, Shepard herself

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Jewish Mumbai is now very different from the thriving Jewish Bombay Nana left behind when she was young. In the film, Shepard states there are only an estimated 3,500 Bene Israel left in Mumbai (approximately 5,000 in all of India). To put this number in perspective she says, “5,000 Jews within a population of one billion could easily fit in just one apartment block in Mumbai.” She says she came with the assumption that the community was in decline but suggests that the story is perhaps more complicated than that and is also perhaps changing.

She is careful to not suggest a surge or great renaissance but she sees the community in a difference light and applauds “the tremendous community infrastructure and organizations that maintain and strengthen ties.” She sees the work of both AJJDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) and ORT (a world-wide Jewish charity with a focus on education and training) as instrumental in fostering connections.

Shepard explains that although the community initially left in mass for Israel without looking back, she sees the current community as much more fluid, able to travel back and forth between India and Israel. She suggests that India as a rising economic power will make this type of back and forth migration increasingly more feasible. She tempers her optimism though by saying, “I am not suggesting anything radical, just that the story does change slowly over time.”

Shepard herself has since made many trips to India and now feels very much at home there. She is able to feel her

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Feature

by Erica Lyons

in the knowledge that she was able to “reconstruct Nana’s life pre-partition. I was able to go to many of the places she would have visited as a child, attend a service in a synagogue that she might have prayed in.” Shepard says it was more than a mere curiosity to see what the places looked like. It was more of a quest to try to see the world through her grandmother’s eyes.

Shepard has grown to appreciate the freedom not to choose between her multitude of faiths and traditions. She says she is “happy within multiple traditions in multiple layers of identity.

While it is a blessing, it can also be a challenge,” but Shepard has found a comfortable place in the middle with mastery of the “rare ability to go between cultures.”

extended family since she was a child.

With that same level of comfort, she now also visits cousins from her Jewish side in Israel. To many, this movement between Pakistan and Israel, Islam and Judaism is seemingly impossible. To Shepard, it is merely parts of the whole – finely woven pieces of her own tapestry of heritage and history. So, where is home to Shepard? “New York,” she exclaims. “It is a city that takes you in and immediately becomes part of you.”

Recently married, Shepard was inspired by her own parents’ wedding in 1973 and “the way they integrated the elements most important to them, creating something entirely new.” Like her parents, she and her husband, a Scientist, chose to blend Scientology, Islam and Judaism. Like her parents, they “crafted a service to blend all their traditions and cultures and were able to draw on different elements of all of them. The ceremony incorporated and referenced each of these multiple traditions.” They broke a glass and included carefully chosen readings from each of the different faiths. One of the last remaining Bene Israel cousins from Mumbai’s Jewish community was in attendance and read a passage taken from the Talmud. In an almost literary crafted ending, this cousin is also named Rachel, after her grandmother.

If Nana could see film, Shepard knows that she would be delighted. It was a search through the history and future of the Bene Israel community.

Shepard expresses deep satisfaction

“Mazel tov was shouted spontaneously,” Shepard laughs, “Also quite unexpectedly, a surprise to even me, we danced the hora.” For Rachel Jacobs, this would certainly be something to smile at.

Nana at eighteen

Nana’s presence and finds comfort in walking along the paths Nana traveled in her girlhood. With the same ease, she is also now able to move between her own other traditions. She visits Muslim cousins in Pakistan and was warmly received at the Karachi Literary Festival where she discussed her book and her multicultural heritage founded on three faiths. Festival aside, she expresses concern that “diversity in Pakistan today is now under attack. It is a place in crisis.” This was quite different from the cosmopolitan Karachi that her grandmother lived in long ago.

Shepard has traveled between the United States and Pakistan to visit her

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Writer’sDesk

by Jessica MacKenzie Murthy

Eating Falafel in Bangalore

Finding a small taste of home

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Writer’sDesk

by Jessica MacKenzie Murthy

A

s much as I enjoyed living in India, one of the most difficult adjustments for me was the food. I left Washington, D.C. and moved to Bangalore to be with my husband who is a native of the city. I was enthralled with almost everything about Bangalore, but about three months in I was having a culinary crisis of epic proportions. I had been used to having every type of cuisine at my fingertips, and suddenly I was finding it difficult to get what I wanted. Of course, there is unending diversity within Indian cuisine, but just like the proverbial cat who is always on the wrong side of the door, I was craving just about everything I couldn’t get my hands on. I found myself dreaming at night about cupcakes towering with butter cream frosting, rotisserie Peruvian chicken, and fat, juicy burgers.

