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Today Shalom Aaron Copen is a forgotten name
in Calcutta. But in 1790 this Jewish jeweler from Aleppo ( in Syria)
had added a new dimension to the city’s milieu. Choen’s
tryst with Calcutta had sowed the seeds for the future generation of
Jews to make this city their home. Shalom was a descendant of exiles
who fled from Spain during the Spanish inquisition. The story goes
that Shalom had first dropped anchor on the shores of the Arabian Sea
and ventured to set up a fairly thriving business in Surat together
with a wealthy Jew named Jacob Semah. But the lure of the muslins of
Dcca and Murshidabad silks proved irresistible for these two Jew
merchants. As shiploads of silk, muslin and indigo sailed for
Baghdad (Iraq) Shalom’s business in Calcutta flourished like
never before. But prosperity in business did not draw Shalom away
from dabbling in the art of jewl making.
We are told that Shalom traveled to Lucknow in the
early half of the 19th century and visited the durbar
(court) of Ghazi Haider, the meperor of Oudh. Harider was so
impressd by Shalom’s mastery of gems that he appointed him as
Court Jeweller of the Oudh royalty. History relates that when he
journeyed back to Calcutta around the 1820s after a three year
sojourn in Lucknow a train of five dozen soliders and oddboys, 14
carriages and palanquins and nearly 100 attendants accompanied this
Jewish businessman.
That Shalom Cohen had climbed enviable heights
amongst the elite of Calcutta is evident from the fact that he was
even invited by the Governor General of India, Lord William Bentinck.
The influx of Jews into Calcutta had in fact begun
in trickles from the early years of the 19th century.
These immigrant Jews predominatly hailed from the Baghdad lineage.
Iran, in those years, witnessed a mass exodus of Jews fuelled by King
Daud Pasha’s chaotic rule.
The arrival of two Jewish men in the second decade
of the 19th century heralded a remarkable chapter in the
history of Calcutta’s Jew community. Moses Duek Cohen and
Joseph Ezra. Moses, remembered as the foretunner of Baghdad
habitants in Calcutta, was later to transcreate his Calcutta
experience in a well known Hebreq book titled Kaneh Muddah. What
however appears to have transformed Jewish life in the city is the
pervasive influence of the Ezra family.
Joseph Ezra left for Baghdad soon after exploring
business avenues in Calcutta. But it was not long before Joseph’s
eldest son David Joseph Ezra returned to this city and set about
creating what in time became the Ezra legend. David’s export,
of indigo, silk and rice, spread to Baghdad, Aleppo, Damascus,
Zanzibar and Muscat.
David Joseph possessed an uncanny foresight. As
his coffers swelled he invested a sizeable fortune in real estate.
Many who imagined at the time that David was building castles in the
air rued their luck as property values spiraled over the years. The
Ezra business finally grew into a staggering industrial empire under
Sir David Ezra (a great-grandson of Joseph Ezra and the last of the
Ezra moghuls in Calcutta) by the third decade of the 20th
century.
Another man who turned big time amongst Jew
entrepreneurs of mid 20th century Calcutta was Benjamin
Nassim Elias. Elias had emerged from obscurity in Calcutta’s
jute and gunny trade and ended up forming the giant B.N. Elias
conglomerate of companies which made him one of the most powerful
industrial magnets of the day.
Interestingly, till Jewish dominance receded from
this city, Sir David Ezra had remained the unrivalled monarch of real
estate in Calcutta. A curious trait in Sir David personality was his
naturalist’s bend of mind. He had assiduously collected stocks
of rare birds, swans (from the the king’s swannery), golden
turkeys and tortoises. Onw hears that zebras and deer gambolled in
the sprawling lawns of David Ezra’s Calcutta mansion.
The reign of the Ezras infused life into Jewish
construction activities in Calcutta. Together with the setting up of
the Ezra Hospital and the Ezra Benevolent Fund the city’s three
Jew Synagogues were also engineered. Beth El was considered the most
imposing synagogue in the East when it was built in 1850. The Maghen
David (the last synagogue) indeed reshaped the city’s skyline at
the close of the 19th century. Architecturally Italian,
the towering floral-carved pillars of the Maghen were shipped from
Paris by the Ezras.
While the presence of the Ezra was instrumental in
attracting their brethrens form Baghdad to settle in Calcutta, the
Manhigim (the immense authority then wielded by the synagogues)
passed into the hands of the Ezra family. The outcome was a
feudalistic society which engendered disparities and left a wide
cross section of Jew households to wallow in deprivation.
At this juncture a man named Ezra Arakie provided
the impulse to a liberal minded group of Jews who rose to rid
Calcutta’s Jew citizenry of the evils that plagued it. A flurry
of endeavours that marked the ensuring five decades till the Jewish
emigration was sparked off by Israel’s liberation after the
Second World War, truly vitalized Jewish lifestream in Calcutta.
From a radical turn that Calcutta’s Jewish
life took gre the Jewish school for Boys and Girls, the Elias Meyer
Free School (founded by a millionaire by the same name) and the
Jeshuran Free School which became heavens of learning for numerous
Jewish children who were languishing in neglect. Medical facilities
were enhanced to nurse the ailing with the founding of the Musleah
Memorial Clinic.
The formation of the Jewish Women’s League in
about these times set space civil liberty movements. Two Jewish
clubs also sprung up in the city’s cultural scene. The Judean
and Maccabi clubs evolved as haunts for social intermingling.
One learns that during the years the Maccabi had become the hub
of entertainment and leisure for battle-scarred Jewish soldiers.
Two centuries have passed since Shalom Choen
traversed the rolling seas and reached Calcutta in quest of a dream.
Vanished into the mists of time is Jacob Saphir, the 19th
century Jew traveler, who in his awe described Calcutta as the
“emporium of nations”. Long gone is David Mordecai the
landscape photographer of the thirties who has painstakingly
documented even the most inaccessible terrain of the Indian
subcontinent. Even to this day a treasure chest of close to 15000
negative frames carefully catalogued and preserved at the Calcutta
home of the Mordecais’ bear testimony to this missionary
lensman.
A couple of Jewish schools, the Beth El and Maghen
David synagogues, a period confectionery shop called Nahoums and a
clutch of 90 surviving Jews now glimmer as beacons of those
incredible wanderers from Baghdad.
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