From Portugal to Persia:
Passover Customs from Around the World
alcutta. The name itself evokes extremes, from jokes about the long-running show, Oh, Calcutta!, to images of desperate poverty. The piteousness is impossible to deny, but the city is more a kaleidoscope of shifting color than a stereotyped black-and-white still shot.
It is the gleaming brown bodies of Indian children naked on the street; the dusty, bare flat feet of their mothers as they squat to chop red onions outside makeshift shelters held together with rags and plastic; the running walk of coolies in plaid, skirt-like garments called lunghis, baskets of striped watermelons improbably balanced on their heads.
It is the sudden mint-green and salmon-pink dome of a mosque jutting out from among the drab sand-colored buildings around it, and the marigold-garlanded Hindu shrines that pop up just about anywhere.
It is pyramids of string beans, orange gooseberries, tomatoes and ginger piled in giant wicker baskets beside bundles of coriander and mint in open-air markets; tiny yellow bananas still clustered on the branch, dangling from street stalls; burlap bags filled with countless varieties of rice and lentils; shimmering displays of colored glass bangles.
For Jewish visitors, Calcutta holds remarkable surprises that testify to the generous presence of a community that once numbered 5,000. Today about 50 elderly Jews remain, but many sites of Jewish interest make the city a worthwhile stop on any tour of India.
History: Legend and tradition trace the earliest Jewish settlement in India to the time of King Solomon or to the Second Temple. However, the first Jewish community in Calcutta was organized by Shalom ben Aaron ben Obadiah ha-Cohen, a Syrian Jew who came to seek his fortune in 1789. At the age of 26 he left his native Aleppo for Surat, on the western coast of India.
Though it would never have as large a Jewish community as Bombay, Calcutta’s prominence as the capital of British India captured Ha-Cohen’s interest and he settled there, on the east coast, in 1798. To assist him in his trade in diamonds, silk, indigo and cloth, he employed many Jews who moved to the city from Aleppo and the south Indian city of Cochin. Ha-Cohen rose to become jeweler to the nawab (nobleman) of Lucknow, north of Calcutta. It is said he even rode with the nawab on his elephant.
News spread to Jewish communities throughout the Middle East, and immigrants began trickling in from Syria, Persia and Yemen. Religious persecutions in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra between 1825 and 1835 spurred a wave of emigration to Calcutta and gave the community its decidedly Baghdadi flavor.
A close-knit traditional group, the early settlers provided links in a chain of trading posts stretching from Shanghai to London dealing in opium, indigo, cotton yarn, silk and piece-goods, gold leaf, precious stones, ivory and coffee. Many flourished as confectioners, grocers and opticians; some became professionals.
A few distinguished themselves in business: David Joseph Ezra made his fortune in real estate; Benjamin Nissim Elias built an empire in cotton, jute and tobacco processing, engineering companies and electricity supply. It is to Ezra’s son, Elia David Joseph, that the city owes its magnificent synagogue, Maghen David. In 1886 Elia’s widow built the Ezra Hospital that still bears the family’s name.
In 1826, Ha-Cohen’s son-in-law, Moses Dwek ha-Cohen, established the city’s first synagogue, Neveh Shalome, as well as Beth-El 30 years later, where it still stands on Pollock Street.
To combat missionary activity, the Jewish Girls’ and Boys’ School was founded in 1881. When the boys’ division closed 13 years later, boys were accepted into the girls’ school. The Jewish Free School (renamed the Elias Meyer Free School) for indigent boys was founded in 1882. Jewish trustees still run both although there are no Jewish students.
After Indian independence in 1947, the community’s activities were curtailed by the restrictive policy of Indianization. The Jews, who had reached the zenith of their economic and social status under the British Raj, began leaving. About 2,000 emigrated to England and another thousand scattered to Australia, Canada and the United States. The establishment of Israel in 1948 prompted an aliya of about 2,000. The population gradually dwindled to a handful who remain to look after business interests or who have no children to draw them elsewhere.
Community: With a population of almost 2,000 by the end of the nineteenth century, the community began to move east from their original settlements near the Hooghly River toward the Bowbazaar area, close to their synagogues. Many adopted Western dress and etiquette and the English language. Wealthier members moved to the select residential area of Park Street in South Calcutta.
Throughout the 1930’s and 40’s Habonim, the pioneer Zionist group, promoted Jewish values and aliya. During World War II, Rabbi David Seligson, an American chaplain stationed in India, helped organize the Young People’s Congregation at Beth-El synagogue. Seligson influenced Ezekiel Musleah, then a teenager, to study for the rabbinate in New York. Musleah returned to India in 1952 and served for 12 years as the only ordained rabbi the community ever had.
Sights: A walking tour of the old Jewish neighborhoods provides a window to the community, while offering a closeup of Calcutta’s teeming street life. Starting at the Central Metro stop of the country’s only subway, walk down Bowbazaar Street (many street names have been changed to erase the British influence, but people still use the old designations anyway).
Almost immediately the archway of the Elias Meyer Free School and Talmud Torah proclaims this a Jewish area. Stop to admire the necklaces, bangles, and earrings of 22-karat gold that glitter like burnished sunshine in the windows of Bowbazaar’s jewelry shops. Street vendors hawk temptations of all kinds, but be careful of uncooked or deep-fried food. Sip the refreshing liquid of green coconuts sold on almost every corner.
