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Mumbai, India

Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is the capital of Maharashtra and the proverbial “gateway to India.” Mumbai entered Jewish history after the cession of the city to the Portuguese in the middle of the 16th century. Then, a tiny fishing island of no economic significance, Mumbai was leased out around 1554–55 to the celebrated Marrano scientist and physician Garcia da Orta in recognition of his services to the viceroy. In his Coloquios (Goa, 1563), Garcia repeatedly refers to “the land and island which the king our lord made me a grant of, paying a quit-rent.”

After the transference of Mumbai to English rule, the Jew Abraham Navarro expected to receive a high office in the Mumbai council of the East India Company in recognition of his services. This was, however, denied to him because he was a Jew. In 1697, Benjamin Franks jumped Captain Kidd’s “Adventure Galley” in Mumbai as a protest against Kidd’s acts of piracy; his deposition led to Kidd’s trial in London.

The foundation of a permanent Jewish settlement in Mumbai was laid in the second half of the 18th century by the Bene Israel, who gradually moved from their villages in the Konkan region to Mumbai. Their first synagogue in Mumbai was built (1796) on the initiative of S.E. Divekar. Cochin Jews strengthened the Bene Israel in their religious revival. The next largest wave of immigrants to Mumbai was Jewish merchants from Syria and Mesopotamia. Prominent was Suleiman ibn Ya?qub or Solomon Jacob, whose commercial activities from 1795 to 1833 are documented in the Mumbai records.

The Arabic-speaking Jewish colony in Mumbai was increased by the influx of other “Arabian Jews” from Surat, who, as a consequence of economic changes there, turned their eyes to India.

A turning point in the history of the Jewish settlement in Mumbai was reached with the arrival in 1833 of the Baghdad Jewish merchant, industrialist, and philanthropist David Sassoon (1792–1864), who soon became a leading figure in the Jewish community. He and his house had a profound impact on Mumbai as a whole, as well as on all sectors of the Jewish community. Many of the educational, cultural, and civic institutions, as well as hospitals and synagogues in Mumbai, owe their existence to the generosity of the Sassoon family.

Unlike the Bene Israel, the Arabic-speaking Jews in Mumbai did not assimilate the language of their neighbors, Marathi, but carried their Judeo-Arabic language and literature with them and regarded Baghdad as their spiritual center. They, therefore, established synagogues, the Magen David in 1861 in Byculla and the Kneseth Elijah in 1888 in the Fort quarter of Mumbai.

A weekly Judeo-Arabic periodical, Doresh Tov le-Ammo, mirrored communal life, appeared from 1855 to 1866. Hebrew printing began in Mumbai with the arrival of Yemenite Jews in the middle of the 19th century. They took an interest in the religious welfare of the Bene Israel, for whom – as well as for themselves – they printed various liturgies from 1841 onward, some with translations into Marathi, the vernacular of the Bene Israel. Apart from a short-lived attempt to print with movable type, all this printing was by lithography.

In 1882, the Press of the Mumbai Educational Society was established (followed in 1884 by the Anglo-Jewish and Vernacular Press, in 1887 by the Hebrew and English Press and, in 1900, by the Lebanon Printing Press), which sponsored the publication of over 100 Judeo-Arabic books to meet their liturgical and literary needs, and also printed books for the Bene Israel. Several Bene-Israel journals were also published in Mumbai (Bene Israelite, Friend of Israel, Israelite, The Lamp of Judaism, Satya Prakash).

The prosperity of Mumbai attracted a new wave of Jewish immigrants from Cochin, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bukhara, and Persia. Among Persian Jews who settled in Mumbai, the most prominent and remarkable figure was Mulla Ibrahim Nathan (d. 1868), who, with his brother Musa, both of Meshed, were rewarded by the government for their services during the first Afghan War. The political events in Europe and the advent of Nazism brought many German, Polish, Romanian, and other European Jews to Mumbai, many of whom were active as scientists, physicians, industrialists, and merchants. Visits of Zionist emissaries stimulated communal life in Mumbai.

[Walter Joseph Fischel]

Contemporary Period

After the establishment of the State of Israel and India’s Independence, the Jewish community of Mumbai started diminishing due to emigration. In the early 21st century, the Jewish population of Mumbai was estimated to be about 2,700. The city remains the last major center of organized Jewish life in India. There are eight synagogues in Mumbai – six belong to the Bene Israel community and two to Baghdadi Jews. Mumbai is also home to the Indian branches of ORT (Organization for Technological Training) and the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC).

On November 26, 2008, two Islamist terrorists took over the Mumbai Chabad House and held residents. The next day, Indian commandoes stormed the house, and one was killed. The terrorists were killed, as were the six hostages, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka Holtzberg, who was six months pregnant. Four of the six victims were Israeli citizens.

Two men linked to a local Islamist group behind efforts to kill Hindu leaders were detained in 2023 for plotting to carry out a series of bombings and surveilling the Chabad House in Mumbai.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Paul Gottlieb / Yulia Egorova (2nd ed.) BIBLIOGRAPHY: Fischel, in PAAJR, 25 (1956), 39–62; 26 (1957), 25–39; idem, in: HUCA, 29 (1958), 331–75; S. Jackson, The Sassoons (1968), index; C. Roth, The Sassoon Dynasty (1941), index; D.S. Sassoon, History of the Jews in Baghdad (1949), index; idem, Massa Bavel, ed. by M. Benayahu (1955), index; Soares, in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Bombay Branch, 26 (1921), 195–229; A. Yaari, Ha-Defus ha-Ivri be-Are?ot ha-Mizra?, 2 (1940), 52–82. CONTEMPORARY: S. Strizower, Exotic Jewish Communities (1962), 48–87; World Jewish Congress, Jewish Communities of the World (1963), 40–41; S. Federbush (ed.), World Jewry Today (1959), 339–40. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Roland, The Jewish Communities of India (1998).


Source: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.
“2008 Mumbai attacks,” Wikipedia.
“India terror suspects said to have plotted attack on Mumbai Chabad House,” Times of Israel, (July 31, 2023).