I wasn't alive when India gained its independence in 1947. But my grandfather was. I always think of a photo of him (below, just to the left of the flag, in a dark suit, bright white shirt and tie) making a speech at a company event raising the Indian flag. You can't see the flag very well in this old black-and-white photo. But it's striking, with its bands of saffron, white, and green that symbolize strength and courage; peace and truth; fertility, growth, and auspiciousness.

Independence augured a new day for the country that had been my family's home since 1820. But there was a lot of uncertainty for the future.

On August 15, India celebrates its 76th birthday.  Since independence, the country has progressed in so many ways.

• India is the largest democracy in the world. Of its 912 million eligible voters, 69 percent are registered to vote, and 67 percent voted in the 2019 elections.  
• India is the fifth largest economy in the world, after the US, China, Japan, and Germany. The founding socialist-inspired economic model gave way to economic liberalization in 1991, leading to tremendous growth and globalization.  
• India is a major player in the information technology (IT) sector, outsourcing and software development. Initiatives like Digital India ensure that government services are available electronically by increasing Internet connectivity and technological empowerment.  
• India has just sent a mission to the moon, part of its homegrown space program. The robotic lander and rover aboard Chandrayaan-3 are scheduled to land on the moon August 23 or 24. If it is successful, no other country besides China will have accomplished that feat in this century.  
• India’s infrastructure has improved. The total length of its highways has jumped from 15,000 miles in 1947 to 145,000 today.  
• India has made significant efforts towards environmental awareness by recycling, greening its cities, and reducing trash and pollution. Several states and cities have taken steps to ban or restrict single-use plastics, and stricter emissions standards have been implemented.
• India is working to reduce poverty and homelessness through programs that provide rural employment opportunities, social security measures, affordable housing, and homeless shelters, and that improve access to basic services like education, healthcare, and clean drinking water.
• Women's empowerment and gender equality are improving. There's still a long way to go, but progress is heartening in areas from education and healthcare to legal rights, employment, and political participation. Read what a difference one person can make!
  

Celebrate India with us! We are offering $100 off our tours (per person), if you register and reserve your seat by August 15.

We have just a few seats left for out upcoming November and February tours. Don't miss out on this unforgettable tour that offers unparalleled experiences of India's diversity, a remarkable mix of sacred and secular. However you look at it--on a personal, historical, cultural, or religious level--India is a monumental place to explore. It is beyond stereotypes.

Contact me for more information.
Learn more.
Register here.

The glorious teak ark painted red and gold, and the chandeliers and colorful lamps in Cochin's Kadavambagum Synagogue remind me of the flames of the hanukkiah. It feels almost miraculous to have returned to India this past November with our first group since the pandemic.

For me, the highlights of our recent trip focused on moments of reunion, warmth and spirit, including:

• Standing on the beach where India's Bene Israel community says their ancestors landed. According to the community's tradition, Hanukkah and India are intimately linked. A small group of people is said to have fled the Hellenist persecution in the land of Israel, heading to India. They were shipwrecked off the coast of Bombay. Only seven couples survived. They buried their dead and settled in the villages along the coast. When we visit the villages and the Bene Israeli synagogues in Mumbai today, it's always a profound experience to acknowledge the miracle of the community's survival and revival.
• Sharing the joy of reunion with a mother in Mumbai who burst into tears and embraced me tightly when we surprised her family with a visit. During our visits in the past nine years, she has welcomed us graciously to her tiny two-room home that houses thirteen family members. We have watched her children grow up.
• Enjoying songs and laughter with the Jewish community in Mumbai after a sumptuous Baghdadi dinner at the Knesseth Eliyahoo Synagogue. We sang together, listened to slightly off-color jokes, and tried to learn the Baghdadi skill of rhythmic thumb-thwacking.
• Making chapatis (Indian flat bread) together with Indian women for the huge, free, daily community meals that are open to everyone at the Sikh Temple in Delhi. It was almost a meditative experience to silently roll out ball after ball of dough and participate in the mitzvah of feeding the hungry.
• Feeling the thrilling energy of our songs and prayers bringing alive the sacred spaces of mostly empty synagogues throughout the country.
• Sitting on a bench outside the Taj Mahal and being asked politely by one Indian after another to pose in pictures with them. Who was exotic to whom?
• Watching the faces of our group members as India entered their hearts and souls.

here to edit.

