Continued from above.
And more to nail the christolies:
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles/cochin-pref.htm
<b>Foreword
The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India
Daniel J. Elazar</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The authors raise numerous points of interest to ordinary readers and scholars alike. <b>Who is not curious as to how the Jews of India survived for so long in an atmosphere of tolerance when other Jewish communities such as that in China, benefitting from similar toleration, assimilated so thoroughly. Their argument is that India as a host society combined tolerance with culturally enforced diversity which made the difference.</b> Indian society, with its several major religions and further division within Hinduism into four major castes, a fifth of outcasts, and over 3,000 subcastes, tolerates wide diversity but does not permit people born into one group to cross over into another or even to associate with the others beyond the public square, since the food taboos of every religious community, caste and subcaste mean that they cannot eat with one another. Nothing separates more than that. The Jewish community could fit into India as another caste and even developed its own subcastes, as the authors explain, properly denoting this as the Cochin Jews' one great (and sad) departure from halakhic Judaism.
This book is especially important because the authors document the last year of complete life of the organized Jewish community when they were in residence in Cochin. It was during that year that for the first time in hundreds of years or more the Jews were unable to muster at least a minyan (a ten-man prayer quorum) to conduct Sabbath services in their synagogue. Thus the authors record the last gasps of a once-flourishing community. <b>They devote the last part of their book to describing the dissolution of that community, principally as a result of aliya to the State of Israel.</b>
(Again: it is because Cochin Jews chose to leave for Israel that they are now so sparse in Hindu Kerala. Contrary to christolies, Hindus did not eliminate them, though Cochin-Jewish history records that islamaniacs and christomaniacs persecuted and converted them.)
In doing so, intentionally or not, they make the case for Zionism in the modern and postmodern worlds. All too often, the case for Zionism is made out to be one of finding a refuge for persecuted Jews. While this was true of much of the Jewish world, the case of the <b>Cochin Jews is a very different one. These Jews, like those of the contemporary West, were not persecuted. Rather, modernity, which destroyed of traditional society, everywhere it touched, destroyed theirs as well, making it impossible to maintain their old way of life in the diaspora.</b>
(The following is both interesting and understandable: They say psecularism - deHinduisation of the host society - is what threatened Jewish survival in Cochin)
<b>As the authors indicate, it was the very success of modernization and secularization in Indian society that threatened the survival of the community as young people began to be attracted into the Indian mainstream and it became impossible for the community to live in the old ways and thus preserve the old traditions.</b> Thus those who wanted to remain Jews felt the necessity to move to the Jewish state where being Jewish was protected by the fact of living within a politically separated and independent civil society. <b>The Jewish way of life which the Cochin Jews found in Israel was not the traditional way of life that they knew. Indeed, as the authors indicate, they felt that they had been better Jews from the perspective of religious tradition in India than they had become in Israel</b>, where even for those who wanted to fully maintain traditions, the pace of life according to the modern tempo denied them the "luxury" of doing so, but they could survive as Jews, something that had become increasingly difficult in the "old country" as a tiny minority.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So while it was Hindu Bharatam, the Jews were better Jews and could preserve their way of life. When India psecularised they couldn't do so anymore and moved to Israel. Then they found that in Hindu India they had been able to be better Jews than in Israel.
And more to nail the christolies:
http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles/cochin-pref.htm
<b>Foreword
The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India
Daniel J. Elazar</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The authors raise numerous points of interest to ordinary readers and scholars alike. <b>Who is not curious as to how the Jews of India survived for so long in an atmosphere of tolerance when other Jewish communities such as that in China, benefitting from similar toleration, assimilated so thoroughly. Their argument is that India as a host society combined tolerance with culturally enforced diversity which made the difference.</b> Indian society, with its several major religions and further division within Hinduism into four major castes, a fifth of outcasts, and over 3,000 subcastes, tolerates wide diversity but does not permit people born into one group to cross over into another or even to associate with the others beyond the public square, since the food taboos of every religious community, caste and subcaste mean that they cannot eat with one another. Nothing separates more than that. The Jewish community could fit into India as another caste and even developed its own subcastes, as the authors explain, properly denoting this as the Cochin Jews' one great (and sad) departure from halakhic Judaism.
This book is especially important because the authors document the last year of complete life of the organized Jewish community when they were in residence in Cochin. It was during that year that for the first time in hundreds of years or more the Jews were unable to muster at least a minyan (a ten-man prayer quorum) to conduct Sabbath services in their synagogue. Thus the authors record the last gasps of a once-flourishing community. <b>They devote the last part of their book to describing the dissolution of that community, principally as a result of aliya to the State of Israel.</b>
(Again: it is because Cochin Jews chose to leave for Israel that they are now so sparse in Hindu Kerala. Contrary to christolies, Hindus did not eliminate them, though Cochin-Jewish history records that islamaniacs and christomaniacs persecuted and converted them.)
In doing so, intentionally or not, they make the case for Zionism in the modern and postmodern worlds. All too often, the case for Zionism is made out to be one of finding a refuge for persecuted Jews. While this was true of much of the Jewish world, the case of the <b>Cochin Jews is a very different one. These Jews, like those of the contemporary West, were not persecuted. Rather, modernity, which destroyed of traditional society, everywhere it touched, destroyed theirs as well, making it impossible to maintain their old way of life in the diaspora.</b>
(The following is both interesting and understandable: They say psecularism - deHinduisation of the host society - is what threatened Jewish survival in Cochin)
<b>As the authors indicate, it was the very success of modernization and secularization in Indian society that threatened the survival of the community as young people began to be attracted into the Indian mainstream and it became impossible for the community to live in the old ways and thus preserve the old traditions.</b> Thus those who wanted to remain Jews felt the necessity to move to the Jewish state where being Jewish was protected by the fact of living within a politically separated and independent civil society. <b>The Jewish way of life which the Cochin Jews found in Israel was not the traditional way of life that they knew. Indeed, as the authors indicate, they felt that they had been better Jews from the perspective of religious tradition in India than they had become in Israel</b>, where even for those who wanted to fully maintain traditions, the pace of life according to the modern tempo denied them the "luxury" of doing so, but they could survive as Jews, something that had become increasingly difficult in the "old country" as a tiny minority.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So while it was Hindu Bharatam, the Jews were better Jews and could preserve their way of life. When India psecularised they couldn't do so anymore and moved to Israel. Then they found that in Hindu India they had been able to be better Jews than in Israel.