A week and a half ago, ten members of the Jewish community of Kolkata, India, which numbers only 23 members, gathered at the Magen Dovid shul for a tefillah led by two Rabbanim who flew in from overseas, Rav Yishai Dieck from Israel and Rav Yonatan Goldschmidt from England, the Hindustan Times reported on Sunday

“The last visiting rabbi, who was based in Cochin, left India two years ago when the Covid-19 pandemic started,” said David Ashkenazy, a community leader and one of only six remaining community members whose parents were Jewish. “For us, this was a great moment. We plan to hold prayers at least twice a month in the presence of a rabbi.”

According to the 2001 census, the last census in which Jews were included, there are 4,650 Jews in India. Although Kolkata has the smallest Jewish community of Indian cities, it boasts three shuls built in the 19th century by Jews led by Shalon Cohen, the first recorded Jewish immigrant in the city. He arrived in 1798 from Aleppo.

Ashkenazy spearheaded the restoration of all three shuls. “We want to keep the shuls alive, although marriages and social events are not held in these places anymore,” he said. “We plan to celebrate Rosh Hashanah in September and invite community members from other countries.”

“Ours is a very small community now,” said Sydney Banerji, whose mother, a Jew, married a Bengali Hindu. “David is trying to work out an arrangement with an American-Jewish company that provides kosher certification for food products manufactured in India. The certification has to be done by rabbis who come from abroad. For a proper prayer we need at least ten and it’s difficult to assemble ten men in Kolkata. All of the community members are over 60 and the oldest, a woman, is 90-something. So, even if there is a will, it doesn’t always work out. But David and I will figure out something.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)