Mumbai's Reform Jewish Community Celebrates Rosh Hashana With US Rabbi Stacey Blank Amid Ongoing Challenges

Mumbai: India's Jews form a tiny minority of some 4000 people. The Reform group among them, numbering just a few hundred, are an even smaller minority among them. They have no rabbi, with lay members leading religious services in rented halls because their only synagogue in Mumbai, at Byculla, was burned down in the 1993 riots.

This week, as the worldwide Jewish community celebrates Rosh Hashana, their New Year, Mumbai's Reform Jewish welcomed a woman rabbi from the United States who is guiding them through one of the holiest periods in their religious calendar.

Rabbi Stacey Blank, who is from Cleveland, said she has been astonished by the history of the Reform movement, also called Progressive Judaism, in India. The movement was brought to India in 1925 by an Indian Jewish doctor training in the United Kingdom.

Dr Jerusha Jhirad, a Padma Shri-awarded gynecologist and obstetrician who had trained in London. Dr Jhirad, who later became the superintendent of Cama and Albless Hospital, was influenced by the reform movement that had taken root in Germany and the rest of Europe in the nineteenth and wanted to establish the belief in India. "That a woman began a community in India is amazing," said Blank

The reform movement, which began in the West in the nineteenth century, was influenced by the Protestant reformation in the Christian Church in Europe. "Jews in Europe lived in closed areas, often forced into ghettos. If you left, you had to assimilate so you could be part of the larger society," said Blank, who is from the World Union for Progressive Judaism which was founded in 1926 in the United Kingdom. The Reform movement provided an alternative to those who wanted to live in modern society and also stay Jewish, said Blank.

Apart from allowing women to become rabbis, Progressive Jews do not follow gender segregation during worship. Their prayers are written in both Hebrew and English so that everyone understands them. "A rabbi in Orthodox Judaism is a judge interpreting Jewish law, but in the Reform sect the rabbi is a teacher," said Blank. "We also sing a lot," Blank said. "We are open to prayers outside the prayer book. If there are no prayers for a particular occasion we make one up. We are open to new things."

There are also ideological differences in which the Progressive sect looks at redemption. While the Orthodox prayers have Israel at its core, Reform Jews end religious services with a prayer for the world.

The war in the Middle East has concerned Jews across the world. "We are experiencing anti-Semitism in places like America. It is a difficult time," Blank added.