Mordechai Ben-Porat
For over than two years we at the Center have been talking about how we could obtain historic and ethnographic information (photographs, documents and artefacts) concerning the Jews from Iraq who emigrated to the Far East by way of India, beginning at the end of the 18th century.
Last year, in March 1998, I visited Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia and this year I decided to rearrange my very busy schedule and to travel to India in order to visit three places, Bombay (now called Mombai), Poona and Calcutta, with the financial assistance of Mr. Avraham Sofaer and his wife Marian.
The trip began on Thursday, February 4, 1999 on an El Al flight from Ben Gurion Airport to Mombai. We had to be at the airport at 7:00 a.m. The difference in time between the two cities is three and one half hours.
We were received at the airport in Mombai by the driver of the Israel Consul, Mr. Walid Mansur, who took us to our hotel. After a short rest we met the president of the Baghdad Jewish Community Mr. Solomon Sopher, who had remained in Bombay and who also serves as the Trustee of the David Sassoon Fund. He is a pleasant, kindly man who has a great deal of energy and who devotes much of his time to the service of the community, he is also the Cantor for the Magen David Synagogue in Mombai. The Consul, Mr. Walid Mansur, is a Druse who has served many years in the Israeli Defense Forces and was retired as a Brigadier General. He is well loved by the Jewish Community and has a great understanding of them. On the Sabbath, February 6, I visited the Eliahu Synagogue with Mr. Mansur. There were about three minyans and a similar number of women. Among the men were representatives of the Joint who had come for the dedication of a new building for the Jewish Community. In Mombai there are about fifty people of Baghdadi origin who were born in Mombai. In all of India there are some 5,000 "Bnei Yisrael". In this Synagogue: in the 1950s there were about 700 worshipers. In those days the Bnei Yisrael were not a part of the Baghdadi community but today the Baghdadi Jews are very much helped by the Jews of "Bnei Yisrael" in many ways, beginning with providing the necessary worshipers for a minyan to the provision of different services. Mr. Sopher welcomed us and invited me to come up to the Torah and afterwards I spoke to the assembly about my mission in India.
Sunday, February 7,1999
We visited the library named for David Sassoon (incidentally, the Sassoon family has about 17 Trust Funds). At the entrance to the library is a statue of David Sassoon and many things written about him. All of these I documented in photographs and on video tape. The library is still functioning today and after our visit there we visited the Magen David Synagogue where we found a very large Ark for Tora Scrolls.
On our visit to the School we witnessed a "military ceremony" wherein the "soldiers" were pupils, boys and girls, from the upper classes of the school. They were dressed in white shirts and trousers decorated with symbols, ribbons and red lace. We also met the teachers and conversed with them about Israel. There are 750 pupils in the school, many of them Muslims. David Sassoon donated to institutions that accepted all religions. When we arrived there were bright, eye-catching signs saying: "a Hearty Welcome to Mordechai Ben-Porat". During our visit to the city we had the use of Solomon Sopher’s car with its driver. After our visit to the school and the Magen David Synagogue which are near to one another we went to the home of Mr. Walid Mansur. He and his wife Gwahir welcomed us with great warmth and invited us for lunch.
That same evening we visited Miss Sophy Kelly who used to be the wealthiest person among the Jews of Bombay but is today in painfully straightened circumstances.
Monday, February 8, 1999
We flew to Poona, accompanied by Mr. Sopher. Flight problems are an endemic part of life in India. The reasons are many and varied: a strike on the part of the baggage handlers, badly maintained air conditioners and so forth and as a result of this it is almost impossible to arrange meetings in advance if you intend to fly somewhere. The flight to Poona took about half an hour but that did not include almost five hours of travel to the airport and the waiting. We went directly from the airport to the Ohel David Synagogue, an impressive structure, within and without. In Poona there are three families of "Baghdadis": Ezra Sion Daniel who maintains the synagogue and is 84 years old and his wife Rima Joliet. They have sons and daughters in Israel and in the United States, Sasson Chai, the son of Saul Daniel, brother to Ezra Sion Daniel and a widow named Mida Avraham Cohen who was very active in the community. Mida was the wife of Avraham Cohen and she has a 47 year old, unmarried daughter, Haton Karin Avraham. According to Baghdadi tradition she is known as "virgin". The "Shammash" of the Synagogue is Dov Solomon of the Bnei Yisrael. He has a wife, two daughters and a son. The person who photographed the meeting is Morris Avio a professional photographer and also of the Bnei Yisrael. He too has family in Israel. That comprises the Jewish Community of Poona.
It is heartbreaking to see how badly the Synagogue was burned, together with the Torah Scrolls by, Iranian ruffians who broke in through a window one night and set fire to the building. This was during the Gulf War when missiles were being fired on Israel. In the courtyard of the Synagogue, David Sassoon is buried in a little tomb. Ezra Daniel read the psalms and said the prayers for the dead.
From there we went to a horse farm owned by a Persian who gave us the use of his chauffeur-driver Caddilac. We returned to the airport for our flight to Bombay. Here the same delays in flight schedules ocurred.