Farther down is the Menassseh Meyer building with the name of its Jewish patron emblazoned across the front; it is now used by the police department. Continue straight down Lal Bazaar: Here tea sellers use old-fashioned scales to weigh out parcels of tea leaves from crates stacked high behind them, and public typists offer their services to the illiterate, tapping out letters on manual typewriters. One block past the massive red brick Calcutta Police Station, at 1 and 2 Old Courthouse Street, stand Norton Buildings, former headquarters of B.N. Elias and Company and former home of the Jewish Association of Calcutta. Retrace the route back one block and turn left into Radha Bazaar. As it becomes Pollock Street, look for the imposing yellow clock tower of the Beth-El synagogue on the left, adorned with light blue Stars of David.
Beth-El, renovated recently with community funds, typifies the architecture of Indian synagogues-soaring ceilings, delicate columns and arched stained-glass windows. It is easy to feel reverence sitting on the plain wooden benches downstairs (for men), gazing at the wood-and-brass bima Sefardim call a teba in the center of the sanctuary. The women’s galleries upstairs are at eye level not only with the chandeliers and ceiling fans, but with the domed top of the Ark, painted light blue with white stars to resemble the heavens. The perpendicular solidity of the seven columns on either side of the sanctuary gives the otherwise airy structure a necessary visual balance. The Ark, or hekhal, is literally a semi-circular room with a shelf around its perimeter that holds sifrei Torah in gleaming silver cases. Community members still gather in the courtyard to make matza as they did in days gone by. Directly across the street the original site of the Jewish Girls’ School is now a post office.
From Pollock, turn left onto Ezra Street, named for David Joseph Ezra, who lived at No. 54 and owned almost every property on the street. Turn right onto Brabourne Road, then left into Bihari Bose Road (formerly Canning Street), where bangle-sellers peddle their wares alongside barbers giving shaves and haircuts in the open. It’s hard to miss Maghen David at 109 with its imposing red brick exterior and 142-foot steeple. An unusual feature for a Jewish building, the steeple wasn’t strange for the Christian architect who designed it. Ironically, he inadvertently complied with the talmudic prescription to have the synagogue tower over all the other buildings in town.
When Neveh Shalome could no longer accommodate its growing congregation, Maghen David was built on the adjoining site. Nevertheless, Neveh Shalome continued to attract worshippers. It was demolished in 1910 and a smaller building took its place. Neveh Shalome suffered years of inter-synagogue strife based on competing claims to the land on which the buildings stood; it is not used as a synagogue any longer but remains a mute witness to the discord that plagued the community.
Maghen David is an exquisite example of the ornate Italian Renaissance style, its stained-glass windows throwing colorful patterns on the black-and-white marble floor. Eighteen stone pillars surround the sanctuary, topped by teal-blue arches inscribed in gold with Hebrew verses meant to deepen kavana, the meaningfulness of prayer. The semicircular platform in front of the hekhal, where the kohanim recited the priestly blessing and where weddings and circumcisions were performed, is inlaid with intricate Castilian tiles in blues, browns and beiges and bordered with a wrought-iron-and-wood rail. Menorah, an elaborate decoration over the semicircular hekhal, depicts a variety of symbols, including two menoras, the Ten Commandments, a painting of the Western Wall, a mystical 10 spheres and the urim and tumim, the priestly breastplate. The graceful sanctuary can seat 400 men and 300 women, but Shabbat morning services now barely draw a minyan. Services start at 6 and rotate weekly between Beth-El and Maghen David. During the week, the caretakers of both synagogues are happy to accommodate visitors. Just knock on the door, or call David Nahoum in advance to make arrangements (telephone 91-33-244-8364).
For another walking tour, to south central Calcutta, begin at the police station in Lal Bazaar. Turn right into Bentinck Street, passing No. 29, the former home of Habonim. Bentinck turns into Calcutta’s main thoroughfare, Chowringhee, now called J. Nehru Road. Past the Metro Cinema and Grand Hotel, turn left into Lindsay Street and follow it to New Market, a covered mart of hundreds of tiny shops selling everything from sweets to saris. A "guide" will inevitably attach himself to you-with the incentive of a commission from the stores he picks. It’s worth his guidance to be able to navigate the maze, but don’t forget to bargain.
Wherever you go in New Market, take a break at Nahoum’s, a Jewish-owned bakery and confectioner’s shop (244-3033). Although there is no rabbinical supervision, the community has patronized the shop since its inception. One hundred years ago, Nahoum Israel Mordecai came to Calcutta from Baghdad and began selling home-made pastries door-to-door; the shop he later established has been in its present location for 65 years. David Nahoum, his grandson, a trustee of most of the city’s remaining Jewish institutions, has become the community’s unofficial emissary; his brother, Nahoum Nahoum, ran the retail shop until he died. Lemon tarts, eclairs and cheesecakes, special occasion cakes shaped as boats and violins grace the shelves. On Fridays, Nahoum’s often bakes Jewish specialties like cheese pastries and date-filled babas. Shabbat loaves, different from braided hallas, can be special ordered.
Reading: On the Banks of the Ganga (Christopher), by Rabbi Ezekiel N. Musleah, provides a comprehensive history of the Calcutta Jewish community. Gay Courter’s novel, Flowers in the Blood (Dutton), portrays a prominent Jewish family from Calcutta. Open Heart (Doubleday), by A.B. Yehoshua, follows an Israeli doctor to India and includes a brief description of Calcutta. City of Joy, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (Doubleday), gives a powerful overview of the city. Calcutta’s greatest poet, the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, can be read in translation; a Polish version of his drama, The Post Office, recently translated into English (St. Martin’s) was the last play performed at the orphanage of Janusz Korczak in the Warsaw Gheto.
Recommendations: Direct flights on Air India (800-223-7776; 212-751-6200 in New York) from the United States only stop in New Delhi or Bombay, from which travelers can connect for Calcutta. For information and assistance, contact the India Tourist Office, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112; 212-586-4901.