Don't take my word for it. Here are the thoughts of some of our participants:

"This tour has been among the most affecting long-term experience of the many travel experiences I have had over the years, from Uzbekistan to the Trans-Siberia Railroad to Armenia, Israel (ten times), and so on...I found this trip to be life-altering."  -Paul P., Toronto, Canada

"Every day was a delight in every sense: What a spectacular and unique blend of Jewish India and India; what a wonderful introduction to so many beautiful aspects of Indian life; what a blessing you are to us, to the Jewish community in India and world-wide. I am so profoundly grateful for the totality of this experience  and for the kaleidoscope of memories and impressions that I will cherish."  -Janet M, Santa Monica, CA

"We had high expectations and you exceeded them. We have seen so many wonderful things, and sang and prayed in synagogues where we brought alive the spirits of past congregations. Fantastic organization, a full itinerary and great company. Thank you."  -Barbara S., London, England

Our Feb. 2023 tour is sold out! Give yourself a Hanukkah present and register now for our next available tour. Spaces are sure to go fast. Check out our itinerary: Nov. 2-15, 2023 and register.

Learn more about the culture and history of the Indian Jewish communities on this month's episode of Stories Between the Lines, a podcast hosted by Princeton-based Nandini Srinivasan. Nandini came across the story Mayim Bialik wrote on Grok Nation about her mom Beverly's tour with us in November 2018. Nandini decided to feature me in her podcast, shining a light on my "efforts to preserve Indian-Jewish traditions for the next generation." Listen here.

See you at the Taj Mahal!

I'm not afraid to admit that I'm superstitious. The hamsa (Arabic for "five") I wear around my neck, a golden hand with a tiny turquoise dot in its center, is my constant protection. It represents the hand of God; its blue stone symbolizes God's watchful eye, always alert to deflect harm. If I wear a different necklace, I pin or carry a hamsa somewhere else.

My Baghdadi-Indian heritage is replete with amulets, superstitions, and customs to elude the Evil Eye (ayin hara). I was raised with the belief that evil spirits float around the universe, ready to harm you.

Sephardim don't have a corner on the market: The ayin hara, a universal belief, works in insidious ways; sometimes a malevolent gaze or a few words of praise, perhaps rooted in envy ("What a beautiful baby!"), are enough to open the gateway to evil.

To me, the Evil Eye is harm or danger in any manifestation, and I hang onto superstitions for no good, rational reason. Choosing to suspend my logical side is a tangible acknowledgment that sometimes my destiny is beyond my own control, yet maybe my belief in a protective energy will shield me.

Rosh Hashanah ushers in a season filled with the mystery of destiny--not as an abstract concept, but one vibrant with images as concrete as my hamsa: The Book of Life; the Throne of Mercy; the Heavenly Court; the Gates of Compassion; the Birthday of the World; God's shofar-like voice.

Sephardic and Mizrahi families respond with an equally concrete ceremony in hopes of influencing our destinies just a little more. We transform fruits and vegetables into edible, pseudo good luck charms, matching each with a new year's wish based on its Hebrew name or characteristic. The short, home-based "seder yehi ratzone" ("May it be God's will") asks God to keep evil and enmity far away from us and to provide us with strength, abundance and peace.

Apples, pomegranates, dates, beans, pumpkin, beetroot leaves, and chives turn into our wishes for a year full of sweetness, good deeds, prosperity, happiness, freedom and friendship. Traditionally, the seder concludes with the head of a fish or sheep (savory sweetbreads), for the wish that we should be heads and not tails, leaders, not stragglers. (I suggest a head of lettuce.) By ingesting these foods, we participate in the process of birth and growth inherent in nature, investing Rosh Hashanah with even more power as the birthday of the world.

The fish, which crosses Ashkenazic-Sephardic lines, is both a symbol of fertility and of God's protection: its eyes never close. Storyteller Peninnah Schram, whose family is from Lithuania and Russia, remembers her mother serving her father a cooked fish head for Rosh Hashanah. "I never looked too closely at it," she told me, "but it sat on the plate like a ‘king' with the fish roe, too. My father relished it. None of the rest of us would eat it."

