Hiraeth-What Remains
Photography project on the Jewish community of Ahmedabad
May - June 2022
Jewish Schools of Ahmedabad
Jewish community of Ahmedabad have immensely contributed to the city by establishing city's first few English medium schools. Since times have changed and the community shrinked to few hundreds currently no kids from jewish community studies in these schools and to keep the secular nature of education no religious symbols of any kind is used inside school which symbolises their jewish administration.
While the walk around 'Best school' I met Robin who is the only Jewish staff currently working for the institution.
Classical school which was one of the first few english medium schools in Ahmedabad.
Families and Portraits
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Reuben David wearing his army cap, while Gujarat riots ruined the city and its people he lead the army group for bringing people to control.
Serena David wearing Kippa ( head cap ) while praying.
Agarwarkar family house
Bension Agarwarkar at his house
Old photographs of migrated family members from Bension Agarwarkar's house
From the left Bension Agarwarker's eldest sister Flora, grand niece Amaira and another sister Diana. Flora continued to wear dresses following the Jewish custome of wearing dress as an unmarried women.
Inside the synagogue
Johnny Pingle narrating friday prayer at synagogue. Johnny Pingle shifted abroad to learn hebrew and prayers, after the training he shifted back to Ahmedabad to be the Rabbi at present synagogue.
Centuries old prayer lamp inside synagogue
Prayer book from the synagogue.
Inside the synagogue for friday prayers
Archives
Oldest Archive from the collection of Esther David portraying the early community of 1850s migrated from Maharashtra, observing the photograph closely we can observe how the Marathi community slowly absorbed Gujarati way of living from the small thing of shifting direction of wearing saree and slowly adopting wearing a cap. The unmarried women in Jewish community followed a custom of wearing a dress over saree, the married women also stopped wearing sandals to show their toe rings.
Archive from the collection of Serene David, showing the marriage picture of Serena to Col. Reuben David
Documentation of Jewish cemetaries.
I documented a series of Photographs from Jewish cemetrary of Baroda,Old Jewsish cemetary of Ahmedabad and New Jewish cemetary of Ahmedabad.In between the plants and trees lied some of the most beautiful grave stones ,hiding behind an era of history that people around forgot to find significance in.There lied grave stones of survivors of german holocaust , jewish people of british armies to the early ancestors of current jewish community of ahmedabad. I observed inscriptions of stone writing from 1876 in Marathi and 1926 in Gujarathi showing how the community was adapting to their new surroundings. The stone graveyards lies as abandoned corners in the cities hoping for attention from the authorities
Mala Patel and her son
While visiting cemeteries I attended 5th day death ceremony of Mala Patel's mother, as the funeral progressed I saw people around me smelling a leaf and throwing it backwards. As an outsider to the ritual I asked Mala what is the significance of the leaf , Mala just smiled and said even she don't know the significance. After the rituals Mala approached me and narrated her story of arriving at cemetery today. Mala shared story about her mother who was a Jew married to a Hindu but it was her last wish to sleep in a Jewish grave with all the rituals and prayers, she and her son arrived that day to fulfil her last wish.
Though Jewish communities followed marrying inside the community as time went by people often could never find matches inside their circles. Many older populations of Ahmedabad thus turned unmarried individuals and a few decided to leave the community to marry outside. Since there are much more opportunities outside many youth migrated to outside countries and also due to the growing tension as a minority in the state the community shrinked to few hundreds in past few years and are slowly washing away from the cities of Gujarat drastically.