by Rabbi Arnold Saltzman
The Kol Nidre itself is a collection of requests to nullify vows made under duress, pressure, war. The prayer asks God to forgive our vows which we were unable to keep in the year that has passed, so that we may begin a truly new year with a clean slate.
Kol Nidre is not intended to free us from obligations like contracts or debts. Rabbis in the past have even gone so far as to ban the Kol Nidre if it were to be used in this manner.
Asking for forgiveness is not meant to free you from your responsibilities in your relationships. In this the rabbis are clear. You must go to someone you have offended or failed to honor in your obligation to them, and then ask them to forgive you. They do not have to do so, yet, that is the formula for Teshuva, repentance.
So a modern rabbi, like Jonah, the prophet, goes to the community and says repent! Be sincere! Give Tzedakah! Change your ways! and we hope that you will in fact do this: that you will change yourselves for the better.
I want to speak about how a small community can make an impact through its commitment, its history, in order to help us understand that it is in own communities power to do something which will last and be carried on for generations.
A neighbor of ours, David Jhirad, recently passed away, and it is a terrible sadness for us, as we have been neighbors and friends for twenty-nine years. David, his wife Anna, and sons, Nicholas, Alex, and Dylan are extended family for us. His story is a great American story, an immigrant story, and a Jewish story as well. He was born in India, in what is now Karachi, Pakistan. The Jews of India had lived there since ancient times.
Some say that in the time of Solomon a ship was wrecked off the Western shore of India, and that those who remained founded the oldest Jewish community in India. Others say it was founded as a trading outpost for Solomon, bringing spices, precious jewels and metals, and fabric back to Israel. Indian Jewish communities eventually included Cochin, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Calcutta. These all have synagogues, not run by Chabad rabbis, but by Jews who have been living in India for as long as anyone can remember.
David was hospitalized a number of years ago, and when I went to see him he told me about his childhood. His father was Chief Judge Advocate for the Raj, the British Royal Navy under the Imperial Rule of Great Britain. When the Indian revolution came, it was more violent than Ghandi anticipated. Many people were killed, there were religious divisions and hostilities among the HIndus, Muslims, and others.
Most interestingly, there was no record of anti-semitic or anti Jewish violence in the history of India. However, David’s community, the Jewish community was attacked in what he described as a pogrom – total destruction and looting, attacking of civilians. Why? Not because they were Jewish, but because they were loyalists. They supported Great Britain, and the crown. In a way it was not that unlike the fate of American loyalists in the American revolution, although most Jews supported the revolution.
David went off to Cambridge, a brilliant young scholar, descended from Jews who were both the Judges and the warrior class in India. David’s father married a Scottish beauty, and so David, by tradition, was not Jewish. His mother had him distance himself from Judaism, and that put a terrible wedge between him and his father. His father remarried and further had little contact with David.
A snowy day one winter, on a Shabbat morning, Carol looked out the window and saw a young family trying to get into the house next door, but just standing there in the snow. She invited them in even though she knew I was crazed on Saturday mornings about being on time for services. We met David, Anna, and Nicholas and became good friends.
David was destined to become the deputy Secretary of Energy under Richardson during the Clinton administration. David was a scientist, an atheist, a world class expert on energy development and solutions. If Al Gore had become president, David was sure to be Secretary of Energy. It was not to be, so David took a Professorship at Georgetown, and finally at Hopkins School of International Studies.
David was surprised by what I told him: I considered him Jewish by patralinial descent, and I considered his children Jewish as well. I think that helped David to reconcile at least in some way his relationship with his father and his many extended Jhirad family members here and in Israel.
His beloved wife, Anna, had his funeral in a Georgetown Church, yet, for some reason she asked me to say a Jewish prayer an acknowledgement of his ancestry. At first I did not wish to do this, yet, upon reflection, I decided to lead the kaddish. I am sure that some were puzzled that I led a Jewish prayer in the Church, others were just shocked that David Jhirad had any Jewish origin at all, as he never spoke of it. Still others got up putting their hands together and with me made a traditional Indian bow to say good-by. I saw some weep as they did this.
The Jewish communities of India are very small. They are like our community, a collection of families and individuals who decided that in order to perpetuate Judaism, to have a future, then you will need Jewish worship, Jewish education, and Jewish leadership.
How does Cochin survive with 50 people? Will we be like Cochin, holding on to our beliefs, yet not reaching out enough to increase our numbers? Can we welcome the David Jhirads who have a Jewish father and make them part of our community?
