16
Friday, December 27, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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Bene Israel Jews
Maintaining Tradition
New York (JTA) — American
representatives of the Bene Is-
rael, the 2,000-year-old Jewish
community of India, now believe
that their ancient community in
Israel has dwindled to 5,000 per-
sons. The community has 40,000
descendants worldwide, with
30,000-35,000 now living in Is-
rael.
According to Elijah Jhirad,
president of Cong. B'nai Bina in
New York.
"We have called ourselves Bene
Israel because when we founded
our home in India 2,000 years ago,
the term Jew hadn't come into
existence, so we retained the bi-
blical Bene Israel — Children of
Israel." This, he noted, had a
marvelous effect on the Moslems
who came to India because they
seemed to honer the term Bene
Israel and not the term Jew."
Bene Israel legend has it that
they are descendants of Asher and
Zebulun, the two seafaring tribes,
who were shipwrecked in the In-
dian Ocean fleeing the tyranny of
Antiochus Epiphanes in 175-163
BCE.
"There's one factor people try to
suppress," observed Jhirad, and
that is, although we had the
Cochin Jews and the Bagdhadi
Jews who came to India, it was not
they so much who were responsi-
ble for giving us the knowledge of
Hebrew. Surprisingly enough, it
was the Christian missionaries."
Continuing, he said:
"The American and Scottish
missions came to Bombay and
said 'Oh, look! These people are
ripe for conversion and what we
ought to do is set up schools to
teach Hebrew'." But there were
few conversions and Jhirad
praised the Christians because "to
their credit they didn't hold it
against us and they continued
this kind of education and, not
only that, they were responsible
for us enjoying Hebrew and
Judaic studies."
It was also the Christians who
translated the Bible to Marathi,
the group's language, and that
was the greatest boost to us be-
cause then the Bible came to
everybody — every man, woman,
and child," Jhirad said.
The learned Cochin Jews, lo-
cated on the southern tip of India,
traveled north, meeting the Bene
Israel Jews and helped them link
their strands of Jewish tradition
and understanding together. In
1796, they helped establish Bene
Israel's first synagogue, Gate of
Mercy, in Bombay.
Jhirad in 1967 left India for Is-
rael where he served as adviser to
the government on maritime
transport and trade. "The whole
purpose of our going to Israel is to
integrate into the mainstream,"
he asserted. "For me, I am a Jew,
and my indentity as a Jew is far
more important than my indi-
vidual identity in Bene Israel."
But Jhirad also believes in up-
holding their songs and customs.
This prompted him to become ac-
tive in the four-year-old B'nai
Bina Congregation that serves
35-40 families in the New York-
New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state
area. "One of the reasons for the
congregation was to try and make
a record of our traditions, our
music, our culture, and our his-
tory," declared Jhirad. "We are
trying to preserve particularly
the old songs that were never
written down and that are so dif-
ferent from the Sephardic and
Ashkenazic melodies."
Jhirad and his congregation
performed at the Long Island
Jewish Arts Festival in Sep-
tember, introducing many U.S.
Jews to their unique melodies and
the "kirtan," poetic paraphrases
of biblical stories.
UN Assembly
Attacks Israel
New York (JTA) — The United
Nations General Assembly held a
two-day debate last week on the
Middle East situation, during
which there were calls from Arab
delegates and the Soviet Union
for a convening of an interna-
tional peace conference. Israel's
Ambassador to the UN, Binyamin
Netanyahu, presented to the
General Assembly Israel's opposi-
tion to the conference.
Netanyahu said that if the
General Assembly was serious
about the Mideast it would adopt
a resolution calling for an end to
the use in the region of warfare
forbidden by international law —
an apparent reference to the al-
leged use of chemical weaponry in
the Iraq-Iran war — and for effec-
tive dialogue among all countries
of the region on the basis of
mutual recognition and respect
for sovereignty.
The General Asseinbly, mean-
while, adopted a series of strongly
anti-Israel resolutions. They in-
cluded a call for all member-states
to cease all dealngs with Israel, a
condemnation of Israel's dealings
with the apartheid government of
South Africa, and a resolution de-
ploring the transfer of some na-
tions of their embassies from Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem.
Furthermore, the Assembly
adopted 25 resolutions and two
decisions on the recommendation
of its Special Political Committee,
including an omnibus resolution
on Israeli practices in the oc-
cupied territories declaring those
practices to be "grave breaches" of
the 1949 Geneva Convention and
constituing "war crimes and an
affront to humanity."
Nearly all the resolutions at-
tacking Israel found the Jewish
state joined at times by the U.S.,
as casting the sole opposing vote.
There were various numbers of
abstentions during the adoption
of the resolutions.
Singles Haven
Tel Aviv (ZINS) — Israel now
has approximately 400,000 single
men and women in the 25-35 age
bracket, according to the news-
paper Yediot Achronot. In a li-
mited survey projecting results
about the entire population of the
country, the newspaper said that
as many as 35 percent of the total
adult population of Israel may be
single.