Kolkata’s Jewish population is dwindling

At 94, Flower Sillimanwas the oldest living graduate of the Jewish Girls School of Kolkata. This November, students of the school came together to sing a hymn at her memorial service at the Maghen David synagogue in Kolkata.

But the names of the girls singing the traditional Jewish hymn didn’t sound Jewish at all: Mohsina, Anika, Fatima and so on. 

Almost all the students at the Jewish Girls School in Kolkata are Muslim these days. According to Brian Auckland, the treasurer of the school, there are only around 20 Jews left in Kolkata, mostly in their 70s or older. He says he does not think there has been a marriage in the community for the past 35 to 40 years.

“Any religious ceremony now is, unfortunately, mostly burials,” he said.

Though there is a Jewish cemetery, holding a funeral is difficult. Jewish tradition requires a minyan, or 10 Jewish men, to conduct a service, but there’s no minyan anymore. There’s no rabbi, either.

“The body is washed by the local people who we have engaged,” said Sidney Moses, vice president of the synagogue. “The prayers are read in English.”

But there are still three beautifully maintained synagogues. The largest is the Maghen David, where Silliman’s memorial was held, a brick-red building with marble floors, huge chandeliers and stained-glass windows.

It is possibly the only synagogue around with a steeple, Silliman told me several years ago. In fact, it looks like a big red church.

Silliman said Martin Burn, the engineering company that built it when India was under British rule, thought all houses of worship had steeples.

“We said, ‘But synagogues don’t have steeples,’” Silliman said. But these efforts proved to be futile.

So, the Jews of Kolkata wrote to the chief rabbi of Baghdad for advice. He said a steeple was permissible as long as it was higher than any other place of worship within a certain radius.

The Jewish community in Kolkata came from all over the Middle East from places like Syria and Iraq. They were known as Baghdadi Jews because they followed the rabbi of Baghdad. They came to Kolkata (known then as Calcutta) as traders when it was the capital of British India. The city was home to many mercantile communities: Armenians, Chinese and Jews. At one time, there were about 5,000 Jews living in Kolkata. The three synagogues were bustling. 

“You had to reserve your seat beforehand,” Silliman reminisced.

As a child, her daughter Jael didn’t share the same enthusiasm as her mother.

“I actually found it quite boring. The prayers were in Hebrew. I didn’t have my school friends there,” she recalled.

In Kolkata, synagogues like Maghen David are right next to churches, mosques and Hindu temples. Silliman remembered trying to observe Yom Kippur while church bells rang, muezzins called the faithful to prayer in mosques and drums beat in temples.

“I remember telling my mother, ‘God must be getting deaf with so many people trying to get his attention at the same time,’” she recalled.

Her mother shushed her, saying, “Don’t talk like that. God is everybody’s God.”

It’s a lesson that Kolkata’s Jewish community took to heart.

For example, they realized the people who understood their dietary rules best were Muslims. Many Jewish families had cooks working for them. But these “Jewish cooks” weren’t usually Jewish.

“They were always Muslim. We called them ‘Jewish cooks,’ meaning they knew how to cook Jewish food,” said Silliman, who went on to publish “Three Cups of Flower,” a cookbook containing many of her Kolkata-Jewish recipes.

Silliman’s daughter remembered her mother’s cook who was also Muslim as being almost more Jewish than her. He would get upset if Silliman didn’t observe all the traditions during Jewish festivals, and would threaten to complain about it to Silliman’s mother.

Now, those Jewish cooks are gone, as are the Jews of Kolkata. A wave of emigration started in the late 1940s, taking them elsewhere for better opportunities and larger Jewish communities, said Susan Lynne Iyer, who came to the memorial with her mother. She said most of the community, including her own family, moved to London, Israel and the United States. 

But the institutions they built — schools, synagogues and even a Jewish bakery — still remain. Iyer says she still comes to the synagogue on Jewish holidays with her mother, even though there’s no service. It’s a tradition. 

“We just pray and go,” she said. “There’s no one here.”

But that’s not quite true. The synagogues have been left in the care of men like Abdul Khan, who hands out the kippot, or the Jewish head coverings for us to wear inside. He says he has been looking after the synagogue for the last 20 years, and is the third generation of his family to do so.

He’s not the only one. Generations of Muslim caretakers are now the custodians of Kolkata’s Jewish heritage.

Sidney Moses says he is moved by their dedication: “They say, ‘This is our synagogue and we will continue.'”

At her memorial, Silliman’s friend Aparna Guha bade her goodbye not with a hymn, but with a song Silliman herself loved to sing: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”