Yom Tov wrapped in a sari

Josh Scheinert

The private security guard had some questions before letting us into the building. Around him were armed police, soldiers with automatic rifles positioned behind sandbags, and an armoured Humvee. We were going to Rosh Hashanah services in Mumbai. After the 2008 terror attacks, this community takes no chances. 

Inside Mumbai’s sky-blue Baghdadi Knesset Eliyahoo synagogue, bright chandeliers hang from vaulted ceilings. Nathaniel, 23, has been leading services for the dwindling congregation ever since his bar mitzvah. Meanwhile, at Tiferet Yisroel synagogue, they break for Indian chai tea between Shacharit and Musaf services. We went there on the second day of Yom Tov to hear the Bene Israel chant Hebrew prayers with an Indian twang.

The highlight of spending Rosh Hashanah in Mumbai, however, was Tashlich. In Mumbai, it’s the service to attend. Every year, 300 Mumbai Jews gather on the ferry wharf. Standing at the water’s edge, the community stood in quiet devotion – the women in bright and colourful saris, the men in kippot. At the service’s conclusion, a young boy not much past his bar mitzvah walked up to the front, raised a long shofar and sounded its note over the water. It was a poignant and public moment that symbolized how, after centuries, the Bene Israel still proudly exist.

The story in Calcutta, where we were for Yom Kippur, is starkly different. Once home to 6,000 Iraqi Jews, today the community’s three gorgeous synagogues stand empty, and the famous Nahoum’s bakery is without its Jewish namesake, who died last year. We set out on Kol Nidrei night to light candles at the synagogues with three of the community’s able women. But for our presence, the only proof of Calcutta’s Jews would have been that small flickering flame.

But then, as we arrived at the largest synagogue, a small group of Jewish tourists appeared in search of services. We stood in the empty Beth El Synagogue and sang Kol Nidrei before an open ark with two silver-encased Torah scrolls inside. The silence of the empty building was a stark contrast to the madness of the Hindu festival Durga Puja happening just outside. There were hundreds of thousands of revellers in the streets.

The next evening, as we entered Calcutta’s Magen David Synagogue, Asia’s largest, for the Neilah service, a lone man in a kippah holding a worn-out prayer book sat in the corner. Mordechai Israel couldn’t read Hebrew, so he was just clutching his prayer book and looking at its pages. 

His face lit up when he saw us, and he rushed into stories about the community – about how the synagogue used to be packed and they had to bring in chairs from outside, about the sound of the cantor’s voice (it had been 25 years since Calcutta had a cantor), and about how rich and vibrant the community used to be. 

Then his face turned sombre as he admitted to us that now there was nothing. Mordechai, too, would soon be leaving. In a little more than two weeks, he was making aliyah to Israel. His heart was there, he told us. There was nothing left for him in the community anymore, just memories. 

We had never met Mordechai before, but the connection was instant. The universality of our shared religion – the shared experience of the holiday – was enough to bring us together.

When the time came to say Neilah, Mordechai suggested that we recite it from the bimah, which we did. And so ended a Yom Kippur in Calcutta, in a near-empty synagogue, with two Canadians, an Israeli, and an Indian soon to be an Israeli. We concluded with Avinu Malkeinu and then sang “Next Year in Jerusalem.” For the four of us present, that hopeful prayer took on a whole new meaning. 

Josh Scheinert is a Toronto-based lawyer currently spending a semester in India as a visiting law professor with O.P. Jindal Global University.