What Helped India’s Jewish Communities Preserve and Read the Hebrew Bible?

A history of readers, not only surviving books

India’s Jewish communities preserved the Hebrew Bible through much more than keeping old books. Scribes copied it, teachers explained it, congregations heard it, and families carried its stories into regional languages. Preservation meant maintaining materials and helping people understand what they received. It also involved disagreements about learning, authority, and belonging. The surviving evidence lets us see some of that work without imagining that every community followed the same path.

First, a Torah scroll is not a scroll of the entire Hebrew Bible. It contains the five books of Moses. The larger Jewish collection, the Tanakh, also includes the Prophets and the Writings. A bound study Bible and a scroll prepared for synagogue reading therefore serve different purposes. David Stern’s material history explains why the shape of a book matters alongside its words. Calling every Hebrew object a Bible would obscure what its users actually did with it. ¹

Three communities are especially important here. Kerala’s Jews developed Malayalam religious and domestic traditions. The Bene Israel of the Konkan and western India used Marathi. The later Baghdadi communities of Bombay and Calcutta drew people from several West Asian regions, including places beyond Baghdad. These names identify different histories of settlement, language, and organization. They should not become interchangeable labels for one timeless Indian Jewish culture. ^{2, 3}

Their beginnings also require restraint. A community’s cherished account of arrival is evidence of how people understood their past, but it does not establish an ancient itinerary. Ophira Gamliel compares premodern letters and legal discussions rather than assuming centuries of complete isolation. Shalva Weil’s examination of a Bene Israel officer likewise distinguishes a remembered Torah journey from later documentary evidence. Respect for memory and scrutiny of a historical claim belong together. ^{4, 5}

What a scroll can show

A manuscript carries evidence of work. Thomas Yeates’s 1812 description of a Pentateuch brought from Cochin counted leather sheets and columns and noticed repairs. Decades later, Schiller-Szinessy’s Cambridge catalogue distinguished hands and retouched portions in the scroll. Those observations make copying and maintenance visible. They also warn against assigning every part of a repaired object a single original date. An old appearance cannot establish when Jewish people first reached India. ^{6, 7}

Nor is every Hebrew scroll biblical. Columbia’s exhibition of Hebrew manuscripts includes a 1781 scroll recounting the history of Cochin’s Jews. Its format might look familiar to someone expecting a Torah, but its contents belong to community history. The distinction is useful whenever photographs circulate without explanations: the script, material, contents, and purpose of an object all need attention. A Hebrew title or rolled shape is only the beginning of identification. ⁸

The Hebrew Inscriptions in Kerala project describes a manuscript world containing biblical interpretation alongside liturgy, poetry, history, and medicine. Hebrew books could include Malayalam glosses or translations. These were working libraries with several kinds of knowledge. The range helps us avoid imagining that a synagogue’s books formed one undifferentiated sacred text, or that using a local language meant abandoning Hebrew. ⁹

Reading also had a place. Kerala Museum’s account distinguishes the raised reading platform from the ark where Torah scrolls were kept. Storage and public reading required different arrangements within the same building. In an oral history, synagogue custodian Elias Josephai remembered a hall that had served as a Hebrew school as well as a Sabbath meeting space. The building connected learning with gathering; its furniture was part of that practical life. ^{10, 11}

Learning across languages and distances

A visitor could notice understanding as well as pronunciation. In his 1832 travel account, Rabbi David D’Beth Hillel described Cochin readers who knew Hebrew Scripture and could explain it in Malayalam. His observations do not measure the ability of every person. They do challenge the assumption that local Jewish life consisted of reciting unfamiliar sounds without understanding. The traveler also disputed conclusions about antiquity made by the Christian collector Claudius Buchanan. Jewish readers could evaluate the claims visitors made about them. ¹²

Scripture helped organize time as well. Richard Marks’s study of Jacob Sapir’s 1860 journey through southern India shows the traveler locating his movements by Hebrew months and the weekly Torah portions. A reading cycle provided a way to describe arrival, departure, and Sabbath rest. The Bible belonged within a recurring pattern of life, rather than existing only as a volume opened for occasional private study. ¹³

Books moved through relationships that local Jews actively cultivated. Mascha van Dort traces Ezekiel Rahabi’s efforts to have Cochin prayer texts printed. A handwritten local book, contacts in the Netherlands, and the Proops press contributed to the 1757 Amsterdam publication. The resulting volume preserved distinctive Cochin material. Printing was possible through a network, but the desire to preserve and circulate these texts was already present among their Indian users. ¹⁴

