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Most of these refugees arrived in India at the start of World War II and consequently were better positioned to find employment and shelter than many European Jews who were forced to leave amid war. Jewish refugees in British India were able to secure jobs in the arts and the service industry while a disproportionately large percentage of the ...
Although India is noted for having four distinct Jewish communities, viz Cochin, Bene Israel (of Bombay and its environs), Calcutta, and New Delhi, communications between the Jews of Cochin and the Bene Israel community were greatest in the mid-19th century. [61]
A notable Jewish population once existed in the Portuguese India colony of Bassein. These Jews were of the Bene Israel community who had arrived in India centuries earlier. They had their own synagogues and enjoyed freedom. When the Portuguese took control over Goa, crypto-Jews from Portugal flooded in large numbers.
After India gained its independence in 1947 and Israel was established as a nation, most of the Malabar Jews made Aliyah and emigrated from Kerala to Israel in the mid-1950s. In contrast, most of the Paradesi Jews preferred to migrate to Australia and other Commonwealth countries, similar to the choices made by Anglo-Indians. [7]
Bene Israel teachers in Bombay, 1856. The Bene Israel community believes that their ancestors fled Judea during the persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes and are descended from fourteen Jews, seven men and seven women, who came to India as the only survivors of a shipwreck [7] [21] near the village of Navagaon on the coast about 20 miles (32 km) south of Mumbai. [22]
These buildings dating from the mid-sixteenth through the mid-20th century once served the country's three distinct Jewish groups—the ancient Cochin Jews, [1] and Bene Israel [2] communities as well as the more recent Baghdadi Jews. [3] The Jews in India had very peaceful existence compared to Middle East and Europe where they were persecuted ...
The Sephardic Jews became known as the Paradesi Jews (as "foreigners" to India. [1] They were also sometimes called the White Jews, for their European ancestry). [2] The descendants of the meshuchrarim were historically discriminated against in India by other "White Jews." They were at the lowest of the Cochin Jewish informal caste
The history of the Jews in Mumbai (previously known as Bombay), India, began when Jews started settling in Bombay during the first century, due to its economic opportunities. [1] The Jewish community of Bombay consisted of the remnants of three distinct communities: the Bene Israeli Jews of Konkan , the Baghdadi Jews of Iraq , and the Cochin ...