Here, we have done that, and I am proud of it. No one at our small congregation is made to feel unwelcome or not a member of the community due having one Jewish parent or because they chose Judaism.
The Jews of India are intriguing. How is it possible that Jewish communities did not grow more and prosper? What are we doing to welcome people into Judaism while advocating its goodness and kindness, its success and brilliance as a way of life?
In this new year, we will remember that David took time off from his work as Vice President of the Rockefeller Foundation to join us at my Rabbinic Ordination. Why did he want to be there? What was intention: friendship or searching for a connection to something Jewish? Both?
What are we hoping for in the New Year?
In this New Year I urge all of us to find a way to learn about the Jews of India, and in that way perhaps we can discover what it is that we are about as well. What can we do that is lasting here that will be remembered or will it be forgotten? Can we do this through our dedication to the goodness of our faith and practice, while at the same time being proud of our great heritage?
We are here and the beauty of the land, the resources of the community are there, and we have not experienced a shipwreck. Can we make a lasting community after having putting down roots in an area where there were few Jews just fifteen years ago? We set out on a path that makes us a congregation, a community. We bring people together for worship, for social reasons, for education and Tzedakah.
David was probably the most distinguished American of Indian origin, a world class expert on Nuclear Energy and other types of energy development. Deputy Secretary of Energy, Professor, humanitarian. David was shuttling back and forth to India as he had a project to bring energy to remote Indian communities for the first time in places that had never seen a light bulb.
When Josh, our son, was five, he asked me “Can light bend?” I responded by saying let’s go and ask David, a source of wisdom.
David’s father was head of the Bene Israel, the Indian Jewish community. The Indian Jewish community may be the only Jewish community which has no history of anti-semitism. David’s family history there goes back at least 800 years. An ancestor of his was given a piece of land in Pune for his courage and military service. This land was donated and became the land that the Bene Israel Synagogue was built on.
There are three Jewish communities, Bene Israel, the Cochin, and the Bhagdadi. Like all Jewish communities in each case the customs are different enough that they prefer their own synagogues. Some date the Bene Israel to the time of Antioches Epiphanes, when Jews went to Egypt and sailed to India. The graves of those shipwrecked Jews are preserved in burial mounds still there. The survivors became oil-pressers and farmers, and cocoanut oil merchants. They did not work on the Sabbath. They had only one prayer, the Sh’ma and recited it for every celebration and service. They observed holidays and later prayed in Hebrew and Marathi. They took both biblical names and Hindu names.
Christian missionaries in the 18th century reinforced their identity and taught them Hebrew. The Bible was translated into the native Marathi. Indian words appear in the bible from the old Tamil language: words for ivory, elephants tooth, and peacock.
The synagogue in Cochin is 400 years old, and the women of the Bene Israel are pioneers in nursing and medicine. Dr. Jerusha Jhirad, the first woman doctor in India, and an ancestor of David’s, became head of the Cana Hospital and offered free services to the poor and needy one hundred years ago.
Why did 5000 Jewish Indians go to Israel? In their case they went because the Bible taught we would return. Yet, ironically is was India which welcomed our granddaughters great grandmother fleeing Nazi Europe, and where my daughter-in-laws grandmother learned Yoga which she was teaching in her 90s in Jerusalem.
My rabbinic teacher, Rabbi Gelberman, was influenced by Yoga and meditation. He taught that “we share the ideal that — living a selfless, dedicated life leads to loving, compassion and caring. All the great religions teach this.”
We gather here and we are diverse in background, we have members who are survivors of the Holocaust, and members from many areas of the world. We are dedicated to bringing an American Jewish experience, which will give an identity for the future. Though we are small in numbers we are both welcomed and admired
What we do here will arouse the curiosity of others in the future. If we build or expand will it be a place that is welcoming? Will hundreds of people line up every day to see where we worship, just as they do every day in Cochin?
Can we better serve the needs of our small community? Can we enjoy who we are and learn to share that?
In the shipwreck which brought Jews to ancient India we find a metaphor that in the difficulties of life, we can hold on, regain strength, and be born again. Like Jonah who prayed from within the big fish, he emerged willing and ready to do what was needed, what God was asking him to do.
In the New Year we pray on our journey, that even if shipwrecked, that we emerge to an inner self that enables us to ask for and to create a good life connecting past, present and future. We are left with the prayer and the question: What will we do that reveals the dedication and work, the spiritual growth of a people so that others may look back and say ‘look at what they created, what they did, what they stood for.’
G’mar Chatima Tova – May you be inscribed and sealed in the book of life, health, happiness, and prosperity in the New Year.