I wanted mezze with glistening olives and silky hummus. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the South Indian food I was surrounded with. Who could turn down a crispy, fragrant Mysore masala dosa and chutney, or lovely plump idlis with a steaming bowl of sambhar? Certainly not me, but still… after a few months I was searching for the food I grew up with. I must say that not all of it was missing.

Bangalore is very cosmopolitan, and I was pleasantly surprised to be a regular at a brilliant Thai/Malaysian joint, not to mention the Italian restaurant just up the street whose chef was actually from Italy!

One day my husband and I were driving to the grocery store and there was an unexpected traffic jam, so we took a side road near our house. I glanced out the window and my heart skipped a beat. A

new restaurant was opening, and I could have sworn....

“Stop the car!” I yelled, and my husband slammed on the brakes. wondering what I was shouting about.

There it was. I was not hallucinating.

The newly painted lettering said TA’AM. And then came the best part. In small letters underneath was written the most exciting word I had seen in weeks: falafel. I asked my husband to park the car, and I jumped out before he could even shut it off. My joy was short lived.

The guard camped out at the front door told me they were not open yet, and as I gazed inside the huge windows I could see they were still setting up.

Three weeks later it was time. I couldn’t even wait for dinner, so we headed over for an early lunch. We walked in to an empty restaurant and sat down. The menu danced in front of my eyes but for my husband it might as well have been, well, Lebanese. I told him not to worry (he’s vegetarian) and I ordered up a storm. I was talking so fast I think I confused the waiter.

Within 20 minutes our feast arrived. I tucked into it so quickly I inadvertently left my husband at a loss for what he was looking at or how exactly to eat it. I finally looked up and realized he needed me to guide him through the maze of dishes in front of him… falafel, hummus, pita, pickles, baba ghanoush, pickled vegetables of every imaginable kind, feta cheese and tahini.

After we had demolished the meal and were sitting and talking, I noticed a man walking over to us. He introduced himself

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as one of the owners, and explained that he was an Israeli who had just opened the place with his Indian wife. He asked us what we thought, and I grinned from ear to ear. I told him I was overjoyed and he thanked us for coming. But as he was walking away, the cook in me took over.

“Wait,” I called out, “I think the baba ghanoush needs more lemon!” I could see him laugh even as his back was turned. He waved his wife over from out behind the counter and explained to me that they had fought about that very issue in the afternoon.

“Anything else?” he asked me, wanting to know my honest feedback, even though my husband warned him that I would not hold back.

“Well, the pita is missing something… I think the flour mix is wrong.”

He laughed again and told my husband it was to be expected. He asked if I was Jewish and smiled widely when I said I was.

We talked for a long time. He explained that while there did not seem to be enough Jews in Bangalore to form a minyan, that he knew a few others and they regularly met during holidays. We were, of course, more than welcome to join them.

We shook hands and said our goodbyes.

I smiled all the way back to our apartment finally feeling like a little bit of home was finally with me in my otherwise perfect corner of India.

Ta’am closed not long after I left Bangalore in 2008, but the taste of hummus, the smell of falafel frying and the feel of a warm pita in my hand will always bring me back to Bangalore.

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Feature

by Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Ph. D.

Absence of Jewish Studies in India

Creating a new awareness

Interior, Magen David Synagogue

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Feature

by Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Ph. D.

A

few years ago when I happened to be staying for a few days with a cousin of mine in Colaba, Mumbai, I went to the street book vendors at her suggestion. She told me that I could get books on any subject at throwaway prices. When I asked for books on Jews, I was told to come back the very next day. When I returned there in anticipation, I was shown a book on juice. It is not surprising that the book vendor mistook “Jews” for juice in spite of being in the business of books, given the fact that there hardly is any demand for books on Jews. Most Indians are entirely ignorant of their existence.

