Mumbai, India - Synagogues: 1 of 4

Today we took the “Jewish Chronicles” tour of Mumbai. We discovered there are at least nine functioning Synagogues here, so we decided it would be great to visit a few and learn about their Congregations. We had a great tour guide that had a wealth of knowledge about the individual Synagogues even though she was Muslim, not Jewish. We say “functioning” because they have a Congregation and some Services albeit some are only once a week. There may be more (i.e., Chabad) but we only were looking at the ones that were open every day to the public for visits.

So how did there get to be at least nine Synagogues and none of them were repurposed building or simple storefronts? They were all originally built as Synagogues. We visited three. We needed to have our passports with us as the ship told us the Synagogues security require them. It’s the world we live in.

The first Jewish area began in 1796 and eventually over 22,000 Jews were in this area during the beginning of the 20th Century. What eventually happened to this Congregation and all the others we visited was that they lost many members that went to Israel in 1948 or to Europe where there were better opportunities for many of these educated Jews. Currently there are 3,500 Jews in Mumbai and about 5,000 in all of India. Almost all of them are from Sephardic backgrounds. There are some “Black” Iraqi Jews that began to settle here in 1820 as well as mostly Indian Jews.

Magen David Synagogue established in 1861, is an Orthodox Sephardic Congregation in a Victorian style building with two Jewish Day school built next door was our first visit (Note: the first Synagogue in India is in Cochin but you will have to wait 3 days to see that one). The schools were named E.E.E. Sassoon and Sir Jacob Sassoon. Unfortunately, with so few Jews here, the students are 95% Muslim. Interesting the name is Sassoon (as in Vidal). The Sassoon (Hebrew for joy) family is from Iraq where they left for India, where they built their wealth. Jacob Sassoon is the grandson of David and a very long line of Sassoon’s (I spent an hour on the family tree just to figure out all the many Sassoon, some of which were Rabbis). They also built Synagogues in Shanghai and Hong Kong and were considered part of the British aristocracy. The Synagogue is still very important in the Community and provides assistance to many Jews and non-Jews and sponsored many social welfare causes and construction in India. The school is 95% non-Jews but continues to operate as a high-end private school.

This was a moving experience as we joined the Morning Service where everyone wore tefillin and tallism just like how I grew up in NY and we stayed through the hakafah and the reading of the Torah. The morning Service could have been anywhere except for the fact that the Siddur was in Hebrew and a local Indian dialect rather than English. The Rabbi is from Israel although much of the Service was run by lay leaders. One of the Congregants told us all about the history and survival of this Synagogue and how these days the funding is mostly though a small legacy as donations.

They have Services every day (I counted exactly 10 congregants). We waited for them to open the Torah and although it changed our timing for other visits, it was worth the wait. Not only was it beautiful to sit in the pews and listen to the Service but it was nice to see they have a very young Rabbi lead the Service (he is 21 years old). The Torah is 165 years old and came from Baghdah and beautifully read although I didn’t fit their need for Kohen or Levite and we left before they did the last Aliyah.

They believe heavily in giving back to the community through offering their resources and school rooms to the community for activities and events.The perimeter of the Sanctuary was covered in bags of donations and ingredients for meals to be donated to the needy. The entire experience was so amazing how we were in a Synagogue in India and it felt like we were back home or anywhere there is a Congregation in the World.Read more