Interestingly, Baghdadi families discontinued the fish head because of the similarity between the words dag (fish) and d'agah (worry). The Rosh Hashanah seder's potency comes not only from the foods, but from the words of the blessings associated with them. Anyone who has been the victim of a lashing insult or the beneficiary of a plump compliment knows that words can convey the most powerful of charms or the most harmful of curses.

In my book, Apples and Pomegranates: A Family Celebration for Rosh Hashanah (Lerner/Karben) I’ve recreated, explained and enhanced the short seder.  I wanted families today to be able to access this easy, meaningful, tasty ritual in their home celebrations. In addition to the actual seder in Hebrew, English and transliteration, Kiddush and Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals), you’ll find a seder shopping list; a description of each food and its special characteristics; short folk tales, parodies, and biblical and original stories (The Story of Deborah; Jacob and the Beanstalk); activities (create a bean mosaic or a pumpkin centerpiece); questions for thought (“How can we turn a curse into a blessing?”); songs (Eretz Zavat Halav U’Dvash), recipes (Date Muffins, Apple Preserves), and new year’s customs from around the world.

The Hebrew language itself is endowed with sacred, even mystical powers. Abracadabra? It's from the Hebrew, avra k'dabra. (it has come to pass as it was spoken). When the community assembles for Kol Nidre, the rhyming, incantation-like Aramaic formula absolves us of our words, the vows we have made during the year.

To my surprise, Rabbi Manuel Gold, z”l, who studied and wrote about Judaism and Jewish magic and passed away in 2020, around the same time as my father, confirmed that Kol Nidre was, indeed, originally an incantation. Its powerful triple repetition was intended as a protective measure against demons. He told me that the language is similar to that in ancient Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls, many from the sixth and seventh centuries CE, found in the Jewish quarter of Nippur, Iraq.

Although the Torah forbade many of the beliefs in and actions against demonology--which  saturated every aspect of life--popular Judaism interpreted them through a monotheistic lens instead, Rabbi Gold told me. "It was a struggle between popular and purist religion. Judaism fought magic in its early history, but by the time of the Gemara, codified around 500 CE, many rabbis conceded. The Talmud says [Pesahim]: ‘If you're worried about demons, demons concern themselves with you. If you're not worried, be careful anyway!'"

Rabbi Gold said he did not personally believe in demons; his work grew out of a doctoral dissertation. But he offered a modern interpretation: "Demons reside in each one of us. They prevent us from being whom we want to be."

Rabbi Gold also interpreted the Kapparot (literally, atonements) that precede Yom Kippur in Orthodox communities as a magical act. Kapparot involve spinning a rooster (for a male) or a hen (for a female) three times around a person's head while reciting appropriate prayers. The bird, which is supposed to absorb an individual's sins, is then slaughtered and given to the poor.

Some High Holiday customs may be less dramatic but are no less powerful for their adherents. In some Ashkenazic communities, taking a nap on Rosh Hashanah afternoon was forbidden because you're not supposed to sleep away the time when you're inscribed in the Book of Life. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, "If one sleeps at the year's beginning, his good fortune likewise sleeps."

Good fortune has to be kept going throughout the year, not just on Rosh Hashanah. If you poke the surface of Sephardic or Ashkenazic traditions, more superstitions spill out like the hiss of air from a balloon. As we enter the year, may both our rational and irrational sides find harmony and blessing.

Tizkoo L'Shanim Rabot! May you merit many years.

Twenty-one-month old Elisa, a refugee from Afghanistan who arrived in the United States in November with her parents, is already calling her new Jewish neighbors “auntie” and “uncle.” She and her family have been welcomed to a suburban New Jersey town by members of the Jewish community. They are part of a national "Welcome Circle" program sponsoring Afghan refugees under the auspices of HIAS, the 100-year-old agency originally founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the only Jewish agency that works with the American government to implement the refugee admissions program. The circles are now expanding to help refugees from the Ukraine.

“It was very difficult to leave the country you’ve spent your entire life in, to leave your family,” said Ali, 28. “I still tear up and get mad about how much I’m missing home.” Dina and Ali are Shiite Muslims, and while Ali noted that he had met Jews at the embassy where he had worked, he said that “something like this, where people would sit together, break bread, share a meal and talk—that didn’t happen before.” Religion is not a factor in determining whether a person is good or bad, he added. “For me and my family, what matters is humanity.”

