2013 was an exciting year for Indian Jewish literature: two works of fiction were published, one in Hindi, the other in English. Sheela Rohekar's Miss Samuel: Ek Yahudi Gatha (Miss Samuel: A Jewish Saga) is one of only two Hindi novels depicting Indian Jewish life, and the first Hindi novel in 52 years to explore the Bene Israel community, the largest Jewish group in India. Jael Silliman's The Man with Many Hats, on the other hand, is the first novel by a member of the Baghdadi community, the latest Jewish settlers in India, and one of the only two novels to depict Baghdadi Jewish life there. Both authors are women, legatees of a rich tradition of women's writing among Indian Jews.
Considering the numerical insignificance of Jews in India – the highest the population ever reached was 30,000 in 1951, when India's total population was 300 million; today it is around 5000 out of 1.3 billion – the community has left its cultural mark on Indian society. Most of the earliest female stars of silent cinema were Jewish: they were the first group to break the taboo associated with women in the performing arts, and thus paved the way for women of other communities to follow suit.
Yet Indian Jewish culture remains underexplored. Bahais Joseph Talkar's Marathi novel Gul and Sanobar (1867) is considered the first published work of literature by a Bene Israel Jew. It was soon followed by M D Talkar's Bagh-o-Bahar. But the best known Jewish writer from India has been Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004), who wrote poetry and plays and is acknowledged as the father of modern English poetry in India. The first Indian Jew to publish a novel in English depicting the Bene Israel community was Esther David, whose The Walled City was published in 1997. Since then she has emerged as the most published Indian Jewish novelist in English, with a number of novels to her credit: Book of Esther (2002), Book of Rachel (2006), Shalom India Housing Society (2007), My Father's Zoo (2007), The Man with Enormous Wings (2010), and a collection of short-stories, By the Sabarmati (1999). Another Bene Israel author, Sophie Judah, is known for her collection of English short stories, Dropped from Heaven (2007), in which she traces the recent history of Indian Jews from the 1930s until the present (at a point when the river in Judah's fictional town has dried up, the Jewish population almost vanished, and the town's only synagogue was transformed into a pickle and chutney factory.)
Identity and community
Rohekar's and Silliman's works are, therefore, particularly welcome developments in Indian Jewish literature. Through Miss Samuel's protagonist, Miss Seema Samuel, Rohekar looks back at the Bene Israel Jews' existence in India. According to tradition, a ship-wreck two millennia ago brought the community to the west coast of India, between present-day Mumbai and Goa (official documents detailing their arrival, however, date only from the 17th century). The 63 year-old Miss Seema spends her days in an old-age home two hours away from Pune, thinking about the last six generations of her Bene Israel family in Ahmedabad (the same community from which Rohekar originates).