But Jews around the world have also developed Hanukkah customs that are unique to their local community. For example, while jelly-filled donuts (sufganiyot) are a mainstay among Ashkenazi Jews, Hanukkah in southern India is celebrated by making gulab jamnun, a milk-based ball of dough that is deep fried and then drenched in sugar syrup. The sweet treat is also consumed by non-Jewish Indians during other celebrations like Diwali.

Indian Jews enjoying gulab jamnun is far from the only example of a distinct tradition that a community has developed in Diaspora. Here are eight more customs that go beyond playing dreidel or giving Hanukkah gelt. 

1. Hanging the Menorah On the Wall 

Most Ashkenazi Jews place a menorah in the window in order to publicize the miracle of Hanukkah. In Morocco, Algeria and other North African communities, it is customary to hang the menorah on a hook in the doorway, beside the mezuzah. Putting the menorah near the mezuzah was thought to enhance the protection already offered by the mezuzah. If you look at menorahs made in North Africa, you will notice that many have a ring at the top, as well as a flat metal backing, so that the menorah could be safely hung. 

Some Jews affiliated with Chabad also hang their menorahs. This group traces the tradition back to the Talmud (Shabbat 22a) which describes the menorah as being positioned on the doorpost like a mezuzah:

Rav Shmuel from Difti said: … the halakhah is to place [the menorah] on the left so that the Hanukkah lamp will be on the left and the mezuzah on the right. Then, one who enters the house will be surrounded by mitzvot. 

2. Constructing a Menorah from Potatoes   

Jews in Romania, as well as Austria and other central European communities, would scrape out potatoes, filling each potato space with oil and a wick to serve as the menorah. Rather than putting all eight out at once, each day they would add another potato. While the origin of this custom is unclear, it likely came about due to economic struggles. 

3. Lighting an Extra Shamash 

The Jewish community of Aleppo, which comprised mostly Sephardic Jews who had escaped the Inquisition, lit an extra shamash (helper candle) on each night of Hanukkah. Several explanations exist — some say that the second shamash was meant to honor God and acknowledge the divine intervention that brought them to safety. Others say the custom was a nod toward the non-Jews of Aleppo, who welcomed them as refugees. 

4. Glass Boxes On Display 

Before mass immigration and the establishment of the State of Israel in the 20th century, Jews lived in Jerusalem for centuries and followed the ruling that the menorah’s lights needed to be placed outside the home for all to see. This decree originates in the Talmud (Shabbat 21b):

The sages taught in a beraita: It is a mitzvah to place the Hanukkah lamp at the entrance to one’s house on the outside, so that all can see it.

However, Jerusalem winters are often wet and windy, so the community began crafting aquarium-like glass boxes to protect their flames. Inside, Jerusalem Jews put small cups of olive oil and lit a wick to correspond with each night. Some of Jerusalem’s oldest homes even have a shelf carved out of the home’s exterior walls to place the glass boxes in. 

Today, many Israeli Jews have adopted this practice, although some will simply place a hanukkiah with candles inside the box, rather than using oil. 

5. Chag HaBanot: A Celebration of Women 

Jewish communities in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Greece and Yemen celebrate another holiday during Hanukkah, known in Judeo-Arabic as Eid Al Bnat or Chag HaBanot in Hebrew, both of which translate to the Festival of the Daughters. 

Observed on Rosh Chodesh Tevet (which falls on the sixth night of Hanukkah), the girls and women of the community refrain from work and gather to recall Jewish heroines, particularly Judith, the Jewish woman who lived during the time of the Maccabees and helped prevent the impending siege of Jerusalem by decapitating the invading Assyrian general. 

Chag HaBanot festivities vary from community to community, but often include eating sweets and fried treats, dancing, visiting the synagogue to kiss the Torah scrolls and singing well into the night. Girls approaching bat mitzvah age, as well as women who were engaged, were also publicly celebrated during Chag HaBanot. 

Read more about Chag HaBanot here.

6. Neighborhood Wine Tastings 

The region of Avignon, located in southern France, is renowned for its wineries. During the Saturday night that falls during Hanukkah, after Shabbat ended, the Jews of Avignon open a new bottle of local wine in their homes and make a toast. Then, each family travels around their neighborhood to taste the wines chosen by their neighbors and to toast to the miracle of Hanukkah.

7. No Melachot Near the Menorah

It is a longstanding practice among North African and Middle Eastern Jewish communities, as well as Haredi Ashkenazi Jews, that as long as the menorah is lit, women refrain from doing melachot, the types of work that are forbidden on Shabbat and holidays. While Hanukkah is not a holiday that requires Jews to refrain from labor, this custom can be traced back to laws codified by both Ashkenazi and Sephardic leaders who ruled, pre-electricity, that the light of the menorah was not to be used for anything besides enjoying the holiday.

8. The Ninth Night of Hanukkah

In some parts of Morocco, Jewish children spend the last day of Hanukkah going from house to house to collect the leftover cotton wicks that Moroccan Jews used in place of candles. At sundown, the wicks are ignited to create a large bonfire, and each community gathers to sing, dance and even leap over the fire, which was believed to bring good luck to the jumper, especially to women seeking a partner or struggling to conceive.

These are only a sampling of the many traditions that various communities around the world have developed over time. Click here to learn more about the diversity of the Jewish people and some of its less widespread customs.

Explore Hanukkah’s history, global traditions, food and more with My Jewish Learning’s “All About Hanukkah” email series. Sign up to take a journey through Hanukkah and go deeper into the Festival of Lights.

The post 8 Hanukkah Traditions From Around the World appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The exact time Jews arrived in Kaifeng is not entirely certain. Most scholars believe that Jews first arrived during the Song Dynasty (960-1127 C.E.), from India or Persia (present day Iran), stops on the Silk Road. During this period, the Chinese people called the Jews “Tiaojinjiao” (the religion that removes the tendon) because Jewish dietary law (kashrut) forbids the consumption of the sciatic nerve. A bit later, during the Ming Dynasty, the emperor assigned Jews one of eight last names because he found Hebrew names confusing. To this day Kaifeng Jews can be recognized by their last names: Ai, Shi, Gao, Gan, Jin, Li, Zhang or Zhao. 

At its peak, the Kaifeng Jewish community had around 5,000 members. While some Kaifeng Jews have discreetly recovered their lost Jewish identities, there is nothing close to a formal, organized Jewish community in the city today.

The Kaifeng Synagogue

Kaifeng’s first synagogue was built in 1163 and destroyed by a flood in 1461. In 1600 a fire burned down the synagogue which had replaced the original building. A second flood destroyed the third version of the synagogue in 1642. Yet another flood wiped out Kaifeng’s last synagogue in the 1860’s. The community’s last religious leader died around the same time.

Kaifeng Jews had prayed in their synagogue in both Hebrew and Mandarin. They wore blue head coverings while worshipping, which led misguided neighbors to call them “the Muslims with the blue caps” in order to differentiate these congregants from “the Muslims with the white caps” (actual Muslims who wore white headgear for prayer). Jews in Kaifeng faced westward when praying — the direction of Jerusalem.

Much like Jews outside of China, for centuries, Kaifeng Jews centered their Jewish practices around the synagogue: observing Shabbat and other Jewish holidays, holding circumcisions for sons and giving their children Hebrew names in addition to Chinese names.

Decline of the Kaifeng Jewish Community  

For years Kaifeng Jews were isolated from other Jewish communities around the world, and very few people knew of their existence. Europeans did not even realize there was a Jewish community in China until 1605 when a Kaifeng Jew travelled to Beijing and met an Italian Jesuit named Matteo Ricci. Ricci’s account of his encounter with a Kaifeng Jew explained that the Jewish visitor had said he “worshipped one God.”

Historically, China has been one of the few countries in the world with virtually no anti-Semitism. Non-Jewish Kaifeng residents saw similarities between the Jews and themselves, and encouraged Jews to be part of the community. Ultimately, intentional or not, this led to more assimilation.

A difficult period of war and social upheaval in China began in 1644. This, along with the increased tendency of Kaifeng Jews to intermarry with Han Chinese and assimilate, led to a decline in Jewish religious observance. Eventually Kaifeng Jews became indistinguishable in appearance and practice from their non-Jewish neighbors.

Eventually the synagogue’s land was sold and the Torah scrolls taken to libraries in other countries. Today, there are no remaining synagogues (or rabbis) in the city.

Artifacts of the Kaifeng Jewish Community

Although the Kaifeng Jewish community is tiny today, their presence has been well-recorded through the preservation of Jewish artifacts. The British Library houses a Torah scroll from the Kaifeng Synagogue, and its Hebrew letters look very similar to Chinese characters. Additionally, the Hebrew Union College’s Klau Library in Cincinnati, Ohio has a siddur (Jewish prayer book) in Hebrew and Chinese characters and an ancient Hebrew manuscript version of the Bible owned by the community. While the Bible includes vowels, it seems they were written by someone who did not understand them, as the vowels were placed randomly. Since Modern Hebrew does not require vowels, the text can best be read by ignoring the vowels altogether.  

Perhaps most notably, the Klau Library also conserves two haggadahs from the Kaifeng community. One, from the 17^th century, written in Jewish-Persian hand, and a second from the 18^th century, written in Chinese Hebrew square script. Both haggadahs come from a period before the text went through a modern day expansion, therefore the books do not include contemporary songs of European origin such as “Dayenu” and “Had Gadya.” Interestingly, the haggadahs are also missing a blessing over the matzah, which indicates that the writer of the text forgot to write the blessing or the blessing was no longer a part of their Passover traditions. The Kaifeng Jews seem to have spoken Hebrew with heavy Chinese accents which led to some errors in the transcription of the text as well.

Rediscovering Jewish Roots

The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Israel in the late 1980s, and the arrival of Jewish tourists to Kaifeng, inspired many Kaifeng Jews to rediscover their Jewish identities. A prayer group met for the first time in years, local residents gave tours to sites of Jewish interest, and a 50 person Passover seder was held in 2015. Yet, the ability to practice Judaism publicly was short-lived.

Jewish Life in Kaifeng Today

Between 500 and 1,000 people living in Kaifeng today claim to be Jews. While most don’t speak Hebrew, celebrate Jewish holidays, or practice traditional religious beliefs, these Chinese citizens still call themselves Jewish.

Some members of the community remember celebrating Passover and Yom Kippur as children, or having Stars of David in their childhood homes. Nevertheless, today the only specifically Jewish custom observed by most Kaifeng Jews is the practice of not eating pork. There are approximately 100 Kaifeng Jews who observe Judaism to a fuller extent.

In 2016 the communist Chinese government, which opposes all religion, shut down the few existing Jewish organizations in Kaifeng and forced the small Jewish community to celebrate, learn and pray in private. Additionally, the authorities removed all public signs of Jewish history in Kaifeng and members of the local Jewish community have reportedly been monitored by the authorities.

Some Kaifeng Jews have made aliyah to Israel in recent years, but proving their Jewishness is complex. Chinese descent is patrilineal, which means that descent is calculated through male links only. Traditionally, Jews use matrilineal descent to determine if a person is Jewish. Influenced by Chinese practices, Kaifeng Jews trace Jewish lineage through the patrilineal line. This practice produces extra challenges for Kaifeng Jews who wish to be accepted as Jewish by the larger Jewish community — especially those seeking to move to Israel. Since Kaifeng Jews don’t fit the criteria of Israel’s Law of Return, they are required to go through a yearlong conversion process in order to become Israeli citizens.

While Jews living in other cities of China, such as Beijing and Shanghai, are expat Jews who arrived in recent generations, the Chinese government considers the Jews of Kaifeng to be ethnic Chinese of Jewish descent. Kaifeng Jews even think of themselves as the only proper community of Chinese Jews in the world. Although communist China has never recognized Judaism as an authorized religion, for years Judaism was unofficially tolerated all over the country.

Recently in Kaifeng this has changed and the government created a crackdown on non-government approved religions. The Chinese government feels that ethnically Chinese groups claiming minority status could lead to social and political instability. By contrast, non-Chinese Jews (Jews living in China outside of Kaifeng) are free to practice Judaism as long as they don’t promote Judaism among the Chinese population.

Learn more about Jewish communities around the world by signing up for our email journey here.

The post The Jews of Kaifeng: China’s Only Native Jewish Community appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

But neither term captures the multiple cultural influences that shaped the language for more than five centuries of life in the eastern Mediterranean, resulting in a marvelous blend of Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Italian and French. Like Yiddish, Ladino was traditionally written in Hebrew characters and known as Djudezmo and Djudyo, words that mean “Jewish.” Below are a few popular Ladino expressions, with a pronunciation guide at the top.

Ladino Pronunciation Guide

j

as in French “bonjour”
h as in English “hot”
dj as in English “joy”

1. Ijo de ken sos tu? 

?איז’ו די קין סוס טו

Pronunciation: 

EE-jo de ken sos tu
Meaning: You are the child of whom?
How to use it: You meet someone, realize you might know people in common, and begin playing Sephardic Jewish geography with the question: “Ijo de ken sos tu?”

2. Haberes buenos!

!חאביריס בואינוס

Pronunciation:

ha-BEAR-es BWE-nos
Meaning: Good news!
How to use it: This can be used either to announce good news or as a way to ward off bad news.
Sample uses: You aced your exam and tell you parents: “Haberes buenos! I got an A!”
You find out Nona (grandma) broke her hip and, to ward off the bad news, reply, “Haberes buenos!”

3. Dezmazalado de mi!

!דיזמאזאלאדו די מי

Pronunciation:

dez-ma-zal-A-do de MEE
Meaning: Pity me! I’m out of luck.
Sample use: You haven’t texted me in weeks! Dezmazalado de mi!

4. Djente de piron 

ג’ינטי די פירון

Pronunciation:

DJEN-te de pee-ROAN
Meaning: The one percent (i. e. rich folks)
Literal translation: “People of the fork”: owning a fork (and not just a spoon) was once a sign of high-class status.

