What do India and Thanksgiving have in common?

They share the word, "Hodu," which is both the word we use to give thanks to God as well as the Hebrew name for India!

That double meaning was clear on our extraordinary November 2019 tour. Our group spanned the spectrum from nonreligious to Orthodox, ages 50-83, yet we bonded as a family and created delightful and poignant memories together. We sang our hearts out  in the synagogues we visited.  Hodu LÁdonai Ki Tov: Let us give thanks to God, for God is good.  In Hebrew and Hindi we sang Kol Ha-Olam Kulo, Gesher Tzar Meód: The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid at all.   At the Maghen David Synagogue in Calcutta, we marveled at the 18 arches, each decorated with a biblical verse encouraging us to thank God, praise God, and sing to God.

Everywhere, we interacted with India's friendly, open and lively people, who wanted to take selfies with us as much as we wanted to photograph them. And we expressed our own gratitude for India's welcoming society in which Jews were not afraid. India accepted Jews who took  refuge from all over the world throughout the centuries: those escaping Hellenist persecution at the time of the Maccabees, fleeing the Inquisition and upheaval in Baghdad. Even Holocaust refugees found sanctuary in India.

Join us on our next tours: We already have registrations for November 2020, so make sure to reserve your space now. Don't miss out on this transformative once-in-a-lifetime experience! Click here to learn more and register now.
 
If you want to travel sooner, join our 12-day tour in January 2020 at an unbelievable cost of $3,285 pp double occupancy.  Click here to learn more and register now.

As a vegetarian, I don't usually share the third meaning for the word hodu:  it's also the Hebrew word for turkey.  But on this Thanksgiving, I can't resist: Let us give you the T0UR-KEY to Jewish India!

Happy Thanksgiving!

There’s an Israeli song by Naomi Shemer that plays constantly in my head at this time of year. Hitchadshut (Renewal) is about the unique season we are in now: Aharei Hahagim, After the Holidays.   
 
After the holidays, everything will be renewed.
Ordinary days will return, renewed.
The air, the earth, the rain and the fire -
And you, too, will be renewed.
 
In an unending journey
Between the fields of shadow and the fields of light,
There is a path you have not traveled
And which you will travel.
The hourglass, the clock of your lifetime,
Signals to you now…
 
Travel definitely opens new vistas for renewal and transformation. Ordinary days become extraordinary. Rich experiences, new friendships, and meaningful encounters can be life-changing.

For me, Aharei Hahagim signals the time to start packing my bags for my next trip to India.  It means I am about to meet a wonderful new group of travelers, eager to experience paths they have not traveled, excited to learn about India’s Jewish history and culture, and ready to connect with other travelers and the amazing people we visit in India.
 
A year from now, you, too, can experience that Aharei HaHagim feeling, packing and preparing to explore India with us. Registration for our November 2020 tour is officially open. We already have registrations, and the tour promises to fill up fast. Don’t miss out on this transformative once-in-a-lifetime experience! Click here to learn more and register now.
 
If you want to travel sooner, join our 12-day tour in January 2020 at an unbelievable cost of $3,285 pp double occupancy.  Click here to learn more and register now.
 
Enjoy Ofra Haza’s beautiful rendition of Hitchadshut here. By the way, for Israeli song afficianados, there is another song actually called Aharei HaHagim, written by Ehud Manor and Avi Toledano, and also sung by Ofra Haza with Avi Toledano: Watch here.
 
So here’s to Aharei Hahagim! Wishing you a year of renewal, transformation, song, lots of travel and new beginnings!

Art Deco is not an architectural style most people would associate with India. But, in fact, Mumbai has one of the largest collections of Art Deco buildings in the world, second only to Miami.

The Art Deco buildings on Marine Drive and those along the nearby park, the Oval Maidan, were designated last year by Unesco as a World Heritage site, and activists hope the new designation will help preserve the neighborhood. According to The New York Times, Atul Kumar, a resident of Marine Drive, founded the nonprofit Art Deco Mumbai in 2016 to raise awareness of these buildings on social media, as well as to document them in an online repository. The final list is  estimated to total 600 buildings, built between 1930 and 1950 with streamlined forms and geometric motifs.

