The Constitutional Pal

The vanishing without violence: Can a community disappear without being persecuted?

Tzedek, tzedek tirdof.
Justice, justice shall you pursue.
Even when the only justice left... is remembrance. (Devarim 16:20)

Exordium:

They left no bloodstains. No broken glass. No desperate flight in the night.

In the story of the Jews in India, there are no ghettos, no pogroms, no state-sponsored erasure. And yet—one by one—synagogues fell silent, Hebrew was forgotten, and communities faded not by fire, but by time.

This is not a story of persecution. It is a story of peaceful erosion.

From the Paradesi Jews of Cochin to the Bene Israel of Bombay, from the Baghdadis of Calcutta to the Telugu-speaking Bene Ephraim, the Bnei Menashe of the Northeast, and the forgotten synagogues of Ahmedabad and Chennai—India’s Jewish communities lived for centuries in relative safety, dignity, and even affection. But they are now disappearing in slow motion.

The law didn’t chase them away. But it wasn’t watching closely enough to know they were going.

This piece explores what happens when a minority fades—not through violence, but through migration, intermarriage, forgetting. It asks what the law can protect—and what it overlooks. It documents what’s left: not just crumbling gravestones and locked synagogues, but recipes, stories, names whispered across continents, rituals kept alive by one or two people who still remember what it meant to belong.

This isn’t about revival. It’s about testimony. It’s about writing down what silence cannot say.

Let the law forget. We won’t.

“We are the only people who came from a country where we did not have to look back when we are on the road.” — Ruby Daniel, a Cochin Jewish elder. Ethno-Religious Conflict in the Cochin Jewish Community: An Analysis of Jewish Life in Kerala through the Life Writing of an Indian Jewish Woman by Anita Ann Thomas

“We don’t mourn because we never had to leave. But we also never got to stay.” — oral testimony, Cochin Jewish elder, 1998

In a quiet lane in Ahmedabad, a blue door with a rusting mezuzah swings open only on Diwali. The family who lived there once lit Shabbat candles. Now, the only light comes from firecrackers outside. Built in 1934, Magen Abraham Synagogue stands as Gujarat's only synagogue, a masterpiece of Indo-Judaica architecture. Its European-inspired grandeur, featuring Grecian pillars and a majestic Ark, is a testament to the enduring spirit of the vibrant Bene Israel Jewish community in the city.

I once walked past the Gate of Mercy synagogue in Mumbai. I didn’t enter. I just stood there, wondering how a bethel could echo so loudly with absence. Established in 1796 by Samaji Hasaji Divekar, the Shaar Harahamim Synagogue, also known as the Gate of Mercy Synagogue is Mumbai's oldest synagogue. Despite its historical significance, it now sees dwindling attendance, symbolizing the broader decline of the Bene Israel community in the region.

The Vanishing Without Violence

It’s a haunting question. One that doesn’t come with a dramatic answer—but with silence, gradual forgetting, and doors that quietly close for the last time.

Unlike the tragedies of exile, genocide, or forced conversion, some disappearances don’t come through fire. They come through time. No burning, no bans. Just a soft vanishing.

Children stop learning the language. Synagogues turn into museums. Rituals shrink to fit time or taste. The last Shabbat dinner becomes just “dinner.”

This is not the story of persecution. It’s the story of peaceful erosion.

And nowhere is this more visible—and less discussed—than in the story of India’s Jewish communities.

Memory Without Trauma

The Indian Jewish Exception

In the popular imagination, Jewish history is a litany of expulsions: Spain, Russia, Germany. But the Jews of India are the exception. They weren’t expelled. They weren’t hunted. They weren’t forced to flee.

Instead, they lived peacefully—and slowly faded.

The Bene Israel, India’s largest and arguably most enduring Jewish community, trace their roots to a shipwreck sometime in antiquity—possibly as early as 175 BCE—off the Konkan coast, near the village of Navgaon. Oral tradition holds that seven Jewish families survived and made their home among local populations, gradually adopting Marathi as their language and integrating local customs while preserving core Jewish rituals like kashrut, circumcision, and Sabbath observance. Over generations, they became known as “Shanivār Telis”—Saturday oil pressers—due to their observance of Shabbat, during which they refrained from work.