It did come as a little bit of surprise to me that this happened in Mumbai, where most of India’s five thousand and three hundred Jews live, and around which, as believed, they have lived for almost two millennia. I find a resonance of the experience I had when I visited Mumbai’s synagogues when I see the filmmaker Sadia Shepard in her documentary In Search of the Bene Israel as she struggles to explain to Mumbaikars (locals of Mumbai) what a synagogue is, despite the fact that there are eight functioning synagogues in Mumbai.

Setting the record straight Ignorance about Jews is widespread to the extent that I have even come across the head of the Department of Sociology at an Indian university who innocently asked me if the Jews were a sect of Christians. Mixing them with Christians or Muslims or Zoroastrians (Parsīs) is a common mistake among Indians, but the academics would presumably be expected to be better informed. Considering this omnipresent ignorance, I should not have been taken aback when my doctoral research on Indian Jews was seen to be related to West Asian Studies when I went for

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Photo credit: Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com

Signs from Cochin

interviews for academic positions in Indian Studies at universities in India.

They were not sure what box to put my research in.

ambitions for political prominence and professional clout.”

From my personal experience, I can also say that whoever works on Jewish related themes in India is often suspected of being a Mossad agent or a radical Zionist. There have been a number of attempts in the Urdu press to represent my research as a Zionist or Israeli conspiracy against Muslims.

Ather Farouqui explains these types of assertions in, “Urdu Press in India” in Oxford University Press’ Muslims and Media Images: News versus Views.

Farouqi explains, “...the prospects remain that Urdu journalism will continue the traditional game of arousing Muslim sentiments through provocative writing, and render them susceptible to the influence of the communal leadership, with which a good many Urdu journalists are themselves aligned due to their own

Few Indian followers of non-Semitic religions know much about Judaism, and the knowledge they have comes mainly through various secondary sources. They rely on English literature, media reports on the Arab-Israel conflict, the accusation of deicide, and the lessons they received in European History at the school or university level with half-hearted passing references to Jews. An example of which is the University of Lucknow which has never asked its students any question about the Holocaust in its examination history in spite of the fact that it teaches courses on European history. It is noteworthy considering the tendency of students to give more attention to the topics on which questions are likely to be asked in the examination. The

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A Lack of Holocaust Education

Feature

by Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Ph. D.

Jaico, the largest publisher and distributor of Mein Kamf in India, has sold more than one hundred thousand copies in the last decade. There has been a steady rise of ten to fifteen percent in the book’s sale between 2000 and 2009 as reported by Ahmed, Zubair in his article, “Hitler memorabilia attracts young Indians”, BBC News, Mumbai.

Indian shop front

Holocaust isn’t even a footnote. Most other Indian universities are not any different in this respect, except the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The apathy towards Holocaust studies perhaps is better explained by a look at India’s historical record and the reaction to the Holocaust. As Tilak Raj Sareen argues in Indian Responses to the Holocaust, “It was the Indian Muslim attitude towards Jews that largely determined India’s response to the Holocaust.”

In the year 2002, the Israeli Government protested against the lack of mention of the Holocaust in the standard history textbook. In the book, there was great detail and attention given to the treaty of Versailles. It was merely revised to vaguely mention that many Jews were killed during the war, without specifically mentioning the Holocaust.

The fact remains that the students in India are generally never told anything about the Holocaust.

There is actually even no word for the Holocaust in India’s national language, Hindi. This apathy towards Jewish Studies is the reason why those who

dub television documentaries on Jews into Hindi are even not aware of the proper use of Yahūdi, the Hindi word for Jews. They usually use the English word ‘Jews’ instead.

Do you really believe in the Holocaust?

I was taken by surprise when a Hindu student of mine asked me if I really believed that the Holocaust actually took place after he saw a number of books on the subject on my bookshelves. I see this type of statement as a testament to how well the Holocaust deniers have done their job in India. The media is not the only one to blame; academics are sometimes at the helm. There is even a Hindu professor I know who openly admits his admiration for Hitler, though he did not agree to an interview. The Nazis have been openly admired by the Hindu Right Wing, “whose discussion of Nazi policies towards the Jews was mediated by their general stand on the religious minorities of India, particularly on the Muslim community,” according to Egorova, Yulia in Jews and India: Perceptions and Image. Not surprisingly there is a growing popularity and admiration for Hitler among Indian youth.