“What is special about Mumbai’s architecture, and about Art Deco in particular, is that unlike Delhi it is not all monuments or public buildings,” Mr. Kumar told The New York Times. “It is homes and schools and cinemas, spaces we have lived in, grown up with and can relate to.”

What the Times did not report is that many Baghdadi Jews lived in the Art Deco buildings near the Maidan because the neighborhood was in walking distance of the Knesset Eliyahoo Synagogue. During our visits to Mumbai, we pass by the Regal Cinema, the New India Assurance Building and the Maidan on our Shabbat walks, and stop to admire Mumbai's architectural and Jewish heritage.

Read the full New York Times article here.

India, the land of yoga, meditation, and spirituality, has long held a deep fascination for Westerners. Famous travelers to India have included the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Beatles, Oprah Winfrey, Mick Jagger, Prince Charles, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. 

In March 1962, Jackie Kennedy and her sister, Lee Radziwell, spent two weeks in India and Pakistan, riding camels and elephants, enjoying a boat ride on the Ganges and posing in front of the Taj Mahal. They were accompanied by John Kenneth Galbraith, the United States ambassador to India, and his wife, Kitty. In India, the sisters were greeted by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi.  Crowds lavished them with flowers and gifts.

Lee Radziwell gathered 89 photographs from the trip in a blue album embossed with gold letters that read, "Visit of Mrs. John F. Kennedy to India." It includes a photo of Jackie in front of the Taj Mahal in a green dress and white gloves. After Radziwell's death this past year, the album and other memorabilia are up for auction at Christie's. Read more from The New York Times here.

When we travel to India on our tours, crowds of people don't throw flowers at us on the streets, but we are welcomed privately with garlands of flowers, necklaces to ward off the evil eye, tikka dots and more. We stay at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower in Mumbai as Jackie did, and often pose in front of the same bench at the Taj Mahal as she did!

We marvel at India's tolerance, culture and spirituality as well as our own Jewish contribution to India's achievements. There's no place like India!

So you thought seders were just for Passover? Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews hold a special seder on Rosh Hashanah, too!

We recite blessings over a variety of foods that symbolize our wishes for the new year. The ritual is called a “seder yehi ratzon” (may it be God’s will) because we ask God to guide us and provide us with bounty, strength and peace in the year ahead. The food, called simanim (signs) include apples, pomegranates, dates, pumpkin, beans, scallions, spinach, and a head of lettuce.  Our wishes for are based on word-plays on their Hebrew names. Through these simple foods, we ask for the ability to appreciate the basic goodness of our lives,

Thank you to Jewish Week writer Ronni Fein for writing about the seder. You can read her article here.

Enjoy my special recipe for Apple Maraba, a cooked, spiced apple, to serve at your Rosh Hashanah meal!

Apple Maraba

4 slightly tart apples (like Macintosh)

1/2 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar
8-12 whole cloves
1 Tbsp. rose water
2 drops natural red food coloring (optional)

Peel and core apples. Cut into eights (or quarters if apples are small). Set aside. Pour water and sugar into a wide-based cooking pot, bring to a boil and simmer until sugar dissolves. Insert cloves into some of the apple pieces. Add apples, rose water and food coloring (optional; it tints the apples a pinkish color). Bring to a boil and simmer covered (about 10 minutes).

Shake the apples in the pan from time to time. Apples should be soft but retain their shape. Cook uncovered 2-5 minutes longer until liquid evaporates. Apples should NOT completely dissolve into applesauce. Remove from heat and cool. Remove cloves if desired. Double the recipe for more servings.

"The holidays are so late this year!"

If you are like me, you have remarked with surprise, or delight, or regret, that Rosh Hashanah is not until the end of September this year. It doesn't seem to matter that I have had more time to prepare, because no matter when the holidays fall, I don't seem to be ready! 

This dilemma made me think about what time means both in Jewish tradition, and in Indian society.

"Jewish time" is legendary, meaning that events never start at the time advertised. Through this lens, the holidays are not really late at all, just running on "Jewish time!" On the other hand,  the Jewish calendar is punctilious about time: we light candles, make havdalah, break our fasts, at times that are precise down to the minute. How do we make the most of our time? Arguably the most famous advice comes from Hillel: "If now now, when?"