Religious contact did not guarantee religious agreement. Alexander van der Haven examines Rahabi’s exchanges with Danish missionaries, who sent Christian texts and hoped to persuade him. Rahabi sought Hebrew books while disagreeing with their theology. The same contact could mean prospective conversion to a missionary and an opportunity to acquire and discuss books to a Jewish reader. A history of learning must attend to both purposes rather than assume the sender determined the outcome. ¹⁵

Bene Israel teachers and Marathi books

Bene Israel learning also depended on people moving between communities. Kehimkar’s community history remembers teachers from Cochin, vernacular explanations, and a knowledgeable bookbinder who answered scriptural questions. His account has its own judgments about religious improvement, which should not be treated as neutral descriptions of earlier believers. Its concrete details nevertheless show that learning took place through conversation and skilled work as well as through formal institutions. ¹⁶

Teaching Hebrew involved several abilities. Mitch Numark identifies an arrangement at the Israelite School in which Cochin teachers taught cantillation, the patterned chanting of the text, while a Bene Israel teacher handled Hebrew grammar. Sound, grammatical understanding, and interpretation were related tasks, but they were not identical. A student might develop them through different teachers. This makes the simple question of whether someone knew Hebrew less informative than asking what that person could read, explain, or teach. ¹⁷

Christian institutions were another route to texts. The American Marathi Mission’s 1882 retrospective reported that much of its 1833 edition of Exodus went to Jewish readers and that demand prompted another edition. That tells us something about circulation and interest. It does not tell us that recipients accepted Christian teaching. A book could pass through a mission press and enter a Jewish household for purposes rooted in Jewish faith. ¹⁸

Marathi books also required decisions about script. Sarah Beckham’s study of historical print documents distinguishes translated texts from devices for representing Hebrew sounds in Devanagari. Translation gives words meaning in another language; transliteration helps a reader pronounce words written in another script. Neither operation by itself guarantees the other. Primers, charts, and parallel texts answered different learning needs, and their use shows readers working through those needs rather than simply receiving a finished religious inheritance. ¹⁹

Institutions within the community supported that work. The Smithsonian’s study of Marathi prayerbooks identifies Joseph Ezekiel Rajpurkar as translator, the Bene Israel Improvement Society as publisher, and the Gunpat Krushnajee Press as printer. Naming all three reveals a chain of responsibility behind a religious book. Translator, sponsoring association, and press workers each made a contribution. These prayerbooks also remind us to distinguish biblical texts from liturgies that incorporate Scripture. ²⁰

The wider printing record includes primers, grammars, religious literature, and Marathi verse dramas, as an announcement of the Jewish Indian collection explains. Bible reading belonged within this larger supply of educational material. Later schooling continued to combine languages. Vivian Hafif-Digmi’s study of Rebecca Reuben cites a 1934 visitor describing Marathi instruction, the subsequent addition of English, and Hebrew as a second language in her school. Jewish education could prepare children for several linguistic worlds at once. ^{21, 22}

Hearing the text at home and in public

Reading was not equally available to everyone. Katz and Goldberg document disputes in Cochin over who could receive honors associated with public Torah reading. A. B. Salem and others challenged exclusions, and changes came unevenly. This history prevents us from treating a carefully preserved scroll as proof that every member enjoyed equal participation. A community could value its sacred books while still needing to confront injustice in the way people gathered around them. ²³

Women’s practices also widen the record. Anna Schultz’s fieldwork describes Bene Israel women studying Torah in Marathi with notebooks and photocopies. Their reading and discussion were Jewish religious activity in their own right. They complicate any account that equates religious learning exclusively with a public male office or with fluency in Hebrew. A familiar language could make close attention to Scripture possible. ²⁴

Malayalam songs offered another setting. Barbara Johnson’s earlier study shows women copying notebooks and learning with older singers. ⁴¹ Her later account describes Ruby Daniel pressing for further translation and collaboration with Malayalam scholar Scaria Zacharia. ²⁵ A 2016 essay follows renewed performance through recordings and rehearsal. ²⁶ Varghese and Parui’s analysis emphasizes the responsibility associated with inherited notebooks. ²⁷ Preservation could join a treasured object with people willing to learn from it.