5. Kome kon gana! 

!קומי קון גאנה

Pronunciation

: KO-may kon GA-na
Meaning: Bon appetit!
Literal translation: “Eat with desire.”

6. Engleneate!

!אינגליניאטי

Pronunciation:

en-glen-AY-a-te
Meaning: Have fun!
Literal translation: Entertain yourself!

7. Hadras i baranas

חאדראס אי באראנאס

Pronunciation:

HAD-ras ee bar-an-AS
Meaning: An outrageously big fuss. Being pretentious and really noisy at the same time.
How to use it: When someone is really making a scene: “Look at all that hadras i baranas!”

8. Bavajadas de benadam 

באב’אז’אדאס די בן אדם

Pronunciation

: ba-va-JAD-as de ben a-DAM
Meaning: Human foibles
Literal translation: Stupidities of mankind
Sample sentence: Water cooler chatter reveals the bavajadas de benadam.

9. Bivas, kreskas, engrandeskas, komo un peshiko en aguas freskas! Amen!

ביב’אס קריסקאס אינגראנדיסקאס קומו און פישיקו אין אגואס פ’ריסקאס אמן

Pronunciation:

BEE-vas, KRES-kas, en-gran-DES-kas, KO-mo un pesh-EE-ko en AG-uas FRES-kas! a-MEN!

Meaning: An elaborate “bless you” after a sneeze (or multiple sneezes)
Literal translation: Live; thrive; grow; like a little fish in fresh water! Amen!

10. Kaminos de leche i miel!

קאמינוס די ליג’י אי מייל

Pronunciation

: Ka-MEE-nos de LE-che ee MEE-el

Meaning: Bon voyage!

Literal meaning: May you follow paths of milk and honey

11. Sano i rezio!

סאנו אי ריזייו

Pronunciation:

SA-no ee REZ-yo
Meaning: Farewell!
Literal meaning: May you be healthy and strong

The post The 11 Best Ladino Expressions and Phrases To Know appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Here are some important things to know about this beautiful language that is not well known outside the Sephardic community. Find out how to learn Ladino here.

1- Ladino was once the primary language spoken by Sephardic Jews throughout the Mediterranean.

From the Spanish Inquisition until World War II, Ladino was the primary language spoken by thousands and thousands of Jews throughout the Mediterranean. Ladino no longer is spoken anywhere as a first language, and estimates put speakers with Ladino familiarity at just 200,0000 worldwide.

2-While primarily based on Spanish, Ladino has vocabulary from several other languages.

Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish and Judezmo, is essentially 15th-century Spanish, but it also has words mixed in from Portuguese, French, Italian, Arabic, Greek, Turkish and Hebrew.

3.  Ladino was an oral tradition for centuries.

It was first written in Rashi (or solitreo) script, then with Hebrew letters, and now primarily with Latin script.

4.  Ladino is a rich source of Jewish poetry, proverbs, folktales and more.

One collection of folktales we recommend is Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster collected by Matilda Koen-Sarano. The nearly 300 stories in this volume were told to Koen-Sarano in their original language of Ladino, and documented over 21 years.

5. Just because you speak Spanish, don’t expect it to be effortless to learn Ladino.

Because Ladino is based in 15th-century medieval Spanish, some vocabulary might seem antiquated and the syntax odd. Certain consonants get flipped (d’s and r’s occasionally), and pronunciations can be strange (an “h” or “j”, which would be silent in modern Spanish, are pronounced in Ladino, for one example).

6. You can watch cartoons in Ladino.

Ora de Despertar

(Time to Wake Up!)- is an animated musical cartoon collection developed by me, Sarah Aroeste, with easy-to-learn words teaching the elementals of Ladino. It is intended for young children, but is a good way for adult Ladino learners to connect easy vocabulary and concepts with dynamic visuals.

7. You can listen to Ladino music on Spotify, iTunes and other major music outlets.

Plus, there are several online radio stations where you can enjoy Ladino music and stories, including:

• 91FM Radio Lev Hamedina: Hosts a Ladino music and story program for Hebrew speakers.
• Radio Nacional de Espana (Spanish Public Radio): Has a Ladino broadcast, Emisión en sefardí.
• Israel Broadcast Authority: Has a daily Ladino newscast, Kan Ladino.

8. There are dozens of excellent documentary films about Ladino.

Here are a few we recommend:

• Las Ultimas Palavras (The Last Words) (2015): Filmmaker Rita Ender embarks on a journey in search of Judeo-Spanish in Turkey. The disappearance of the language becomes a symbol for the growing sense of uprooting among the younger generation.
• Saved by Language (2015): The story of how Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, his mother tongue, survived the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian Colonel who helped him escape to a partisan refuge after he ran away from the train taking Yugoslavian Jews to Nazi death camps.
• El Ultimo Sefardi (The Last Sephardic Jew) (2003): This film follows Eliezer Papo — a lawyer, novelist and itinerant rabbi — on a tour of post-Inquisition diaspora communities. Papo is called the last Sephardic Jew because he can trace his lineage back to Spain, and because he grew up speaking Ladino — which, according to the filmmakers, is the true definition of “Sephardic.”
• The Ladino Ladies’ Club (2015): Nine charming Sephardic women in Bulgaria share memories about their lives and Sephardic traditions in Ladino.

9. Tom Hanks appears in a movie featuring Ladino dialogue.

In Every Time We Say Goodbye (1986), Hanks plays a gentile American soldier who is recuperating in Jerusalem after his bomber gets shot down during World War II. There he falls in love with a Sephardic girl and must navigate the cultural (and linguistic) differences with her Ladino-speaking family.

The post 9 Things to Know About Ladino appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Because the Bene Israel families were scattered among many villages, community life in Kolaba District was extremely limited, and group prayer and Jewish rituals took place in the home. The community’s religious observance was based on biblical Judaism: they celebrated Jewish holidays related to the Bible; the Sabbath was strictly observed; all male children were circumcised eight days after birth; and the first Hebrew verse of the Shema was recited on all occasions for prayer.

Initially, the Bene Israel had no Torah scrolls, prayer books, or synagogues, nor were they familiar with rabbinic Judaism or the details of halakhah. They were guided by three Bene Israel religious leaders called kazis, who traveled from village to village in order to officiate at all rites of passage.

Origins of the Community

According to the community’s own oral tradition, they are descended from “seven couples from a country to the north,” the sole survivors of a shipwreck off the Konkan coast near Navagaon (about 48 km south of Bombay).

Ever since the early 19th century, Christian missionaries and Jews (non-Bene Israel as well as Bene Israel) have offered diverse suggestions to explain the community’s origins. For example, the centrality of the prophet Elijah in Bene Israel tradition produced the theory that their ancestors lived in the Holy Land in the time of Elijah (eighth century BCE) and that the “country to the north” was actually Israel.

Other theories have these ancestors tarrying in Persia or Yemen before ending up, shipwrecked, on the Konkan coast. Dating of their arrival in the Konkan ranges anywhere from the eighth century BCE to the sixth century CE.

The Bene Israel Community in Bombay

In 1674, the British East India Company moved its headquarters to the islands of Bombay (Mumbai). By the mid-18th century, Bombay had developed into a metropolis with a bustling port city, attracting thousands of Indians from the countryside, including hundreds of Bene Israel.

Although most of the community remained in the villages, many Bene Israel were tempted by the opportunities in Bombay for employment and education. Others moved to the city in order to enlist in the “Native Forces” of the British East India Company‘s (and later the British Government’s) Military Services. The relative proportion of enlistment, of decorations for bravery, and of promotion to the highest ranks possible for Native Forces was extremely high among the Bene Israel, given the size of their total population.

In Bombay, Bene Israel worked mainly in construction, in the shipyards, and as carpenters. Here, they were introduced to new techniques and new kinds of tools. Because an oil-pressing monopoly already existed in the city, they did not pursue their traditional occupation.

In 1796, the first Bene Israel synagogue, Sha’ar haRahamim, was founded in Bombay.

Thanks to the Missionaries

India’s Bene Israel are unique among Diaspora communities because it was a Christian missionary who created — albeit unintentionally — a firm basis for the Bene Israel community’s entry into mainstream Jewry.

The British did not allow missionaries into British territories in India until 1813, but soon thereafter European and American Christian missions were established with headquarters in Bombay. The Reverend John Wilson of the Church of Scotland (later of the Free Church of Scotland) arrived in India in 1829 and worked with the Indians of Bombay and Kolaba District until his death in 1875. He was a scholar, an erudite writer, and one of the founders of Bombay University (1857).

Wilson introduced Hebrew as a subject for matriculation and for higher education. He saw in the Bene Israel the biblical “remnant of Israel.” It was Wilson who wrote, in 1838, the first serious account of the Bene Israel and their customs. Already in 1832, he wrote and published in Bombay The Rudiments of Hebrew Grammar in Marathi, “intended for the benefit of the Native Israelites.”

Using Wilson’s book of Hebrew-Marathi grammar as a first step, some pupils became very proficient in Hebrew. In due course, they themselves became teachers of Hebrew, not only in Wilson’s schools but also at the college and university level. These Bene Israel scholars published Marathi translations of classic Hebrew texts, Jewish prayer books, rabbinical commentaries, and sermons. Each Hebrew text was accompanied by a parallel translation into Marathi, for the first time giving the Bene Israel access to a wide range of Jewish texts.

In addition, Bene Israel studied the English language and secular subjects in Wilson’s schools, which opened up a whole new world of knowledge. Most important, their literacy in Hebrew and in English enabled them to communicate and maintain contact with mainstream Jewry.

It is remarkable that during a century of concentrated efforts to convert Bene Israel to Christianity, the various missions met with almost no success at all. In 1854, after Rev. Wilson had been in India for 25 years, he wrote “… the labours of the Bombay Missions have not yet been blessed to the conversion of any of their number.”

Jewish Education and Communal Organizations

While Christian missionaries were trying to convert the Bene Israel, in 1826 a group of dedicated Cochin Jewish teachers left their community in order to live among the Bene Israel in Bombay and Kolaba District and teach them about mainstream Jewish observance. A second group of Cochin teachers arrived in 1833.

On weekdays, they taught Jewish religion and Hebrew reading and writing; on Saturdays, they conducted morning prayer services and discussed halakhah and Jewish beliefs in the afternoons.

More Bene Israel synagogues were founded, and each became a vital center of religious, social, and communal life. With no ordained rabbi, the synagogue was served by a hazan (cantor), usually a Cochin, Baghdadi, or Yemenite Jew who also served as shohet (slaughterer for kosher meat), mohel (ritual circumcisor), and sofer (scribe).

During the 19th century, Bene Israel families also settled in Pune, Ahmadabad, Karachi, Delhi, and other Indian cities. Initially, Jewish prayer services were held in the homes of community members, but in time a substantial synagogue or–where there were too few Jewish residents—an attractive prayer-hall was erected.

Two main factors contributed to the community’s dispersal throughout the Indian subcontinent. First of all, during the British period, educated Bene Israel were favored for civil service positions. Second, relatively large numbers of Bene Israel served in the government police services, the army, navy, merchant marine, and (in the 20th century) the air corps. All these vocations tended to involve permanent or temporary postings far from Bene Israel population centers.

For those stationed in remote places, the only reminder of their Jewishness would often be home life and the Jewish calendar–that is, the Jewish High Holidays, Passover, or family rites of passage. On these occasions, they would travel to Bombay, to their native villages, or to the nearest Jewish congregation in order to celebrate with family or at least be together with fellow Jews.

The Bene Israel in Recent Times

Over the course of the 19th century, Bene Israel were confronted for the first time with the simultaneous influences of Jewish orthodoxy, secular education, and Western ideas. The choices they made then–and continued to make in the 20th century–depended upon such variables as proximity to other Jews and to a synagogue, finances, and degree of actual contact and familiarity with various expressions of Jewish observance.

At the end of the 1940s, with India’s total population at 350 million, the Bene Israel population in India peaked at an estimated 24,000 to 25,000.

After 1948, many members of the community began emigrating, mainly from the cities, to the new State of Israel. They were motivated by a combination of three equally compelling factors: a sense of Jewish identity, Zionist idealism, and concern over Bene Israel economic prospects in the newly-independent India.

A minority of Bene Israel emigrated to England, the United States, Canada, or Australia. Large-scale emigration from the Villages did not occur until the early 1970s. Since then, the total number of Bene Israel remaining in India–almost all in urban centers–remains fairly stable at around 5,000.

In Israel, the Bene Israel population (i.e., persons with at least one Bene Israel parent) was estimated as of 1994 at 40,000, almost all of whom have settled in cities or in development towns.

When members of the community first arrived in Israel, very little was known about the history or cultural background of the Bene Israel, which exacerbated their problems of absorption. Although the years that followed their immigration were therefore made unnecessarily difficult, the community’s situation has greatly improved.

The Bene Israel in Israel have established several social and cultural organizations, which serve as foci of community identity. At times these organizations present information about the Bene Israel to Israeli society at large. Mainly, however, they help both the young and the older members of the community maintain a link with their heritage and with India, the country that provided a friendly home for generations of Bene Israel.

Reprinted with permission from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The post India’s Bene Israel Jews appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Because of low literacy levels, a tendency to rely on oral traditions, and nomadic lifestyles among most Ethiopians prior to the 20th century, historic material about this community is scant and unreliable. However, a tentative story can be pieced together from written records of Ethiopian rulers as well as testimony from the Beta Israel themselves.

Origins of the Community

Most likely, the Beta Israel arrived in Ethiopia between the first and sixth centuries, coming as merchants or artisans from various countries in the region.

Scholars once believed that during the Middle Ages the Beta Israel were a homogeneous group living under unified, autonomous Jewish rule. Yet new discoveries have shown that the truth is far more complex. It seems the Ethiopian Jewish community was for the most part fragmented both physically and religiously, with each Beta Israel village appointing its own spiritual and secular leaders. There was little contact between Beta Israel communities, and usually no overarching leadership uniting them.

