When Nimkar ajji-ajoba passed away, the Judahs felt a personal loss. It so happened that in the ’90s when Dr Irene and her husband Dr Judah, along with their friends, were travelling in Thal village, they met the Nimkar couple. “We were exploring the Konkan countryside for synagogues.
In Thal, there was one synagogue. But since it was a public holiday, it was closed. We wanted to use the loo and so requested the Nimkars. At their home, we heard the ajji singing Shabbath songs in Hebrew! We learnt that there were hardly any Jews left and so no one gathered for the prayers any more. Having lived opposite the synagogue for several years now, the Nimkars knew which prayer to sing at what time, in which order,” recalls Irene in chaste Marathi.
A few years later when they were in that area, they went over to Nimkars again. But learnt that they were no more. “The shock I felt must have shown on my face, because the young girl before me asked if I wanted water and if I wanted to rest,” adds Irene.
The facade of that synagogue in Thal became the cover of Irene’s book — Evolution of the Bene Israels and their synagogues in the Konkan — brought out by Vishwakarma Publications.
The book got the printed form in 2017, but putting together notes of her community began in Irene’s childhood. “I was always filing away notes, news bits about Bene Israels (Sons of Israel) in my diary. My granny also used to tell me lots of stories about Jewish community. Somewhere I knew, the story of our community had to be told, and so this is a lifelong project,” she explains.
In Konkan
Just like the Parsis, theirs is a tale of persecution. “Legend goes that nearly 2,500 years ago, seven men and seven women, came to India, by sea route. They got shipwrecked near Konkan coast and that’s how we came to live in the coastal area. One group was shipwrecked near Kochi (Cochin); they are called the Kochi Jews. And, there is another group of Baghdadi Jews,” she adds.
So is there another book in the offing, we ask. “Yes, it is. But that will be my third book, not second one,” points out Irene.
Going back to the story of her community, Irene has many tales of the generosity of the Konkani people, who assimilated the Jews in their region.
“Most of the synagogues were returned to Zilla Parishads and now function as schools. In the deluge of 2005 rains in Mumbai and Konkan region, one school-cum-synagogue was affected badly. The religious scrolls had got wet and one of the teachers used to dry one scroll carefully, every single day. She managed to save so many scrolls and our history. She couldn’t even read them, but she knew something of the Jewish community and the fact that the school was earlier a synagogue. Many thanks to such people and Konkan region is full of them,” she adds.
The Maharashtrian suffix
“There are about 3000 Bene Israels who have taken on the Maharashtrian suffix of ‘kar’ in their surnames like Kandlekar, Cheulkar etc, in the country, mostly living in Mumbai. Pune has less than 200 such families,” says Irene. Most of them left the country for Israel, US, UK etc when the country gained Independence. “But, now, most of them are returning to India in search of their roots. If a family has two sons, then one goes abroad, while the other stays in India. In one of our travels, the locals told us of a story of a young Jewish chap who came to these parts, set up a guest house, Shalom (which means peace in Jewish) and is inviting people to stay there,” she adds.
The book is the tale of many such stories from the oil-presser community, who have got educated and trained in various fields like academics, medicine, navy and army, computers etc. “India has always been very accommodative and assimilative,” Irene concludes.
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