The best time to visit Calcutta is from November to February, when the temperature is comfortable. Avoid monsoon season, June to September.
Although there are no kosher restaurants in Calcutta, many Hindus are vegetarian, so kosher travelers will find plenty of tasty and inexpensive food. Eat cooked vegetables, opt for fruit with a rind and drink and brush your teeth with only sealed bottled water. While no inoculations are required, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta (404-639-3311) has up-to-date recommendations. Your doctor can prescribe antimalaria pills and diarrhea medications; ask your travel agent for complete details on other food and health caveats.
Despite health warnings and poverty, India will charm you with its magic. The warm and hospitable people offer a small sampling of the harmony characteristic of the Jewish experience there.
he sign above the door at 11 Bowbazaar Street still said "I.S. Musleah," my grandfather’s name, and up in the dark, musty staircase began the journey for which I had traveled over 7,000 miles from Great Neck, New York. After 33 years, I had returned to Calcutta, where I was born. The only member of my family left at 11 Bowbazaar was my great-aunt Ramah, 89, bedridden after a fall. As a child of six, I had emigrated to the United States with my parents and two sisters, leaving behind the city that had been home to my family since 1820, when Hakham Eliahu Musleah, grandson of the chief rabbi of Baghdad, settled in Calcutta. What I remembered was a hazy reconstruction of old photographs and family stories, fueled by imagination and buffeted by images of squalor and homelessness. But the desire to return had remained constant.
I traveled back with my parents in February 1997. Unaccompanied by a husband or my two children, I was often mistaken for a girl of 20 instead of a woman of 39. I slept in the bed in which my father was born. I sat in my grandfather’s seat in the Maghen David Synagogue, next to my father, who sat in his grandfather’s seat. Back at 11 Bowbazaar, I listened to the clock chime every quarter hour and imagined my grandmother listening to the same chimes-the grandmother I had never met, the grandmother after whom I had named my daughter Shoshana.
For me it was a dream fulfilled, a journey back to the place where much of my family history began and the paths upon which I and my children now tread were set by personalities and character and circumstance. The reality I found was not lyrical or lovely. Instead, it bordered on a shattering sense of closure not only for my family but for the Jewish community that had once numbered 5,000 and had faded to 50 elderly people. It was wretchedness and wonder combined, the bittersweet marvel of grand, granite-pillared synagogues that stood empty.
When I first climbed up the stairs at 11 Bowbazaar, kissed the mezuza and entered the house, the mixture of awe and despair was almost overwhelming. There was the south veranda where my great-grandmother peeled vegetables, and the north veranda graced by the sukka on Sukkot. Here was the godown - the storage pantry - my father sneaked into as a child to savor the secret taste of biscuits and sweets. This was the window my grandmother looked out in anguish after giving birth to a stillborn child. It was jolting to stand in the places the stories had occurred, as if mythology had sprung to life.
I wondered around the dark rooms filled with heavy rosewood furniture, stared up at the peeling walls and the old-fashioned light switches. My own wedding photo faced those of my aunts and grandparents, mirror images. The sense of continuity at being in a place that breathed generations was eerie.
Aunty Ramah was my last real link with those generations that floated about the house. I cried when I saw her, sat on the bed and held her hand for a long time. She kept saying she could hardly believe it was me. "I always remember how sweet you were, little darlings," she crooned. I imagined how it would be to see my children suddenly grown up, and I understood.
The cold, hard details of living at 11 Bowbazaar for a week brought me down to earth. I gawked at the gray stone bathroom where I was told I could bathe by mixing hot and cold water in a small steel tub and pouring the combination over myself with a bucket. The toilet, in a separate room, jammed up if paper was thrown in. Paper or not, it usually didn’t flush at all. I lay down on the bed, shrouded in a mosquito net with moth-eaten holes that defeated its purpose. With my head on a pillow as hard as the rock Jacob lay on when he dreamed of angels, I made peace with the fact that amenities wouldn’t be the strong point of the trip.
We found other treasures to compensate. Aunty Ramah was surrounded by a handful of loyal caregivers. Chief among them was the trustworthy cook, waiter and butler rolled into one whom Aunty Ramah calls, "Boy!" because she’s known him since he was a "table boy" who assisted the cook and did odd jobs around the house.
"What is his real name?" I wanted to know. "Apka nam kya hai?" my mother instructed me to ask in Hindustani, a colloquial dialect of Hindi. "Suleiman," he answered with a smile.
Every morning Suleiman served us tea in butter-yellow cups and saucers, and whatever fresh sweets or savories he’d just bought: crisp, fried, puffed kachowris with potato curry; sweet whole-milk yogurt that came in a clay pot; creamy Indian sweets in tempting arrays; heart-shaped "queen cakes" from Nahoum’s, the Jewish-owned bakery. Every morning my mother would chat in Hindustani with Suleiman, going over the menu for the day. He cooked us lunches and dinners: a potato and egg dish called mahmoosa; curries of minced vegetables that melted into subtle stews; dal (lentils) and rice; even handmade potato chips!
Muni, the cheerful ayah (nursemaid) who bathed and dressed and fed Aunty Ramah, adopted me. With my mother as translator, she told me about her shadhi, her arranged marriage – and how embarrassed she had been when she met her husband for the first time at her wedding. She tried teaching me some Hindi, and I repeated after her haltingly: Apko America may yad karega: "I’ll remember you in America." On my own, I added: Bahot acha: "Okay, good," wagging my head from side to side in the Indian manner. She draped me in her saris, pasted red beauty dots – bindis – on my forehead and giggled at the results.