These songs included biblical narratives, but they also included wedding songs, devotional poetry, and community memories. Johnson cautions that researchers’ categories do not necessarily reproduce the singers’ own categories. We therefore should not call the entire repertoire a sung Bible. The songs show how biblical material entered a broader religious and cultural life, with performers making connections that a list of book titles would miss. ⁴¹

Baghdadi households and a connected print world

The Baghdadi record similarly requires looking beyond prominent merchant families. Jael Silliman’s reconstruction of Farha’s household describes women with differing degrees of Hebrew knowledge, including some who could read Psalms. That family history does not represent every woman in Calcutta. It does reveal religious activity in households that a history focused on wealthy benefactors could overlook. Learning, observance, and resources were unevenly distributed within communities as well as between them. ²⁸

Printed evidence makes some vernacular uses visible. LaVerne Poussaint’s account of the Valmadonna exhibition identifies Indian imprints including Ecclesiastes in Judeo Arabic and Song of Songs in Aramaic and Judeo Arabic. Such examples locate individual biblical books within a multilingual reading world. They do not mean every Baghdadi reader possessed the same library. They show why Hebrew literacy, spoken language, and access to translated material should be investigated separately. ²⁹

Passover books offer a particularly concrete example of adaptation. Shalom Sabar compares the illustrated 1846 Bombay Haggadah with the later Poona edition, where figures preparing for the festival wear local dress. The Haggadah joins biblical passages with explanations, prayers, and the order of the household ceremony. It is not simply another title for Exodus. Images and translations helped a familiar religious narrative speak within the setting in which families actually lived. ³⁰

Song required similar distinctions. Sara Manasseh explains conventions for representing the Hebrew sounds of Babylonian Jewish praise singing. The repertoire included religious poetry alongside biblical material. Her research on Bombay performers also brings a Hebrew teacher and printer into an ensemble whose members came from several Jewish backgrounds. A community’s religious life could cross linguistic and social boundaries through cooperation, even where other relations between communities remained tense. ^{31, 32}

Care, custody, and the next reader

Preserving manuscripts also raises questions about who controlled their removal. Buchanan’s own account describes local opposition when he sought records in Cochin, followed by the involvement of magistrate Thomas Flower. Rebecca Jefferson places that transaction within the history of manuscript collecting. The fact that a document survives in a famous library does not settle whether everyone involved welcomed its departure. Care for an object and fairness toward its owners are questions that must be considered together. ^{33, 34}

The routes of later manuscripts were different. Cambridge’s 1982 newsletter records the allocation of two Cochin liturgical manuscripts from the Sassoon estate. The Magnes exhibition describes collecting in Kerala during the 1960s and 1970s and the work of identifying material in several languages. These institutional histories help explain where evidence can be studied. They also reveal that surviving records are dispersed, while photographs, copies, catalogue descriptions, and original objects offer different kinds of access. ^{35, 36}

Living custodians belong in this history too. Josephai described obtaining a Torah scroll for his Ernakulam synagogue and receiving help with its restoration from neighbors of other religions. These are his recollections of a particular project. They give preservation a human scale: someone remained, sought assistance, accepted responsibility for a place, and wanted later visitors to recognize the Jewish presence there. A restored building could support memory without turning its community into a vanished abstraction. ¹¹

Transmission also continued through teaching and discussion after migration. Joan Roland records Marathi religious debate and translation within Bene Israel networks. Her later research in America describes differing preferences for familiar Indian liturgy and more accessible English services. Preserving a tradition could require explaining it afresh to younger people, while acknowledging that their needs differed from those of their parents. Keeping a book was one responsibility; making its language and practice intelligible was another. ^{37, 38}

A Christian reason to listen carefully

For Pentecostal Christians, this history invites gratitude and humility. Paul addresses Gentile believers in Romans 11 and warns them, “Boast not against the branches.” The surrounding passage considers Israel, faith, God’s mercy, and the danger of arrogance. It offers no permission to turn living Jewish neighbors into mere illustrations of a Christian story. Reading Scripture faithfully includes paying attention to the people whose histories we describe and refusing claims that the evidence cannot carry. ³⁹

Katharina von Kellenbach’s discussion of Christian repentance argues that respect must change how Christians teach and represent Judaism. That principle has an ordinary historical application: distinguish a Jewish prayerbook from a Bible, recognize a translator’s labor, and listen when a community’s account complicates a collector’s report. Christian confidence need not depend on overlooking another community’s agency. Truthful attention is itself a way to honor our neighbors. ⁴⁰

India’s Jewish biblical heritage endured through materials, knowledge, relationships, and repeated acts of care. Some practices changed; some were contested; some became difficult to pass on. The people who copied a text, taught its grammar, explained it in Marathi or Malayalam, or prepared a place for its reading made preservation possible. Learning their history can deepen our own willingness to teach patiently, preserve responsibly, and receive the past with both thankfulness and care.