Sometimes the Beta Israel were treated well by the Ethiopian monarchy, but at other times they suffered persecution. Many fellow Ethiopians refer to the Beta Israel as falasha (a derogatory term meaning outsider). In 1624, the ruling king’s army captured many Ethiopian Jews, forced them to be baptized, and denied them the right to own land. According to local legend, some members of the Beta Israel chose suicide over conversion.

Religious Life

Since the Beta Israel community existed in isolation from other Jewish communities around the world, they developed a unique set of religious practices — in some ways quite different from what is typically considered “Jewish.”

For example, an order of Ethiopian Jewish monks was founded in the 15th century to strengthen the community’s religious identity and resist Christian influence. This monastic movement introduced an organized approach to religious practice, creating new religious literature and prayers, and adopting laws of ritual purity.

Historians learned about the community’s religious life in the 19th century from the writings of Joseph Halevy, a French Jew who visited the area in 1867. He provided the first eyewitness account of Beta Israel life from a European Jewish perspective.

Halevy described a community that followed legal sections in the Hebrew Bible and observed laws of purity surrounding menstruation, birth, and death. They observed Shabbat and believed in values such as respecting elders, receiving guests, and visiting mourners. They referred to the Torah as Orit (possibly from the Aramaic term for the Torah, Oraita), and kept their Torah scrolls covered in colorful cloths in houses of prayer or in the homes of one of the kessim (priests).

Like today in Israel, Ethiopian Jews celebrated Sigd, a festival which commemorates the giving of the Torah. On this holiday, community members would fast, climb the highest mountain in the area, and listen to the kessim chant passages of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the Book of Nehemiah. In the afternoon they would descend, break their fast, and rejoice in their renewed acceptance of the Orit.

Missionaries and Trying Times

At the time of Halevy’s report, one of the biggest challenges facing the Ethiopian Jewish community was European missionary activity. Though the community had frequently been pressured to convert by Ethiopian authorities, missionaries from abroad — with large-scale, organized missions — presented an even stronger threat.

European missionaries, well-versed in the Hebrew Bible, were educated and skilled in debate. The Beta Israel’s clergy could not compete. By providing schools and Bibles written in the local language, Amharic, the missionaries challenged the community’s practice and faith.

On a number of occasions the Beta Israel’s monastic clergy tried to escape the missionaries’ influence by leading their communities to the Promised Land (Israel). By and large, these journeys were disastrous. One particular attempt in 1862 ended in large-scale starvation and death.

Between 1882 and 1892 the regions of Ethiopia where the Beta Israel lived suffered from a famine that killed an estimated one third to one half of the Beta Israel.

The World Jewish Community

Halevy’s student, Jaques Faitlovitch, was the first Jewish foreigner to work in earnest on improving conditions for the Ethiopian Jewish community. Arriving for his first visit in 1904 and returning several times in subsequent years, Faitlovitch created tiny schools in Addis Ababa for Beta Israel members, hand-picked 25 young leaders for education abroad, and acted as an emissary on behalf of the world Jewish community.

Faitlovich secured two letters from rabbis abroad acknowledging the Beta Israel as fellow Jews. The first letter, written in 1906, called the Beta Israel “our brethren, sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who dwell in Abyssinia” and “our flesh and blood.” The letter, which promised to help the community in its religious education, was signed by 44 world Jewish leaders including the chief rabbis of London and Vienna and the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.

The second letter, from 1921, was written by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the revered Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Palestine. He called on the Jewish people worldwide to save the Beta Israel — “50,000 holy souls of the house of Israel” — from “extinction and contamination.”

Faitlovich’s work on behalf of the Beta Israel community came to a dramatic halt with the Italian invasion of  Ethiopia in 1935-6. Under fascist rule, it became forbidden to practice Judaism in Ethiopia.

Some of Faitlovitch’s work was undeniably controversial — he created a schism dividing the young, westernized leaders he chose from the elders of the rural communities. But, until the 1960s, no one but Faitlovitch took such a dedicated interest in the community, invested in it financially and educationally, and visited with such regularity. Moreover, it was the letters that Faitlovitch brought to Ethiopia from Kook and other contemporary Jewish leaders that allowed the Beta Israel to cling to their hopes of returning to the Promised Land, and, decades later, for world Jewry to readily accept them.

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The Greek‑speaking Jewish communities, which the immigrants from Spain and Portugal later called “Romaniots” or “Gregos,” were all under Ottoman rule at the time of the fall of Constantinople — renamed Istanbul — in 1453. The Arabic‑speaking Jews (“Mustarabs” in the idiom of the Iberian refugees), were the other important indigenous group. They lived in “Arabistan”–countries conquered mainly during the reign of Selim I (1512‑1520) and of his son Suleiman the Magnificent (1520‑1566). For all the Jews the conquest was a salvation, as their situation in the 14th and 15th centuries under Byzantine and Mamluk rule had been extremely difficult.

Haven for Jewish Refugees from Spain and Portugal

Then, in the wake of the expulsion from Spain (1492) and the forced conversion in Portugal (1497), tens of thousands of Iberian Jews arrived in Ottoman territories. As all that was required of them was the payment of a poll‑tax and acknowledgement of’ the superiority of Islam, the empire became a haven for these refugees.

From early in the 16th century, the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire became the largest in the world. Constantinople and Salonika each had a community of approximately 20,000 people. Immigration from the Iberian peninsula, arriving in several waves throughout the 16th century, also transformed the character of Ottoman Jewry. Far more numerous than the local Jews, the Spaniards and the Portuguese soon submerged the Romaniots, and the indigenous population was assimilated into the culture and community of the new immigrants.

After the conquest of Constantinople, Muhammad II, wishing to aggrandize the city and make it into a capital befitting a great empire, brought into it many people from the provinces. This migration affected the Jewish community and changed the character it had acquired during the Byzantine period.

The economic and religious situation was indeed ameliorated; but many of the older Romaniot congregations disappeared, their memory preserved only in the names of several synagogues in Istanbul. The congregations which replaced them in the capital as well as in Salonika or in Tiriya in western Anatolia, were purely Spanish.

Jewish Prosperity and Cultural Blossoming

Within the communities, the congregations were organized according to the geographic origin of their members. Grouped around synagogues, the Jewish organizations provided all the religious, legal, educational, and social services, thus creating an almost autonomous society. Until the end of the 16th century, these institutions were very flexible, allowing significant mobility within them. The geographic origin of its members soon lost its importance, and the development of the congregation was determined by power struggles between rich individuals or groups with conflicting interests.

Throughout the 16th century, the Jews in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The empire was rapidly expanding, and economic demand rose accordingly. Thus the Jewish population could easily enter into trade with Christian Europe, and into industries such as wool weaving that were only then beginning to evolve. Under the leadership of figures like Don Joseph Nasi and Solomon ibn Yaish, they could take advantage of their worldwide network of family connections and their knowledge of European affairs in order to promote the concerns of the Sublime Porte, as well as to protect their personal interests and those of their community.

This was also a time of cultural blossoming: Hebrew law was enriched by Joseph Caro’s Shulchan Aruch (the “Prepared Table”) which was to become the authoritative code for the entire Jewish nation, while from Safed in Palestine emerged the Lurianic Kabbalah of Ha-Ari, one of the most influential trends in Jewish mysticism. It seems that these communities of exiles, suddenly liberated from the danger of extinction, could give expression to an outburst of cultural forces which had been stifled by centuries of persecution.

Reprinted with permission from Eli Barnavi’s A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, published by Schocken Books.

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Many synagogues were built from the 13th through the 18th centuries, especially in the region of Galicia. Few of these structures remain. Synagogues were a common target during pogroms, which hit with full force throughout the 19th century; additionally, many Jewish community buildings were destroyed by Nazi forces during World War II.

In the second half of the 20th century, nearly all surviving synagogues were confiscated by the Soviet Union and used for a variety of state purposes, ranging from storage warehouses to opera houses. Upon declaring independence in 1991, the newly sovereign state of Ukraine returned many synagogues back to remaining Jewish communities. Today, a small number of historical synagogues have been restored and continue to serve as hubs of Jewish prayer and education. Other synagogues are permanently gone, with only a plaque nearby to remind passersby of the Jewish community that once gathered there.

The architectural style deployed to construct synagogues varied greatly from place to place and was often a reflection of the local Jewish community’s safety, status and economic standing, which fluctuated greatly due to the political instability and antisemitism that have shaped Eastern European Jewish life for the last several centuries.

Lviv’s Golden Rose Synagogue

Prior to WWII, the oldest synagogue within Ukraine’s modern borders was the Golden Rose Synagogue in Lviv. Throughout its history, the synagogue was also known as the Nachmanowicz Synagogue or the Turei Zahav Synagogue. Constructed in 1582, the building’s architects utilized the renaissance style that had become common among European synagogues in that period.

The synagogue was often a target of antisemitism. The building was held for ransom by Jesuits in the early 17th century, although the Jewish community was able to buy it back. In 1941, the Golden Rose Synagogue was badly damaged by Nazi forces; in 1943, the Nazis rendered in unusable.

Today, the sanctuary remains in ruins, although Lviv’s Jewish leaders yearn to restore the synagogue. Currently, the former lobby is used by members of Lviv’s Jewish community as a makeshift place for prayer.

Fortress Synagogues

The oldest synagogue that is still standing in Ukraine is believed to be the Sataniv Synagogue in Western Ukraine. Some historians date the synagogue’s original construction to 1514, while others say it was likely constructed sometime in the 1700s. Like many places of worship during that era, a thick wall was built around the Sataniv Synagogue so that the building and its dwellers would survive invasions and attacks. This style is known as fortress architecture, and was also utilized by the Husiatyn Synagogue, which is about 23 miles south of Sataniv.

The Husiatyn Synagogue was built in the 16th century and served the local Jewish community until World War II, when the building was severely damaged. In 1972, the Soviet Union turned the ruins into a cultural museum for the local town — the synagogue is also near a castle and church — but the building once again decayed and is currently vacant.

Wooden Synagogues

Timber was the material of choice in many Jewish towns and shtetls across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealthm (which then included the territory that is modern day Ukraine) beginning in the late 16th century. Constructing a synagogue from wood was not only cheaper due to the abundance of surrounding forests; it also allowed local Jewish communities to circumvent the building permits necessary for masonry, as well as distinguish their places of worship from stone churches. By utilizing timber to create multi-floor centers of Jewish life and learning, Jews created a unique style of synagogue architecture that remains solely associated with shtetl life in Eastern Europe.

The synagogues were even more notable inside and often featured intricate wood carvings of biblical motifs that were painted brightly. The largest wooden synagogues were destroyed by the end of World War II, but there are ongoing efforts to reconstruct models or renovate smaller surviving synagogues. The most famous reconstruction is the Gwoździec Synagogue, which once stood in the Ukrainian town that is known today as Hvizdets. The original synagogue was burned down by Nazi soldiers.

The Gwoździec Synagogue’s vibrant domed ceiling was recreated in 2011-2012 and lives on today inside the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. On the right is a photograph of the original synagogue in the 1920s. (Wikimedia Commons)

While the reconstructed Gwoździec Synagogue is in Warsaw, the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris and the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv also have reconstructed wooden synagogues on display.

The only wooden synagogue in Ukraine that is believed to have survived World War II entirely is located in Skhidnytsia, a town 65 miles north of Lviv. Today, the building has been remodeled and repurposed as a church.

Choral Synagogues

Influenced by the Jewish enlightenment (also known as the Haskalah), choral synagogues emerged across Europe in the late 18th century. Choral synagogues differed from their predecessors in architecture and in the style of the services. Previously, the bimah was located in the center of the sanctuary in synagogues so that congregants surrounded the prayer leader; in the new choral synagogues, the bimah was near the ark at the front of the sanctuary, like many American synagogues today. The men’s section was constructed to face the bimah and ark, rather than wrapping around the bimah like in wooden synagogues.

Choral synagogues were mostly constructed in cities. Their architecture and design often reflected Moorish Revival, Romanesque Revival and Neo-Gothic influences.

The largest synagogue in Ukraine today is the Kharkiv Choral Synagogue, in the city of Kharkiv. Construction of the synagogue took place between 1909 and 1913. From 1923 until 1990, the synagogue did not host services; instead, the space was used as a sports club, a movie theatre and as a center for organizing through a Jewish affiliate of the Comintern, a Soviet movement that encouraged communism internationally. Following Ukrainian independence, Jews began to use the space for prayer again, and the building was renovated in 2003. Today, the synagogue is affiliated with Chabad.

The Choral Synagogue of Drohobych is another one of Ukraine’s notable synagogues that has survived pogroms, WWII and the Soviet Union. Originally constructed in the mid-19th century, Drohobych’s synagogue was considered the main synagogue in Galicia. While the building was not destroyed in WWII, it was seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the war and used as a warehouse. Ownership of the synagogue was returned to Drohobych’s Jewish community in 1991, and the building underwent a major restoration between 2014 and 2018.

The Choral Synagogue of Bila Tserkva, located 50 miles south of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, was built in 1860. Soviet authorities converted the synagogue to a college building and removed all Jewish imagery from the design.

In the city of Dnipro, the choral synagogue is known as the Golden Rose Synagogue. The building was originally constructed in 1896. In 1999, parts of the Golden Rose Synagogue was renovated by Israeli architect Frank Meisler. Today, the synagogue serves some of the city’s estimated 50,000 Jewish residents and is located adjacent to Dnipro’s Menorah Center, which is believed to be the largest Jewish life complex in the world. Operated under the auspices of Chabad, the Menorah Center includes a Jewish museum, kosher restaurants and a market, a hotel and shops.

In the capital city of Kyiv, there are two historic choral synagogues that are still active today: the Brodsky Synagogue and the Great Choral Synagogue. The Great Choral Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in Kyiv, as it was constructed in 1895. While the Nazis used the building as a horse stable during WWII, the synagogue has been accessible to the Jewish community since the end of the war.