My father guided me through the old Jewish neighborhoods. "This is where I was getting my hair cut when the Hindu-Muslim riots started in 1946," he remembered at one spot. "I had to run home with only half my hair done… This is Norton Buildings, where my father worked for 37 years." Or, opening a gate, "My Hebrew master used to live in this one room with his six children."
The vendors in the street filled my senses with a rich feast of sights and smells of the foods they peddled. They fried eggs on clay stoves; boiled milk and tea sweetened with plenty of sugar and sold it for one rupee (3 cents) in tiny clay cups; shaved a block of ice and poured syrup over the ice chips in a glass. My mother stood fascinated at the snack stalls, trying to discern the secrets of the perfect golden pakoras – slices of eggplant and onion coated in chickpea flour and deep-fried. At home she used minuscule portions of oil, salt and sugar in her cooking, but here she craved spicy salted chickpeas; doughy, deep-fried pitchkas dipped in hot sauce, and fudgy paeras.
Not all the sights were as appetizing. Outside 8/81 Bentinck Street, where my family lived before we left for America, men used a wall as a urinal. I immediately began to walk looking down. The rickshaw wallahs, though officially banned from the streets, beckoned for business anyway. Two men balancing a wooden door between them on their heads claimed the right of way. A beggar woman with a scrawny child on her hip opened her hand for money. As soon as I gave her one rupee I was surrounded by others and quickly learned a lesson in hardening my heart.
We stopped at Beth-El, the 140-year-old synagogue my mother’s family had attended. "So many people used to come to synagogue they used to fight for seats," she sobbed with uncharacteristic sentimentality, usually my father’s domain. "All gone. All empty." Only a handful of men now make up the Shabbat minyan.
At Maghen David, our next stop, my father’s cache of nostalgia tumbled out. Not only did he grow up in this synagogue, but when he returned to India after being ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, he served as rabbi here for 12 years. Standing at the tzedaka box in the back of the sanctuary, he recalled that on every birthday his grandfather would bring him to drop in coins. The money was sent to Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron and Tiberias.
We climbed the stairs to the women’s gallery and he remembered that the last time he had been there was almost 60 years ago. He had kissed his mother’s hand after he read the maftir portion from the Torah for the first time at the age of 10. She died a month later. Hard-hearted, I made him repeat the story into the tape recorder and the video camera.
On Shabbat we returned to Maghen David, walking together to the 6 o’clock service in the dim morning light. Sitting in my grandfather’s seat, I closed my eyes and tried to feel his presence but I didn’t feel anything. I had never met him. I got up and stood behind one of the pillars, trying to imagine the benches full of people. In my mind, I pasted my grandfather’s picture onto his seat, a photograph I have of him with a kippa on his head and a siddur in his hand. I pasted my great-grandfather’s picture onto his seat, his long beard flowing, and my father’s picture as a boy onto his. Then I started to cry.
All I could do was paste pictures of people I had never known into their appropriate spots in this synagogue that was once vibrant and alive. What sadness for my father to sit and walk where in his bones, in his heart and soul, he felt the closeness of everyone he loved-all dead now. I asked him if he saw them. "It’s very vivid," he said. "It’s very hard."
When my father went up to the teba (bima) to lead Shaharit, I listened to his chanting mix with the cawing of crows and chirping of sparrows that flew in the open windows, and I suddenly and intensely wanted an aliya. I wanted to be part of the chain of melody-makers in the synagogue. Every verse decorating the arches on each side of the synagogue declared in Hebrew, "I will sing to God," or a variation of the verse. My voice, I thought, should echo and bounce off the high ceiling and up to the balcony where my grandmother and my aunts sat, looking down. I wanted to make the magnificent dying edifice mine in some small way.
I knew it wasn’t the synagogue’s custom to give women aliyot, but I asked the man in charge if there were any chance I could have one. Unwilling to take sole responsibility for the decision, he polled two or three of the 12 men present, who shook their heads no. I shrugged it off (so I thought) and went to sit with my mother in the women’s gallery, near the stained-glass windows that threw colors onto the plain benches. As I listened to my father read from the Torah about the priest’s breastplate, its colorful glowing and ornate stones worn over the heart, it seemed as if the synagogue was the breastplate, worn over my father’s heart. I wanted to wear it over mine while I was here, to show that this synagogue had a living legacy. I didn’t have the chance.
My tenuous connections to grandparents I only knew through my father’s memories were revitalized when we visited their graves. We went to the Calcutta Jewish Cemetery with a guide provided by the India Tourist Office. The caretaker opened the rusted iron gates to reveal a grassy expanse crowded with 3,000 tombs that sprouted like a forest of blackened stone coffins above the ground. My father headed straight for his parents’ graves, which he had visited only twice previously in the last 30 years.
He fell on his father’s grave, heaved one sob and kissed the stone. He fell on his mother’s grave and kissed the stone. A weed caught his attention and he plucked it. Then he straightened and recited the hashkaba, the Sefardic memorial prayer and Eishet Hayil, the selection from Proverbs praising "a woman of valor." The sound of ever-present crows mixed in eerily with the murmur of prayer.
My mother’s parents are buried in England. Standing in the background, she explained the poignancy of the moment to the guide. "His mother died when she was just 39," she whispered, but her words shocked me as if she had blared them through a loudspeaker. Was it an accident that I was kissing my grandmother’s grave for the first time at the same age at which she had died?
After my father washed his hands, the ritual ceremony upon leaving the cemetery, I hugged him and asked, "Are you okay?" He answered, "Continuity is a great thing."
