Hinduism, Torah, and Travel: Jacob Sapir in India

Addressing questions of comparative religion and the phenomenology of travel, this essay analyzes Rabbi Jacob Sapir's encounter with Hinduism during his travels in India in 1859-61. The introduction of his travelogue, Even Sapir, sets up an opposition between the study of Torah in Jerusalem, his home, on the one side, over against outward travel and the traveler's mind, on the other. Sapir's experience of India and especially Hinduism centered on this duality, so that he viewed Hinduism through the rabbinic category and vocabulary of idolatry, and travel meant wandering in exile. But Sapir bridged the two perspectives in various ways detailed in this essay, such as applying a concept of perceptual holiness to Hindu practices, and his reports of Indian life and Hindu religion sometimes transcended pre-judgments and expressed attentive interest in foreign life observed beyond home and study-house.