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“The popularity in India of Mein Kamf, that bible of social and political intolerance, is not a new phenomenon,” writes Satya Sivaraman, in his article Musings on the Popularity of Mein Kampf from Infochange Agenda. “From the time,” Sivaraman continues, “Hitler rose to power in Germany in the 1930s there have been strong currents in the Indian mainstream that admired the Fuhrer for all he stood for and indeed even sought transplantation of his perverted philosophy to Indian soil.”

In 2006 there was an unsuccessful attempt to open a Nazi themed restaurant in Navi Mumbai, a satellite town of Mumbai. A film on Hitler’s last days, titled Dear Friend Hitler!, is currently under production in India.

Growing a new consciousness I have made conscious efforts to bring about positive change in the Muslim attitudes towards Jews, Israel and Zionism by introducing Muslim Indian youth to Jewish literature and cinema from India, Israel, the US and Europe.

Awareness of the Holocaust is also essential. I found I needed to begin by combating Holocaust denial in my capacity as a Fellow of the Centre for Communication & Development Studies, Pune, under its youth outreach programme called Open Space.

In September-October 2009 I organised a fourteen day Holocaust Films Retrospective, the first ever in South Asia, at the two biggest universities

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Feature

by Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Ph. D.

in my hometown of Lucknow, a major centre of Muslim scholarship in South Asia. Four thousand people saw fortysix films collected from around the world, without any financial support from the state or any institution. All film screenings were absolutely free of charge. The event was inaugurated by the mayor of the city of Lucknow, where demonstrations against Israel are commonplace. During the American invasion of Iraq, flags of Israel and the US were drawn on the floor at the entrance to Lucknow’s most famous landmark, the Shia Muslim monument, the Bara Imambara, so that visitor to the monument would trample on the flags as they stepped in. Americans and Israelis were barred from even entering it.

In response to actions like this, I understood it was important to have the support of Muslim academics and a number of Muslim intellectuals were asked to speak against Holocaust denial, along with many non-Muslims, during the film festival. All film screenings were followed by discussions, which were attended by celebrities like theatre personalities, educators, social activists, leaders of almost all religious communities, a number of academics and university students and an acclaimed filmmaker. Muslim scholars, like the Anthropologist Prof. N. Hasnain, Urdu Poet Prof. Malikzada M. Ahmad and the Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Assembly, Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, who is the world’s only Zionist Muslim cleric, spoke against Muslim Anti-Semitism. Also Jewish speakers from the US, like the Human Rights Activist Dr. Richard L. Benkin and the filmmaker and writer Sadia Shepard, and from Israel, Sharon Rappaport, Political Secretary, Israeli Embassy in New Delhi, gave messages that spoke to Jewish-Muslim reconciliation.

Introduction to other forms of Jewish cultural expression is also essential. I

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The Gate of Mercy Synagogue

have tried to introduce Jewish literature from India, Israel, the US, and Europe, by organising the readings of the works of Padmashri Nissim Ezekiel, Esther David, Meera Mahadevan (nee Miriam Jacob Mendrekar), Robin David, Yehuda Amichai, Etgar Keret, Tadeusz Borowski and Katherine Kressman Taylor.

Music is also very useful in building this bridge. I organised “An Evening of Jewish Music” dedicated to World Peace in memory of Daniel Pearl on his birthday, as part of the Daniel Pearl World Music Days peace movement.

Likewise, film can speak to the youth.

A retrospective of the Israeli filmmaker Professor Yael Katzir’s award-winning documentaries was also coordinated.

366 members and The Ten Lost Tribes Challenge with 407 members, aimed at promoting interest in Jewish Studies among South Asians and bringing about reconciliation between Muslims and Jews. I think that the growing numbers speak for themselves. I have also been trying to build a Jewish Studies library, a resource center, which my students could benefit from.

I hope my efforts bear fruit. Change can only begin with knowledge.

A way forward - reaching the next generation In order to reach out to students, I also seek to use sources outside of traditional media and academic outlets. I maintain an active and strong presence on the social networking site Facebook with groups like IndoJudaica with 443 members, Jewish Studies in India with 467 members, Holocaust Education in South Asia with

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Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Gautam Buddha University in Greater NOIDA (a satellite town of Delhi), India. He can be reached on aafreedi@gmail.com. The full text of his article, including footnotes, can be found online on the Asian Jewish Life website.

