mumbai, india | In many ways, Queenie Mendoza, 34, is a typical success story for ORT India’s Vocational Training and Computer Center.
She worked as a servant before entering ORT’s beautician program on her employer’s recommendation. After graduating, she started a full-time job in the school’s salon, and has worked there for 13 years.
But Mendoza is not the type of student the founders had in mind when they established the school 45 years ago: She’s Catholic. ORT, an international Jewish organization that provides educational resources and technological training, has a mandate to help Jews.
When the school opened in 1961 in Bombay, as this coastal metropolis used to be known, its student population was almost entirely Jewish. Three years ago, its boys’ school closed due to a lack of Jewish students. Today, only one of the 18 girls studying early childhood care and education is Jewish, according to the program’s coordinator, a ratio consistent across nearly every other vocational course.
In a country where more than 30,000 Jews once lived, only about 5,000 remain, 4,000 of them around Mumbai. To stay open, Jewish schools have had to accept a broader population.
The main factor in the decline is immigration, especially to Israel.
“Young people are migrating to Israel because there are better prospects,” said Elkan Palkar, 29, head of ORT’s computer department. “All families have relatives in Israel.”
This doesn’t mean Jews have no religious life around Mumbai. ORT sells kosher wine, challah, chicken and baked goods. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee runs a Jewish community center for 500 members who attend classes on Hebrew and Judaism, holiday parties, youth discos and clubs for children and seniors.
Rabbi Joshua Kolet, 36, a Mumbai native and the community’s rabbi since 2001, started the Hazon Eli Foundation for Jewish Life in India two years ago to teach Torah, Hebrew and Jewish law in suburban Thane. He runs a Sunday school that attracts about 25 students each week.
But many question whether these measures will re-energize the remnants of a formerly vibrant community.
Mumbai’s remaining Jews are descendants of two communities, the Baghdadis and the Bene Israel. The Baghdadi Jews, who at their peak numbered 5,000, came from Iraq about 250 years ago. After Indian independence virtually all of them left for England, Israel or other countries. Less than 200 Baghdadi Jews remain in Mumbai.
Most of Mumbai’s community is made up of Bene Israel, Jews who trace their origins to a shipwreck off the Maharashtra coast around 175 BCE.
According to legend, the shipwreck left seven Jewish couples from the Galilee living on the Indian coast. Their progeny today speak Marathi and maintain customs peppered with Indian traditions.
For the past half century, the Bene Israel also have been immigrating in large numbers to Israel. There are between 55,000 and 60,000 Bene Israel in Israel today, according to the Jewish Agency.
Today, the largest Bene Israel synagogue in Mumbai, Magen Hassidim, attracts about 60 worshippers on Shabbat. The other synagogues get fewer than 30 worshippers.
According to community leaders, aliyah has slowed over the past decade — particularly in the past two or three years — and Mumbai’s Jewish population has remained constant.
“If the community wants to continue, it’s viable,” Kolet said. “And the community doesn’t want to move.”