One more journey on the nostalgic path home remained, a trip to Madhupur, enshrined in our memories as an idyllic hill village famous for its pure water and clear air. Since my father’s boyhood, numerous members of the Jewish community had spent vacations there. I was eager because I, too, had vivid memories of Madhupur, especially of the pet goat I adopted from among the stray animals in the village, and of horse-and-buggy rides to the ravines, the closest we came to the beach.
We boarded the five-hour Toofan Express at Howrah Station, Calcutta’s cavernous railroad mecca, and whooshed past dhobis washing clothes in ponds; fertile rice paddies; bullocks plowing fields and cows grazing. Silhouettes of palm trees waved like the blades of a windmill; the fringed leaves of banana trees looked as if they had been cut with scissors. Dung cakes dried on the railroad tracks; elaborate creations were stacked in beehive shapes.
Along the way, my father was transformed into a boy, mesmerized by the sound, movement and adventure of the train. As a child, he knew the train schedules and stations by heart, and still rattled them off: Liluah, Belur, Bally, Burdwan, Asansole. He recalled how his father used to love to put his head out the window of the train to see the old-fashioned steam engine working; how by the end of the trip his face would be black with soot.
Nothing prepared us for the disappointment in Madhupur. At first, my father didn’t see the reality – its ordinariness, a village like any other, with trash-filled dirt streets. Lost in another world, he pointed out "Home," a once-grand house whose red façade had now faded into a mottled pink. My father pulled out a tiny black-and-white picture of himself as a boy standing in front of the splendidly kept "Home" and held it up the building, almost as proof that the good old days of his childhood had indeed existed. He chatted with the Muslim family that lived there, and showed them the picture. They marveled that after 35 years he had come so far, ostensibly seeking buildings. They didn’t grasp that "Home" meant something as deep as its name.
The Dak Bungalow crushed his expectations. It had housed the British government court and guests, and fulfilled the same purpose for the Indian government. Instead of a magnificent pure-white cottage surrounded by an open green park, we found a dilapidated mustard building in the midst of a yellowed field bordered with squatters’ lean-tos. Elias Lodge, another estate, was overrun by weeds, its front gate blocked by twisted trees. In the market area, the Burdwan Sweet Shop, of blessed memory, which once sold such rich, creamy confections that people would bring boxes of sweets back to Calcutta, now attracted more flies than customers.
The one bright spot was Lilly Ville, where we stayed during our last vacation. The Anglo-Indian couple who lived there invited us inside, and when I saw the wide red veranda, it all came back to me. I remembered that was where my goat urinated and my mother banished him from the house.
We did take a buggy ride, although we didn’t have time to go as far as the ravines. We all crammed into a bicycle rickshaw that could comfortably seat two, my mother on my father’s lap. That provoked hysterical giggles, especially when we narrowly escaped being impaled on the horns of a cow in no hurry to cross the road. We haggled for clay toys, bananas, bangles and bindis, even for the price of our room at the Madhupur Rest House, until we realized we were bargaining for the equivalent of 30 cents off the two dollars it was going to cost per room. We laughed a lot during the day we spent in Madhupur, mostly because if we didn’t we probably would have dissolved in tears.
We saved those tears for the day we left Calcutta. "See you again, Aunt Ra," we promised, kissing her wistful face, wondering if we’d ever really return. But as I walked back down the musty staircase that just a few days earlier had been so dark and still, I felt it suddenly come alive with new memories of my own.
When my family and I emigrated from Calcutta to Philadelphia in 1964, nobody had ever heard of a Jew from India. I remember standing up in front of my second grade class at Solomon Schechter Day School, singing the Indian national anthem, "Jana Gana Mana," as proof that I was really a little Indian girl...and not Pocahontas either.
Despite the surge of interest in Sephardic culture, many people still don't know much about the Jews of India, a group of disparate communities from Cochin to Calcutta, isolated from each other by thousands of miles as well as differing origins and customs.
Bombay's B'nei Israel community claims its origin dates back to the Greek persecution that brought on the Maccabean revolt. The Jews of Cochin, in South India, trace their roots back 2,000 years, although the earliest documentary evidence of the settlement dates from the eleventh century CE. Many Portuguese Jews fled the Inquisition and made their home in Cochin. The first Jew to settle in Calcutta was Shalome Cohen, a Syrian businessman who left his native Aleppo and made Calcutta his home in 1798. He prospered and eventually became the court jeweler to the Nawab (nobleman) of Lucknow. Iraqi Jews streamed to India in the 1800s, both to try to emulate Cohen's success as well as to escape religious persecutions in Baghdad from 1825 to 1835. Eventually, the Calcutta Jewish community grew to a population of 5,000 at its peak in the 1940s, establishing five synagogues, two Jewish schools, a Jewish hospital and other Jewish institutions.
Today, only 50 Jews remain in Calcutta. About half the community made aliyah to the newly independent state of Israel in 1948. The other half, afraid their economic circumstances would decline after India gained independence from Britain in 1947, scattered to other English-speaking countries: England, Australia, Canada and the United States.
My parents, too, decided India was not the best place to raise a family anymore. My father was already familiar with America: he had been encouraged to enter the rabbinate by a Jewish chaplain stationed in Calcutta. My father was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and went back to Calcutta to serve the community for 12 years. We came to the U.S. by ship--and although Ellis Island was closed by then, our first glimpse of America was...the Statue of Liberty.
