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| 1 |
ID:
193282
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| Summary/Abstract |
The migration of Cochin Jews from Kerala to the promised land of Israel can be traced back to the 1950s. Though the population of the Jewish community in Cochin is reduced to less than ten in number today, their past cannot be erased from Kerala history, especially the ethnic life of the Malabari Jewish community. Apart from folk songs and archaeological findings, Ruby Daniel, a Malabari Jewish woman, and the renowned ethnographer Barbara C. Johnson left behind an essential source of ethnographic data to explore the social life of Jew town. The significant ethnic life of the Malabari Jewish community and their attempt to claim and confirm their identity as the mainstream Cochin Jewish community continues even today among the remaining Malabari Jews in the Jew town. This article attempts to analyze the ethnic and social life of the Malabari Jewish community and the Cochin Jewish community through the auto-ethnographical narrative of Ruby Daniel.
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| 2 |
ID:
115293
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper is a study of cultural interaction and diffusion in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hebrew language instruction, it examines the encounter between India's little-known Bene Israel Jewish community and Protestant missionaries. Whilst eighteenth and nineteenth-century Cochin Jews were responsible for teaching the Bene Israel Jewish liturgy and forms of worship, the Bene Israel acquired Hebrew and Biblical knowledge primarily from nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Bene Israel community was a Konkan jati with limited knowledge of Judaism. However, by the end of the century the community had become an Indian-Jewish community roughly analogous to other Jewish communities. This paper explores how this transformation occurred, detailing the content, motivation, and means by which British and American missionaries and, to a lesser extent, Cochin Jews instructed the Bene Israel in Jewish knowledge. Through a critical examination of neglected English and Marathi sources, it reconstructs the Bene Israel perspective in these encounters and their attitude towards the Christian missionaries who laboured amongst them. It demonstrates that the Bene Israel were active participants and selective consumers in their interaction with the missionaries, taking what they wanted most from the encounter: knowledge of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language. Ultimately, the instruction the Bene Israel received from Protestant missionaries did not convert them to Christianity but strengthened and transformed their Judaism.
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