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soc.culture.jewish FAQ: Jews As A Nation (7/12) |
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Lembe') called Voyage to the Invisible City. The author, Tudor Parfitt
lives with them, studies them and sifts through the early records of
the area, and concludes (over their objections of course) that their
"jewish" traits come from Islam, not Judaism. They appear to him to be
a mixture of locals, Hindus from India (they have lots of ancestor
worship mixed in too) and Islam (they circumcise at 13 not in the
first few weeks). He originally concluded that there is little
likelihood that they have any real Jewish ancestry.
Recently, Kohen Madol Haplotype testing has been performed among the
Lemba; these tests have proven the Lemba to have the highest
concentration of the gene marker than any known halakhic Jewish group.
This is reported in an article titled "Decoding the Priesthood" by
Peter Hirshberg and Jane Logan, in Jerusalem Report (May 10, 1999
issue). According to this article, the Lemba have the same proportion
of the gene as "Western" Jews and a remarkably high frequency among
their Buba clan, a senior clan parallel to our Cohens.
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Subject: Question 13.9: Who Are The Jews of India, And What Are Their
Origins?
Answer:
India has a legacy of four distinct Jewish groups: the Bene Israel,
the Cochin Jews, the Sephardic Jews from Europe, and the "Baghdadis"
from Iraq. Each group practiced important elements of Judaism and had
active synagogues. The Sephardic rites predominate among Indian Jews.
One of the most important Jewish peoples of India are the Bene Israel
("Sons of Israel"), whose main population centers were Bombay,
Calcutta, Old Delhi, and Ahmadabad. The native language of the Bene
Israel was Marathi, while the Cochin Jews of southern India spoke
Malayalam.
The Bene Israel claim to be descended from Jews who escaped
persecution in Galilee in the 2nd century BCE. The Bene Israel
resemble the non-Jewish Maratha people in appearance and customs,
which indicates intermarriage between Jews and Indians. However, the
Bene Israel maintained the practices of Jewish dietary laws,
circumcision, and observation of Sabbath as a day of rest.
The Bene Israel say their ancestors were oil pressers in the Galil and
they are descended from survivors of a shipwreck. In the 18th Century
they were "discovered" by traders from Baghdad. At that time the Bnei
Israel were practicing just a few outward forms of Judaism (which is
how they were recognised) but had no scholars of their own. Teachers
from Baghdad and Cochin taught them mainstream Judaism in the 18th and
19th centuries.
Jewish merchants from Europe travelled to India in the medieval period
for purposes of trade, but it is not clear whether they formed
permanent settlements in south Asia. Our first reliable evidence of
Jews living in India comes from the early 11th century. It is certain
that the first Jewish settlements were centered along the western
coast. Abraham ibn Daud's 12th century reference to Jews of India is
unfortunately vague, and we do not have further references to Indian
Jews until several centuries later.
The first Jews in Cochin (southern India) were the so-called "Black
Jews", who spoke the Malayalam tongue. The "Sephardic Jews" settled
later, coming to India from western European nations such as Holland
and Spain. A notable settlement of Spanish and Portuguese Jews
starting in the 15th century was Goa, but this settlement eventually
disappeared. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Cochin had an influx of
Jewish settlers from the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain.
The Jews of Cochin say that they came to Cranganore (south-west coast
of India) after the destruction of the Temple in 70ce. They had, in
effect, their own principality for many centuries until a chieftanship
dispute broke out between two brothers in the 15th century. The
dispute led neighbouring princes to dispossess them. In 1524, the
Moors, backed by the ruler of Calicut (today called Kozhikode)
attacked the Jews of Cranganore on the pretext that they were
"tampering" with the pepper trade. Most Jews fled to Cochin and went
under the protection of the Hindu Raja there. He granted them a site
for their own town which later acquired the name "Jew Town" (by which
it is still known).
Unfortunately for the Jews of Cochin, the Portuguese occupied Cochin
in this same period and indulged in persecution of the Jews until the
Dutch displaced them in 1660. The Dutch protestants were tolerant and
the Jews prospered. In 1795 Cochin passed into the British sphere of
influence. In the 19th century, Cochin Jews lived in the towns of
Cochin, Ernakulam, and Parur. Today most of Cochin's Jews have
emigrated (principally to Israel).