My father became the rabbi of Mikveh Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Philadelphia. He spent hours with a reel-to-reel tape player, learning the Sephardic melodies that differed from the familiar Calcutta chants. My mother, who had worked as a secretary in Calcutta, learned to cook. In Calcutta, we had relied on our Indian cook who was trained in the rules of kashrut--as did most Indian Jewish families. Before we left, my mother followed the cook around and wrote down everything in two steno pads. The first things she tried to cook in America were: mahmoosa, an egg and potato dish; beet khata, a sweet-and-sour curry with dumplings; and aloomakalas, a round, deep-fried potato that is crisp on the outside, white and fluffy inside. Writing down recipes is easier than following them...We sampled a lot of burned food in those days! When my mother turned to the women in the synagogue to guide her, they taught her how to make good Sephardic foods like...chopped liver, brisket, noodle kugel, matza balls, and sponge cake! Though Mikveh Israel is Sephardic, many of its members were Ashkenazic.
We arrived in the U.S. in July, with Rosh Hashanah not far off. Many Sephardic and Oriental Jews have a special Rosh Hashanah mini-seder, featuring foods that symbolize good wishes for the new year. Our seder includes apple preserves spiced with whole cloves, dates stuffed with walnuts, pomegranate ("May we be as full of mitzvot as this pomegranate as full of seeds"), spinach, pumpkin, scallions and string beans.
The blessings over the vegetables derive from puns on their Hebrew names that turn into wishes that our enemies should be destroyed. In Calcutta, we also used a sheep's head to concretize the biblical hope that we should be "heads and not tails." Understandably, we did away with this particular dish in America! The seder also reflects the kabbalistic influence on our community. We recite five biblical verses--from 10 to 17 times each. The word and repetition counts, when added up, suggest numerically calculated hopes for a good year. The last verse is: "And you will have peace, and your house will have peace, and everything that is yours will have peace."
Nothing acid or sour is eaten on Rosh Hashanah, such as the sweet-and-sour Arabic dish called "khatta." Instead, the meal consists of tempting dishes like "mahmoora," chicken cooked with tomatoes, spices, almonds and raisins, served on a bed of pilau (rice) and topped with none other than "roshinkes mit mandlen"-- more raisins and almonds sautéed quickly until crisp and golden. We even dip the hallah into sugar, not salt, after reciting the motzi.
In Calcutta, the distinctive home ritual carried into the synagogue. Instead of one special Selihot service the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah, Sephardic and Oriental Jews conduct Selihot, the special set of penitential prayers--all through the month of Elul. On erev Rosh Hashanah, a pre-dawn Selihot service began at 4 a.m., followed by the morning service and a visit to the cemetery.
Though I was too young to remember the synagogue observance, my parents have described Rosh Hashanah in the Maghen David Synagogue in Calcutta. At 6 a.m. on Rosh Hashanah morning, the synagogue, draped in white, began to fill with people, men dressed in white sharkskin suits (a shiny, heavy, polyester-like material). Women also wore as much white as possible. The entire service was chanted aloud, and did not end until 1 p.m. The centerpiece of the service is a poem by Judah Samuel Abbas that describes the binding of Isaac. The shofar blasts also differ from the traditional Ashkenzic blasts: "teruah" is one long blast instead of nine short blasts. After the Torah reading, the solemn mood of the service shifted to that of an auction, as the aliyot, ark openings and other honors for the second day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur went up for grabs. Honors for the first day were auctioned off the previous Shabbat. Though the auction prolonged the service by almost an hour, nobody seemed
to mind. Only the people interested in the bidding -- about half the congregation -- remained in the sanctuary, laughing and joking among themselves, but still paying very close attention. Much of the bidding was done in increments of 26--the numerical value of God's name--until the bidding reached 101, the numerical value of the guardian angel Michael's name. The opening of the ark on Kol Nidre night and reading the haftarah traditionally drew the highest bids. Parents bid on honors for their children as well. When the Torah was taken out, a special haftarah scroll accompanied it; this light scroll was usually carried by a child. It was also a child's job to point to the beginning of the Torah portion with a yad, or pointer.
On Rosh Hashanah afternoon, many Calcutta families opened their homes to others for the traditional reading of the Book of Psalms, accompanied by a light meal of sweets and fruit. While the distinctive Calcutta lifestyle has vanished with the dispersion of the community, my family follows many of the Calcutta customs, including the Rosh Hashanah seder. We continue to greet family and friends on Rosh
Hashanah with the traditional blessing: "Tizku l'shanim rabot:" May you merit many years. The response is: "Tizke ve'tihyeh:" May you merit, and may you also live.
From Portugal to Persia:
Passover Customs from Around the World
At my Passover seder, which follows the traditions of the Jews of Indian-Iraqi-Syrian ancestry, we chant each paragraph of the haggadah in both Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, a combination of Hebrew and Arabic. We use romaine lettuce instead of horseradish; a thick date syrup called halek for haroset; celery leaves instead of parsley for karpas; lemon juice instead of salt water, bread instead of matzah... No, no, just kidding. But only about the bread.
Although Jews all over the world conduct a seder for Passover with the hagaddah as their "instruction manual," customs vary from country to country. The words may be familiar, and certain rituals universal, but different melodies, novel customs and special foods impart a distinctive flair to Passover traditions from Portugal to Persia. One rule of thumb: American Jews generally follow the customs of Ashkenazic Jews (from Eastern Europe); what sounds unusual in America is actually quite common among the many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews (who hail originally from Spain or the East). Sephardic communities often share similar customs, although they vary in nuance by country. Foods, especially, were influenced by what was available locally and by regional culinary traditions.
