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  • From India to Israel: Identity, Immigration, and the Struggle for Religious Equality by Joseph Hodes
  • Maina Chawla Singh
Joseph Hodes. From India to Israel: Identity, Immigration, and the Struggle for Religious Equality. McGill-Queen’s University Press. xviii, 210. $24.95

Indian diaspora communities spread across continents are increasingly attracting scholarly attention. Jews of Indian origin, of whom approximately 80,000 are now living in Israel, trace their Indian roots to over 2,000 years ago. Thus, it may be argued that Indian Jews who were part of the Jewish diaspora are today also a segment of the global Indian [End Page 473] diaspora! However, scholarship on Indian Jews, especially their post-migration experiences, remains scarce, despite some key points of uniqueness. First, Indian Jews have no collective memory of experiencing anti-Semitism in India. Second, although characterized broadly as Mizrahim (non-western) within Israeli society, Indian Jews in fact do not share a Judeo-Arabic heritage with their other Mizhrahi cousins from Iraq, Morocco, or Yemen. From India to Israel is therefore a welcome scholarly intervention that deepens our understandings of Indian-Jewish communities, of which the Bene Israel have always been the largest segment. The title aptly deploys the metaphor of a journey, which in this case is not just about aliyah (“migration”) but about the more challenging journey of post-aliyah social integration in Israel.

The introductory chapters of this book highlight the lives and status of Bene Israel Jews in pre-modern and modern India, establishing their deep Indian roots, their harmonious coexistence in multi-faith rural and urban Indian communities, and their limited exposure to early European Zionism. Subsequent chapters, “Ingathering of Exiles” and “Arrival in Israel,” expand on what several other scholars have argued: that new olim (“immigrants to Israel”), especially from non-European countries, suffered marginalization in Israel, including dismal housing, bad schooling facilities in the ma’barot (“temporary housing”), and underemployment. In addition, Bene Israel also suffered deep humiliation via institutionalized discrimination by the religious establishment, who questioned their practices and “purity” through the centuries that they had lived in India. Their Jewishness, inextricably linked to their “Israeli-ness,” was challenged by rabbinical authorities. Rabbis in the 1950s and early 1960s blatantly refused to perform marriages if one partner was a Bene Israel. Agitations surfaced, and some Bene Israel olim even reached out to the Indian Prime Minister, who arranged for their return to India, probably a unique instance in Israeli history of “Ingathering of Exiles.”

Joseph Hodes’s rigorous analysis of how the pushback offered by the Bene Israel community led to mobilization, street protests, and political discussions at the highest political levels, in both Israel and India, is the key strength of this book. The contribution of individual leaders like Samson J. Samson sheds light on how an immigrant group in the Jewish homeland had to evolve its own leadership to represent its interests to the Jewish state. Although the Bene Israel community has been studied previously by scholars, namely, Nathan Katz, Joan Roland, Maina Chawla Singh, Shalva Weil, and others, who have highlighted how the Bene Israel were marginalized (first by Baghdadi Jews in India and later by many Ashkenazi communities in Israel), Hodes’s full-blown focus on their political battles for religious acceptance reveals the shock and anger they experienced because of this rejection in Israel. After all, their migration had been voluntary. Unlike their Ashkenazi counterparts, they were [End Page 474] never refugees! Although in 1964 the Israeli prime minister issued a statement refuting all suspicion about the “purity” of Bene Israel Jews, the author notes that even in 2005 the chief rabbi of Petah Tikva refused to perform marriages involving a Bene Israel. From the interviews conducted by Hodes, it is evident that although the Bene Israel Jews are now well integrated, and although many have by now raised Israeli grandchildren, the memory of that rejection remains fresh for many of the first generation who made aliyah to Israel.

From India to Israel reflects rigorous archival research. It is a must-read for all who are interested in understanding how diversity within Israeli Jewish society posed challenges in the early decades of nation...

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