Viewpoint

by Dr. Adam Cohen

In Search of Ecstasy

Israelis and drug abuse in India

Photography by Sarthak Jain

S

uspended on the edge of a 1,000 foot cliff, with the vibrant glow of the dawning sun, two Israeli backpackers light up a joint of marijuana and soak in the serenity of another Indian morning mentally aloft in a dazed high. They are just two of the thousands of Israelis that flock to Kodaikanal, a mountainous sanctuary in Tamil Nadu known as the Queen of the Hills, to get a taste of India and the ‘high’ life. Unfortunately for many of the Israelis, their adventures become more about the drugs and less about the vast cultural experience available to them in India.

36

“A significant majority of the Israelis that visit Kodaikanal are using drugs, and those who are using will often use 3 or 4 times a day,” says Dr. Charles, a local psychologist associated with the Asian Jewish Education Foundation International (AJEFI), an organization working to combat the substance abuse amongst Israelis.

Every region of India boosts its own variety of drugs for tourists to experience: Goa with its hard drugs like ecstasy and cocaine, Manali with its Malana Cream Hashish, and Kodaikanal promoting hallucinogenic mushrooms and other famed assortments of marijuana. “For

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Israeli backpackers – most of whom have recently completed their three year mandatory service in the Israeli Army – this medley of drugs is highly enticing,” says Dr. Saraswati, another psychologist working with AJEFI. In India drugs are cheap, highly accessible, and the Indian Government rarely prosecutes drug use amongst the tourist crowd to avoid diplomatic tension.

This spells TROUBLE for the Israelis touring through India’s unregulated drug culture. “PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is not an unknown condition among Israeli backpackers. They suffer from the traumas of violence and military

Viewpoint

by Dr. Adam Cohen

discipline just like any other man or woman in the services. Drugs provide an easy escape from stress and anxiety, but it is not a healthy one,” explains Saraswati.

Around one third of Israel’s young adult population use their wages collected from military service to travel internationally. For many, these adventures abroad provide a rite of passage from the military life into adulthood. “After my service I felt burdened by stress,” says one Israeli backpacker who has now settled in India, “I just need to get out of the country for a while. Living in Israel is not as easy as everyone thinks.”

India provides attractive incentives for the Israeli backpacker: cheap living, easy traveling, interesting cultural sites, and established Israeli communities.

But perhaps above all “drugs are practically free in comparison to the rates of western societies,” Charles elucidates.

This enticing tourist paradise with what the Indian Times refers to as “an uninterrupted treat of drugs, rock ’n roll and nirvana” has put a significant mark on the towns and villages where large concentrations of Israelis have settled during their travels in India.

From November until Passover, Israelis

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flood cities like Manali and Kodaikanal by the thousands. As a result, entire communities have been re-arranged to attract Israeli business.

“Three hundred rupees a night per room is my average rate for Israelis,” says Samuel of the Vadakanal village in Kodaikanal. “If I put 3 Israelis in one room (3 floor mats for sleeping, Indian toilet, and water from Mercury infected wells), that’s 900 Rupees a day. I have 4 rooms which earns me a total of around 3 Lacks (300,000 Rupees) a month.”

Compared to local hotel rates, these fees are quite outrageous. Even some

37

Viewpoint

by Dr. Adam Cohen

of the most luxurious hotels will only charge 1,200 Rupees per night, which includes all amenities. But the Israeli travelers stick to the grooves of a specific path that other Israelis blazed before them. “The Israelis come to Vadakanal because they hear about it from other Israelis while they are traveling in India,” describes one of the members of the Kodaikanal Chabad House working to enrich the lives of the Israelis traveling through Kodaikanal.

“They will meet in Goa or Dharmasala, sharing their stories with one another and highlighting the best places to visit.”

Such isolated interest in specific areas has caused local markets to skyrocket, especially in the drug industries that thrive off of the Israeli tourists. “Hashish, magic mushrooms,” murmurs one drug dealer wandering from shoulder to shoulder of Israelis scattered through the central streets of Kodaikanal. An interested buyer follows him into a secluded corner of town where a dealer withdraws a variety of drugs from which the Israeli nonchalantly makes his purchase.

This economically dependent tourist industry has significantly transformed the local politics and community. Drug dealers bribe government officials to sell their products without restriction, forest services provide land for growing marijuana, and locals who were once farmers become drug dealers because of the attractive incentives and easy money.