By the 18th and 19th centuries, the Bene Israel had become firmly rooted in what is now Maharashtra, particularly in the burgeoning colonial capital of Bombay. Here, they rose rapidly as a mercantile and professional class—serving as physicians, teachers, civil servants, and soldiers in the British Indian Army. Many were educated in English missionary schools and took on roles in the colonial administration, contributing significantly to Bombay’s civic life. Their synagogues, such as Magen Hassidim (built in 1931) and Tiphereth Israel, became central community institutions.

This was a community that straddled two worlds with grace: deeply Indian in language and food, yet distinctly Jewish in worship and worldview. Their Hebrew schools and community centers thrived, and the Bene Israel developed a rich body of liturgical music and oral history, blending Jewish prayer with the melodic sensibilities of Maharashtra.

At their peak in the mid-20th century, the Bene Israel numbered around 20,000 in India. But like many other Jewish communities in India, they began to emigrate en masse to Israel after 1948, with further waves in the 1960s and 1970s. The Six-Day War and broader regional instability hastened this exodus, though the departure was not forced. It was driven by opportunity, ideological pull, and the desire to be part of a Jewish homeland.

Yet migration brought its own challenges. In Israel, Bene Israelis were initially viewed with suspicion—dismissed as not “fully” Jewish by some rabbinical authorities due to their centuries-long isolation. Despite formal recognition in 1964, many faced cultural prejudice, stereotyping, and struggles for integration, echoing broader questions of Mizrahi and Sephardi identity within a predominantly Ashkenazi system.

Back home in Maharashtra, the story became one of slow fading. A New York Times feature in 2016 captured the poignancy of this decline: aging congregants praying in nearly empty synagogues, shuttered Hebrew schools, and young people leaving without return. The Indian government formally recognized Jews as a minority in 2016—an act that felt more like a eulogy than a renaissance.

Today, fewer than 3,000 Bene Israel Jews remain in India, most concentrated in Mumbai and a few coastal villages like Alibaug and Panvel. Their synagogues often stand quiet, their Hebrew chants replaced by the buzz of passing traffic or the echoes of curious visitors.

But their legacy endures—in Mumbai’s architecture, in Jewish-Marathi cookbooks passed down from grandmothers, in the archives of the Sassoon Library, and in the diaspora communities in Israel, the US, and the UK, where Bene Israel families continue to wrestle with hybrid identities.

It is a story of faith without fire, of continuity despite forgetting. Not a disappearance through violence, but a dispersal through time.

The Baghdadi Jewish community of Kolkata, founded in 1798 by Shalom Obadiah Cohen—a jeweler from Aleppo—was once the vibrant heart of a Judeo-Arabic trading network that spanned India, China, and the Middle East. Wealthy merchant families like the Ezras, Gubbays, and Eliases built fortunes trading opium, tea, and jute, and helped shape the commercial architecture of colonial Calcutta. They constructed monumental buildings, schools, hospitals, and synagogues, the most famous being the Maghen David Synagogue, now locally known as the lal girja (red church).

These Jews gradually Anglicized—shedding their Arabic language and identity in favor of British dress, culture, and Judeo-English affiliations. They lived alongside other minority communities like Armenians, Parsis, and Chinese, in a city that epitomized the cosmopolitan fabric of the British Empire.

By the 1940s, their numbers peaked at around 5,000. But independence, the collapse of colonial trade, rising nationalism, and the creation of Israel shifted the landscape. Many emigrated to the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, with relatively few going to Israel. By the 1960s, only 1,000 remained. Today, fewer than 20 do.

One of the last pillars of this community was Flower Silliman, born in 1930, who passed away in October 2023. At her memorial, held at the Maghen David Synagogue, Muslim students from the Jewish Girls School sang “Shalom Aleichem”, and Catholic students from Mizoram sang hymns in Hebrew and English. This unlikely gathering captured the remarkable interfaith harmony that still defines Kolkata—even as its Jewish presence dwindles to memory.

Flower’s life spanned the zenith and the slow fading of her community. She opened a kosher Indian restaurant in Israel in the 1970s, authored a cookbook on Calcutta’s hybrid Jewish cuisine, and embraced both Gandhian ideals and Jewish tradition. Her daughter, Jael Silliman, now curates this legacy and has become the community’s chief historian and voice.

