Next Year in Bombay, directed by Jonas Pariente and Mathias Manyin, Chai Chai Films.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Less than an hour in length, the gentle documentary Next Year in Bombay takes viewers on a visit to three Jewish communities in India. First is the Konkan coast, about 25 miles from Bombay (Mumbai), where, according to tradition, a group of Israelites was shipwrecked two millennia ago. They intermarried with the local population and physically became indistinguishable from other Indians, but they kept their religion and to this day practice Judaism.
They are known as the Bene Israel. If there is any doubt of their Jewishness – and in Israel, there is –we see a graveyard with Hebrew tombstones, a shochet slaughtering a chicken according to prescribed ritual, and also meet members of the David family in the city of Albag, who for generations have served as presidents of the local shul. We also see some customs with a decidedly Indian flavor – one ceremony called ‘Malida,’ which also is the name of an Indian food, involves an offering of fruit to God. Additionally, the story of Elijah’s ascent to heaven is compared to local Hindu belief about Gods who flew to heaven from the mountain tops near Albag.
The scene then shifts to Bombay itself where we follow Sharon and Sharona Gulsukar, an Orthodox couple who serve as teachers in the Jewish community. Both studied in Israel and although they were not particularly observant during their childhoods, they have found their way back to the religion of their forefathers. The couple confides that they met at a dance, and that it was lucky he was more than a head taller than she because he had been eating onions!
They had grown up in neighborhoods where Jews, Muslims, Christians and Hindus all intermingled – in fact, Sharona had attended a convent school as a girl. They both describe their spiritual relationship to Judaism; for Sharona study in Israel felt like “coming home” to her people; for Sharon, Judaism and Torah are a “highway to finding the Creator …. Jewish nirvana.”
Once again the scene shifts and we are following Sharon aboard a train that takes him 600 miles to the rural province of Andhra Pradesh where another group known as the Bene Ephraim live simple lives. Most of them work gathering the red chili that spice many Asian foods, but come Saturdays—no matter how much they may need the money—they will not work, for it is the Shabbat. In their synagogue, men and women sit in separate sections on rugs on the floor, and they are thrilled to have Gulsukar come and lecture them about the ways of the Torah. Privately, he also coaches their lay leader on how he can work his way through the siddur.
Are the Bene Ephraim Jewish? Gulsukar responds that if someone thinks he is Jewish and lives like a Jew, then he is Jewish no matter what anyone else thinks. Not by race, but by faith is Jewishness established, he says.
The discussion serves as an introduction to the documentary’s essay on the contemporary problems of the Jews of India. At the Jewish Agency offices in Bombay, a young woman of the David family learns that as far as Israelis are concerned, she is not Jewish because it is not her father’s religion, which she followed, that counts, but her mother’s lineage. The official tells her to apply for a non-Jewish visa to Israel, and then to formally convert when she gets there.
A comment is made—gently—that if the European Jews were also required to prove the Jewishness of their mothers all the way back over two millennia, every member of the Knesset would also have to go through conversion.
Notwithstanding these obstacles, aliyah from India is increasing, and soon, it is feared, the tiny Indian Jewish communities will lack the infrastructure to maintain religious life. The Gulsukar are the glue that holds together two communities, but they too are considering making aliyah so that their children, coming into school age, can have proper Jewish educations. But if they leave, who will teach those who remain behind? They obviously are quite conflicted by what they discern as their competing responsibilities.
As these issues are examined, the photography explores the blending of Indian and Jewish scenes. At one class for sari-clad women at a Bombay synagogue, the discussion turns to the meaning of the word “Tzaddik”. Sharona Gulsukar is able to make everyone understand that it is a title, just as “Mahatma” was a title for Gandhi.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
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