While considered a choral synagogue due to its interior, the Brodsky Synagogue’s exterior was unique when it was built in 1898, as it was inspired by Roman basilicas. After being destroyed in WWII, the building was salvaged by Soviet authorities and converted into a puppet theater. When the theater relocated in 1999, Jewish leaders in Kyiv regained access to the synagogue. Today, the congregation is affiliated with Chabad.

Want to learn more about the Jews of Ukraine, past and present? Sign up for My Jewish Learning and JTA News’ email series to learn more about the complicated Jewish history of Ukraine and how the past sheds light on the battles unfolding today.

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An Unorthodox Upbringing

Asenath Barazani was the daughter of the eminent Rabbi Shmuel b. Netanel Ha-Levi of Kurdistan (1560?–1625/1635?). Her father, a scholar and mystic with a large following, aimed to rectify the plight of his brethren, namely, the dearth of educated leaders. He built a yeshiva in Mosul where he hoped to train young men who would become community leaders and scholars. Since he had no sons, he trained his daughter to be a learned scholar of the highest order. She described her upbringing in a letter:

I never left the entrance to my house or went outside;
I was like a princess of Israel…
I grew up on the laps of scholars, anchored to my father of blessed memory.
I was never taught any work but sacred study, to uphold, as it is said:
“And you should recite it day and night (Joshua 1: 8)”

Yeshiva Leadership

Asenath was married to one of her father’s finest students, Rabbi Jacob Mizrahi. She described the conditions of their marriage in the continuation of the above letter:

“And he (my father) made my partner swear never to allow me to engage in work, and thus he did as he was commanded. From the start, the Rabbi (Mizrahi) was involved in his studies and did not have time to teach the students, so I would teach them in his stead, a helpmate…”

Thus we learn that Rabbi Mizrahi agreed to conditions whereby Asenath would never have to spend her time on housework, because she was a Torah scholar like himself. After her father died, her husband technically became the head of the Yeshiva, but in fact it was Asenath who taught the students who had come for rabbinic training.

When R. Mizrahi passed away, the leadership of the yeshiva naturally passed to his widow, and since she had already been the students’ teacher, the transition was natural and painless. Unfortunately, neither her father nor her husband had been successful fundraisers and the yeshiva was always in financial straits. Asenath wrote a number of letters requesting funds in which she described the dire situation that had befallen her and her children. Her home and belongings had been confiscated, as had their clothing and books. She was still teaching Torah, but the debts were adding up and, as a woman, she felt it was inappropriate for her to travel in search of financial support. In letters addressed to her, one can see the respect and admiration of fellow rabbis from far and near.

Myths & Legends

Few of her writings are extant, but one can perceive in them her complete mastery of Torah, Talmud, Midrash, Kabbalah and Hebrew, for her letters are lyrical as well as erudite. A recently discovered manuscript provides additional insight into her life. Inter alia, it reveals an attempt to deceive her regarding the means of delivery of contributions to her yeshiva. In addition, there are numerous stories about her, most of which have been found in amulets, which allude to her supernatural powers. These include her ability to limit her childbearing to two children so that she could devote herself to her studies, and the ability to freeze an intruder in his tracks in order to prevent him from raping her, a feat achieved by loudly calling out holy names. Ironically enough, while in life her sex did not seem to present a problem, in local folklore her sexuality clearly plays a central role. Nevertheless, she successfully ran a yeshiva which continued to produce serious scholars, including her son, whom she sent to Baghdad upon request, where he continued the dynasty of rabbinic scholars.

One well known legend claims that Asenath received messages from her father via dreams. While visiting Amedi on Rosh Hodesh, she convinced the community to celebrate outside. When the synagogue suddenly went up in flames, by means of a secret name, she alerted the angels of the danger; they successfully extinguished the fire. The synagogue whose contents were unharmed was renamed in Asenath’s honor.

Impact & Legacy

No mention of opposition to her leadership is recorded. She was clearly important to the Kurdish Jews in her lifetime, but one cannot find any influence on the lives of other women in the community, even of her daughters. However, her status has been used to justify permitting Orthodox women to be ordained as rabbis. In addition, her descendants have copies of their family tree and are proud to be related to her. Today she is still idolized by Kurdish Jews as her achievements are viewed as a sign of greatness.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

Looking for a kid-friendly way to teach about Asenath Barzani? Check out our partner site Kveller’s interview with Sigal Samuel, the author of “Osnat and Her Dove,” a children’s book that recounts Barzani’s incredible life.

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The Jews of Israel reflect a diversity of languages, religious traditions, cultural customs and oral histories. While some Jewish Israelis are descended from Jewish communities that have lived continuously in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and elsewhere in Israel, the vast majority are descended from Jewish immigrants, many of them refugees who fled to the Jewish state to escape persecution, bringing a wide range of customs, languages and folkways with them to the Jewish state.

While Israeli Jews are descended from immigrants who arrived from virtually every country on earth, they are often broadly categorized into four main groupings based on their geographic origins and the ritual and prayer customs they follow. 

• Ashkenazi Jews — the Jews of Europe
• Sephardic Jews — the Jews of Iberia who relocated across Europe, North Africa and Turkey after the Spanish Inquisition 
• Mizrahi Jews — Jews from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, North Africa and other Middle Eastern Jewish communities 
• Ethiopian Jews — Jews from the Beta Israel community 

Waves of Immigration

Jews were first exiled from the land of Israel around 722 BCE by the Assyrian Empire. They returned to the land of Israel at various times since then, but the emergence of Zionism in the late 19th century led to five major waves of aliyah, or Jewish immigration to pre-state Israel. 

The first two consisted primarily of Jews fleeing pogroms and antisemitism in the Russian Empire, as well as smaller numbers of Yemenite, Kurdish, Bukharan and Iranian Jews. Later aliyot included a large number of Ashkenazi Jews from both Western and Eastern Europe fleeing Nazi persecution, as well as Jews from major Sephardic communities in Greece, the Balkans and Western Europe.

The influence these immigrants had on the formation of the State of Israel cannot be overstated. Many of Israel’s leaders — including David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Chaim Weizmann and Golda Meir — arrived during these waves. European immigrants in particular left an indelible imprint on the early character of the state, establishing its universities, government and legal system on the European model. Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, involved in Jewish labor movements in their home countries, would establish Israel’s famous kibbutz communities, the influential Histradrut union, and the Haganah, the pre-state militia that would evolve into the Israel Defense Forces. 

Immigration to Israel Post-1948

Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, and the subsequent expulsion of 700,000 Jews from several Arab states, led to the largest and most diverse influx of immigrants in Israel’s history. With its expanded infrastructure, the Israeli army also began bringing Jews in danger to the state through special operations between 1949 and 1951. Operation On Eagles’ Wings airlifted an estimated 49,000 Jews from Yemen to Israel between 1949 and 1950, while an estimated 125,000 Iraqi Jews were brought to Israel through Operation Ezra and Nehemia in 1950 and 1951. Nearly 90,000 Jews from Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt also immigrated in the state’s earliest years. By the end of 1951, Mizrahi Jews accounted for 56% of all Jewish immigrants to Israel. 

By 1972, a total of 600,000 Mizrahi Jews had immigrated to Israel. However, tensions between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Israelis were commonplace.Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews were sometimes stereotyped as less educated and less intellectual. Ashkenazi Israelis received access to better resources for new immigrants, such as housing, stipends and higher quality education. Few non-Ashkenazi Jews served in prestigious army units or in governmental leadership positions, and marriages between an Ashkenazi Jew and a Sephardic or Mizrahi Jew were known in Hebrew as nisuei ta’arovet, or mixed marriages.

Simmering Tensions, New Immigrants

By the 1980s, divisions between ethnic groups lessened greatly as Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews became more integrated into Israeli society. In 1978, Yitzhak Navon made history when he became the first Sephardic Israeli president. David Elazar was the first Sephardic Israeli to become the army Chief of Staff in 1972. And in 1998, the Iranian-born Shaul Moraz became the first Mizrahi Jew to hold the position. In the 1980s and 1990s, non-Ashkenazi Jews also gained more influence in the Knesset with the formation of the Shas political party in 1984. The party has often been key to forming Israel’s governing coalition and has given a prominent platform to issues of importance to Sephardic and Mizrahi Israelis.

Sephardic and Mizrahi culture also became popular among all Israelis. Singer Ofra Haza, whose songs included traditional Mizrahi elements, rose to fame within Israel in the late 1970s and internationally by the mid-1980s. The daughter of Yemenite immigrants, Haza is often credited as being a driving force behind Israel’s embrace of Mizrahi music. She also paved the path for future Mizrahi Israeli musicians like Achinoam Nini, Rita and A-WA.

Beginning in the 1980s, Israel also saw two more large immigration waves: Russian-speaking Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopian Jews. 

Russian-speaking Jews began relocating to Israel in 1989; by 1995, more than 600,000 had immigrated. Due to the sheer number of newcomers, the post-Soviet aliyah had a tremendous impact on Israel in terms of demographics and culture. As of 2020, nearly 1 in 5 Jewish Israelis were of Russian origin. State services are often offered in Russian (in addition to Hebrew and Arabic) to accommodate the more than 1.5 million Israelis who speak the language. 

Many immigrants who arrived during this wave were accomplished academics, scientists and musicians who were eager to contribute to Israeli culture. Israel’s Russian community is also often credited with shaking up the political scene. Russian Israelis tend to be more politically conservative and have exerted influence through political parties established to represent their interests. 

Some Ethiopian Jews had relocated to Israel in small numbers during the 1970s. But in the mid-1980s, antisemitism and political unrest led the Israeli army to conduct three major rescue campaigns — Operation Moses in 1984-85, Operation Joshua in 1985 and Operation Solomon in May 1991. An estimated 22,000 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel through these covert operations.

At first, many Ethiopian immigrants faced challenges receiving the support and services needed to fully integrate into Israeli society. However, since the 2000s, Hebrew literacy rates among Ethiopian Israelis have continued to rise, leading to greater access to higher education and well-paying jobs. Ethiopian Israelis have also left a cultural mark: Traditional Ethiopian cuisine has become a mainstay in many Israeli cities, and some of the most popular musicians in Israel today are Ethiopian.

Contemporary Israel: Coming Together

As Israel’s establishment fades farther into the past, Israelis define their identity less by where their parents or grandparents immigrated from and more by being Israeli. Marriages across ethnic lines are commonplace, and nearly half of Israelis have a parent or grandparent that immigrated from a Sephardic or Mizrahi Jewish community. It’s common to be at a Shabbat dinner table and find classic Ashkenazi cuisine like kugel or brisket served alongside Sephardic and Mizrahi foods, such as hummus, tahini, pita, jeweled rice and stuffed vegetables.

As Israeli society has become more multicultural, more and more leaders in the arts, academia, politics and culture are from non-Ashkenazi backgrounds, helping to bring greater awareness to the challenges non-Ashkenazi immigrants faced in Israel’s early years. While Israeli society faces many contemporary challenges, immigrants have become more integrated and the diverse ethnic backgrounds of Israel’s Jews have become more celebrated.

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History

Folk tales suggest that ancestors of Bukharan Jews were among the Lost Tribes who arrived in this region after the Assyrian exile in 722 BCE. Most historians, however, agree that the first to arrive were among those exiled from the Land of Israel at the hands of the Babylonians in 586 BCE. 

In the12th century, renowned Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela recorded that 50,000 Jews lived in Samarkand, among them “wise and very rich men.” Although these numbers are widely believed to be exaggerated, the data indicate that the city was home to a robust and well-established community at the time. Throughout the Middle Ages, the fate of the region’s Jews oscillated. During periods of persecution and instability, Persian-speaking Jews moved between the various territories today demarcated by Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, seeking shelter among one another’s communities.

In the latter half of the 19^th century, much of Central Asia came under Tsarist Russian colonial control. Though Tsarist rule was largely oppressive for the Jews of eastern Europe, it was favorable to Central Asia’s Bukharan Jews.

Taking advantage of economic opportunities provided by the telegraph and railroad, and new trading rights extended to Jews in the region, a wealthy, well-traveled Bukharan Jewish merchant class emerged. Their travels and business took them as far east as China, and west to France and England. In addition, pilgrimage to Jerusalem became popular. In 1890 a Bukharan Jewish residential quarter was established in the city, renowned for its wide tree-lined avenues and its majestic architecture, a blend of Central Asian and Western European style.

In 1924, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the Soviets redrew Central Asia’s boundaries, creating the republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which ultimately became independent states in 1991. These two republics had been home to some 50,000 Bukharan Jews, who considered themselves indigenous to the region, having arrived before Islam was introduced to the area, and before the Uzbek dynasts conquered the territory. Yet, their deep roots were not strong enough to withstand the changes that swept through the region with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the rise of independent nation states. Mass migration –– primarily to the United States and Israel –– began on the eve of the dissolution of the USSR. By 2015 only a few hundred remained in Uzbekistan and far fewer in Tajikistan. 

Language

Prior to the late nineteenth century, Bukharan Jews’ primary spoken language was a Judeo variant of the local Persian. The group’s literary tradition, shared with the Jews of Iran and Afghanistan, included Persian texts written in Hebrew script, which narrated biblical chapters (such as the story of Purim and Hanukkah, the conquest of Joshua, and the life of Moses) in verse form. In the early twentieth century, a printing press and new cultural projects emanating from the Bukharan Jewish quarter of Jerusalem gave rise to a literary renaissance, with religious scholar and linguist Shimon Hakaham at its helm. In Uzbekistan, meanwhile, language projects sponsored by the early Soviet regime resulted in the printing of Bukharan Jewish language textbooks for school children, newspapers, poetry, as well as the rise of a theater.

By 1940, however, the promotion of an independent Bukharan Jewish language was banned. Throughout the Soviet period, Bukharan Jews in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan studied Russian in school. Today, many are trilingual, speaking Russian, their native language (often referred to today as Bukharian) and Hebrew, English or German (depending on where they currently live).

