Calcutta Kosher (Oberon Modern Plays)

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About Shelley Silas Shelley was born in Calcutta and moved to London with her family when she was a child. Book ratings by Goodreads. Goodreads is the world's largest site for readers with over 50 million reviews. We're featuring millions of their reader ratings on our book pages to help you find your new favourite book.

Anthias, Thinking through the lens of translocational positionality: Duke University Press, Durham Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Athlone, London The Calcutta Jews had come to the city from Iraq and Syria when the British first came to trade in India, and had grown and had prospered under the Raj. Favoured by the British and commercially successful, many were unsure of their economic futures when India gained Independence.

Since they were a tightly knit community, once a few Jews chose to leave, other family members soon followed suit. By the sixties the community had dwindled precipitously. This saddened Morris who had opted to stay — he had a thriving family business, many friends and loved his life in Calcutta.

In her recent book, Writing Indians and Jews. I pick up from this important point to discuss the contribution of two female writers of the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta, Jael Silliman and Shelley Silas, whose works may contribute to the debate around minor literatures and mi- nor transnationalisms in postcolonial India. Shih, Minor Transnationalism, cit.

Brinkley What Is a Minor Literature? Moreover, for their original concept of minor literature, see also G. Silliman, The Man with Many Hats, cit. Guttman, Writing Indians and Jews.

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Choosing to present themselves as Indian Jews, they have adopted a label that oscillates in-between the idea of belonging to an ethnically hybrid class whilst maintaining a clearly defined religious affiliation. We Jews from the Middle East carried out our business and trade in ports across Asia.

Jews from the Middle East across Asia! Who would have thought? Shenhav, The Arab Jews: Their migration to the island was instigated directly via the persecutions meted out by the Governor of Baghdad, Daud Pasha His acts of cruelty and injustice prompted a mass exodus of Baghdadi Jews from Persia to India, where they established themselves as rich merchants and senior members of the community. They were loyal to, but never considered themselves, British — nor were they so regarded by the colonial powers. They clamoured unsuccessfully for European status, which the British never granted them.

Silliman further adds to this last statement: The Jewish Cemetery in George- town. Silliman, Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames, cit. As Banerjee, Gupta, and Mukherjee have maintained, the Baghdadi Jews were indeed among the most important tassels of the multicultural jigsaw of colonial Calcutta. Albeit their current invisibility in postcolonial Kolkata, their history of migration to the shores of the Ganga can shed light both on the broader diasporic history of Oriental Jews and on the forgotten stories of those families who came to Asia from Baghdad, Basra and Aleppo in search of bet- ter lives.

They invited Jewish, Armenian and Parsi trad- ers from the Middle East to help open up the new port city for trade. We spoke English and wore Western clothes, but we were also accepted and comfortable in India. The peculiar position occupied by this community and its crucial role in upholding the political and economic supremacy of the Raj explains some of the reasons of its great success Although the Baghdadi Jews had been able to adjust and thrive in colonial Calcutta, they obviously felt unsecure in independent India.

Many were poor and disenfranchised laborers, often supported by the charities and trusts established by the most affluent families. As Roland has pointed out: Perspectives on the Study and Portrayal of a Community, cit. The importance of these sites of tangible cultural heritage synagogues, schools, museums, and other monuments is undeniable in mapping the ge- ography of the city. However, it is the presence of the intangible heritage, condensed in the sensory memories of smells and tastes of special recipes, or popular melodies of religious chants, and more profane Hindi songs, that seem to hover along the lanes of remembrance.

Morris is one of those who still recollects his mother tongue, Arabic, but is equally at ease and housed in the acquired languages of Hindi, Bengali and English: Accustomed to the ways of India, Morris is notwithstanding proud to be a Baghdadi Jew rooted in his ancestral traditions. Morris is a nomadic subject who lives across cul- tures, languages and histories: There was also a shifting population of Europeans, British and Americans visiting or living in Calcutta for pleasure or for business.

Morris spoke some Bengali and Hindi and H. CalCutta Kosher and the Man with Many hats cursed colourfully in both languages as well as in Arabic.

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Sensory Memories, Sensual Nostalgia. Low, Introduction, in Idd. Towards Transnational Sensescapes, ibi, pp. Lahiri Remember- ing the city, cit. Caswell, Lost and found: Joya, one of the Brahmo women interviewed by Lahiri, poignantly says: It has changed a lot. I went to Nahoums where that old gentleman still sits chatting to his Anglo-Indian friends so I could feel that kind of feeling we used to have in our old days and when I went to the Chinese shoe shops.

Nahoums cakes and patties still taste much better than any other places. It still tastes the same.

When I walked through the dilapidated lanes and by lanes of South Calcutta I still liked it. I could smell the old Calcutta. It reminded me of the Calcutta of my childhood. People are sitting on the verandas. It is on this multisensory set that Shelley Silas has staged her play Cal- cutta Kosher, an intriguing work right from the curious title that juxtaposes, without contradictions of any sort, two words and two worlds that seem perfectly matched: Produced by Kali Theatre Company London , Calcutta Kosher brings on stage the story of a dying Baghdadi Jewish woman, Mozelle, who in her final moments reveals to her two legitimate daughters, Esther and Silvie, that 39 S.

They include dietary laws and prescriptions regarding foods that are permitted and others that are not allowed. Interestingly, the difficult issue of preserving traditional Kashrut rules presented itself also in Italy. Siporin, From Kashrut to Cucina Ebraica: This statement is applicable also to food-conscious India, and to Calcutta more specifically, where it exists a deep culinary culture to account with and that has given birth to a distinctively unique Calcutta Jewish cuisine.

The confession regarding the real identity of Maki throws Esther and Silvie into disbelief, but, as the play unfolds, we come to realise that, far from being exogenous to the house, Maki is the real heart of it, and the only surviving hope for the Baghdadi Jewish traditions, whom she preserves with the help of the loyal Muslim servant Siddique. Whilst Esther and Silvie have been educated abroad and live safe but aseptic lives in London Esther , or exotic but depressing existences in Los Angeles Silvie , it is Maki who has learned how to preserve the Jewish traditions of her mother in the country of her father.

The inner space of the house was the dominion of the Indian woman, who thus became the protector of an essentialised Indian culture, to be kept segregated from the profane activities of the material world outside, dominion of the male. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the ghar became the principal site of those spiritual qualities of Indian culture that Indian Hindu and middle-class women had the responsi- bility to protect and nurture Maki, Indian by nationality and Jew by legitimate 43 The observance of the holy days and of the day of Shabbat is often highlighted by Jewish people as one of the most important tenets of lived Judaism.

In Reclaiming Judaism as a Spiritual Practice: As we can evince for these pas- sages, the religious rituals cannot be separated by the meals and the special foods that characterized them. In the Baghdadi Jewish literature, food and recipes occupy a very central place, and the dining table becomes a contesting ground of multiple belongings and shifting affiliations and identities.