You'd be Surprised to Know these Indian Jewish Cuisines

The Jewish community in India is one of many groups who immigrated to the country and made India their home. Regardless, what marks the Jews exceptional is their ability to blend into the local culture of the region. Separated by geography and language, there's not much that might seem to connect India's diminishing Jewish communities – except praying in Hebrew, and food.

East of the Hooghly River in Kolkata establishes Barabazar, a wholesale market whose history returns to the 18th Century. Everything is traded here, from spices, clothes, and electronics to salvaged doors and second-hand furniture. Amidst this bustling grid of roads, the imposing Magen David Synagogue sits at the corner of Brabourne Road and Canning Street. Besides, it is the city's oldest existing synagogue, Neveh Shalom Synagogue.

Baghdadi Jews made Kolkata their home, who were once abundant enough to warrant five synagogues; now, there aren't enough for a minyan (minimum [10] male Jews required for liturgical purposes). Magen David and the smaller Beth El Synagogue on nearby Pollock Street were classified as protected monuments and renovated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2017. Today, they are tourist destinations and are kept open for the odd visitor.

Story of Jewish in India

The story of fading Jewish populations discovers echoes elsewhere in India. Esther David's latest book, Bene Appetit: The Cuisine of Indian Jews, is an attempt to preserve the culinary traditions of these disappearing communities. Jews are believed to have first arrived in India about 2,000 years ago. Since then, until two centuries ago, waves of Jewish immigrants persisted coming here from different parts of the world, fleeing persecution and searching for better livelihoods. Afterward, they set up in disparate corners of the country.

The Bene Israel Jewish community, the largest group, is spread over Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra and parts of Gujarat, while Malabar or Cochin Jews can be found in Kerala. Baghdadi Jews set in Kolkata; Bene Ephraim Jews near Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh; and Bnei Menashe Jews in Manipur and Mizoram. By 1940, an estimated 50,000 Jews called India home. But widespread immigration to Israel in the 1950s slowly whittled away the numbers, and it is estimated that fewer than 5,000 remain.

Predictably, they merged and adapted the local language and culinary influences into the local communities. So much so that each community is now separate. No two speak the same language, and much of their food differs widely. Hence, specific points of overlap remain: all five communities continue to pray in Hebrew, and all maintain the dietary laws – which consist of not using dairy and meat, no pork, no shellfish, no fish without scales – that are fundamental to the religion.

Arc in the food story

David admitted that she had only a passing interest in food, an award-winning author and artist from the Bene Israel Jewish community. One of her previous books, Book of Rachel, has a protagonist who becomes a cook, and each chapter starts with a Jewish recipe. Therefore, a cookbook was never on the radar for David. A trip to Alibaug (outside Mumbai, and Bene Israel homeland) to meet with a source transformed things. The fragrances and taste from dishes made by her source took her back to childhood and opened long-forgotten memories. Therefore, the first line of Bene Appetit: "Food is memory."

The angle in the food story of each of the five communities is a factor of history. In Kolkata, the change in cuisine conceivably happened soon after the Iraqi Jewish immigrants reached and discovered Indian spices. Author Sonal Ved, in her book Whose Samosa Is It Anyway? The Story of Where "Indian" Food Really Came From, articulates when they came in the 1800s, they likely knew only such ingredients as chili and garlic. When they found the rest, it "gave rise to a whole novel hybrid Jewish cuisine, which had preparations like arook (meaning "veined" in Hebrew and Arabic), rice balls flavoured with garam masala; pantras, beef-stuffed pancakes sprinkled with turmeric, ginger and garam masala; hanse mukhmura, a duck-based dish where the meat is prepared with almonds, raisins, bay leaf, tamarind paste and ginger root; and aloo-m-kalla murgi, pot-roasted chicken with potatoes."

Mattancherry is a small locality south of Kochi on the Kerala coast that's home to Jew Town, a mishmash of a few streets with stores selling antiques, spices, curiosities, and local handicrafts, interspersed with cafes and eateries. Synagogue Lane's end is the 17th-Century Paradesi (foreign) Synagogue, established with sloped tiled roofs, blue and white willow-patterned tiles, Belgian chandeliers, Jewish symbols, and four scrolls of the Torah.

Jewish cuisine & aromatic spices

Outside, the humid coastal air carries the fragrances of spices that Kerala always had in plenty. As a trading community, the Malabar Jews realized an opportunity and turned out controlling the local spice trade. Unsurprisingly, Malabari Jewish cuisine today is aromatic with spices and tempered with coconut milk (an essential part of traditional Kerala cuisine), which works excellently with Jewish dietary laws. Here, you'll find Malabar Jews eating flavorsome curries made with fish, chicken, and vegetables and sambhar (lentil and vegetable gravy), eaten with rice. There are also appam (rice hoppers), meen pollichathu (green fish curry), chicken in coconut curry, Jewish fish kofta curry; and puddings and payasam (a kind of porridge) made of coconut milk. An unusual dish is pastel, something similar to an empanada, stuffed with minced chicken.

The localized impacts are undeniable in western India, home to the Bene Israeli Jews. Poha (beaten rice) is a regular Maharashtrian staple used to prepare breakfast and snacks and undergoes a strong presence in local Jewish food. The poha is washed and mixed with grated coconut, a display of dry fruits and nuts, and diced seasonal fruit and forms an integral part of the malida (a local Jewish thanksgiving ceremony). But there are also unique dishes such as chik-cha-halwa, a signature Bene Israeli sweet made by diminishing wheat extract and coconut milk.

On India's east coast, Machilipatnam, a tiny port town in Andhra Pradesh, and a few other nearby rural cities are home to the Bene Ephraim Jews, a population of a mere 50. Andhra's fiery food discovers its way into the local Jewish cuisine, with spicy curries accompanying regional Andhra dishes that accommodate the Jewish tradition, such as tamarind rice, lemon rice, biryani, chicken with gongura (tangy roselle leaves), sambhar, chutneys and a sweet called bobbatlu (a flat, round wheat envelope with a sweet lentil filling).

Influence of regional practices

Additionally, in India's north-east, the Bnei Menashe Jews in Manipur and Mizoram depend on rice, a local staple and eaten for all meals, including breakfast – and complements cooked with fiery red or green chillies as is the local practice. These include bamboo-cooked fish, bamboo shoot sauce, mixed greens, including colocasia stir fry and mustard leaves, otenga (a dish made with elephant apple), rice puris (fried puffed bread) and even an egg chutney and rice pudding made with regional black rice.

Besides recipes, David's book also demonstrates how Jews of each region honor their festivals and traditions (Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Hanukkah, and others) and have adopted cultural facets from the regional communities, like mehendi and the dressing of saris and bangles.

For David, traveling from one community to another and encountering language and geographical differences, the similarities stood out.

"It was both surprising and heartening at the same time," she stated. "Indian Jews are united by their food heritage."

Read More News :

Enterprise Bot joins World AI Show & Awards as Platinum Sponsor

India's semiconductor consumption to cross $80 billion by 2026, says PM Modi