Relationship with Wider Jewish World

Living on the silk-route, Central Asia’s Bukharan Jews oscillated between periods of contact with the wider Jewish world and periods when their political situation prevented travel and trade. Contradictory reports about the late-eighteenth century traveler Yosef Maman illustrates this paradoxical situation. Maman, a Sephardic kabbalist is said to have stumbled upon the Jews of Bukhara in the late 18th century. In one version of the story, he found them to be ignorant of basic Jewish religious tenets and practices, and remained in Bukhara to teach and reconnect them with the wider Jewish world. Recent scholarship, however, challenges this version of history, portraying it as a legend intended to delegitimize Bukharan Jews’ local traditions. By contrast, Bukharan Jewish historians depict Maman’s arrival as part of a long-standing flow of Jewish traffic between east and west.

The Tsarist period is remembered as a Golden Era for Central Asia’s Bukharan Jews. The rise of a well-traveled nouveau riche mercantile class allowed for Bukharan Jews to build a residential quarter in Jerusalem, and contribute to other charitable causes in Ottoman Palestine/pre-state Israel, including hospitals, orphanages and burial societies. During this period, Central Asian rabbis were brought into far-reaching conversations with rabbis in Ottoman Palestine regarding issues including kosher meat slaughtering and laws of marriage and divorce. Prayer books, Passover haggadot, and handbooks of Jewish practice, which were published in Jerusalem, circulated back to the Jewish communities in Central Asia. 

In the 1920s, the Soviets dismantled the Bukharan Emirate, cut through old borders, carved new ones and incorporated the region into the USSR to create the Soviet Social Republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Under Soviet rule, mobility and communication was highly restricted, bringing an end to Jewish participation in international social, religious and trade networks. Still, they maintained some contact with other areas of the Jewish world through relatives who had immigrated in previous years, and through Jewish travelers who trickled into the area throughout the Soviet period. Finally, Bukharan Jews encountered Jews who fled or were evacuated out of Central Asia during World War II. Of note is their contact with Lubavitch Jewish refugees, who had a significant impact on Jewish practice, particularly in Samarkand.

Once the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, representatives from Jewish organizations in the United States and Israel traveled to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to work with the local Jewish communities. Chabad, the Jewish Agency for Israel, B’nai Akiva, the Joint Distribution Committee and Midrash Sepharadi offered aid, provided kosher food, taught Jewish classes, ran summer camps and engaged youth in Jewish cultural and social programs.

Mass Migration: Causes

Bukharan Jews left Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in very large numbers when the borders reopened in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Locals suffered instability due to economic chaos and weaknesses in the changing state welfare systems, including social security and health insurance. As an ethnic minority, most of whom were not highly proficient in the Uzbek language, Jews were also largely excluded from the project of nation building; they were not admitted to universities, and many were let go from their state-sponsored places of employment. As non-Muslims, Jews were further marked and stigmatized as outsiders. In neighboring Tajikistan, which was experiencing a long-standing civil war, the situation of Bukharan Jews was even more precarious. By 1993, approximately half of the region’s 50,000 Jews had left; most for Israel or the United States, and some for Austria, Germany and Canada. 

Conditions stabilized in the second half of the 1990s, and Jewish life was enriched through the establishment of branches of international Jewish organizations (such as Chabad, the Joint Distribution Committee and Midrash Sepharadi). Nevertheless, migration continued as individuals followed their siblings, children and in-laws who had already left post-Soviet Central Asia. By the close of the 20th century, one of the longest chapters of Jewish diaspora history had come to an end. 

Cultural Practices

Cuisine infused with local spices, colorful embroidered caftans with golden-tassel caps, and a rich musical tradition inflected with Central Asian sounds are all hallmarks of Bukharan Jews’ rich cultural life. Also noteworthy are their distinct religious practices, which show how the group adapted to the Turko-Persian Muslim and Soviet environments in which they lived. 

Far from the seat of Soviet power, most also continued to keep kosher and celebrate major Jewish holidays and life-cycle rituals. These rites, however, were mostly held in secret and conducted without prayer books or other religious guidebooks, which were banned under Soviet rule. Due to going underground, their Jewish practices took on features that further distinguished them from Jews in other parts of the world. Weddings, for example, were broken into two distinct components. The civil ceremony, conducted at the state-governed “Palace of Culture” was followed by large celebrations with music and feasting. The religious ceremony, by contrast, was held late at night, with only the closest family members present. The few guests permitted to attend were expected to raise their hands above their heads and open their fingers wide throughout the ceremony to signify that they were not hiding anything or harboring any ill-will. 

Bukharan Jewish rites of mourning held during the seven-day period after burial (shiva) are carried out much the same way as they are among Jews around the world. However, the local custom of yushvo —a special multi-course meal of symbolic foods interspersed with eulogies, songs of mourning and prayers — is added to these practices. The ceremony is held every evening during the week of shiva and for the next month weekly on the day that the person passed away (for example, every Wednesday). Further, during the entire first year of mourning, a yushvo is held each month on the date that the person had passed away (for example, the fifth of each month). Although the Soviets restricted prayer in the synagogue, they conducted little surveillance around rituals that took place in the domestic sphere. Therefore, on account of these very frequently held events, community prayer continued despite restrictions placed on institutional religion.

Bukharan Jews Today

As of 2020, only 100–200 Bukharan Jews still remain in Uzbekistan and fewer in Tajikistan. Others have resettled primarily in the United States and Israel, with others in Canada, Austria and Germany. While no solid statistics are available, community leaders and the press report that 125,000 Bukharan Jews live in Israel and 75,000 in the United States; among them many are the children and grandchildren of immigrants from Central Asia. 

In the United States, most Bukharan Jews are clustered in New York, primarily in Queens, where there are two major synagogues that also serve as community centers: Bukharian Jewish Community Center and Beth Gavriel Bukharian Jewish Center, both in Forest Hills. In addition to their active religious life, Bukharan Jewish culture has flourished in the United States with the newspaper Bukharian Times, music ensembles, restaurants, theater, the publication of cookbooks and a museum housed in the Queens Gymnasia school.

Bukharan Jewish Recipes to Try

Plov: One Pot Chicken and Rice

Dushpara: Bukharan Meat-Filled Dumplings

Bukharan Chicken and Herbed Rice

The post Who Are the Bukharan Jews? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Today, most Mizrahi Jews live either in Israel or the United States. In their new homes, Mizrahi Jews are more likely than other Jews to maintain particularly strong ties with others from their family’s nation of origin. Thus, it is not uncommon to find a specifically Persian or Bukharan synagogue. Likewise, Mizrahi Jews are not united by a single Jewish language; each subgroup spoke its own tongue.

The unique Mizrahi culture has penetrated Israeli mainstream society in recent years. Yemenite music entered the pop scene with Ofra Haza, who blended traditional instruments, rhythms, and lyrics with modern flair. Yemenite silversmiths create sacred objects used by Jews of all backgrounds. “Mizrahi” restaurants — where large platters of skewered meat and breads and bowl upon bowl of salads and condiments are shared by a group — have become fashionable gathering places in Israel.

READ: Mizrahi Jewish Influences in Israel

Despite these trends, Jewish ethnic barriers remain strong. In Israel, Ashkenazic Jews still dominate leadership roles in public institutions. For much of Israel’s history, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews were disproportionately underrepresented in the government. Yet now, they make up more than half of the population.

The post Who Are Mizrahi Jews? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Early History

The Jewish presence in Ukraine can be firmly dated to as early as the ninth century, but there’s reason to think it may go back even farther. The Khazars, a Turkic people who established a trading empire in southern Ukraine in the sixth century, are believed to have converted to Judaism in the eighth century, but the extent of this is unclear.

The Jewish presence in Kyiv can be firmly established by the 10th century. Sources in the Cairo Geniza note a Jewish presence in the city as early as 930. By the 12th century, historical documents mention a “Gate of the Jews” in the city and a well-known talmudist, Moses of Kiev. At various points, the Jewish community was prosperous, active in trade and in the arenda system, in which large rented estates were used for agricultural purposes. In a pattern not unfamiliar in Jewish history, economic success made Jews ready targets for violent antisemitism. 

Jews flourished in Ukraine in the early modern period, becoming one of the country’s most significant ethnic minorities. Among the most prominent Jews of this time were the Brodsky brothers, Lazar and Lev, who grew wealthy in the sugar industry and helped finance a Jewish hospital, synagogue and trade school in the 19th century. Much of the Jewish population was clustered in the major cities, but many also lived in innumerable shtetls, tiny villages that dotted the countryside. Antisemitic violence was commonplace. The Jewish community of Kyiv suffered from multiple expulsions — in the late 15th century and again in the 17th. In both cases, the community was able to reestablish itself. In 1648, tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were massacred and hundreds of Jewish communities destroyed by Cossack bands led by Bogdan Chmielnicki, a tragedy that helped lay the groundwork for the embrace of the false messiah Shabbetai Zevi. 

It would not be the last time the Jews of Ukraine were targeted for mass murder. In 1768, thousands of Jews were killed in Uman, a Ukrainian town that would later become synonymous with the Breslov Hasidic movement, whose founder, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, is buried there. The 1821 pogrom against the Jews of Odessa is considered the first in the modern period. It was followed by similar attacks against Jews in the city in 1859, 1871, 1881 and 1905. In the wake of World War I, an estimated 50,000-100,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in pogroms in the course of a few years.

Rise of Hasidism and Yiddish culture

It may be in part because of the widespread suffering among Ukrainian Jews that the country became fertile ground for spiritual, cultural and political innovation. Among the most significant and lasting of these developments was the Hasidic movement, whose founder, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer — better known as the Baal Shem Tov (literally “master of the good name”) — was born in a small village in Ukraine around 1700, as were many of his disciples. The Baal Shem Tov established his court in Medzhybizh, in western Ukraine, where he is buried. The town was then a major Jewish center and many prominent Hasidic rabbis were born there, including Rebbe Nachman. From Medzhybizh, Hasidism spread to other Ukrainian towns, including Mezritch, Chernobyl, Belz and Uman — and from there to the rest of Eastern Europe. 

Hasidism was a populist movement that, in contrast to the then-dominant Jewish paradigm that sought spiritual uplift through dedicated study, taught that even less-educated Jews were capable of directly encountering God through various ritual practices, notably ecstatic prayer. But Hasidism was not the only response to the situation of the Jews of Ukraine. In the 19th-century, Ukraine became a center of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), which sought both Jewish cultural renewal and better integration with the surrounding society, and later the nascent Zionist movement, which responded to antisemitic violence by encouraging the return of Jews to their ancestral land in Israel. 

Under the influence of the Haskalah, Ukrainian Jews were instrumental in the emergence of both modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. Isaac Baer Levinsohn, born in the western Ukrainian city of Kremenets, wrote Hebrew poetry and sought to disseminate Enlightenment ideals among the country’s Jews. Sholem Aleichem, born Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich in 1859 in Pereiaslav southeast of Kyiv, was a Yiddish playwright who created the character Tevye the Dairyman, later immortalized in Fiddler on the Roof. Haim Nahman Bialik, born in Ukraine in 1873, was one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew poetry. And Ahad Ha’am, a Hebrew essayist and one of the foremost Zionist thinkers, was born in central Ukraine in 1856.

One of the earliest Zionist groups was established in eastern Ukraine in 1882. Bilu, which took its name from a biblical verse urging Jews to “let us go,” was established in Kharkiv and sent some of the earliest settlers to Palestine that same year. Ukraine would also produce some of the major leaders of the Zionist enterprise. Israel’s second, third and fourth prime ministers —  Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir — were all born in Ukraine. So was Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second (and longest serving) president. And Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refusenik whose plight helped galvanize the fight for Soviet Jewry in the 1980s, was born in Stalino (now Donetsk) in 1948. 

The Holocaust

Even before the arrival of the Nazis, antisemitism was rife in Ukraine. In 1913, a Ukrainian Jew named Menachem Beilis was tried in Kyiv on charges that he had ritually murdered a teenage boy two years earlier. Beilis was ultimately acquitted and later emigrated to the United States, but the case — much like the Dreyfus Affair in France a decade earlier — convinced many Jews of the deep antisemitism at the heart of the Russian Empire and drove many to emigrate. Violent pogroms against Jews continued as the 19th century turned to the 20th. In the wake of World War I and the 1917 Russian revolution, Jews in Ukraine were subject to one of worst massacres in Jewish history. As many as 100,000 were killed, raped and tortured over a period of several years, and many more were left homeless when their towns were burned. The violence was so horrifying that when a Russian Jew was tried in Paris for killing one of the leaders of the anti-Jewish violence, a jury acquitted him.

Yet the Jewish population remained robust. Depending on how one counts, Ukraine was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe on the eve of the Nazi invasion, with some 2.7 million Jews, equalling about 5 percent of the population. 

The western part of modern-day Ukraine was under Polish control when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, initiating World War II. Most of the Jewish population of these areas fared much worse than those in the central and eastern parts of the country, where hundreds of thousands fled east as the Germans advanced into Ukraine in the summer of 1941. Within months of their arrival, they would perpetrate one of the worst massacres of the war on the outskirts of Kyiv, when over the course of just a few days 33,000 Jews were shot and buried in a mass grave at a ravine known as Babi Yar (now more commonly referred to as Babyn Yar). Similar (though smaller) mass killings also took place in Lviv and Odessa. 

Babi Yar would serve as a foretaste of what was to come for the Jews of Ukraine. Rather than deport the Jews to distant camps as was done elsewhere in Europe, in Ukraine special German military forces killed most of the Jewish population close to where they lived, often in concert with local collaborators. In total, an estimated 1.2–1.6 million Jews were killed in Ukraine during the Holocaust — or some 60 percent of the prewar Jewish population. 

Ukrainian Jews under Communism

After the war, returning Jews faced a hostile reception from their Ukrainian neighbors. And as a republic of the Soviet Union, state-sanctioned antisemitism under Communist rule made life difficult for Jews. Still, some 800,000 Jews lived in Ukraine in the 1950s, with most clustered in the country’s largest cities. But as with elsewhere in the Soviet Union, Jewish life was highly circumscribed. 