Tuesday, February 9, 1999
We then flew to Calcutta. The flight that should have left at 8:00 a.m. was delayed until 10:45 a.m. and involved a miserable wait of two hours in the plane. All of this because of poor visibility. The delay in the airplane was torture for us because both the seats and the aisles were crowded. Instead of arriving in Calcutta at 10:30 a.m. we finally touched down at 1:30 p.m.
From the airport we traveled to the hotel that had been booked for us by Mr. David Nahoum, President of the Jewish Community. It was very luxurious, not at all to my taste. The streets of Calcutta are depressing. Traffic with its myriad of taxis and private cars is disorderly and wild, without any sense of order and dangerous to life and limb. Despite this, one must admit there are, surprisingly, very few accidents and the drivers are truly expert.
Wednesday, February 10, 1999
The President of the Community, Mr. David Nahoum, arrived at 7:45 a.m.; he is a bachelor, dedicated and dependable. He is very worried about the future of the Community should there be a departure of the few worshipers who still remain. Mr. Nahoum took care to reach me early before the streets were filled with demonstrators against the government, who were protesting the rise in prices. We went directly to the Magen David Synagogue, which is located in a narrow alley that adjoins a street where there is also a market. The Synagogue, built one hundred and fifteen years ago, is old and beautiful. We were accompanied by a local camera and video crew and together we planned the filming of the institutions of the Community for the next day. From there we proceeded to the Beit El Synagogue which is nearby and was built during the same period. This synagogue has a ritual bath, an oven for baking matzot and a winery for preparing raisin wine. Outside the synagogue is an area for erecting a tabernacle (succah). Inside there are a large number of parochot and some twenty Torah Scrolls. Mr. Nahum told me in great distress, that in order to save what is left of the Community's property there is a plan to turn it all over to the care of the government: it will then be designated as a protected site, which is true of all buildings except the religious ones, are only included by special request. He says that such a request has been made concerning the Magen David Synagogue and once the formalities are complete the Beit El Synagogue will also be included. In the Beit El Synagogue there is a silver key used in the dedication ceremony of the Synagogue. The key and other Jewish ritual implements are of great value and are kept in a heavy iron safe at the synagogue. Among the furnishings of the synagogue are wooden benches upholstered in straw. Most of them are in reasonably good condition.
From there we went to a school originally founded as a Jewish boys' school but where, today, some one thousand non-Jewish boys are studying. There is a wooden plaque on the front of the building that dates from the time of the founders of the school. It states that the school was founded by the Community Trust in cooperation with the government. On the school flag there is a reminder of the connection of the school with the Jewish Community. All of this was photographed.
We went to another school where about one thousand girls are studying. We saw about 20 marble plaques with the names of donors inscribed on them. On each one was the name and particulars of the donor and of his donation and in this way served to perpetuate the names of these donors and record the progress of the Community. We spoke with the principal of the school and arranged to film it. There are still about 60 Jews in Calcutta and all are over 65 years of age. Each week on Erev Shabat prayer services are held, alternating between the synagogues.
Thursday, February 11, 1999
Mr. Nahoum, and his driver, came to the hotel at 7:30 a.m. and we went to the school to see a presentation prepared for us by the pupils: dances, Hava Nagila etc. This presentation was filmed on video tape by two brothers, expert cameramen, whom Mr. Nahum hired at his own expense. They also filmed all the plaques and photographs in the school. The photographing and filming went on until 2:00 p.m.and in the meantime we went over to the Magen David Synagogue where we were joined by a film crew and we reenacted the dedication of the synagogue with its original silver key used in the ceremony more than one hundred years ago. I then spent half an hour interviewing Mr. Nahum about himself and the Community. The film crew went on recording every plaque and every corner. By now it was almost 16:00 and Mr. Nahoum invited us for lunch. Since we had to be ready to fly to Bombay the next morning at 4:30 a.m. we arranged that the film crew would finish filming the Synagogue, school and cemetery in our absence and that Mr. Nahoum would send us the material through Mr. Walid Mansur at the Israeli Consulate. Mr. Nahoum handed me 30 copies of the Jewish newspaper "Shema" published in the 1940s.
Friday, February 12, 1999
We woke up at 3:30 a.m. in order to prepare for our flight to Bombay at 6:25. It took about three hours and when we arrived at our hotel I phoned Mr. Sopher who had just returned from Poona where he went to deal with the sale of some of his horses. We met in the afternoon at the Eliahu Synagogue. I interviewed him concerning the Community. In the evening we went to the home of Mr. Sopher for Shabat kiddush and for a dinner of the foods so well loved by those from Iraq, about 15 varieties of them.
Mr. Sopher had invited about 12 guests, members of the Community and of Bnei Israel for Shabat kiddush and they also helped prepare the meal. They prepared the food under the close supervision of teachers and clerical staff from the school. Mr. Solomon performed the kiddush in the traditional Baghdadi manner.
The girls, all Christians, formed a chorus and repeated the songs. It was a pleasant evening and I spoke to them about sending us material for the museum. Some of them even promised to visit us in Israel. Sabbath, February 13, 1999
I spent the morning resting at the hotel and in the evening, a few hours before the trip to the airport, I interviewed Mr. Solomon on video because I felt that my first interview with him had too much background noise caused by the traffic. At 1:30 a.m. we went to the airport and the plane took off at 5:05 a.m. We landed back in Israel at 9:30.