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Correspondence

Apr. 8, 1963

Letter from Bene-Israel Purity Justification Committee Criticizing Plan to Bring Israeli Rabbis to India (1963)

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Letter to Abraham Jhirad about Indian Mebasser Article on Bene Israel and Israeli Marriage Policies (1962)

Dear Abel, I am putting into letter form, special delivery, some of the thoughts I tried to express over the phone this morning. When the new J.P.S. translation was first announced, I did not share the alarm of some of our fellow Orthodox Rabbis. At most, I felt slightly revolted by the cheap publicity. However, I now have some authentic information, in advance of the official publication, that is genuinely alarming and that, I believe, requires immediate action by the R.C.A., which has, at the last Executive Meeting, referred the matter to the Publications Commission for a report in March. My recommendation is that the commission, or preferably a specialized sub-committee of it, report before February 14th, which is the official publication date for the book.The information came to me from a lay scholar who is an observant Jew and who attended a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. (I ask you to keep this particular aspect confidential since I do not want to be revealed to the others.) At this occasion, Prof. \[ ] regaled his learned audience with contemptuous references to Orthodox Jewry, to which he referred as "the lunatic fringe." He maintained that the restraint the translators felt on their account during the preparation of Genesis was almost completely abandoned by the time they reached Deuteronomy.The major departures from the Masoretic tradition should be sought in footnotes throughout the text which refer the reader to "superior readings" in the Samaritan, Vulgate, and—I believe—Septuagint translations.I would like to refer you and the committee to a particular verse which, according to my informant, can best serve as a criterion for loyalty or disloyalty to the Masorah. That is in Genesis 10:10, where four cities are mentioned, in the land of Shinar, as being in the kingdom of Nimrod. Biblical scholars have identified the first three, but have not excavated the fourth, identified in the Bible as Kalach.Non-Masoretic exegetes have …
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Letter from B.J. Israel to Indian Foreign Affairs Committee about Concerns of Visit of Israeli Rabbis (1963)

As a member of the Indian Jewish community, I wish to invite the attention of your Ministry to an impending intrusion of the Govt, of Israel in the internal religious affairs of the community. As you may be aware, the Bene Israel section of the community has been very much exercised over certain discriminatory directives issued by the Chief Rabbinate in Israel which subject members of the community who have migrated to Israel to humiliating questioning if they wish to marry. Instead of following the straightforward course of withdrawing these obnoxious directives, which have been condemned by progressive elements of Jewry the world over, efforts have been made to bring Jewish religious institutions in India under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. As resistance was shown to the reception of a Rabbi deputed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Israel in consultation with the Chief Rabbinate and presumably paid out of Israeli State funds, it has now been arranged to have the Rabbi sponsored by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, with headquarters in New York, since this Union has been helping with guidance and money a local organisation called UOJCI (Address C/o Magen Hassidim Synagogue, 8 Morland Rd. Jacob Circle, Bombay 11-rBC). Apparently the local organisation has accepted the arrangement without realising its dangerous implications.To the reception of a foreign Rabbi and the acceptance of his guidance in deciding complicated questions of Jewish religious law there can be no possible objection, as the community has no trained Rabbis of its own. Nor can there by any objection to such a Rabbi being of Israeli nationality. But the participation of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel (which, it may be explained, is almost a limb of the State machinery in Israel in so far as its rulings in matters of marriage and divorce are enforced by the State) in the deputation of a Rabbi …
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