As a result, the Jewish population declined substantially in the second half of the 20th century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jews emigrated in mass numbers. Some 80 percent of the Jewish population is estimated to have left, mainly for Israel and the United States, after 1991. According to Ukrainian census data, barely 100,000 Jews remained in the country by 2001. 

Ukrainian Jewry Today

Estimates of the total Jewish population of Ukraine today vary widely. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research puts the core Jewish population at 43,000 and the enlarged Jewish population — including those of Jewish parentage who do not self-identify as Jews and the non-Jewish spouses and children of Jews — at 140,000. The IJPP puts the number of Ukrainian Jews who would qualify for emigration to Israel under the country’s law of return at 200,000. The European Jewish Congress says the Jewish population could be as high as 400,000. 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Jewish life gradually began to reconstitute itself across the region. After a half century in which the main synagogue in Kyiv was the country’s only functioning Jewish house of worship, today there are now dozens. According to the EJC, there are 75 Jewish schools in Ukraine. In 2012, the largest Jewish community center in Europe opened in the eastern city of Dnipro. Known as the Menorah Center, the 22-story, $100 million center towers over the city and includes a hotel, synagogue, luxury mikveh ritual baths, social hall and several kosher restaurants. 

In 2021, the government finally unveiled a memorial to the murdered Jews at Babi Yar after years in which the site was marked only by a handful of neglected monuments. The site is intended to eventually encompass a museum, a synagogue and additional monuments. The inauguration ceremony was presided over by Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish comedian who became Ukraine’s sixth president in 2019. “The time for memory has come,” Zelensky said at the ceremony, which was also attended by the president of Israel and the chancellor of Germany.

Want to learn more about the Jews of Ukraine, past and present? Sign up for My Jewish Learning and JTA News’ email series to learn more about the complicated Jewish history of Ukraine and how the past sheds light on the battles unfolding today.

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Those early Jews were the first of several waves of immigrants that would repeatedly change the Australian Jewish community. At the time, they represented just 0.4% of the first cohort of British convicts shipped off to the Australian colonies — about the same as the Jewish proportion of the total Australian population today.

Some 120,000 Jews live in Australia now, the vast majority of them in Sydney and Melbourne, with smaller communities in Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart. The community boasts a wide range of institutions that serve its needs, protect its interests and express support for Israel. But in those first years of Jewish settlement there was neither the ability nor the inclination to form an organized community. 

The convicts themselves came from the London underclass and were not on the whole religiously educated. They were also spread around the state of New South Wales. It was only when convicts began to be emancipated, and some Jewish free settlers started to arrive, that the embryo of a functional community could be formed.

Makeshift Jewish services took place in private premises from about 1820, but a request to use an empty government building for Jewish services was rejected by the colonial administration in 1828. That same year Philip Joseph Cohen arrived in New South Wales and claimed authority from the chief rabbi of Great Britain to perform marriages. The first rabbinic presence was a visit by a member of the London Beit Din, Rabbi Aaron Levy, to carry out a divorce. It is likely that he brought a Torah scroll, prayer books and other useful Jewish items with him.

A congregation was formed in Sydney in 1831, but it conducted services in rented premises. The first purpose-built synagogue wasn’t opened until 1844 on York Street in Sydney. Another synagogue was built in Hobart, in Tasmania, in 1845. And the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, founded in 1841, built its synagogue building in 1848. By the end of the decade, synagogues had been built in four Australian colonies. 

Still, there were few Jews in Australia. The population began to increase in the late 1840s with the goldrushes — particularly in the state of Victoria, where the Jewish population increased from 300 to 3,000 within a decade. This meant there were enough people and enough money to establish several new synagogues and to organize Jewish education in Sydney and Melbourne. In Sydney, a new synagogue was founded in 1859, which later merged with the York Street congregation to form The Great Synagogue in 1878. The minister, Alexander B. Davis, served for 41 years and molded the outlook and character of the congregation. In keeping with the British stock of most members and their religiously lukewarm outlook, the synagogue practiced a very mild form of Orthodoxy, with a mixed choir, English readings and no expectation of a high level of observance from its members. Synagogues also opened in Adelaide and Brisbane and a community was formed in Western Australia in 1887, first in Fremantle and then Perth. 

By 1881, there were just over 9,000 Jews in Australia. But several waves of eastern European migration beginning in the 1880s raised the Jewish population to over 21,000 by 1921. The new arrivals not only increased the size of the community, but also influenced its nature, particularly in Melbourne. These immigrants were much more religiously committed and less influenced by tepid Anglo-Orthodoxy. Unhappy with the Anglicized services in established synagogues, they organized their own worship when they could afford it. In time, the traditionalists founded their own congregations to rival existing synagogues. Yiddish culture also flourished in Melbourne, which after World War II was one of the few places in the world where secular Yiddish institutions continued to exist. 

The early 20th century was a time of mixed fortunes for Australian Jewry. Jews rose to the top of Australian society and played major roles in many areas of national leadership, but intermarriage rates were high. Sir John Monash, born in Melbourne to German-speaking Jewish immigrants in 1865, commanded Australian forces in Europe during World War I. In the 1930s, Sir Isaac Isaacs served as chief justice of the Australian High Court and later as governor-general. 

These were sources of great pride to the community but they did not solve its long term problems. That solution came in the 1940s and 1950s, a period which saw a near-tripling of the Jewish population, from 23,000 in 1933 to 59,000 in 1961. These watershed years saw a major influx of Jewish immigrants from three principal sources. The first was Holocaust survivors, who arrived in such large numbers that Australia came to have the highest per capita population of Holocaust survivors and their descendants of any country outside Israel. The second was Hungarian refugees who came to Australia after the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising. The third was the so-called “Ten Pound Poms,” Britons who paid just 10 pounds to travel to Australia in a postwar scheme aimed at increasing the Australian population.

There were other important Jewish immigrant groups too. After World War II, there was a wave of immigration by Jews from the Middle East and South East Asia brought by political unrest and anti-Jewish feeling in their home nations. In Sydney, a High Holiday service for Sephardi Jews was held from 1947, and the cornerstone of the Sephardic Synagogue was laid in 1962. By 1987, there were around 3,000 Sephardi Jews in Sydney. In Melbourne, the Sephardi Association of Victoria was formed in 1965 and a synagogue was opened in 1977. There are now several Sephardi congregations in both Sydney and Melbourne, as well as Sephardi services in Perth.

This influx had significant and long-term effects on the character of the Australian Jewish community. Less religious Hungarian Jews tended to go to Sydney, where they added little in the way of religious fervor. British Jews, however, brought with them a strong commitment to synagogue membership and attendance, and bolstered the existing congregations. More religious Polish Jews tended to settle in Melbourne, resulting in a large and diverse Hasidic community that has no parallel in Sydney. Some refugees brought a tradition of Central European liberal Judaism with them, which led to the growth and strengthening of Reform Judaism in Australia, where it had previously been weak or absent. Over time, the leadership of the community ceased to be the preserve of the British and came to include the central and Eastern European element. 

The arrival of Chabad — first in Shepparton, Victoria, and later in Melbourne and Sydney — had a massive effect on the religious leadership of Australian Jewry. Although Chabad remains only a small proportion of the Australian Jewish population, Chabad rabbis head both the Sydney and Melbourne Beth Din and even many Modern Orthodox congregations.

In the last half-century, the communities outside Sydney, Melbourne and Perth have dwindled although there are new communities in some regional and rural locations. In the 1980s and especially in the 1990s and afterwards, Jews came in large numbers from South Africa and the former Soviet Union. South African Jews became deeply involved in the Australian Jewish community and to some extent revived it, with their commitment to synagogue life and to ritual practices like keeping kosher. Soviet Jews tended to be semi-detached, making rare and brief appearances at synagogue services, although some Jews of Soviet origins have now reached prominent positions in the community.

As a whole, the Australian Jewish community in the early 21st century is not particularly religiously observant but has a vibrant Jewish identity. Major traditions are widespread, as Seder night at home and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at synagogue. The community gives generously to fundraising causes and has a proud record of making aliyah to Israel. It succeeds in producing strong communal leaders to defend the community’s interests. The most recent research indicates that the community has still been growing, albeit by only about one per cent between 2006 and 2016, but it remains to be seen whether this becomes a long-term trend.

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Many Jamaican Jews trace their origins to Portugal, where their ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism by King Manuel I in 1497. Although legally prohibited from emigrating, many still found ways to leave, moving to Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities in Hamburg, London, Livorno (Italy), Amsterdam — and especially Bayonne, an the area of southwest France near the Iberian peninsula. Over the next 100 years, some of these former conversos (forced converts) came from Amsterdam to the Caribbean — including Jamaica, settling in Port Royal, Spanish Town, Montego Bay, and Kingston, as well numerous smaller towns throughout the island. Although Jamaica was then a Spanish colony, it was controlled by Christopher Columbus’ family, who refused to allow the Inquisition to establish a base on the island. Practicing Judaism was technically illegal, but there was no governmental mechanism for prosecuting suspected heretics.

After the British colonized Jamaica in 1655, another wave of Jewish immigrants arrived. Under the British, it became legal to practice Judaism, which in turn led to the establishment of the island’s first synagogue in Port Royal, a bustling commercial center known as a home base for pirates. Little is known about this synagogue, which was destroyed along with much of the city in an earthquake and tsunami in 1692.

Just across the bay from Port Royal is the Hunt’s Bay Cemetery, the oldest Jewish burial ground in Jamaica. Seven graves in the cemetery bear the skull and crossbones, leading some to suggest that there were Jewish pirates looting Spanish ships. According to this theory, the Jewish pirates of Jamaica were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition and attacked Spanish shipping out of a desire for revenge. The Jewish pirate mentioned most frequently was Moses Cohen Henriques, who was able to steal shipments of gold and silver from Spanish boats off of the coast of what is today Cuba in 1628. Henriques also set up his own pirate Island off the coast of Brazil and worked with Captain Henry Morgan in Jamaica after 1654. But much of this history is undocumented and popular writers have exaggerated or invented much of the story.

The Jamaican Jewish community thrived during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Under British rule, Jews flourished by selling sugar, vanilla, tobacco, gold, rum, and other products. But by the early 20th century, the economy began a slow decline, and many Jamaican Jews emigrated to the United States, England and Australia. At the community’s peak in 1881, approximately 22,000 Jews lived among Jamaica’s 580,000 residents.

Today, there are an estimated 200-450 Jews in a total population of over 3 million, most of them concentrated in Kingston. For roughly a century since its establishment following a merger of two other communities in 1921, the Shaare Shalom Synagogue in downtown Kingston was the only functioning synagogue in the country. (Chabad opened a center in the tourist destination Montego Bay in 2014.) The synagogue property includes a Jewish heritage center and a memorial garden, whose relocated tombstones date back to the 18th century. The ark contains 13 Torah scrolls, many of them from other synagogues in Jamaica that closed or merged.

Shaare Shalom is one of only a handful of functioning synagogues in the world with sand floors, many of them in the Caribbean. Sand floor synagogues typically have a wood base covered in sand. Since a good deal of sand is lost through attrition, the supply requires replenishing every number of years.

The origin of this practice is shrouded in mystery, with the explanations offered ranging from practical to historic to midrashic. The custom may have originated in Amsterdam, where sand was used to dry mud on people’s shoes. Others have suggested that sand symbolizes the terrain of the Sinai Desert through which the Israelites wandered for 40 years after the Exodus. Some also believe that sand symbolizes God’s promise to Abraham to make the Jews as populous as the sands of the sea. But the most common explanation is that the practice originated in the early 1600s in Brazil, where conversos who had returned to Judaism were trying to retain their ancestors’ traditions while subject to the hostile eyes of ecclesiastical authorities.

Many observers have commented on the similarities between Judaism and Rastafarianism, a religion that developed in Jamaica in the 1930s and was popularized by Bob Marley and reggae music. Some branches of Rastafarianism focus on the Hebrew Bible and emphasize themes of freedom and justice. The Rastafarians also believe that the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie was the messiah, based on his being a descendant of King Solomon. This explains the use of shared symbols common to both Judaism and Rastafarianism, including the Star of David and the Lion of Judah.

In 1969, the Jewish community established an international school called Hillel Academy as a way to stop fighting among local Jewish leaders. The academy is considered among the best in the country and is Jamaica’s largest international school, with 700 students from over 40 countries.

Several Jamaican Jews rose to political prominence in the mid-20th century. Neville Ashenheim served as the first ambassador to the United States after Jamaica won its independence from Britain in 1962, serving in the post until 1967. (Ashenheim’s great-grandfather, Lewis Ashenheim, was the editor of the first Jewish newspaper in the West Indies.) Mayer Matalon was one of the most important advisors to the Jamaican government in the 1970s and owned many businesses, especially in construction. Matalon’s brother, Eli Matalon, served in several government posts, including mayor of Kingston, minister of education, and minister of national security and justice.

But the 1970s saw a particularly drastic exodus of Jamaican Jews after then Prime Minister Michael Manley — seen by some as a leader in the style of Fidel Castro — moved the country toward socialism and flirted with revolution. Under Manley’s rule, much of the Jamaican elite left the country. When the 1980 election brought Edward Seaga to power, significant numbers of those elites returned. But many others did not, including many of the leaders of the Jewish community. Though the community today is but a fraction of its former size, its impact on Jamaica endures.

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This was not a man with few religious ties. On the contrary, he was the son of prominent rabbi; however, a Moroccan Sephardic one. In my Askhenazic worldview, I knew next to nothing about Moroccan Jewish ritual, but in fairness, my fiancé knew nothing about Ashkenazic traditions. It turned out that he had never been to an Ashkenazic wedding even though he was already in his early 30s. He grew up in a huge family with many siblings and tens of cousins and had lived solely among a variety of ethnic Sephardim when growing up in Beersheva, Israel. In stark contrast, I was born in London and moved to Long Island at age 6 and had barely met any Sephardim stateside. I certainly had never been to a Sephardic life cycle event and in fact, my wedding at the Sephardic Temple on Long Island was my first Sephardic wedding.

