“We are not afraid of terror attacks; we will still come to our homeland, India,” said Jewish scholar Dr Shalva Weil.
“We are not afraid of terror attacks; we will still come to our homeland, India,” said Jewish scholar Dr Shalva Weil, in the city for a lecture on the Jewish diaspora in the country.
“It is an irony that Jews were attacked by terrorists in a country which has always treated them well,” said the senior researcher at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel.
Weil, who was addressing social science students at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences on Thursday, on the topic ‘Diaspora and Homeland: The situation of Jews in India’, added that the Jewish community was traumatised after the attacks, but would not refrain from returning to their homeland.
Weil’s first book on Indian Jews, India’s Jewish Heritage: Ritual, Art and Life-Cycle, was released in 2003 at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, and she said she was moved to know that the hotel had been one of the targets for the terrorists.
When asked about the Chabad headquarters at Nariman House, Colaba, which was also targeted in the 26/11 attacks, she said, “Chabad Houses are relatively new to the country, when compared to the long history of Jewish origins in India. In fact, it is just five years old.”
Such houses cater to Israeli backpackers and tourists, Weil said. “I don’t know if Jews the world over have united after the Mumbai terror attacks. However, as an aftermath, hotels in Cochin (where many Indian Bene Israeli Jews live) were pretty empty during my visit,” she added.
The founding chairperson of the Israel-India Cultural Association, in her lecture, Weil said that a vast majority of the 4,000 Indian Jews live in Mumbai. “The Bene Israelis (a majority of Indian Jews belong to this community) consider India their motherland, and Israel their fatherland. Israelis had arrived in a shipwreck on the Konkan coast around 2,000 years ago, and speak Marathi very well.” Weil added that there were many Marathi Speaking Associations across Israel.
“Till 20 years ago, the term ‘diaspora’ was traditionally used for Jews. Now, different communities in the world are termed diasporas.” Weil said ended by saying that the Jewish diaspora in the country was expanding, as many Jews had inter-caste marriages and settled here, while the younger ones leave the country and go to Israel for future
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