Sheela Rohekar a Bene Israel Jew is probably the sole-living Jewish Hindi author. In 1978 her first Hindi novel Dinat was published followed by Taviz (2005) Miss Samuel: Ek Yahoodi Gatha (2013) and Pallipaar (2022). She has been awarded the Yashpal Award for Dinat the UP Hindi Sansthan’s Premchand Award for Miss Samuel and the Pen of the Year Award by Hindustan Times.
Madhu Singh is a professor at the Department of English and Modern European Languages University of Lucknow. She has translated G.N. Devy’s A Nomad Called Thief: Reflections on Adivasi Silence into Ghumantu Hai Chor Nahin: Adivasi Maun Par Vimarsh (2017) and Ramchandra Singh’s memoir Thirteen Years: A Naxalite Jail Diary (2018).
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Among the communities that have over the centuries graced the open shores of India one is rarely acknowledged. The Bene Israels one of the ten lost tribes of Israel arrived at the Konkan Coast shipwrecked around 2000 years ago and for generations made the subcontinent their home. This novel—narrated by Miss Seema Samuel an almost 70-year-old Bene Israel living in an old age home—tells their story—of their trials and tribulations love and loss and their longing for ‘Aliyah’ the return to the Promised Land of Israel.
Shifting from the Konkani shores to the bustling streets of Ahmedabad and finally to the tranquillity of an old-age home on the outskirts of Pune each generation of Seema’s family grapples with the tension between their Jewish faith and Indian identity struggling with their fear of persecution and a yearning for acceptance.
Like Isaji Eloji who having married a Hindu Narayani is believed to have ‘blackened’ the Jewish name. Two generations later burdened by his grandfather’s transgression David Reuben stops at nothing to keep his Jewish identity pure even poisoning his daughter Lily for loving a non-Jewish man. Years later his son Samuel David finds that his Jewish identity makes him an outsider in his own country; and his grandson Bobby faces persecution of the worst kind—when he is murdered by a mob in Ahmedabad. Through these shifting tales and intense introspection Seema remains a constant—her memories echoing the past and the present.
Spanning six generations Miss Samuel tells the story of a family a community and a country. Translated into English for the first time Sheela Rohekar’s quiet yet poignant novel is sensitive as it is tender fiction with heart and purpose.
