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Friday June 8, 2007

Collection plumbs the rough edges of Israeli’s Indian subculture

by aron rivin
correspondent

Somewhere in central India, an arranged marriage is set to be finalized, and a veiled bride is escorted by her father toward the canopy. The bride and groom have never met face-to-face, but the dowry has been paid, the ritual gifts of clothing and jewelry given.

Everything is in order, but when the bride’s veil is raised and she turns out to be a half-blind ugly duckling whose face was ravaged by smallpox, all hell breaks loose.

Not your typical Jewish wedding.

The date is November 5, 1930, and the scene is from “Dropped From Heaven,” a book of short stories by Sophie Judah about ethnically Indian Jews living in Jwalanagar, a mythical village in India.

The village may be imaginary, but the community isn’t. The Bene Israel (“Sons of Israel”) are a group of Jews who lived in India for roughly 2,000 years but now reside mostly in Israel. Despite a population of 60,000, many people know little or nothing about them.

For Judah, an Indian-born Jew, “Heaven” was her chance to fill a void of literature written about her own culture.

The book spans 100 years, beginning at the close of the 19th century and ending in the year 2000, during which time the British occupation of India ended, Israel was formed and the majority of Indian Jews began to immigrate to the new Jewish state.

The stories are fiction, but are based on Judah’s own experiences as a woman in a rigidly stratified society.

Most of the tales are from a female perspective: Marriage is a major theme, and Judah shows how tradition acts to cement gender roles marked by inequality. Although no part of the book feels combative or reactionary, when one seething female character refers to herself as “the parasite sex,” the author’s underlying resentment is obvious.

Other themes such as family structure and social class frequently appear. In “The Courtship of Naomi Samuel,” a shameless young man named Itzik tries to court an unmarried girl by extolling his belief in human equality, as well as his disdain for the Indian caste system. Later he objects to the use of Shabbat bread and wine prepared by a non-Jew, saying, “It is unclean. She is a goy.” He is stunned when the girl he hoped to marry swiftly shows him the door and castigates him for being a hypocrite.

Judah’s writing is best when it deals with the minutiae of relationships and family. But when it comes to capturing the darkness of war and death with the same spare language, she struggles. Her writing never stings, never forces readers to be horrified. Perhaps it’s meant to be a bit stiff. After all, “Heaven” is Judah’s portrait of an inflexible culture obsessed with tradition while being forced to change along with the modern world.

“Dropped From Heaven,” by Sophie Judah (256 pages, Schocken Books, $15.64)

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