[Fishing island - East India
Company - pirate Kidd]
<BOMBAY , capital of
Maharashtra and the proverbial "gateway to India".
Bombay enters Jewish
history after the cession of the city to the Portuguese in the middle
of the 16th century. Then a small fishing island of no great economic
significance, Bombay was leased out around 1554-55 to the celebrated
*Marrano scientist and physician Garcia da *Orta, in recognition of his
services to the viceroy. Garcia repeatedly refers in his
Coloquios (Goa, 1563) to "the land
and island which the king our lord made me a grant of, paying a
quit-rent."
After the transference of Bombay to English rule the Jews Abraham
*Navarro expected to receive a high office in the Bombay council of the
East India Company in recognition of his services. This was, however,
denied to him because he was a Jews.
In 1697 Benjamin Franks jumped Captain Kidd's "Adventure Galley" in
Bombay as a protest against Kidd's acts of piracy; his deposition led
to Kidd's trial in London.
The foundation of a permanent Jewish settlement in Bombay was laid in
the second half of the 18th century by the *Bene Israel who gradually
moved from their villages in the Konkan region to Bombay. Their first
synagogue in Bombay was built (1796) on the initiative of S.E.
*Divekar.
[Waves of Jewish immigrants:
Cochin Jews, Syrian and Mesopotamian Jews]
*Cochin Jews strengthened the Bene Israel in their religious revival.
The next largest wave of immigrants to Bombay consisted of Jewish
merchants from Syria and Mesopotamia. Prominent was Suleiman ibn Ya'qub
(Ya'q
ūb) or Solomon Jacob whose
commercial activities from 1795 to 1833 are documented in the Bombay
records. The Arabic-speaking Jewish colony in Bombay was increased by
the influx of other "Arabian Jews" from *Surat (Sūrat), who, in consequence of economic
changes there, turned their eyes to India.
[Jewish immigrants: Baghdad Jews
in 1833]
A turning point in the history of the Jewish settlement in
Bombay was reached with the arrival in 1833 of (col. 1192)
the Baghdad Jewish merchant, industrialist, and philanthropist, David
*Sassoon (1792-1864) who soon became a leading figure of the Jewish
community. He and his house had a profound impact on Bombay as a whole
as well as on all sectors of the Jewish community. Many of the
educational, cultural, and civic institutions, as well as hospitals and
synagogues in Bombay owe their existence to the munificence of the
Sassoon family.
Kneseth David Synagogue in Byculla, Bombay (1861), front |
Kneseth David Synagogue in Byculla, Bombay (1861), interior |
[Jewish cultural life in Bombay]
Unlike the Bene Israel, the Arabic-speaking Jews in Bombay did not
assimilate the language of their neighbours, Marathi, but carried their
Judeo-Arabic language and literature with them and continued to regard
Baghdad as their spiritual center. They therefore established their own
synagogues, the Magen David in 1861 in Byculla, and the Kneseth Elijah
in 1888 in the Fort quarter of Bombay. A weekly Judeo-Arabic
periodical,
Doresh Tov le-Ammo,
which mirrored communal life, appeared from 1855 to 1866. Hebrew
printing began in Bombay with the arrival of Yemenite Jews in the
middle of the 19th century. They took an interest in the religious
welfare of the Bene Israel, for whom - as well as for themselves - they
printed various liturgies from 1841 onward, some with translations into
(col. 1193)
Marathi, the vernacular of the Bene Israel. Apart from a shortlived
attempt to print with movable type, all this printing was by
lithography. In 1882, the Press of the Bombay Educational Society was
established (followed in 1884 by the Anglo-Jewish and Vernacular Press,
in 1887 by the Hebrew and English Press, and in 1900 by the Lebanon
Printing Press), which sponsored the publication of over 100
Judeo-Arabic books to meet their liturgical and literary needs, and
also printed books for the Bene Israel.
Kneseth Elijah Synagogue in Bombay (1888), front |
Kneseth Elijah Synagogue in Bombay (1888), interior |
[Further Jewish immigration in
19th and 20th century]
The prosperity of Bombay attracted a new wave of Jewish immigrants from
Cochin, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bukhara, and Persia. Among Persian Jews who
settled in Bombay, the most prominent and remarkable figure was Mulla
(Mull
ā) Ibrahim *Nathan (d.
1868) who, with his brother Musa (M
ūsā), both of *Meshed, were rewarded by the
government for their services during the first Afghan War.
The political events in Europe and the advent of Nazism brought a
number of German, Polish, Rumanian [[Romanian]], and other European
Jews to Bombay, many of whom were active as scientists, physicians,
industrialists, and merchants.
[[There is no number indicated in the article]].
Communal life in Bombay was stimulated by visits of [[racist]] Zionist
emissaries.
[W.J.F.]>
