India's Jews the Original Jews

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Posted July 21.02

 

DNA Tests Confirm India's

Jewish Community Carries Unusual Moses Gene

[Original headline: India's children of Israel find their roots]

LONDON: More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set

foot in India, the mystery of the world's most obscure Jewish

community - the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel - may finally have been

solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual

Moses gene that would make them, literally, the original children of

Israel.

 

Four years of DNA tests on the 4,000-strong Bene Israel, now mainly

based in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Ahmedabad, indicates they are

probable descendants of a small group of hereditary Israelite

priests or Cohanim, according to new results exclusively made

available to the Sunday Times of India.

 

The priests are scattered worldwide but genetically related in a

distinctive fashion that leaves just a billion to one chance of a

mistake in identifying who the Bene Israel really are, says Tudor

Parfitt, Jewish Studies professor at London's School of Oriental and

African Studies.

 

Parfitt, who initiated and led the research, says this is the first

concrete proof that "exiles from Palestine made it as far as India

and managed to maintain Judaism in the sea of Hinduism and Islam".

 

Contacted in the Israeli town of Ramla, 15 miles from Tel Aviv,

where he emigrated from Mumbai, Aharon Daniel expressed doubt about

the new findings. "Many scientists have claimed to have found

Israeli or Cohanim genes in tribes in black Africa and other

communities around the world and many here were sceptical about

this," he told STOI.

 

But some analysts said that Daniel's doubt could be a reflection of

the shoddy treatment given to a few of the 30,000 Bene Israelis who

returned to the Promised Land in the early '50s, soon after the

state of Israel was created. Their Indian appearance, cricket-

playing, sari-wearing, curry-eating and Marathi-speaking habits led

to a bitter battle for recognition as "real Jews".

 

The name Bene Israel literally means Children of Israel and their

unsubstantiated legend of origin holds their ancestors to be Jews

fleeing persecution in Palestine in 175 BC.

 

According to the legend, seven men and seven women survived a

shipwreck near Navgaon village on the Konkan coast. Their

descendants became thoroughly Indian except for observing Saturday,

the Jewish sabbath, as a weekly holiday. The practice led them to be

known as Shanwar Teli, Marathi for 'Saturday oilpressers'.

 

It was only in 1964, that the Israeli prime minister declared they

were genuinely Jewish and should be allowed to return home (to

Israel) and inter-marry.

 

But now, the new study goes one better. By studying certain genetic

markers on the DNA chain, found only in male descendants of Aaron,

Moses' elder brother, who founded the line of Jewish priests, the

Bene Israel could well claim to be the purest of the pure.

 

Prominent Bene Israelis include poet Nissim Ezekiel and actress

Pearl Padamsee.

 

The new research has also found preliminary genetic evidence to show

the declining community of Black Jews of Cochin left Israel in

remote historical times.

 

The new data, which is to feature in leading Western scientific

journals over the next few months, comes after painstaking efforts

to genetically source the origins of India's other, self-

professed "lost" Jewish tribes, including the Manipuri Jews and the

Telugu-speaking Jews of Guntur.

 

"We took DNA samples, but there was nothing that could prove they

were related to other than the general family of mankind", said

Parfitt, who has researched Indian Jewry since 1984.

 

• Story originally published by:

The Times of India / Delhi | Rashmee Z. Ahmed- July 20.02