Learn more about the Moroccan Jewish community here.

From the get go I was happy to take on new customs. It was fun to do something unusual. In fact, for both of us it was different. I took on Moroccan Sephardic ritual and my fiancé became a part of a somewhat typical American Jewish wedding celebration, which to his family was something very unique.

Perhaps the most interesting Moroccan wedding custom (also done by many other non-Ashkenazic Jews) is a Henna party, done in lieu of the bedeken. The Ashkenazim, immediately before the wedding ceremony, perform the ritual of bedeken in which the groom places the veil on the bride to recall the story of our patriarch Jacob who did not realize that he was married to Leah, and not Rachel, until it was too late. The bedeken reassures the groom that he is indeed marrying the right woman.

However, the bedeken is not something done at a Sephardic wedding. Instead, there is a separate celebration held a few evenings before the wedding in which the bride and groom (and in our case many of our guests!) have henna applied to their palms. The henna does not come off for a while and so at the wedding a few days later, the couple are easily identified.

But the henna celebration is more than that. At our party we wore Moroccan caftans from my fiancé’s family and my fiancé wore a fez. The wedding guests took turns wearing the different caftans for their photo ops and did so while listening to traditional Moroccan music and eating delicious Moroccan food. My brother-in-law’s friend’s Moroccan mother made incredible traditional marzipan desserts which we forever immortalized when we photographed them that evening. The henna was something so special and unusual for me and for my Ashkenazi family and friends that will be forever remembered. I still have some of the leftover henna because I hope to someday have henna parties for my children!.

As a child dreaming of my wedding one day I could never have imagined how it would actually turn out. Perhaps that is a special gift that the Jewish people have given to ourselves. Due to our presence all over the diaspora, we have an endless amount of traditions encompassing a myriad of ritual customs, foods and more. This diversity which continues to develop is indeed something that should be celebrated. I feel lucky to be a part of this Jewish cultural evolution.

Click here for more on Jewish wedding customs.

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Originally, the term “Baghdadi” or “Iraqi,” as used in India, referred to Jews who came from the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, for centuries a center of Jewish learning and culture. However, the name soon came to include Jews from Syria and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, Aden, and Yemen, who were all Arabic-speaking, and even Jews from Persia and Afghanistan, who were not. Baghdadi Jews often referred to themselves as Sephardim, an allusion to their liturgical tradition rather than their geographic origins.

As the British presidencies of Calcutta and Bombay developed, Surat’s importance as a port declined, and the Jewish merchants living there moved to these fast-growing commercial centers. Encouraged by the British, prominent Iraqi families prospered as merchants or as middlemen for the large cotton-, jute-, and tobacco-processing plants. Some Baghdadi Jews also made fortunes in the opium trade.

Bombay (Mumbai)

The Baghdadi Jewish community in Bombay (Mumbai) dates back to about 1730. A century later, there were perhaps 20 to 30 families of Arabic-speaking Jews among the total Bombay Jewish population of 2,246.

In 1833, the man who was to found a great commercial dynasty and a merchant house known throughout the world arrived in Bombay. David Sassoon (1792-1864) was a scion of the family that had long held the position of chief treasurer to the governor of Baghdad, but whose political fortunes were waning. The economic empire the Sassoons eventually established (with centers in Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and elsewhere), along with their wide-ranging charitable activities, earned them the title of “the Rothschilds of the East.”

In 1861, David Sassoon, an observant Jew, built the Magen David synagogue in the then-fashionable Bombay neighborhood of Byculla. The synagogue compound contained a hostel for travelers, a ritual bath, and a Talmud Torah (religious school). Word spread among Jews throughout the Ottoman Empire that employment was available in the firm of David Sassoon and Company in Bombay. To accommodate the new arrivals, Sassoon arranged food, housing, medical care, and education for their children.

David Sassoon also contributed enormously to the development of the city of Bombay, financing numerous educational, medical, and social institutions that were open to all. When he died in 1864, the Times of India wrote, “Bombay has lost one of its most energetic, wealthy, public-spirited and benevolent citizens … in personal appearance, private character and public life most remarkable.”

After David Sassoon’s death, his descendants became major forces behind the development of the textile industry in Bombay. With their help, the city grew, in the second half of the 19th century, into an important manufacturing center. The younger Sassoons carried on their father’s philanthropy in both the Jewish community and the country as a whole.

Thus, it is understandable that the economic, social, educational, and religious history of the Baghdadi Jewish community of Bombay revolved around the Sassoon family. Some have argued that the benefactions and trusts established by the Sassoons obviated any motivation toward entrepreneurship and industry on the part of other Baghdadis. Everything was provided for them: if they could not earn a living in one of the firms, they could subsist on one of the doles.

Calcutta

The capital of British India until 1911, Calcutta became the second-largest center of Baghdadi Jewish settlement. Although most of the community consisted of Iraqis, particularly those who had arrived in the early 19th century fleeing the oppressive rule of Daud Pasha (1817-1831), Aleppo also contributed a number of leading members.

By the end of the 19th century, the community numbered over 1,800, and some of its members had moved into the stock exchange and become major urban landowners.

Initially, most of the Baghdadis lived in an area of Calcutta north and west of the trading center, and three synagogues were built in close proximity. The Neveh Shalom synagogue was completed in 1831, and when it was no longer large enough to accommodate the community, Beth El was erected in 1856. Finally, in 1884, Magen David, the largest synagogue in the East, was dedicated.

Until the 1880s, all power relating to the religious, communal, and social affairs of the community was vested in the synagogue committees, which also acted as liaison between the Jewish community and the government of India. However, towards the end of the 19th century, internal rivalry led to the disintegration of the system. A number of new bodies developed, and eventually a Jewish Association was founded in 1945 to coordinate the various activities and groups.

Social and Communal Life

The merchant elite that dominated community life in both Bombay and Calcutta consisted of fewer than 40 families out of a community that, at its height, numbered less than 5,000. The rest were shopkeepers, artisans, brokers, clerks, or factory workers. Some subsisted on the charity of the community trust funds. As a rule, Baghdadi Jews confined themselves to trade, finance, and industry; relatively few entered the professions.

Like the Bene Israel and Cochin Jews, the Baghdadi Jews in India did not have ordained rabbis of their own. They remained attached to the teaching and traditions of Baghdad, seeking guidance from that city’s hakhams (sages) on questions of ritual and law. After World War I, they tended to refer their questions to the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Enqland.

The Baghdadi Jews in Calcutta and Bombay maintained a very strong sense of community and perpetuated most of the Iraqi Jewish traditions they had brought with them. Rites for protection of the newborn, special circumcision services, binding betrothal before marriage, certain marriage and funeral custom–all followed the ways of Baghdad. Baghdadi families in India today still serve an Arab-influenced cuisine.

Public Life and Political Attitudes

Although most Baghdadi Jews had little interest in Indian politics, they were active in public affairs. In Calcutta members of the community were named as honorary magistrates. Leading Baghdadi Jews were invited to the viceroy’s levees and celebrations, some of which they helped to organize. They were appointed sheriffs of Calcutta and served as municipal councilors.

In Bombay, the Jews played an even larger role. The government of Bombay offered David Sassoon many public appointments, but he accepted only the position of Justice of the Peace. His son, Albert-Abdullah, was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council. In the 20th century, two Baghdadi Jews served as Head of the Bombay Municipal Corporation–i.e., as Mayor of Bombay.

Racial separation between Indians and British, which was fostered by the colonial pattern, also affected the attitudes of the paler Baghdadis towards indigenous Indians. The Baghdadis wished to assimilate into British society and to be considered European, both socially and politically. Aside from religious observances, they quickly adopted an English lifestyle. The wealthier Baghdadis wore European clothes and became culturally westernized; poorer Baghdadis, especially women, continued to wear Arab dress.

Although they learned Hindi to be able to communicate on a day-to-day basis with Indians, most Baghdadis did not acquire a good knowledge of Bengali or Marathi, the regional languages. Instead, they made the switch directly from Arabic to English.

Baghdadis joined British clubs that excluded Indians, and their commercial establishments were affiliated with the British chambers of commerce. And yet, for all their efforts, they remained–like the Armenians—marginal members of the European community.

The Baghdadis’ social concerns were reflected in their relations with other Indian Jewish communities. Initially, Baghdadi-Bene Israel relations had been positive, but the Baghdadis in Bombay, where the Bene Israel were concentrated, gradually drew away from the native-born community.

Doubtful about the Jewish status and religious observance of the Bene Israel, they were also anxious to protect their status in European society in India. Thus, the issues of purity, caste, and color, which were so important in the Indian environment and had been intensified in the British colonial context, created tension between the Baghdadis and the Bene Israel. There was little intermarriage, and for a while Baghdadis would not count the Bene Israel in forming a minyan (prayer quorum) nor call them up to the Torah in the synagogue.

By the mid-20th century, however, relations had improved.

Dispersal of the Baghdadi Community

Indian independence was not welcomed by most Baghdadis. Having always aspired to assimilate among the Europeans in India, and having spurned identification with Indians, the Baghdadi Jews were not supportive of Indian nationalism. They doubted that they would be comfortable in the new India.

After 1947, new economic regulations enacted by the Indian Government restricted imports and controlled foreign exchange, seriously hampering the business of many wealthy Baghdadis. Political changes in the Middle East in the late 1950s and early 1960s closed the markets of Iraq and Egypt to Baghdadi Jewish trade.

With family, connections, and funds abroad, members of the upper classes were free to migrate to countries such as England, Canada, the United States, and Australia. Less affluent Baghdadis who had relatives abroad or who could find a source of livelihood in the West also departed, with a relatively small percentage going to Israel. As the community disintegrated–and, with it, Jewish marriage prospects for children–more left the country. Of what had once been a community of perhaps 5,000 Baghdadis, barely 200 remained in the mid-1990s.

Unlike the Bene Israel and Cochin Jews, the Indian Baghdadi Jews who immigrated to Israel did not tend to maintain their own communal identity. Instead, they merged with the much larger Jewish community that had come directly from Iraq. They settled all across the country: in the major cities, smaller towns and, in a few cases, on kibbutzim.

However, there are small concentrations of Indian Baghdadis in the Kurdani neighborhood near Haifa, in Ramat Eliyahu, and in Ashdod. In these locales, some have maintained their Indian ties and identity and pray in synagogues attended by other Jews from India, rather than in those at the broader Iraqi community. Because their numbers in Israel are relatively small, however, Indian Baghdadi culture is more likely to be preserved in Golders Green in London, or in parts of Canada, Australia, and the United States, than in Israel.

Reprinted with permission from The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

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Ethiopian Jews: Background

Almost all researchers, including those who maintain that the Ethiopian Jews did not exist in Ethiopia until the Middle Ages, admit that Jews have lived in Ethiopia from early times. Some say that the Beta Israel are descended from the union of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba; other theories refer to them variously as descendants of Yemenite Jews, Agaus (an Ethiopic indigenous people), Jews who went down to Egypt and wandered south, or even an outgrowth of Jews who inhabited the garrison at Elephantine.

Women’s Occupations

Although the Beta Israel reigned supreme in Ethiopia for several generations and succeeded in subjugating their Christian neighbors, by the seventeenth century they had become a powerless minority with little or no rights to land. From the seventeenth century on, the Beta Israel women worked as artists and decorators in Christian churches.

By the nineteenth century, the Beta Israel had taken up stigmatized craft occupations. The men became blacksmiths and weavers and the women became potters, a low-status profession associated with fire and danger and with the belief that the Falashas were buda, supernatural beings who disguised themselves as humans during the day and at night became hyenas that could attack humans. “Falasha pottery,” which is still famous in the Wolleka village in the Gondar region, became a major industry and Beta Israel women selling pots and statuettes attracted many tourists, particularly from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The Beta Israel in Ethiopia tended to live in scattered villages located on hilltops near streams. It was women’s job to haul water to their homes in earthenware jugs strapped to their backs. Women were in charge of the domestic sphere, baking the basic bread (enjera) on an open hearth, which they also stoked to gain warmth. They prepared the stew (wat), commonly made of lentils and chicken or meat, to go with the enjera. The meal was often accompanied by a type of home brew (talla) made of hops, other grains, and water and fermented in containers made by women. Food was stored in baskets made of rushes from local plants, dried in the sun and twisted into coils. Women spent time weaving these brightly colored baskets, which could also be used to serve food, if the basket was flat-topped. Preparation of coffee was also the province of women, who washed and roasted the raw coffee beans before grinding them manually in a mortar. They brewed the coffee in a pot over the fire and served it in small cups to guests, primarily females, who dropped in to drink coffee and exchange gossip.

Women looked after young children. A mother would strap the smallest baby on her back, while drawing water from the stream or cooking. Young boys stayed with her in the home until they joined their fathers in the field; young girls were expected to help their mothers and take care of the younger children until the age of marriage, around first menstruation.

The Purity of Women

For the Beta Israel, as for many others, the purity of women and their blood signified womanhood and the pulse of life as it revolved around sexual relations and the renewal of male-female relations.

The Bible states:

When a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the period of her impurity through menstruation…. The woman shall wait for thirty-three days because her blood requires purification; she shall touch nothing that is holy, and shall not enter the sanctuary till her days of purification are completed. If she bears a female child, she shall be unclean for fourteen days as for her menstruation and shall wait for sixty-six days because her blood requires purification.

Leviticus 12:1–6

The Beta Israel of Ethiopia observed this tenet in strict fashion, precisely following the Torah commandment, isolating the woman in a hut of childbirth (yara gojos/ ye-margam gogo) for forty days after the birth of a boy and eighty days after the birth of a girl.

In Leviticus, it is further written:

When a woman has a discharge of blood, her impurity shall last for seven days; anyone who touches her shall be unclean till evening. Everything in which she lies or sits during her impurity shall be unclean.