The Indian attitude towards time is cyclical: the Hindi word for yesterday, kal, is the same as the word for tomorrow. Salman Rushdie jokes about this sameness in Midnight’s Children, “No people whose word for yesterday is the same as their word for tomorrow can be said to have a firm grip on time.” The Indian novelist R. K. Narayan wrote, “In a country like ours, the preoccupation is with eternity, and little measures of time are hardly ever noticed.”

I was intrigued to find out that Mahatma Gandhi's attitude towards time was the opposite:   His pocket watch was among the handful of material possessions he owned, and he attached it to his dhoti with a safety pin and a loop of string. He would apologize if he were even a minute late. “You may not waste a grain of rice or a scrap of paper, and similarly a minute of your time,” he wrote.

One of my favorite images of time, one that is both Jewish and Indian, is of the clocktower of Calcutta's Maghen David Synagogue.  My daughter Shoshana and I loved being so close to the clock that we could almost touch time!

Welcome 5780.
Tizkoo l'shanim rabot! May you merit many years!

Call her the woman in the window. Seeing Sarah Cohen sitting by the window of her Cochin home was always one of the highlights of all our tours.

Sarah Aunty was 96 when she passed away on August 30, 2019. She was the oldest member of the Jewish community in Mattancherry.

The first time I visited Cochin, in 1997, I met Sarah and her husband Jacob, a lawyer. accountant and former journalist who often conducted services at the Paradesi Synagogue. I was struck by the window, which displayed blue wrought-iron Stars of David. To me it was a sign that the Jews of India were not afraid to express their identities openly.

Most of the members of the prosperous and respected Cochin community made aliyah in the 1950s, but Jacob and Sarah were among the few Jews who chose to remain. Jacob's words will forever ring in my memory: “My heart burns. This was a little Jerusalem," he said. "Israel is my spiritual land, the land of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, but India is my motherland;  the only land that offered tolerance, scholarship and prosperity.” Jacob passed away in 1998.

Sarah is legendary for never having missed voting in an election! An example for us all! She has left a legacy worldwide, as many visitors bought her hand-embroidered kippot and hallah covers that she sold in a small shop. They are being used in homes around the world.

My daughter's wedding! Beautiful and unforgettable, filled with love and radiance.
Mazal tov, Shoshana and Ian! (No, it was not in India, but hey, Connecticut is lovely in the summer.)
Below, one particularly poignant and joyous moment before the wedding.

Since weddings have been uppermost in my mind, I decided to write a little more about wedding customs in the Baghdadi Jewish community of India.

Things have changed since my great-grandmother was married to my great-grandfather in 1887. She was 12. He was 19. Obviously it was an arranged marriage—with a professional matchmaker as the intermediary. It was common for girls as young as 10, and usually between 12 and 13, to become engaged. Boys were between 18 and 20. The matchmakers were usually women: their standard fee was a complete outfit, from head to toe. Only once a match was negotiated did the boy and girl meet for the first time. Shades of Fiddler on the Roof!
 
The engagement itself took place at the girl's home. The master of ceremonies was a dakaka, a woman who was an expert drummer and tambourine player. She didn't just play:  she showed her skill while balancing a glass full of liquid or a candy tray on her head!
 
During every holiday during the engagement period, the boy's family sent trays of sweets to the girls family. Both families contributed to the couple's new home. The groom's mother gave the bride-to-be a substantial piece of jewelry. The bride's family supplied the trousseau, jewelry, furniture and gold-embroidered house shoes, and a tallit bag and kippah for the groom. The groom's family paid for the mattress, wedding gown and suit,
and wedding expenses.

A night or two before wedding the family held a henna celebration: henna was placed on tips of the bride's fingers and the small finger of the groom. The bride changed gowns after henna ceremony as many times as her trousseau would allow.  In later years, even when an official matchmaker was not involved, parents or relatives usually initiated the match. Sometimes, however, it was purely a love match.

As is universal in Jewish communities worldwide, we have a huppah (wedding canopy); ketubah (marriage contract); sheba berakhot (seven wedding blessings), and breaking of the glass.  At the wedding dinner and seven nights following, a large candle was lit, and there was lots of singing and ululating! The candle was preserved in case the couple had a son. Then it would be used again at the night preceding the brit milah, the circumcision.
On the first Shabbat after the marriage the groom was given special seat in front of synagogue. A special pizmon (song) was chanted in his honor. Women gathered in the bride's home to honor her.
 