16th and 17th century migrations created important settlements of Jews
from Persia, Afghanistan, and Khorasan (Central Asia) in northern
India and Kashmir. By the late 18th century, Bombay became the largest
Jewish community in India. In Bombay were Bene Israel Jews as well as
Iraqi and Persian Jews.
Near the end of the 18th century, a third group of Indian Jews
appears. They are the middle-eastern Jews who came to India through
trade. They established a trading network stretching from Aleppo to
Baghdad to Basra to Surat/Bombay to Calcutta to Rangoon to Singapore
to Hong Kong and eventually as fare as Kobe in Japan. There were
strong family bonds amongst the traders in all these places.
Typical is the founder of the Calcutta community, Shalom Aharon
Ovadiah HaCohen. He was born in Aleppo in 1762 and left in 1789. He
arrived in Surat in 1792 and established himself there. He traded as
far as Zanzibar. In 1798 he moved to Calcutta. In 1805 he was joined
by his nephew, Moses Simon Duek HaCohen, who married his eldest
daughter Lunah. Soon the community was swelled by other traders and
Baghdadis outnumbered those from Aleppo.
Under British rule, the Jews of India achieved their maximum
population and wealth, and the Calcutta community continued to grow
and prosper and trade amongst all the cities of the far east and to
the rest of the world. The Indians were very tolerant and the Jews of
Calcutta felt completely at home. Their numbers reached a peak of
about 5000 during WW-II when they were swelled by refugees fleeing the
Japanese advance into Burma.
The first generations of Calcutta Jews spoke Judeo-Arabic at home, but
by the 1890s English was the language of choice. After WWII,
nationalism fever caught the Indians rather strongly and it became
less comfortable for the Jews who came to be identified with the
English by the Indians. India's Jewish population declined
dramatically starting in the 1940s with heavy immigration to Israel,
England, and the United States. It is in these 3 nations where the
most significant settlements of Indian Jews exist today. Today there
is just a handful of old people and the once vital community with its
3 synagogues is no more.
For more details, visit the [5]Jews of Chocin Website
().
Lastly, note that there were a number of European Jews who lived, or
settled in India. Some examples: Lady Mountbatten, and Haffkine, after
whom the famous Haffkine Institute in Bombay (Mumbai) has been named.
The mother of one of India's most glamorous film actresses, Zeenat
Aman is said to be Jewish.
Many Indian Jews have reached great prominence. For example, the
Sassons after whom the Sasson docks, the Sasson hospital, and two of
Mumbais well known sites- the Jacob Circle, and Flora Fountain have
been named. In the past years, there has been a Jewish mayor of Bombay
(Dr. E. Moses), and a Jewish Chief of the Navy. In the Indian Army,
Jews have reached very high posts. A General Jacobs, now the Governor
of Goa, supervised the surrender of the Pakistani Army in the
Liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. Maj. Gen. Samson who was awarded the
Padma Bhushan, and a few other Jews reached prominence in the Indian
Army. Two of India's leading literary personalities, poet Nissim
Ezeickel, and cartoonist Abu Abraham are Jewish. Also the late famous
Hindi film actor David, and the late "Sulochana" the Queen of Indian
Silent Films, and the actress/dancer Helen. A Dr. Erulkar was the
personal physician/friend of Mahatma Gandhi. His father, also a Dr.
Abraham Erulkar, donated land for the synagogue in Ahmedabad, Gujrat.
Dr. Erulkar's daughter is currently the 1st lady of Cyprus, married to
the President of Cyprus. Another prominent Indian Jew is Dr. Jerusha
Jhirad, who was given the title of Padma Shri by the Government of
India.
A good book on this subject is Nathan Katz's Who Are the Jews of
India?. University of California Press, November 2000. Hardcover.
ISBN: 0-520213-23-8
[6][Buy at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520213238/socculturejewish/]
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Question 13.10: Are Jews a Nation or a Religion?
Answer:
Judaism can be thought of as being simultaneously a religion, a
nationality and a culture.
Throughout the middle ages and into the 20th century, most of the
European world agreed that Jews constituted a distinct nation. This
concept of nation does not require that a nation have either a
territory nor a government, but rather, it identifies, as a nation any
distinct group of people with a common language and culture. Only in
the 19th century did it become common to assume that each nation
should have its own distinct government; this is the political
philosophy of nationalism. In fact, Jews had a remarkable degree of
self-government until the 19th century. So long as Jews lived in their
ghettos, they were allowed to collect their own taxes, run their own
courts, and otherwise behave as citizens of a landless and distinctly
second-class Jewish nation.