Though the synagogues remain—cared for mostly by Muslim caretakers—prayer services are rare due to the absence of a minyan (quorum). The once-thriving Nahoum’s Bakery, the last Jewish business in the city, recently ceased selling meat due to a lack of kosher supply.

Despite ongoing Middle Eastern tensions, Kolkata's Jews consistently affirm: they never experienced antisemitism in India. “India can hold her head high,” Flower said, “we have never discriminated against the Jews.”

Still, with the youngest member now in their 60s, the community is unlikely to survive the century. Its disappearance, like others in India, will not be marked by persecution or pogroms, but by peaceful emigration, intermarriage, and the slow erosion of ritual continuity.

What remains are synagogues with locked Torah scrolls, cemeteries with unread headstones, and a bakery with a name no longer recognized by the crowds who pass by.

It is a story not of trauma, but of transition. Not of exile, but of evolution. A disappearance, not by force—but by time.

The Cochin Jews—also known as Malabari and Paradesi Jews—trace their origins to Kerala’s Malabar Coast through multiple legends: some say they arrived on the ships of King Solomon, others during the Babylonian exile, and still others after the destruction of the Second Temple or through a fourth-century migration from Majorca. All stories center around the ancient port of Cranganore (Shingly), where Jews had settled long before Cochin became their spiritual home.

The first documented evidence of their presence dates to 1000 CE, when a Jewish leader, Joseph Rabban, was granted royal copper plates by the Hindu ruler of Cranganore—conferring tax exemptions and ceremonial privileges. This positioned the Jewish community as an integrated and respected minority within the local economy and culture.

A massive flood in 1341 forced a relocation to Cochin, where the Paradesi Synagogue was later built in 1568 by Sephardi Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. These Paradesis, or “foreigners,” joined the older Malabari Jews, though a distinct social separation grew between the two groups over time, reflected in Western terms like “white” and “black” Jews. Later arrivals, including Baghdadi Jews, also settled in Cochin, adopting Malayalam and local customs but largely maintaining social boundaries. These terms reflected cultural and geographic differences—not modern racial classifications.

Despite colonial turbulence—especially under Portuguese rule, which brought the Inquisition and the burning of synagogues—the Jews were largely protected by the Cochin Maharajas and found new favor under Dutch rule (1663–1795). Prominent families like the Rahabys rose to power as trade advisors and landowners.

By the 18th century, Kerala had eight active synagogues across five towns, all collectively known as Cochin Jews. Remarkably, this community lived in India for centuries without facing antisemitism, a legacy celebrated in 1968 when they marked the 400th anniversary of the Paradesi Synagogue.

However, post-independence and the creation of Israel in 1948, most Cochin Jews emigrated in the 1950s, joining the diaspora in Israel. Those who remained gradually faded from Kerala’s social landscape.

Once international traders, by the 20th century many Cochin Jews were engaged in petty trade, printing, or soda bottling. Yet even in departure, their culture has not died. As Ruby Daniel, a Cochin Jewish author, wrote:

“Some people write that the Cochin community of Jews is dying. They don’t realize that a root from that tree is shooting up in Israel and starting to blossom. As long as we keep up some of our traditions, I hope that this community will never die.”

The Cochin Jews may have left Kerala. But Kerala has not left them.

The Bene Ephraim, or Telugu Jews, are a small community based in Andhra Pradesh who began publicly identifying as Jewish in the late 1980s. They claim descent from the Lost Tribes of Israel, specifically the tribe of Ephraim, and see themselves as reconnecting with a long-forgotten Jewish heritage through study, tradition, and belief.

Led initially by community elder Shmuel Yacobi, the Bene Ephraim embraced Jewish rituals, Hebrew prayer, and Torah study—despite having no formal rabbinic leadership or institutional backing in the early years. Their primary language is Telugu, and they integrate Jewish customs with local culture, creating a unique fusion of religious identity and regional tradition.

Researchers and rabbis who have visited, such as Bonita and Gerald Sussman, Jason Francisco, and Yulia Egorova, document a community marked by earnest devotion, limited resources, and a strong desire for connection with the global Jewish world. Their practice includes Sabbath observance, celebration of Jewish festivals, circumcision, and dietary awareness, although kosher food is hard to access locally.