(Leviticus 15:19–20)

In Ethiopia, every woman belonging to the Beta Israel spent approximately a week in a special menstruating hut (ye-margam gogo/ye-dam gogo/ye-dam bet), where she was prohibited by virtue of her impure blood from coming into contact with people who were in a pure state.

She was thus isolated for the length of time of her menstrual period and could share the hut only with other menstruating women. Since her impurity was contaminating, she was not allowed to dine or spend time with pure people, least of all her husband, who could resume sexual relations with her only after she had purified herself in the river. A series of stones surrounded the menstruating hut, separating the impure women from other members of the village.

In many villages, the hut was situated almost outside the village, on the peripheries between conquered, civilized space (the village) and the unknown, the wilds, the unconquerable space (the outside). However, in the village of Wolleka near Gondar, the menstruating hut was situated on the hill in the center of the village, far away from the view of passing tourists buying “Falasha pottery” but nevertheless in center-stage as far as the villagers were concerned. It was marked off by stones surrounding the hut in circular fashion, and little children would push food on ceramic plates inside the circle, which would then be taken by the menstruating women. Although Faitlovitch and other Westerners, as well as Ethiopian pupils who had studied in the West, tried to persuade the Beta Israel women not to observe the purity laws according to the Biblical precepts and tried to encourage them to come in line with Jews elsewhere, Beta Israel women in Ethiopia kept these rules strictly until their immigration to Israel, and often thereafter.

Contact with the Western World

The Beta Israel had little contact with the Western world before the nineteenth century. Protestant missionaries from the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews succeeded in converting some Beta Israel to Christianity. In 1867, Prof. Joseph Halevy (1827-1917), a Semitic scholar from the Sorbonne in Paris, met with the Beta Israel in Ethiopia. In a detailed report in 1877 to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Halevy described the religious practices of his co-religionists, who had not been exposed to the Oral Law, and recommended steps to improve their socio-economic conditions; no action, however, was taken.

Click here to read more about Ethiopian Jewish women in Israeli society following mass immigration to Israel.

Reprinted from the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women with permission of the author and the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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Shared Jewish history, rituals, laws, and values unify an international Jewish community. However, the divergent histories of Jewish communities and their contacts with other cultural influences distinguish Jewish ethnic groups from one another, giving each a unique way of being Jewish. In addition, thanks to intermarriage, conversion and interracial adoption growing numbers of American Jews are of color and have Latino, Asian or African-American ancestry.

Worldwide, Jews from distinct geographic regions vary greatly in their diet, language, dress, and folk customs. Most pre-modern Diaspora communities are categorized into four major ethnic groups (in Hebrew, sometimes called eidot, “communities”):

• Ashkenazim, the Jews of Germany and Northern France (in Hebrew, Ashkenaz)
• Sephardim, the Jews of Iberia (in Hebrew, Sepharad) and the Spanish diaspora
• Mizrahim, or Oriental Jews
• Ethiopian Jews

Ashkenazi Jews

The Jewish ethnic identity most readily recognized by North Americans — the culture of matzah balls, black-hatted Hasidim, and Yiddish — originated in medieval Germany. Although strictly speaking, “Ashkenazim” refers to Jews of Germany, the term has come to refer more broadly to Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Jews first reached the interior of Europe by following trade routes along waterways during the eighth and ninth centuries.

Eventually, the vast majority of Ashkenazim relocated to the Polish Commonwealth (today’s Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and Belarus), where princes welcomed their skilled and educated workforce. The small preexistent Polish Jewish community’s customs were displaced by the Ashkenazic prayer order, customs, and Yiddish language.

Jewish life and learning thrived in northeastern Europe. The yeshiva culture of Poland, Russia, and Lithuania produced a constant stream of new talmudic scholarship. In 18th-century Germany, the Haskalah movement advocated for modernization, introducing the modern denominations and institutions of secular Jewish culture.

Although the first American Jews were Sephardic, today Ashkenazim are the most populous ethnic group in North America. The modern religious denominations developed in Ashkenazic countries, and therefore most North American synagogues use the Ashkenazic liturgy.

Sephardic Jews

Many historical documents recount a large population of Jews in Spain during the early years of the Common Era. Their cultural distinctiveness is characterized in Roman writings as a “corrupting” influence. Later, with the arrival of Christianity, Jewish legal authorities became worried about assimilation and maintaining Jewish identity. Despite these concerns, by the seventh century Sephardim had flourished, beginning a time known as the “Golden Age of Spain.”

During this period, Sephardic Jews reached the highest echelons of secular government and the military. Many Jews gained renown in non-Jewish circles as poets, scholars, and physicians. New forms of Hebrew poetry arose, and talmudic and halakhic (Jewish law) study took on great sophistication.

Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language, unified Jews throughout the peninsula in daily life, ritual, and song. Ladino, a blend of medieval Spanish with significant loan words from Hebrew, Arabic, and Portuguese, had both a formal, literary dialect, and numerous daily, spoken dialects which evolved during the immigrations of Sephardic Jews to new lands.

The Sephardic Golden Age ended when Christian princes consolidated their kingdoms and reestablished Christian rule throughout Spain and Portugal. In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled all Jews from Spain; soon after, a similar law exiled Jews from Portugal. Sephardic Jews immigrated to Amsterdam, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Others established new communities in the Americas or converted publicly to Christianity, sometimes secretly maintaining a Jewish life. These converts (known in Ladino as conversos and in Hebrew as anusim, forced converts) often maintained their Judaism in secret. In the 21st century, there are still people in both Europe and the Americas who are discovering and reclaiming their Jewish ancestry.

Wherever Sephardic Jews traveled, they brought with them their unique ritual customs, language, arts, and architecture. Sephardic synagogues often retain the influence of Islam in their architecture by favoring geometric, calligraphic, and floral decorative motifs. Although they may align with the Ashkenazic religious denominations (usually Orthodoxy), the denominational identity of Sephardic synagogues is, in most cases, less strong than their ethnic identity.

At home, Ladino songs convey family traditions at the Shabbat table, although Ladino is rapidly disappearing from daily use. Sephardic Jews often maintain unique holiday customs, such as a seder for Rosh Hashanah that includes a series of special foods eaten as omens for a good new year and the eating of rice and legumes (kitniyot) on Passover.

Mizrahi Jews

Although often confused with Sephardic Jews (because they share many religious customs), Mizrahi Jews have a separate heritage. Mizrahi (in Hebrew, “Eastern” or “Oriental”) Jews come from Middle Eastern ancestry. Their earliest communities date from Late Antiquity, and the oldest and largest of these communities were in modern Iraq (Babylonia), Iran (Persia), and Yemen.

Today, most Mizrahi Jews live either in Israel or the United States. In their new homes, Mizrahi Jews are more likely than other Jews to maintain particularly strong ties with others from their family’s nation of origin. Thus, it is not uncommon to find a specifically Persian or Bukharan synagogue. Likewise, Mizrahi Jews are not united by a single Jewish language; each subgroup spoke its own tongue.

The unique Mizrahi culture has penetrated Israeli mainstream society in recent years. Yemenite music entered the pop scene with Ofra Haza, who blended traditional instruments, rhythms, and lyrics with modern flair. Yemenite silversmiths create sacred objects used by Jews of all backgrounds. “Mizrahi” restaurants — where large platters of skewered meat and breads and bowl upon bowl of salads and condiments are shared by a group — have become fashionable gathering places in Israel.

Despite these trends, Jewish ethnic barriers remain strong. In Israel, Ashkenazic Jews still dominate leadership roles in public institutions. For much of Israel’s history, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews were disproportionately underrepresented in the government. Yet now, they make up more than half of the population.

Ethiopian Jews

A Jewish community in Ethiopia — the Beta Israel (House of Israel) — has existed for at least 15 centuries.

Because of low literacy levels, a tendency to rely on oral traditions and nomadic lifestyles among most Ethiopians prior to the 20th century, historic material about this community is scant and unreliable.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews emigrated to Israel, leaving behind a very small community. Learn more about Ethiopian Israelis here.

Jewish Diversity Still Matters

Many Jews today live a multi-layered Jewish existence. Some Ethiopian Jews attend Hasidic yeshivas, and some Sephardic Jews enjoy matzah ball soup at their Passover seders. Jews from all backgrounds often borrow each other’s cultural traditions. Many populous Jewish communities have a diverse range of ethnicities, and that diversity presents itself even within individual families.

Though some of these cultural divides have healed — partially due to the increase in marriages among members of different ethnic groups — ethnicity is still highly relevant in Israeli society. For example, the public school curriculum over-represents Ashkenazic cultural achievements and history. At least one study recently reported that Mizrahi Jews are still half as likely to attend universities as Ashkenazi Jews.

Massive economic disparities exist among different communities, since Mizrahi immigrants frequently were brought to Israel by emergency airlifts, arriving with minimal property or wealth. Partially as a way to combat these discrepancies, Israeli political parties are often formed along ethnic lines, such as Shas (Sephardic), Agudas Israel (Ashkenazic), and Atid Ehad (Ethiopian Jews).

Some Jews protect their ethnic identity in other ways. Religious Jews will follow the customs of their ancestors in both their homes and synagogues. Others consciously study their traditional Jewish language, whether Yiddish, Ladino, or Farsi (Persian) and join social clubs based on their ethnic heritage. In North America, where secular schools often celebrate multiculturalism, Jewish supplemental and day schools have begun to include Jewish ethnic diversity in their curricula. Indeed Jewish ethnicity becomes a way to trace the course of Jewish history.

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Regardless of where Jews lived most recently, therefore, all Jews have roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Some communities, of course, have more recent ties to this region: Mizrahim and Sephardim, two distinct communities that are often confused with one another.

The Beginnings of the Jewish People

Mizrahim are Jews who never left the Middle East and North Africa since the beginnings of the Jewish people 4,000 years ago. In 586 B.C.E., the Babylonian Empire (ancient Iraq) conquered Yehudah (Judah), the southern region of ancient Israel.

Babylonians occupied the Land of Israel and exiled the Yehudim (Judeans, or Jews), as captives into Babylon. Some 50 years later, the Persian Empire (ancient Iran) conquered the Babylonian Empire and allowed the Jews to return home to the land of Israel. But, offered freedom under Persian rule and daunted by the task of rebuilding a society that lay in ruins, most Jews remained in Babylon. Over the next millennia, some Jews remained in today’s Iraq and Iran, and some migrated to neighboring lands in the region (including today’s Syria, Yemen, and Egypt), or emigrated to lands in Central and East Asia (including India, China, and Afghanistan)

Sephardim are among the descendants of the line of Jews who chose to return and rebuild Israel after the Persian Empire conquered the Babylonian Empire. About half a millennium later, the Roman Empire conquered ancient Israel for the second time, massacring most of the nation and taking the bulk of the remainder as slaves to Rome. Once the Roman Empire crumbled, descendants of these captives migrated throughout the European continent. Many settled in Spain (Sepharad) and Portugal, where they thrived until the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion of 1492 and the Portuguese Inquisition and Expulsion shortly thereafter.

During these periods, Jews living in Christian countries faced discrimination and hardship. Some Jews who fled persecution in Europe settled throughout the Mediterranean regions of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, as well as Central and South America. Sephardim who fled to Ottoman-ruled Middle Eastern and North African countries merged with the Mizrahim, whose families had been living in the region for thousands of years.

In the early 20th century, severe violence against Jews forced communities throughout the Middle Eastern region to flee once again, arriving as refugees predominantly in Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and the Americas. In Israel, Middle Eastern and North African Jews were the majority of the Jewish population for decades, with numbers as high as 70 percent of the Jewish population, until the mass Russian immigration of the 1990s. Mizrahi Jews are now half of the Jewish population in Israel.

Mizrahi Jews Around the World

Throughout the rest of the world, Mizrahi Jews have a strong presence in metropolitan areas — Paris, London, Montreal, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Mexico City. Mizrahim and Sephardim share more than common history from the past five centuries. Mizrahi and Sephardic religious leaders traditionally have stressed chesed (compassion) over humra (severity, or strictness), following a more lenient interpretation of Jewish law.

Despite such baseline commonalities, Middle Eastern and North African Mizrahim and Sephardim do retain distinct cultural traditions. Though Mizrahi and Sephardic prayer books are close in form and content, for example, they are not identical. Mizrahi prayers are usually sung in quarter tones, whereas Sephardic prayers have more of a Southern European feel. Traditionally, moreover, Sephardic prayers are often accompanied by a Western-style choir in the synagogue.

Mizrahi Jews traditionally spoke Judeo-Arabic — a language blending Hebrew and a local Arabic dialect. While a number of Sephardic Jews in the Middle East and North Africa learned and spoke this language, they also spoke Ladino — a blend of Hebrew and Spanish. Having had no history in Spain or Portugal, Mizrahim generally did not speak Ladino.

In certain areas, where the Sephardic immigration was weak, Sephardim assimilated into the predominantly Mizrahi communities, taking on all Mizrahi traditions and retaining just a hint of Sephardic heritage — such as Spanish-sounding names. In countries such as Morocco, however, Spanish and Portuguese Jews came in droves, and the Sephardic community set up its own synagogues and schools, remaining separate from the Mizrahi community.

Diversity Within the Communities

Even within the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities, there were cultural differences from country to country. On Purim, Iraqi Jews had strolling musicians going from house to house and entertaining families (comparable to Christmas caroling), whereas Egyptian Jews closed off the Jewish quarter for a full-day festival (comparable to Mardi Gras). On Shabbat, Moroccan Jews prepared hamin (spicy meat stew), whereas Yemenite Jews prepared showeah (spicy roasted meat), among other foods.

As Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews are a minority of Jews in North America, their heritage remains foreign to many North American Jews of Central and Eastern European heritage (known as Ashkenazim). Yet just as the world begins to embrace multiculturalism, so too has the Jewish community begun to acknowledge and celebrate the wonderful cultural diversity that exists among its own people.

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