Of course, Judaism is a religion, and it is this religion that forms
the central element of the Jewish culture that binds Jews together as
a nation. It is the religion that defines foods as being kosher and
non-kosher, and this underlies Jewish cuisine. It is the religion that
sets the calendar of Jewish feast and fast days, and it is the
religion that has preserved the Hebrew language.
If Judaism an ethnicity? In short, not any more. Although Judaism
arose out of a single ethnicity in the Middle East, there have always
been conversions into and out of the religion. Thus, there are those
who may have been ethnically part of the original group who are no
longer part of Judaism, and those of other ethnic groups who have
converted into Judaism.
If you are referring to a nation in the sense of race, Judaism is not
a nation. People are free to convert into Judaism; once converted,
they are considered the same as if they were born Jewish. This is not
true for a race.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Question 13.11: Who are the Edot Mizraxi?
Answer:
There were two communities in countries like Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
The first are communities that were there since the fall of the
Temple. In the case of Iraq's Babylonian Jewery, since the fall of the
First Temple. These are the people who maintained the institutions
that gave us the Talmud. For example, the acadamy of Sura, in which
half the debates of the Talmud occured (along with
Pupedisa/Naharda'ah, the other half) was founded in the Hasmonian
period and was closed in 1958 CE!
The other community are the exiles from Spain in 1492, who were
largely absorbed into the older communities.
Technically, Edot haMizrach refer to the former, Sepharadi -- the
latter. Of course, the communities pretty well blended. Still, we see
customs particular to these communities that originated in the local
traditions rather than the Spanish ones. Including pronunciation,
diferences in prayer texts, etc... There are far more than one or two
differences in pronunciation, cantillation and services.
The Ben Ish Hai, and later R' Ovadia Yosef, has done much to unify
Sefaradi and Edot haMizrach practice to some fusion of Sepharadi and
Iraqi traditions.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Question 13.12: What About Yeminite Jews?
Answer:
Yemenite Jewery didn't have the same level of communiation or mixing
with the other communities. Until the 19th and early 20th century,
they had a pretty uniform, Rambam-based custom. Trade with Syria
brought with it the Kabbalistic ideas from Sefad, causing a battle
much like the one seen in Ashkenaz when Chassidus started. When they
came to Israel they were in two basic camps (with different flavors
based on city of origin): Baladi (national) custom and Shaami (Syrian;
i.e. the kabbalistically influenced import from Sepharad, Safed, and
Syria).
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Question 13.13: Who was Donna Gracia?
Answer:
Donna Gracia Mendes Nassi (1510-1569) was a Portuguese aristocrat of
the 15th century, who lost nearly all her relatives to the Spanish
Inquisition. They were burned at the stake simply for being Jews. As a
result, Gracia left Portugul and wandered through Europe with her
daughter and nephew. While seeking a refuge where they could freely be
Jews, Gracia managed her family's banking interest and became adept at
navigating the twin worlds of finance and politics. Eventually
Gracia's family landed in Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish
Empire. There they were embraced by the Sultan Suleiman the
Magnificent, who allowed them to maintain their Jewish traditions. As
their position at court became known, Jews throughout the land flocked
to the family in times of need. One of the people she supported was
Samuel Medina (The Maharashdam) and his yeshiva in Greece.
Gracia was born a converso but at home continued to adhere to her
Jewish heritage. After leaving Portugal with her entire entourage, she
went to London and later moved to Antverp where she continued to live
as a Catholic but kept a Jewish home. As the Kings needed her for
their financial interests she was left alone, but eventually she also
had to leave after quite a number of years and travelled via Italy to
Istanbul. During this trip, she decided to return openly to Judaism.
She began to study the Torah and the Talmud with a Rabbi. When she
eventually arrived in Istanbul after travelling throught the Balkans
she was not accepted by the Jewish community there as she was
considered still a converso. At a later stage she travelled to
Palestine studying in Safed and Tiberias where she had also synagogues
built which still exist in her name. She spent some time studying
Talmud in Safed. She valued Jewish education, financed it, and saved
many Jewish refugees from persecution in Portugal and Spain.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: How do I obtain copies of the FAQ?
