Sharmila Ganesan |
Called Bene Ephraim, the 250-odd-member-strong group claims to have descended from the Tribe of Ephraim, one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel that, after being exiled by the Assyrians, are said to have travelled through Persia, western Asia and China before entering India in 722 BCE.This Telugu-speaking tribe has no records of its Jewish roots and the results of their recent DNA test by internatio nal researchers came up “neutral“, proving nothing. So far, their religious identity has steered itself solely through “oral tradition“.
“Our elders used to talk about our Jewishness at home,“ says Sadok. “My father and grandfather used to tell us about the Torah and the difference between Christianity and Judaism,“ he says, adding that his ancestors may have lost their Jewish identity after “being clubbed with the Madiga Dalits“, a scheduled caste who subsisted on cobblery. “Like the Jews, the Madigas also bury their dead and eat beef,“ says Sadok, adding that `Madiga’ is similar to the Hebrew word `Magiddim’, which stands for `preacher’.
In fact, Sadok’s elder brother Samuel Sunder Raju, a theologician now based in Israel, has listed 60 such similarities between Telugu and Hebrew. Curiously , some reports suggest that it was after Samuel returned from a trip to Jerusalem in the 1980s as Shmuel Yacobi that he persuaded several Dalit families about their Jewish ancestry . Shmuel even built a synagogue in Machilipatnam in 2005 and in his communication with groups in Israel, maintained that his ancestors “had been converted to Christianity by Christian missionaries“.
Since then, not only have various rabbis have descended on Kotha Reddy Palem to donate `kippahs’ (skull caps), `tallits’ (shawls) and a replica Torah scroll, but also Christian missionaries from the US whose pleas to go back to Christianity Sadok has po litely dismissed.
Anthropologists Yulia Egorova and Shahid Perwez from the UK, who studied the community for two years, found that every male member reported he had undergone circumcision either during childhood or at a later age.Most members also claim to know Jewish dietary laws.“We only eat kosher food at home and avoid eating nonvegetarian outside,“ says 40year-old system administrator, K Ratnagiri aka Korahi Yehoshuva.
All their weddings happen under the Chuppah, a traditional canopy . Since the community is small, boys tend to marry girls from Christian Madiga families, who then start attending the synagogue. In the local Christian Madiga cemetery , the tombs of the deceased Bene Ephraim are marked with Jewish symbols. Every week, women light candles to prepare for Sabbath which signals a cessation from work from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday .
Slowly , the younger generation who introduce themselves with names like Leah, Deula, Abraham, Yeshua is spawning a few English-speaking teachers, engineers and MBAs. They hope that an official recognition as a lost tribe from the Israel government would help end their poverty .Organisations like Shevai Israel have funded trips for community members like Sadok, the latent dream is to immigrate. “As per the prophecy to scattered Jews, we want to go back to our homeland,“ says Yehoshuva.
December 26, 2016 at 11:53 am
Interesting story about the scattered Jews in Andhra Pradesh and their ancient practices. Their desires must be respected and the state government should look after their well being.