From the perspective of organizations like AJEFI, this lifestyle has cultivated a vicious cycle that is causing decay within both the local and Israeli communities; Israelis want drugs, locals want money, and government officials want power. Together they feed off of one another, making drugs more readily available and corrupt government officials wealthier.

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“These young veterans are searching for emotional and psychological support,” describes Dr. Murali, professor of sociology and an advocate of AJEFI. “A support system has been established.

Unfortunately it is built upon a lifestyle that is neither sustainable nor healthy.”

Around one third of Israel’s young adult population use their wages collected from military services to travel internationally. For many, these adventures abroad provide a rite of passage from the military life into adulthood.

Loose restrictions have caused the Israeli backpacker culture in India to revolve around the youth ideals of drugs, sexy, and relaxation. Only a few organizations are scattered throughout India that support the growing number of Israeli travelers, most of which are religiously affiliated to the Chabad Lubavich community. “You cannot expect a youth population that has just finished military service to know what is going to benefit them in the long term. They come to India to find relief and if there are no substantial options available, they will make their own,” explains Murali.

In truth, the Israeli backpacker community in India has been socially neglected. Many have pushed aside the reality that a large percentage of these young adults are not merely traveling for the sake of traveling but rather to find some balance in their lives. Some of the travelers have even seen death and violence, which undoubtedly affects their quality of life, and by traveling to India they are trying to relieve these heavy burdens that weigh down their thoughts and emotions. But self-healing is most often an ineffective way to treat

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psychological complexes, especially when people end up in an environment that is surrounded with drugs.

“The most common drugs used amongst the Israelis are classified as stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens,” says Dr. Charles. “The stimulants are used because they can relieve states of depression. Depressants are popular because they nullify painful emotions and stresses. Hallucinogens are attractive because they give a sense of elevated awareness, the substance based ‘nirvana’ which people find experientially interesting.”

Addressing this issue of drug use and social neglect is no small task. Although AJEFI, and organizations like it, are providing alternative environments with free lodging, cultural events, and drug rehabilitation facilities, their resources can hardly encompass the growing number of Israelis whose population can expand to over 3,000 people in a small village like Vadaikanal during the tourist months.

In truth, the Israeli backpacker community in India has been socially neglected. Many have pushed aside the reality that a large percentage of these young adults are not merely traveling for the sake of traveling but rather to find some balance in their lives.

Because of the substantial number of Israelis involved, reformation requires the support of large administrative organizations like the Israeli Government and other communities who support the Israeli population. Drug use in India is not simply an isolated incident but an encompassing situation that involves a commanding portion of the Israeli youth population.

Viewpoint

by Dr. Adam Cohen

Actions must be taken which address two important issues: first, steps must be taken to manage the psychological distresses that affect many of the postservice youth who have resorted to drugs as a means to ‘erase’ negative feelings and memories. Second, intuitive programs must be designed that encourage Israelis to explore, on a more holistic level, the diverse aspects of Indian culture that will be sustainable both for the Israeli and the Indian community.

“By working with Israeli backpackers, we are addressing the youth of Israel, the future of this historically and religiously monumental nation-state,” says Dr. Saravanan, Associate Director of The Israel-India Association who

is also a professor of Judaic Studies.

“They will determine the outcome of the Zionist movement and the continuation of a significant point in Judaic history in which Judaism exists both as a Diaspora and nationhood.

Their success is the success of a dream and vision for a permanent Jewish homeland.”

Culturally receptive mentoring would provide a more vibrant preservation of the ethnic traditions within the regions in which large populations of Israelis are settled; the Israelis would benefit by receiving a taste of ancient India while the Indian culture is encouraged to promote its cultural dynamism. But at its current pace, such a bright future does not seem to be the moving trend.

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About the author Dr. Adam Cohen is president of Asian Jewish Education Foundation International, an organization with the central focus of Jewish Education and the Support of Israelis in India. Programs offered cover a diverse range of goals including developing Judaic Studies, providing free accommodations to Jews and Israelis, offering drug rehabilitation for Israeli backpackers, and organizing community service projects that bridge sustainable relationships between Judaism and India. The AJEFI staff includes university level professors, clinical psychologists, and members of the local Jewish Community. More information can be found at www.ajefi.

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