Who Are The Jews of India?
by Nathan Katz, The University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000 Pages: 207. Price: $45, ISBN: 0-520-21323-8
India's smallest and least known religious minority are the Jews, who number less than 10,000 in all. Once a significant community in terms of influence and power at the isolated local redoubts, the Jews of India are today approaching extinction, with the vast majority of the community having shifted to Israel and elsewhere after Independence. Much has actually been written on the Jews of India. This book, while covering familiar ground, offers new insights and perspectives on the life, history and customs of this fascinating community.
Katz, himself an authority on the subject, having already authored two previous books on the Indian Jews, explains that the Jews of the country are far from being a monolithic community. Differences of historical origin, tradition, ritual and custom all justify their being treated as separate communities, albeit united by their common Jewishness. Katz identifies three major Jewish groups in India: that of the Jews of Cochin, the Bene Israel of the Konkan coast and the Baghdadis of Bombay, Calcutta and some cities of North India. These communities adopted varying strategies to come to terms with being Jewish in an overwhelmingly Gentile society. But India, according to Katz, was one of the few countries where the Jews never experienced any form of anti-Semitism, except for a brief interlude at the hands of the Portuguese Catholics in Kerala.