Though their Jewish status is not universally recognized by mainstream rabbinical authorities, the Bene Ephraim have drawn interest from organizations like Kulanu, which supports isolated Jewish communities around the world. Several members have also undergone formal conversions to align with halakhic standards.

Despite economic hardship and marginalization, the community remains spiritually resilient, often gathering in simple prayer spaces with handmade Torah scrolls and siddurim. They are not a revival movement born from memory, but a community rediscovering identity through faith, oral history, and a longing to belong.

Their story is one of aspiration more than inheritance, and of continuity forged not by lineage, but by choice.

The Bnei Menashe, or "Children of Manasseh," are a Jewish-identifying community primarily from the Mizo and Kuki tribes of Manipur and Mizoram, in India’s remote Northeast. They claim descent from the tribe of Menasseh, one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel exiled by the Assyrian empire around 722 BCE.

For generations, the Bnei Menashe maintained distinct customs—such as ritual purity practices, Sabbath-like observance, and monotheistic prayer—which they later came to see as echoes of ancient Judaism. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, many members began to actively reclaim Jewish identity, learning Hebrew, adopting Torah practices, and building synagogues in their villages. They celebrate Jewish holidays such as Passover and Sukkot, often blending tradition with indigenous Mizo-Kuki cultural expression.

This self-awakening gained global attention, especially after advocacy from individuals like Michael Freund and organizations such as Shavei Israel, which supported both religious education and aliyah (immigration to Israel). Since the 1990s, several waves of Bnei Menashe have made aliyah—more than 4,000 by the 2020s. Some underwent formal conversion under the supervision of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, while others continue to live Jewish lives in Northeast India, awaiting recognition and approval for immigration.

Their story is one of spiritual return across centuries and continents. But it’s also layered with controversy and complexity—from halted conversions and political debates in Israel, to questions about authenticity, ethnic integration, and religious recognition.

Despite these hurdles, the Bnei Menashe maintain strong connections to both Judaism and Israel, considering their modern journey not a conversion, but a homecoming. In villages across Manipur and Mizoram, children learn Hebrew songs, women light Shabbat candles, and elders teach the origin story—one that blends ancestral memory with aspirational faith.

They are not just preserving Jewish identity; they are reclaiming it—in lands where Judaism was never expected to return.

While Mumbai has long been the epicenter of the Bene Israel Jewish community in India, Ahmedabad in Gujarat ranks as its second-strongest hold, with a Jewish presence dating back to the mid-19th century. Among the earliest settlers was Dr. Abraham Benjamin Erulkar, who arrived in 1850 and established a prayer room in his home—planting the roots of what would eventually become the Magen Abraham Synagogue, completed in 1934 by his son Dr. Solomon Erulkar.

Ahmedabad, founded by Ahmed Shah in the 15th century and later dubbed the “Manchester of India” for its thriving textile industry, attracted Jewish families during the 18th and 19th centuries as trade routes and rail links expanded across Bombay Province, which included Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Sindh. The Bene Israel Jews, originally settled along the Konkan coast, migrated inland in search of economic opportunity and professional advancement—working as doctors, engineers, lawyers, artists, and civil servants.

Several distinguished Jewish figures emerged from Ahmedabad: Padma Shri Reuben David, zoologist and founder of the city’s zoo; Padma Shri Esther Solomon, noted Sanskrit scholar; Dr. Joseph Benjamin, former mayor of Ahmedabad; Dr. Benjamin Reuben Kehimkar, president of the 1921 Bene Israel Conference.

Other cities across Gujarat—Surat, Baroda (Vadodara), Rajkot, Surendranagar, Palanpur—also saw smaller Jewish communities, often tied to work placements in commerce or civil service. In places like Surat and Rajkot, Jewish cemeteries still exist, bearing witness to this lesser-known history.

The Magen Abraham Synagogue in Ahmedabad remains the only active synagogue in Gujarat, serving as a communal anchor for the state's Jewish population. It is not just a place of worship but also a center for gatherings, weddings, and religious festivals, drawing Jews from across Gujarat, especially during High Holidays.

