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FEATURED ARTICLES
Cover Story: Siona Benjamin's Interviews on Canvas Faces of the Bene Israel by Erica Lyons When artist Siona Benjamin, an American, set out on her trip back to the India of her childhood in 2010, she arrived with an intense sense of purposefulness heavily laden with nostalgia. She was intent on rescuing the stories and narratives of these people, her people, the Jews of India. Benjamin was awarded the Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship 2010-11, which enabled her to embark on
[…] [read online...] Shabbat at Chabad Colombo. Ceiling fans whoosh languidly overhead, muffling the crowd of us individual daveners; four men–me, a backpacking Israeli father and son, and Rabbi Mendie Crombie - not even half a minyan, working our way through kabbalat shabbat, concluding roughly together. On the other side of the loungeroom mechitzah are the rebbetzin and my wife, Naava. At the only synagogue in the country, this, Rabbi Crombie later tells me, is an above-average turnout. The Tomb of Rachel - The Bene Israel Connection Wanderers, emissaries, matriarchs and a holy site by Dr. Shalva Weil In 1856, Rabbi Yaacov Sapir, an emissary from Eretz Israel, departed on a five-year tour of far-flung Jewish communities, including Yemen, India, Australia and New Zealand. Sapir had been born in Oshmiany near Wilna, but his parents, fired by messianic and religious motivations, had come to Palestine and settled in Safed. Upon his return to Jerusalem from his long mission, he published an amazingly detailed travel log, with first-hand descriptions of the life of the Yemenite Jews, as well as the appearance of the pseudo-Messiah Judah ben Shalom. In 1866, he published an invaluable work called “Even Sapir” in which he details all three communities of Indian Jews: the Bene Israel, the Baghdadis who had settled in Bombay (today Mumbai) and Calcutta, and the Cochin Jews. In early 2010, I met Zhang Yangjia, a graduate student in economics from Nanjing University who was preparing a presentation for a class on the development of the Israeli economy since the state’s beginnings in 1948. [read online...]
An Insider's View
by Philip Rosenfeld
It was early in the morning on April 5th when I had the opportunity to witness firsthand the impact the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) mission had on the lives of the Japanese. These were people among the most severely affected by the tsunami. It was also a look at the power and potential of organized cooperation in the Jewish world. |
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