My father and mother went on their first “date” with my mother’s older sister as a chaperone. My mother sat in the back seat, her sister sat in the front, and my father looked at my mother through the rear view mirror! They got married not long after, and here they are with their wedding cake! Sept 11, 1955.

When we travel to Calcutta on our tours, we stay at the Great Eastern Lalit Hotel, the site of my parents' wedding reception. I'm pretty sure I have found the very spot where this photo was taken!

I love old books, especially the ones from my father's library. They were printed all over the world, many in Baghdad, Livorno, Italy; Calcutta, or Bombay. Their leather covers in black, browns or maroons are often embossed with gold designs or stamped with the owner's name.

Recently, I was asking my father about our customs for Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Torah.  There is a universal custom to hold a tikkun on Erev Shavuot (the first night). We called it a hatimah (sealing, as on Hoshanah Rabbah that precedes Simhat Torah).

Our hatimah was conducted after dinner (not a dairy meal) at home with friends and family. It was literally a night of Torah reading that featured a mind-boggling survey of the Torah...kind of an ancient religious version of speed-dating: The beginning and end of each of the 54 parashiot of the Torah and the beginning and end of the remaining 19 books of the Tanakh (Bible) were read aloud!

I asked him, how did you know exactly which verses to read? And he showed me this  amazing volume called Keri'ay Mo'ed, (readings for holidays, which delineates exactly which portions were to be read. For the Torah, usually it's the first few verses of the parashah, and the maftir (ending).

They didn't study all night on an empty stomach...there was some yummy food involved! A fluffy layered Baghdadi bread called Kahi, similar to Indian paratha, was eaten with sweet halwa (not halva) made from fine semolina.

After the Torah reading, sections of the Zohar, the classic mystical text, were read, even though no one understood them, followed by chanting the entire book of Psalms! Finally, when all this concluded, they would go to the synagogue for services at 4 am, when the sun rose.

I get goosebumps when I am reminded of the deep commitment to Torah that is bound up in the pages of this book. I wonder how to revive even a measure of that dedication in our world today?

How many of us remember when the State of Israel was NOT a reality?

Seventy years ago, in May 1949, my Uncle Meyer, who had made aliyah to Israel in 1945, sent a letter home to his father (my grandfather) in Calcutta, enclosed in this special envelope. It features the emblem of the state, the badge of the army, and image of a coin issued by Rome on the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

He included a newspaper account of the incredible celebration of the first anniversary of the state.

“In the cities, villages and settlements of Israel, the people will celebrate the first anniversary of the Day of Independence tonight and tomorrow. As a symbol of redemption, the Shofar will be blown in all synagogues in Israel.  Worshipers will recite the HALLEL (Psalms of Praise) and LEKHA DODI, a religious poem chanted on Friday night that calls for national and spiritual regeneration.  Such passages from the poem as Awake, arise from the dust, and Enough have you sat in the vale of weeping are included. Congregations will recite the sheheheyanu that they were fortunate to see this day, and that they will see the coming year in Jerusalem rebuilt. Following services, evening meals will be conducted as they are on holidays, and candles will be lit. 

A memorial service for those who died during the war will be held. In some synagogues, HAKAFOT (processions with the scrolls of the Torah) will take place as in ancient times when Jewish soldiers carried the Holy Ark with them to and from battle. Portions of the Torah will be read, and replicas of the Menorah on Titus’s Ark will be lit.”

Many, many years after this letter was sent, on one of my parents’ visits to Calcutta, my father found a treasure trove of letters from Uncle Meyer and his sister, my Aunt Ruby, that my grandfather had saved. The letters document life in Palestine–as Israel was known before statehood--and then Israel–in remarkable detail. With incredible foresight and no copying machine handy, my grandfather had copied by hand some of the letters he had written in reply.

Uncle Meyer's and Aunt Ruby's first-hand testimony and photos are part of a presentation I offer to JCCs, synagogues, schools and other organizations. It's called Facing West: One Family's Journey from India to Israel, 1945-1955.