Here is a sampler of different customs and foods that might whet your appetite to add creativity to your own seder, compiled from my own traditions, kosher ethnic cookbooks and Rabbi Herbert Dobrinsky's A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Customs (Yeshiva University/Ktav). All seder plates must include the shankbone (zero'a), egg (betzah), bitter herbs (maror), haroset (symbolizing mortar), green vegetable (karpas), and a second green vegetable (hazeret). Three matzot (plural of matzah, which means unleavened bread) and a liquid for dipping--either salt water, lemon juice or vinegar--stand outside the plate. As is my custom, many Sephardic families use romaine lettuce for maror and celery leaves for karpas. Before boxed matzah was readily available, some communities baked a thick pita-like matzah for
the seder and a wafer-thin variety for the rest of the week.
The one element that changes most from community to community is the recipe for haroset, which symbolizes the mortar the Israelites used to make bricks. Haroset is usually sweet, often made in large quantities and eaten for breakfast, even lunch and dinner, throughout the week of Passover. But the recipe most of us are familiar with--chopped apples, walnuts, sweet wine and cinnamon--is hardly set is stone. In my family, haroset is made from boiling dates until they are reduced to a thick liquid, straining them, then adding chopped walnuts. Persian communities mix spices with over a dozen kinds of fruits and nuts, including dates, pomegranates, bananas, oranges and pistachios. Venetian Jews blend chestnut paste and apricots. Despite the bitterness it is supposed to symbolize, only a few communities temper the pleasant flavor of haroset: among them, the Greek Jews of Zakynthos mash raisins in vinegar, and add pinches of pepper and finely ground brick! Yemenite Jews use chopped dates and figs, chili pepper and spicy coriander.
The haggadah (book containing the seder service), recited in Hebrew as well as the local vernacular, whether Ladino (Spanish and Hebrew), French or Arabic, highlights the concept that each person should feel as if he or she were leaving Egypt. A custom I'm particularly fond of--common among Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews-- helps reenact the exodus. We tie the afikomen (special matzoh that had been placed in the middle of the other matzoh) in a large napkin and give it to one of the children, who slings it from his or her shoulders. The leader asks a series of three questions:
"From where have you come?"
"From Egypt," the child answers.
"Where are you going?"
"To Jerusalem."
"What are you taking with you?"
The child points to the sack of matzah. Then, everyone bursts into the singing of Mah Nishtanah, the Four Questions, which is not reserved for the youngest child alone.
The questions also follow a different order. First, we ask, "Why do we dip twice?" which is the third question according to Ashkenazic custom, then "Why do we eat matzah (unleavened bread)?" "Why maror (bitter herbs)?" "Why do we recline?"
Moroccan Jews hold the seder tray aloft and pass it over the heads of everyone at the table, proclaiming that they have left Egypt and are now free. Persian Jews beat each other lightly on the back and shoulders with bunches of scallions or leeks when they chant Dayenu, to symbolize the sting of the taskmaster's whip.
In Ashkenazic homes, when the ten plagues are recited, each person dips a pinky in the wine and diminishes it by ten drops. Sephardic families are much more superstitious! Often, it is only the leader who recites the plagues so that others will not be "contaminated." In my house, the leader empties a special cup of wine into a bowl, then washes his or her hands. Among Levantine and Balkan Jews (from Turkey, for instance), nobody even looks at the wine that is spilled out. While Sephardic Jews do not usually have a Cup of Elijah or hide the afikomen (special middle matzah) symbols from the seder plate are transformed into good omens for year-round protection against the "Evil Eye." No rabbits' feet here. The Bene Israel Jews in the villages around Bombay still dip a hand in sheep's blood, impress it on a sheet of paper, then hang it above the doorway as a hamsa, the symbolic, protective hand of God. Moroccan Jews follow a similar tradition--but with haroset instead of blood. They also strip the shankbone of meat after the seders and leave it in the cupboard all year as a good luck omen. My family stashes away a piece of afikomen--an unusually crunchy amulet! We've even been known to take that afikomen on plane rides to make sure we leave and arrive in safety.
Ashkenazic Jews do not eat legumes (kitniyot), such as rice, corn, beans and peas onPassover, because these products were sometimes ground into flour and baked into bread. To avoid confusion with the grains which are truly hametz (forbidden), legumes were added to the category of forbidden foods. The practice of Sephardic Jews varies, but many communities do eat rice and other legumes. Lamb--the original Passover sacrifice--is also forbidden among Ashkenazim (Eastern European Jews) since the destruction of the Temple, but some Sephardim (Jews from Spain or the Middle East) feature lamb as the centerpiece of the seder meal. Other special foods include haminados--eggs boiled with red onion skins, vinegar and saffron; leek croquettes; mina-a vegetable or meat matzah pie; fava bean soup; almond torte and nut cake.
For Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Passover celebrations did not end with the seders. In Turkish homes, the father or grandfather throws grass, coins and candy for the children to collect, a symbol of the wealth the Israelites brought out of Egypt (the grass represents the reeds of the Red Sea), and a wish that the year ahead should be "green" and productive. Probably the best known end-of-Passover celebration is the Moroccan "Maimuna," held the day after Passover. During Maimuna, the Arabic word for wealth, or good fortune, tables groan with an array of sweets and symbols of good luck. Traditionally a time for matchmaking, Mainuna has become a day for picnicking in Israel today.
As we say in the Iraqi tradition at the end of Passover, sant-il-khadra, a year of good fortune!
The first Jew to settle in Calcutta was Shalome Cohen, a Syrian businessman who left his native Aleppo in 1790 at the age of 26 and sailed to India on an exploratory journey. He decided to settle in Calcutta, a center of trade and the capital of British India, and did so in 1798. He prospered and eventually became court jeweler to the nawab, the nobleman of Lucknow, a city to the north, in 1816.