Post-1948, and especially after the 1967 Six-Day War, many Gujarati Jews migrated to Israel, leading to a steep demographic decline. From a once-thriving community, only around 350 Jews remain in Gujarat today. Still, Ahmedabad holds firm as the cultural and spiritual center of Jewish life in the region.

In a country that has never known antisemitism, Gujarat’s Jews have quietly preserved their identity that is etched with a memory.

The Jewish community of Madras (now Chennai) traces its origins to the 17th century, when Sephardic Jews from Amsterdam, Portugal, London, and the Caribbean settled in the newly developing colonial port city. Drawn by the East India Company's diamond trade with the Golconda mines, these Jews became prosperous merchants, diplomats, and intermediaries, operating largely outside Company control through their own global Jewish trade networks.

One of the most influential figures was Jacques (Jaime) de Paiva, a Sephardic Jew from Amsterdam, who established the second Madras Synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in Peddanaickenpet (now Mint Street) in the 1680s. De Paiva died in 1687, and his tombstone—once a landmark—has since vanished after years of relocation. The community he helped build included Portuguese Jews, such as Bartolomeo Rodrigues, Domingo do Porto, and Alvaro da Fonseca, who rose to commercial and civic prominence. Three Jews even served as aldermen in the early Madras Corporation.

The Jews of Madras were known for their trade in diamonds, corals, and precious stones, and maintained strong ties with both Golconda rulers and the British elite at Fort St. George. They founded the Colony of Jewish Traders of Madraspatam, and left their mark on places like Coral Merchant Street, named after their businesses.

In a curious—and unsettling—twist of history, de Paiva’s widow, Hieronima, later lived with Governor Elihu Yale, the British official whose name now adorns Yale University. Yale, widely credited as a benefactor of education, was also dismissed for corruption, profited from the slave trade, and built his fortune through colonial exploitation in India. That a Sephardic Jewish woman intersected with his legacy captures the complex entanglement of commerce, empire, and erasure.

By the 18th and 19th centuries, Yemenite Jews, including Najrani rabbis and artisans, began arriving via Cochin, further enriching the religious life of the city. Over time, intermarriage between Portuguese and Yemenite Jews became common, and the community retained a strong emphasis on tradition and religious observance.

At its peak, Madras had three synagogues and cemeteries, with the first believed to have been built as early as 1500. But by 1921, only 45 Jews remained in the city. As the community dwindled, synagogues were demolished, and tombstones relocated—often without care or preservation. In recent decades, some headstones have gone missing entirely, including de Paiva’s.

Today, no Jewish population remains in Chennai. What survives are a handful of relocated tombstones, scattered across cemeteries and city parks—remnants of a once-vibrant Sephardic community that played a pivotal role in the city's colonial past.

Davvid Levi claims to be the last Jew to have lived in the southern Indian city of Chennai. Chennai's Jewish legacy has become one of India’s vanished minorities—not erased by persecution, but by migration, intermarriage, and neglect. A community that once helped build the commercial fabric of Madras now survives only in historical records, a few gravestones, and fading memories.

In Chennai, the last flicker of Jewish life is kept alive by the Samuels family—descendants of the city’s once-thriving Sephardic Jews. As reported in the Times of India, they maintain rituals, guard family artifacts, and light candles for a community that no longer surrounds them. Their story is not one of resistance—it is one of remembrance. They are, quite literally, the keepers of the flame.

Their legacy lives on in names etched into cornerstone plaques. The people? Gone.

As Esther David writes in The Walled City, the Jewish home becomes an archive. The spice jars in the kitchen, the Torah scroll in the cabinet, the grandfather’s prayer shawl—all remnants of a story that may never be told again.

The Law of Disappearance

You don’t need discriminatory laws for a minority to vanish. You just need absence.

In Indian law, custom, religion, and minority identity often become relevant only when they're visible—when a conflict arises, when a right is asserted. If a community fades before that moment, the law never sees it at all.

There's no legal framework for “slow forgetting.”

No clause for cultural erosion. No Article for invisibility.

In her work Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope, Jael Silliman writes about women who held on to tradition while the world outside modernized. They stitched culture into fabric, preserved rituals in memory—but once they passed, who would carry it forward?

The Architecture of Assimilation

When Progress Becomes Disappearance

Disappearance isn’t always loss. Sometimes, it’s adaptation.