I was proud to meet this tenacious Afghan family and the loving members of the Jewish community who are supporting them for my article in Hadassah magazine. Read the full story here.

The plight of refugees is more poignant than ever today as scenes of devastation and despair from Ukraine rivet world attention. The crisis continues as Jews prepare to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot, which begins this year the evening of June 4 and models the Jewish responsibility of welcoming strangers, such as the biblical Ruth, into our midst. The United Nations reports that more than 6.5 million people have fled Ukraine and more than 7 million have become internally displaced since the Russian invasion began in late February. President Joseph Biden has announced that up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine will be welcomed in the United States.    

Synagogues and other Jewish groups across the country have historically mobilized resources to help refugees, from Vietnamese in the 1970s to Soviet Jews through the 1990s to Syrian refugees from 2014 to 2016.  Today, their efforts to welcome strangers who need support continue to unfold in inspiring ways.

For centuries, India, too, welcomed strangers fleeing persecution. Jews escaping Hellenist persecution around the time of the Maccabees were shipwrecked off the coast of Bombay: the nascent Bene Israel community. Refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal fled to Cochin, in South India. And Jews fleeing persecution in Baghdad at the beginning of the 1800s found refuge in Bombay and Calcutta.

India's history of tolerance and lack of any indigenous antisemitism serves as a remarkable legacy for its Jewish communities and serves as a paradigm for interfaith living. That's especially poignant and noteworthy given the climate of the world today.

Learn more during on our virtual tour of Jewish India tonight, June 2, at 8 pm ET, sponsored by a national synagogue consortium. Register here.

Hag sameah and tizkoo l'shanim rabot!

I can see him roll the dice in the air and hear him say, gan eden (paradise, ie double six).The best thing that has happened to me this year, and one of the highlights of my life, is the birth of my granddaughter Maya. It is a thrill beyond compare to be a grandparent. As Maya grows, I look forward to sharing many of the customs and traditions from my Baghdad-Indian heritage with her.

The upcoming holiday of Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah and the transmission of its wisdom from generation to generation.

My father, z"l, shared a LOT of Torah with his children and grandchildren. He graced the reading of Torah with meticulous understanding, scholarship, elegance and depth. And he also had a playful side, so he also shared another Shabbat and holiday custom from India: playing towlee (backgammon) to pass the time. Here he is (above) many years ago showing his granddaughter Shoshana just how it's done! I can see him roll the dice in the air and hear him say, gan eden (paradise), hoping for a double six.

My mother's domain was food, so often the centerpiece of memory. Because we had a cook in India, my mother learned her way around the kitchen only when we came to the United States. She was already 32 years old. She transmitted her recipe for love — food — to her children and grandchildren.

One wonderful organization that is promoting the passing down of Torah in all forms is the Jewish Grandparents Network, which explores new ways for grandparents to play joyful and meaningful roles in their families and to share their Jewish stories, heritage and traditions.

I'm excited to share the JGN blog I've written on Sephardic and Mizrahi holiday customs. You can read it here.

Happy Shavuot!

Light over darkness. That's what Hanukkah celebrates.

This year, it's also a time of thanksgiving and healing, as we approach some semblance of normalcy. And that is truly a miracle. We have lost so many dear ones--but now, hope illuminates the darkness.

Though I am decades past my childhood, I will never forget lighting the hanukkiah together as a family, each of us helping my father to light the wicks of the different glasses filled with oil--and then passing down that tradition as I lit the hanukkiah with my own children.

On these short December days when darkness descends so early, the radiant light of the hanukkiah is a close second to the light in my granddaughter's eyes. Unlike candles that might burn out in minutes, the oil in my hanukkiah, a classic Indian design, burns brightly for hours and reminds me of all the miracles in my life.

The words of Psalm 30 (Mizmor Shir Hanukkat Habayit L'David) that we recite after the Hanukkah blessings remain startlingly beautiful no matter how many times I have said them, the poignant, heartbreaking and hopeful words resonating to my core as if they were written today:

Adonai Elohai shivati elecha va-tirpa'eni: Adonai, my God, I cried out and you healed me...Hafachta mispedi l'machol li: You turned my mourning into dancing.

