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This introductory study of three Indian-Jewish communities—Cochin Jews, Bene Israel, and Baghdadi Jews—helps in the understanding of both Judaic and Indic civilizations, and the nature of communal continuity. Thinking about these three communities' history, social organization, and religious life deepens the understanding of both India and Israel. The Bene Israel lost all of the intellectual equipment in their legendary shipwreck, and as a result tumbled more deeply into assimilation. The identities of the Bene Israel and the Baghdadis evolved more rapidly and within the purview of relatively modern history. The three very different communities of Jews in India had one determining factor in common: the absence of indigenous anti-Semitism. Jewish identity in India is substantial in contemporary discussions about continuity within the Jewish world. Today, only the Bene Israel community of Bombay remains vital among the three communities.

This chapter examines the relevance of Gilles Deleuze's work for the works of Italian director Carmelo Bene. It argues that Deleuze's One Less Manifesto conceived the theatre of continuous variation, particularly Bene's theatre, as one that is initiated and sustained by subtraction. It also questions the compatibility of Deleuze's vitalist concept of subtraction with Bene's own concept of the subtractive.

This book investigates the three major Jewish communities in India: the Cochin Jews of the Malabar Coast, the Bene Israel Jews of greater Bombay, and the “Baghdadi” Jews of India's port cities, especially Calcutta and Bombay. It concentrates on questions of identity—how these three distinct communities came to their individual senses of self, how historical and social forces mediated the Jewish and Indian poles of their identity, and how this identity is demonstrated and expressed in historical legend and religious ritual. The Jewish experience in India modifies the understanding of Jewishness and of immigrant identity.

The transformation of Bene Israel is so unlikely that one is tempted to see therein divine, rather than human, agency. The six reference groups of Bene Israel had a deep impact on their understanding of who they were, on their social organization, on their professional life, and on how they lived their religion and culture. The folk tales and notions about Eliahu Hanabi and his propitiation in the Malida rite are unique to the Bene Israel. The Eliahu Hanabi/Malida complex is an outstanding example of how great religious cultures interact in the performance of rituals. Bene Israel synagogue rituals follow Cochin traditions, but some of their synagogue customs are unique. For generations, the Bene Israel were Jews in India. Now they are Indians in Israel.

The gatherings of the Florentine academies that engineered opera attempted to reproduce Plato’s Symposium as a model for philosophical debates during convivial gatherings. Two such academies were named Umidi (“humid”) and Alterati (“altered”), suggesting that a generous amount of alcohol was served during meetings. Members of the Alterati were admitted with nicknames and emblems that contained references to alcoholic beverages. The minutes of these meetings provide a gold mine of information for the study of material culture within the academies, showing that abstract philosophical reasoning was intimately connected to consumption rituals. The definition of “alteration” in one of the earliest academic lectures by Giulio del Bene shows the influence of Ficino’s idea of music as psychologically therapeutic and it captures opera’s essential function as a form of collective healing and education. In another early academic speech on dramatic purgation, Lorenzo Giacomini extends del Bene’s argument by pointing out that music alone, without staged dramatic text, cannot trigger the highest form of alteration. Giacomini’s medical reinterpretation of Aristotelean poetical catharsis leads him to the groundbreaking idea that representing pathological emotional states (“affetti”) would purge their dangerous effects through controlled homeopathic cures.

The chapter introduces the history of the Bene Ephraim in the context of other Lost Tribes communities all over the world, the history of Dalit movements in India, and broader academic discussion about definitions of Jewishness, particularist and universalist tendencies in Judaism, opportunities for social mobility in India, and issues in conversion and the rhetoric of identity. The chapter also describes the methodology used in the study that this book is based on and discusses ethical considerations of our research.

The chapter develops the theme of the relationship between Judazing movements and Western Jewish organizations and considers the Bene Ephraim in the context of public and academic debates about the immigration policies of the State of Israel. Our ethnography here focuses on the movement of the Bene Menashe, which appears to be of particular relevance to our discussion. The chapter examines the effect that this case, which may open an interesting new direction in Israeli views of Jewish immigration and citizenship, may have had on the Bene Ephraim and their relationship with Israeli authorities.

The year 1788 was a difficult one for the Austrian Monarchy, as the first campaign of the war against the Ottoman Empire ended inconclusively. Joseph II and Archduke Franz were away from Vienna, serving with the army. With persistent rumors that the opera buffa troupe was to be disbanded, the Vienna stage was affected by declining attendance rates. Against this background, Don Giovanni faced additional obstacles: the very late arrival of the new prima donna; the pregnancies of two leading singers; the poor reception accorded to newly recruited tenor and bass performers. In August, Joseph II finally announced that Italian opera would be discontinued at the National Theater at the end of the season. He returned to Vienna at the end of the year, a seriously ill man.

In the light of the imminent closure of the opera buffa troupe, Da Ponte arranged a collective benefit for the performers: a lighthearted satirical piece entitled L’ape musicale, which featured the most popular music of recent seasons. His campaign to persuade Joseph II to change his mind over the decision to discontinue Italian opera bore fruit in January 1789, following the Russian victory at Ochakiv, following which a lighter public mood was briefly evident in Vienna. Da Ponte could now offer his pasticcio on behalf of the whole troupe as an expression of gratitude for the reprieve they had been granted.

The British colonial government received requests for assistance in the establishment of charitable institutions in Bombay in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter underscores the role of the colonial government as protector of the European community in Bombay, in contrast with similar efforts towards native communities (ethnic and religious) in the city. In particular, it demonstrates how a study of Bombay’s charitable institutions provides a deeper understanding of what British colonials deemed as “worthy objects of charity” in western India. It is not simply the dichotomy between colonial engagements with charitable institutions for Europeans and native communities that is of interest. What is unexpected and enlightening is that the government's relationship with the charitable institutions of native religious communities---Parsi, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish--was not always the same. Based on these varied engagements, this chapter reveals the colonial government’s complex and diverging ideas of “worth.”