Answer:
There are a number of different ways to obtain copies of the FAQ:
* WWW. If you are reading this on Usenet, and would like to see an
online, hyperlinked version, go visit [2]http://www.scjfaq.org/.
This is the "web" version of the FAQ; the version posted to Usenet
is generated from the web version. Note that the www.scjfaq.org
version is a copy of the actual master version; if you want to
access the master, visit [3]http://master.scjfaq.org/.
* Email. Scjfaq.org also provides an autoretriever that allows one
to obtain a copy of the FAQ by return Email. To use the
autoretriever, you send a retrieval request to
[4]archives@scjfaq.org with the request in the body of the
message. A more reliable way to retrieve these files is through
the [5]FAQ autoretriever
([6]http://www.mljewish.org/bin/autoresp.cgi). For the FAQ, the
request has the form:
send faq partname
For the reading list, the request has the form:
send rl partname
"Partname" is replaced by the name of the part, as shown in the
general index. The following is a short summary of the mapping to
partnames for the FAQ:
+ [7]01-FAQ-intro: Section [8]1: Network and Newsgroup
Information.
+ [9]02-Who-We-Are: Section [10]2: Who We Are
+ [11]03-Torah-Halacha: Sections [12]3, [13]4: Torah; Halachic
Authority
+ [14]04-Observance: Sections [15]5, [16]6, [17]7, [18]8:
Jewish Holidays; Jewish Dietary Law and Kashrut; Sabbath and
Holiday Observance; Woman and Marriage
+ [19]05-Worship: Sections [20]9, [21]10, [22]11: Jewish
Worship; Conversion, Intermarriage, and "Who is a Jew?";
Miscellaneous Practice Questions
+ [23]06-Jewish-Thought: Section [24]12: Jewish Thought
+ [25]07-Jews-As-Nation: Section [26]13: Jews as a Nation
+ [27]08-Israel: Section [28]14: Jews and Israel
+ [29]09-Antisemitism: Sections [30]15, [31]16, [32]17: Churban
Europa (The Holocaust); Antisemitism and Rumors about Jews;
Countering Missionaries
+ [33]10-Reform: Section [34]18: Reform/Progressive Judaism
+ [35]11-Miscellaneous: Sections [36]19, [37]20: Miscellaneous;
References and Getting Connected
+ [38]12-Kids: Section [39]21: Jewish Childrearing Related
Questions
+ [40]mail-order: Mail Order Judaica
The following is a short summary of the mapping of partnames for
the Reading Lists:
+ [41]general: Introduction and General. Includes book sources,
starting points for beginners, starting points for non-Jewish
readers, General Judaism, General Jewish Thought, General
Jewish History, Contemporary Judaism, Noachide Laws, Torah
and Torah Commentary, Talmud and Talmudic Commentary,
Mishnah, Midrash, Halachic Codes, Becoming An Observant Jew,
Women and Judaism, and Science and Judaism.
+ [42]traditional: Traditional Liturgy, Practice, Lifestyle,
Holidays. Includes Traditional Liturgy; Traditional
Philosophy and Ethics; Prayer; Traditional Practice; The
Household; Life, Death, and In-Between; and The Cycle Of
Holidays.
+ [43]mysticism: Kabbalah, Mysticism, and Messianism. Includes
Academic and Religious treatments of Kabbalah, Sprituality,
and the Jewish notion of the Messiah.
+ [44]reform: Reform/Progressive Judaism
+ [45]conservative: Conservative Judaism
+ [46]reconstructionist: Reconstructionist Judaism
+ [47]humanistic: Humanistic Judaism (Society for Humanistic
Judaism)
+ [48]chasidism: Chassidism. Includes general information on
historical chassidism, as well as specific information on
Lubavitch (Chabad), Satmar, Breslaw (Breslov), and other
approaches.
+ [49]zionism: Zionism. Includes Zionism and The Development Of
Israel, The Founders, Zionistic Movements, and Judaism in
Israel.
+ [50]antisemitism: Antisemitism. Includes sections on
Antisemitism, What Led to The Holocaust, Medieval Oppression,
Antisemitism Today (Including Dealing with Hate Groups),
Judaism and Christianity, and Judaism, Freemasonry and other
rumors.
