India's children of Israel find

their roots
RASHMEE Z AHMED
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2002 9:14:27 PM ]
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.