Bombay becomes Mumbai.

Hebrew becomes English.

Synagogues become cultural centers.

Shabbat candles are replaced with string lights at Diwali.

It’s tempting to call this “progress.” And maybe it is.

But it’s also about identity blurring at the edges. When intermarriage is common, migration is one-way, and young people no longer speak of “us” but “them”—the community hasn’t been hurt. It’s just... gone. There’s no wound. Just an absence too quiet to notice.

Forgotten Communities

In the Indian constitutional framework, religious minorities enjoy explicit protections. Article 29 safeguards cultural and educational rights, while Article 30 grants minorities the right to establish and administer their own institutions.

But here’s the quiet irony: Legal protection does not guarantee cultural preservation.

The law can guard a community’s right to exist. It cannot mandate that the community chooses to.

The Jews of India were never denied legal status. They were free to worship, free to teach, free to migrate. And they did all of those things. But they also intermarried, emigrated, moved on.

The Indian state—unlike many others—didn’t persecute its Jews. But it also didn’t preserve them. Because that’s not what the law was designed to do.

Contrast this with Israel’s Law of Return, which confers automatic citizenship on Jews worldwide, regardless of nationality, geography, or local affiliation. There, identity is not only protected—it’s institutionalized. But even in Israel, the Cochini and Bene Israeli Jews wrestle with cultural invisibility, their “Indianness” seen as quaint or foreign.

So in one case, you have a legal apparatus obsessed with preservation. In the other, you have a tolerant system that quietly forgets.

Both, ironically, risk erasing the very communities they claim to value—one through hyper-definition, the other through inattention.

Resurfacing in Fragments

The Memoir Generation

What disappears as fact often resurfaces as story.

Books like Burnt Bread and Chutney by Carmit Delman chronicle the in-between-ness of growing up Indian and Jewish and American—feeling invisible everywhere and hyper-visible in all the wrong ways.

On Instagram, creators or writers like Leora Pezarkar excavate their family’s Jewish past—not as heritage, but as emotional archaeology.

Comedian Samson Koletkar riffs on being the “world’s only Indian Jewish stand-up comic,” turning his double identity into performance—a resurrection of belonging through punchlines.

They are the afterglow. The ones who didn’t inherit the language, but inherited the longing.

So... Is It Really Disappearance? Maybe not.

Maybe it's metamorphosis. Maybe it's the ember that flickers, but doesn't go out.

Maybe Jewish India doesn’t live in numbers or census charts, but in:

The cinnamon-spiced challah recipe passed down with no exact measurements.

The mezuzah still nailed on a door in Ahmedabad.

The instinct to light a candle, even when the meaning's gone dim.

Like incense—the stick burns out, but the scent lingers on your clothes.

Final Thought

What Law Cannot See

As a legal researcher, I’ve always looked for what the law includes and excludes. But in stories like this, I’m learning to look for what the law forgets to even ask about.

Can a community disappear without persecution?

Yes. But that disappearance asks a different kind of mourning.

Not grief for violence—but grief for silence. For memory that has no court case. For culture that didn’t burn—but simply... stopped being spoken.

And for the moment someone says, “I didn’t know Jews lived in India.”

Maybe it’s time we archive what remains. Not just in museums, but in memory. In writing. In asking questions before there’s no one left to answer them. This isn’t about revival. It’s about documentation. While there’s still someone left to remember. And someone else willing to listen. Because the final act of remembrance is not nostalgia. What vanished in silence will now be written in ink. They never had to look back. But we do. The law may not ask the question. But the archive must.

Testimonies in Ink

Works that Remember

Not every community survives in census data. Some persist in poems, cookbooks, family blogs, oral histories passed down over Zoom calls, or the quiet tap of a key in a room where no one else speaks Hebrew anymore. Some in mezuzahs nailed to doors no longer opened. And some in words—scribbled in margins, typed into blogs, passed down in handwritten recipes with no exact measurements.

This is a list of those words. These are the stories that remembered, when silence could not. This section brings together published and digital works that preserve, reflect, or reimagine Indian Jewish identity—from memoir to blogpost, from recipe to requiem.

Because sometimes the most lasting record... is a story.
“The archive does not weep. But it remembers.”