+ [51]intermarriage: Intermarriage. Includes sections on "So
You're Considering Intermarriage?", The Traditional
Viewpoint, Conversion, and Coping With Life As An
Intermarried.
+ [52]childrens: Books for Jewish Children. Includes sections
on Birth and Naming, Raising a Child, Family Guidebooks,
Upsheren, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Confirmation, Holiday Books for
Children, Liturgy for Children, Bible and Torah for Children,
Jewish History for Children, Jewish Theology for Children,
Israel, Learning Hebrew, and Jewish Stories.
Alternatively, you may send a message to
[53]mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the following line in the body
of the message:
send usenet/news.answers/judaism/(portionname)
Where (portionname) is replaced by the appropriate subdirectory
and filenames; for example, to get the first part of the reading
list, one would say:
send usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lists/general
* Anonymous FTP: All portions of the FAQ and of the reading lists
are archived on [54]rtfm.mit.edu and are available for anonymous
FTP from the pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/FAQ directory (URL
[55]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/FAQ/).
Similarly, the parts of the reading lists are stored in the
pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lists directory (URL:
[56]ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/judaism/reading-lis
ts). Note that the archived versions of the FAQ and reading lists
are the posted versions; that is, they are each one large ASCII
file.
------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Who Wrote the FAQ?
Answer:
The original version of the Frequently Asked Questions was developed
by a committee consisting of Mike Allen, Jerry Altzman, Rabbi Charles
Arian, Jacob Baltuch (Past Chair), Joseph Berry, Warren Burstein,
Stewart Clamen, Daniel Faigin, Avi Feldblum, Rabbi Yaakov Feldman,
Itzhak "Jeff" Finger, Gedaliah Friedenberg, Yechezkal Gutfreund, Art
Kamlet, Joe Kansun, CAPT Kaye David, Alan Lustiger, Hillel Markowitz,
Len Moskowitz, Colin Naturman, Aliza Panitz, Eliot Shimoff, Mark
Steinberger, Steven Weintraub, Matthew Wiener, and headed by Robert
Levene. The organization and structuring of the lists for posting
purposes was done by [2]Daniel Faigin, who is currently maintaining
the lists. Other contributors include Aaron Biterman, A. Engler
Anderson, Ken Arromdee, Seymour Axelrod, Jonathan Baker, Josh Backon,
Micha Berger, Steven M. Bergson, Eli Birnbaum, Shoshana L. Boublil,
Kevin Brook, J. Burton, Harvey Cohen, Todd J.Dicker, Michael Dinowitz,
Rabbi Jim Egolf, Sean Engelson, Mike Fessler, Menachem Glickman,
Amitai Halevi, Walter Hellman, Per Hollander, Miriam Jerris, Robert D.
Kaiser, Yosef Kazen, Rabbi Jay Lapidus, Mier Lehrer, Heather Luntz,
David Maddison, Arnaldo Mandel, Ilana Manspeizer, Seth Ness, Chris
Newport, Daniel Nomy, Jennifer Paquette, Andrew Poe, Alan Pfeffer,
Jason Pyeron, Adam Reed, Seth Rosenthall, JudithSeid@aol.com, David
Sheen, Rabbi John Sherwood, Michael Sidlofsky, Michael Slifkin, Frank
Smith, Michael Snider, Rabbi Arnold Steibel, Andy Tannenbaum,
marktan@aol.com, Meredith Warshaw, Bill Wadlinger, Arel Weisberg,
Dorothy Werner, and Art Werschulz, and the
soc.culture.jewish.parenting board. Some material has been derived
from other sources on the Internet, such as
[3]http://www.jewishwebsite.com/, [4]http://www.jewfaq.org/, and
[5]http://www.menorah.org/. Comments and corrections are welcome;
please address them to [6]maintainer@scjfaq.org.
A special thank you... Special thanks for her patience and
understanding go to my wife, Karen, who put up with me hiding at the
computer for the two months it took to complete the July/August 2000
remodel of the entire soc.culture.jewish FAQ and Reading Lists. If you
think the effort was worth it, drop her a note c/o
[7]maintainer@scjfaq.org.
------------------------------------------------------------
--
Please mail additions or corrections to me at faigin@pacificnet.net.
End of SCJ FAQ Part 7 (Jewish as a Nation) Digest
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