As news of Cohen's success spread, other Jews from the Middle East followed his footsteps. They came largely for business, trading in silk, indigo and opium. Religious persecutions in Baghdad and Basra between 1825 and 1835 caused a wave of immigration from Iraq and gave the community its Baghdadi complexion. At its peak in the 1940s, the Calcutta community grew to 5,000 Jews who built three large synagogues (and two small ones), two Jewish schools, a Jewish hospital and other Jewish institutions.
The Jewish community began to disperse after two near-simultaneous events: Indian independence in 1947, and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. About 2,000 Jews made aliyah and about another 2,000, fearing their economic circumstances would decline after the British left India, scattered to other English-speaking countries--England, Australia, the U.S. and Canada.
Bombay occupies a proud chapter in Jewish history that echoes with lost tribes, shipwrecks and remote villages. At its peak by 1950, Bombay supported a Jewish community of about 35,000, made up of the indigenous Bene Israel overlaid with Jews from Baghdad. Though the community has dwindled to 3,500, it does its best to celebrate Jewish events with vibrancy and joy.
No conclusive evidence exists, but tradition claims the Bene Israel descended from Galilee oil-pressers shipwrecked 2,000 years ago off the Konkan coast-the mainland across the creek from Bombay. The seven couples said to have survived settled around the village of Navgaon and became farmers and coconut-oil pressers-shanwar telli (literally, "Saturday oil men" because they did not work on Shabbat).
Since they had lost everything, the Bene Israel had no written guidelines for practicing Judaism. They lived peacefully in the villages that dotted the coast and kept the rituals they remembered: certain laws of kashrut, circumcision, Shabbat and reciting the Shema, which became an all-purpose prayer. With the advent of educational and employment opportunities introduced when the British began to develop Bombay in the eighteenth century, many Bene Israel moved to the city. They found employment in government service and distinguished themselves in the armed forces. In 1796 the first synagogue, Sha'ar Harahamim, was built by Samuel Ezekiel Divekar, who vowed to erect a house of worship if he survived as a prisoner-of-war of the Muslim sultan of Mysore.
Baghdadi Jews began settling in Bombay in 1730, but did not become a presence until the arrival of David Sassoon, son of a wealthy Jewish family. As the Baghdadi community's unofficial spokesman during Daud Pasha's reign of terror between 1825 and 1835, he was arrested but released on condition that he leave the city. In 1832, Sassoon settled in Bombay and began a commercial and philanthropic dynasty that drew Jews from throughout the Ottoman Empire. At its peak, the Baghdadi community numbered about 10,000.
The emergence of two new states--India in 1947 and Israel in 1948--spelled the dramatic decline of Bombay's Jewish community. Infused with Zionist zeal and anticipating an economic downturn under Indian rule, most made aliya while others dispersed to English-speaking countries.
The Bene Israel initially relied on Torah scribes, teachers and cantors from Cochin to the south, or Baghdad, Yemen and Syria. A religious revival in the nineteenth century resulted in the building of most of its 20 synagogues, eight of which still function. Most of the community serve in administrative and clerical jobs, but about 25 percent have become professionals. India's Jews are served by over 40 organizations, yet most meet too irregularly to sustain a lasting impact.
Nourishing Jewish life in Bombay has become the province of ORT-India, established in 1960, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. ORT provides a kosher bakery; makes kosher wine, halla and chicken available, and oversees the mikve at the Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue; Offices are at 68 Worli Hill Road (telephone: 91-22-496-2350; E-mail: ortbbay@ bom5.vsnl.net.in). The JDC provides assistance to the poor and services for the elderly. Hadassah Mumbai offices are c/o AJDC, 3 Rodef Shalom, 23 Dadoji Kindev Road (ajdc.jew. ngo@axcess.net.in) or they can be reached through the new JDC community center in the Mahim section of the city (431-4734; jewcenter@hotmail.com).
Cochin is one of the oldest living Jewish communities in the world. One tradition claims that Jews arrived in Cochin in the time of King Solomon, traders in gold, ivory and peacock feathers. According to another tradition, the first Jews arrived in the nearby port city of Cranganore in the first century CE, after the destruction of the second Temple. The earliest documentary evidence of the settlement is a set of copper plates that scholars date from the eleventh century CE. It details the gifts made by the maharajah, the local ruler, to Joseph Rabban, the leader of the Jewish community. The privileges included riding on an elephant, carrying a parasol and being accompanied by drums and trumpets.
A flood in Cranganore, a war and internal community strife caused the Jews to emigrate to Cochin. They built the first synagogue there in 1344. In the 16th century, Jews fleeing the Inquisition from as far as Spain and Portugal reached Cochin, where they found protection under its benevolent maharajah. The newcomers were called Paradesis, which means "foreigner" in the local Malayalam dialect. They were later joined by immigrants from the Middle East.
The maharajah granted the Jews a large piece of land adjoining his palace; the Paradesi synagogue was built just 30 yards from his private temple. The Jews became so numerous that one Portuguese historian called the maharajah of Cochin the "King of the Jews." The Jews became a highly respected minority amongst the half-million native Indians who lived in the state of Cochin.
At its height, the Cochin community consisted of 2,000 Jews worshiping in eight synagogues.
One resident recalls Cochin as a "little Jerusalem."But the birth of Israel inspired the Jews to make aliyah almost en masse. Today, only about six families remain. A museum to Cochin's Jewish heritage in Moshav Nevatim, just south of Beer Sheva, in Israel, chronicles the rich culture of the community.
For more information, please contact Rahel Musleah 
