Jew's History in INDIA
The original tradition, as related to Christian missionaries early in the 19th century, is that the Bene Israel are the descendants of the survivors of a shipwreck off the Konkan coast at Navgaon, about 26 miles south of Bombay. Their ship was said to have come "from northern parts" and the date was "some sixteen to eighteen hundred years ago" (J. Wilson, Lands of the Bible (1847) II, 667). In the 19th century various theories were propounded by Europeans about Bene Israel origins conjecturing that the Bene Israel were an offshoot of the Jewish settlements in Yemen, refugees from the persecution of the Jews by Muhammad, or descendants of the Babylonian-Persian Diaspora. Later, in the light of the study of the Bible, of other Jewish literature, of ancient history sources relating to India, the Middle East, etc., some members of the Bene Israel community itself delved into details of possible Bene Israel origins. H.S. Kehimkar (History of the Bene Israel of India (1937) written in 1897) favored the theory that the ancestors of the Bene Israel left the Galilee because of persecutions by Antiochus Epiphanes (175163 B.C.E.). D.J. Samson's argument for Bene Israel arrival in India at some time between 740 and 500 B.C.E. appeared in 1917 in an issue of the Bene Israel periodical The Israelite (i, no. 4,6870) in an article entitled The Bene Israel: Who, Where, Whence. In any case their descendants remained for centuries isolated from Jewish life elsewhere. they adopted customs and dress of their Konkan neighbors, and their language, Marathi, as their mother tongue. Throughout the centuries they clung, however, to some fundamentals of the Jewish tradition and observed circumcision, dietary laws, the Sabbath, and most fasts and festivals prescribed in the Torah, and recited the Shema. . The presence of a special Jewish group in the Konkan region remained unknown to outsiders, except for casual references to them.After creation of Israel most of them Moved to Israel. .
A Marathi Magazine called Mai Bolli(Mother tounge) has been published in Israel since 1989 . In 1995, they celebrated its quartercentary celebration in Lydda .
I hope Raj Thackary Won't Mind because some reading Marathi Magazine In Israel .