Western Jews in India

Kenneth X. Robbins is a psychiatrist, collector, and independent scholar on South Asia. His major areas of interest are the Maharajas and other Indian princes, as well as Rajputs, African Muslim elites, Sikhs, and Jews. Rabbi Marvin Tokayer began his rabbinic career in 1962 as a U.S. Air Force chaplain stationed in southern Japan. In 1968, he returned to serve as rabbi of the one-thousand-member Jewish Community of Japan, a post he held until 1976; he remains Lifetime Honorary Rabbi of the community. He also served on the Federation of Jewish Communities of Southeast Asia and the Far East and as Founding Board Member of the Sino-Judaic Institute. Consummate storyteller Rabbi Tokayer contributed seven articles on rabbinics and the Orient for the Encyclopedia Judaica; authored twenty books in Japanese on Judaica and Japan; and coauthored (with Mary Swartz) The Fugu Plan The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II.

• Foreword: (a) Kocha Varma; Introduction: Western Jews on the Indian Subcotinent by Kenneth X. Robbins; 1. Jews in South Asia by Kenneth X. Robbins; 2. European Jews in the Military Service and Courts of Indian Rulers: (a) Jean-Baptiste Ventura (1794-1858): The Italian Jew who Became the French Commander-in Chief of the Sikh Army by Kenneth X. Robbins, (b) Farasu (1777-1861): Poet, Government Official, Soldier at the Court of Begum Samru by Kenneth X. Robbins; 3. Portuguese Service in India: (a) Jews and New Christians in Portuguese Service in India by Kenneth X. Robbins, (b) The Polish Jew who became a Portuguese Lingua: Gaspar da Gama by Kenneth X. Robbins, (c) The Lingua of the City of Diu: Isaac of Cairo by Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya; 4. Jews, New Christians, and the Portuguese on the South Malabar Coast by Kenneth X. Robbins; 5. Subversion in a Luminal Space: Perso-Arab Learning, Asian Medicinals and the European Classical Revival in the Coloquios (1563) of Garcia da Orta by Guy Attewell 6. Jews in the British Raj: Sir Edwin S. Montagu (1917-22) and Lord Reading (1921-6): (a) You have cut my bonds and set me free now let me help you set others free by Ainslie Embree, (b) Sir Edwin S. Montagu by Ainslie Embree, (c) Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading by Ainslie Embree, (d) Lord Readings First Year as Viceroy (As Seen by an Indian Jew) by M.D. Borgawkar; 7. Between Faith and Reason: Waldemar Haffkine (1860-1930) in India by Marina Sorokina; 8. The Transformation of Leopold Weiss into Muhammad Asad (1900-1992) by Kenneth X. Robbins; 9. French Jewess to Indian Goddess: The Story of Mirra Alfassa, The Mother (1878-1973) by Kenneth X. Robbins; 10. Polish Jew to Hindu Sannyasi to Nisarga Yogist: Maurice Frydman (Bharatananda) (c. 1901-1976) by John McLeod and Kenneth X. Robbins; 11. Artists and Architects: (i) Western Jewish Women Artists: (a) Western Jewish Women Artists in South Asia by Kenneth X. Robbins, (b) Martha Isaacs: A Portraitist and Miniaturist in Calcutta: c. 1778-1822 by Kenneth X. Robbins, (c) Anna Molka Ahmed (1917-94): Pakistani National Artist by Kenneth X. Robbins, (ii) Western Jewish Architects: (a) Jewish Architects in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by Kenneth X. Robbins, (b) The Natural Architecture of Joseph Allen Stein (1912-2001) by Terry Horowitz, (c) Moshe Safdie (b. 1938) and the Khalsa Heritage Complex: (1) Jewish Architect, Sikh Museum by Terry Horowtiz, (2) The Khalsa Memorial Complex at Anandpur Sahib, the Punjab by Moshe Safdie, (d) Monumental Magnificence: Louis I. Kahn in India and Bangladesh by Omar Khalidi, (e) Working with Muzharul Islam in Bangladesh by Stanley Tigerman, (f) The Architect Sidney Epstein and the House of Mewar: (1) Sidney Epstein by Kenneth X. Robbins, (2) My Personal Relationship with Sidney Epstein by Arvind Singh Mewar.

"Generally speaking, this book illustrates how India was such an accepting environment, that not infrequently some Westerners could and did leave behind their socially costly ancestral identities. Moreover, it illustrates the complexity of identities, such that local Jewish of Kannada-speaking (Bombay area) or Malabari extraction would feel affinity for some Western officials because the latter were also Jewish. On the other hand, the local dynasty in Kerala having given privileges to some Western Jews (Paradesis) in the early modern period resulted in a quasi-cast system, and the Paradesi (outlanders) synagogue in Cochin only admitted autochthonous Malabari Jews after a struggle, in the decades leading to Indias independence (which itself paralleled the struggle against the cast system among Hindus) and yet, the Paradesis had made part of the Malabari Jewish lore about the past, their own, and Malayalam was the language of the entire Jewish community in Cochin. A vast bibliography concludes the book. Here and there, there are typos.10 This doesnot detract from the unique, irreplaceable contribution this book makes." Ephraim Nissan