Another miracle we are celebrating is that we are planning our next group tour back to India. With excitement and gratitude, we look forward to new adventures, reconnecting with old friends and making new ones, and returning home with a ton of new photographs and unforgettable memories. We are always back by Thanksgiving to celebrate and share our experiences in India (Hodu in Hebrew) over a meal filled with thanks (also hodu) and sometimes turkey (yes, hodu, believe it or not).

We are reassured by the high vaccination rates in India, especially in the places we travel, and the precautions that are in place in airports and hotels. Your deposit will not be due until six months before our departure date.

I've taken hundreds of people on virtual tours in the past year (see partial list below), and hope I will continue to do so. But there is nothing like being in India in person.

Join us: November 3-16, 2022.
Click here for Itinerary and registration.

Hag Urim Sameach! Happy Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights,
and tizkoo l'shanim rabot, may we merit many years.

I often write about my father, my mother, my grandparents, and now, of course, my new baby grandchild. This Rosh Hashanah, as we count our blessings for the new year, I want to write with great gratitude about my two sisters.

Yes, that's us, dressed up as the little Indian girls we were one Purim soon after we emigrated to the United States. I won't keep you guessing: Flora is on the left; Aliza is in the middle, and I'm on the right. We've grown up a lot since then!

For the past several years, we've worked together as a team to care for our parents, each one of us taking on different responsibilities. Our text messaging group of three is a lifeline, as we share everything from financial logistics to finding an apartment for our mother; from the lingering sadness over our father's death to the comforting joy of spotting a Monarch butterfly that flits about the Milkweed imbued with his spirit.

I know that as we enjoy the Rosh Hashanah seder this year--the distinctive Sephardic/Mizrahi home ritual for the new year--we will think of how my father took an extra helping of dates and apple maraba (preserves) to sweeten the taste of the spinach that he didn't especially like.

We will think of him, and we will think of each other as we chant the seven mystical verses that precede the seder. We will find special meaning in the verse from Psalms 36:9 (below) that we chose to be embroidered on the back of the Torah mantle and dedicated in his memory at B'nai Shalom in West Orange, NJ this past July. Our family worked together as a team to create a meaningful Torah service, each of us participating through the beauty of our own voices.

It's especially resonant that in the Baghdadi and Sephardic tradition, the Rosh Hashanah evening service begins with the piyyut, Ahot Ketanah, Little Sister, by Abraham Hazzan Girondi, a cantor and Spanish poet who lived in the mid-13th century. The poem compares Israel to a little sister who remains faithful to God, and prays that the year of suffering will give way to a year of blessing.

"For with you is the source of light...in your light do we see light." (Psalms 36:9)

To order my book, Apples and Pomegranates: A Family Seder for Rosh Hashanah (Lerner/Kar-Ben), click here.

With my best wishes for a year of light and blessings,
Rahel

It's hard to believe my father has been gone a year.  His yahrzeit, which marks the year of mourning, was 22 Tammuz, which fell on July 1 this year.

He left a manual of Jewish mourning customs from our Baghdadi-Indian heritage with specific instructions about how to conduct the funeral and the shiva; biblical, rabbinic and kabbalistic texts to recite on the 22nd and 30th days after the funeral; and the Mourner’s Kaddish with its variations. He called the 500-page, hard-bound volume embossed with gold lettering Kir’u Aharai, Read After Me.

What he didn’t include—much less foresee—was how to participate in a year of “virtual” mourning, when the mourning was real, but the community was virtual.  After leading a nightly minyan for family all over the world the first month after his death, I switched to participating in the Zoom minyan of Temple of Israel of Great Neck, N.Y., either alone or with my mother, who had been staying with me every other weekend.

I wrote about "My Year of Zoom Kaddish." Thanks to Hadassah magazine for publishing it in this month's issue.

So much of what I've done this year has been to honor my father's memory. Every custom or melody I've shared, every Torah reading I've chanted--to honor his memory. Here he is with my mother in one of his favorite places--standing in front of the Torah. The Yad, the pointer, guided his words.

Now his hands, though physically unseen, remain with us to guide us. The touch of his hands on our bent heads and the sound of his voice as he blessed us with the priestly blessing he so cherished and bestowed liberally upon us will forever resonate in our hearts. May God bless you and keep you. May God's light shine upon you. May God grant you peace.

Yehi zichro baruch. May his memory be a blessing.

Copies of Kir'u Aharai are still available. Please contact me if you are interested.