14 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 26 NO 6, DECEMBER 2010

Yulia Egorova and

Shahid Perwez
Yulia Egorova is Lecturer
in Anthropology at the
University of Durham.
She is the author of Jews
and India: Perceptions and
image (Routledge 2006) and
co-author (with T. Parfitt)
of Genetics, mass media
and identity: A case study of
the genetic research on the
Lemba and the Bene Israel
(Routledge 2006). Her email
is Yulia.egorova@durham.
ac.uk.
Shahid Perwez is a
postdoctoral Research
Associate in the Department
of Anthropology at the
University of Durham.
Following completion of the
study on the Bene Ephraim,
he is now working on a book
based on his PhD thesis, on
female infanticide and sex-
selective abortion in Tamil
Nadu. His email is shahid.
perwez@durham.ac.uk.
Fig. 1. Bene Ephraim elders
presiding over a wedding.
The Children of Ephraim
Being Jewish in Andhra Pradesh
In February 2010 Zoek de Verschillen, a programme
produced by the Dutch Jewish TV channel, featured an
episode on the Bene Ephraim of Andhra Pradesh. Zoek
de Verschillen, which translates as Spot the difference,
could probably be described as a reality TV show in
which young Jewish men and women from Holland visit
Jewish communities in different parts of the world. In
each episode, the protagonist is taken to the airport and
handed a sheet of paper with the name of an exotic place
where they will be spending a week with a local Jewish
family.
In the case of Eli, a young Orthodox Jewish man from
Amsterdam, it was the village of Chebrole in India, the
home of the Bene Ephraim a community of Madiga
untouchables in Andhra Pradesh. In the late 1980s the
Bene Ephraim declared that they belonged to one of the
Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and expressed a wish to repat-
riate to the Jewish state.
1
The community is led by the two
brothers Shmuel and Sadok Yacobi and maintains a
synagogue, which is now regularly attended by about 100
people from the Madiga community.
In the programme, after spending a week with the
Yacobis and other community members, Eli arrives at the
conclusion that although he sympathizes with the Bene
Ephraim movement and appreciates their devotion to
Judaism, he doubts that they could be considered Jewish
from the Orthodox perspective. He accepts that he can see
them as his brothers, but not as Jewish brothers. Elis
explanation for his position is that they lack a genealogy
to prove beyond doubt that they are Jewish. He therefore
concludes that the desire of the Bene Ephraim to move to
the state of Israel will remain a dream that is unlikely to
be realized.
* * *
One of us (Yulia) first learnt about the Bene Ephraim
in 2001 while researching the more conventional
Jewish communities of India and Indian attitudes towards
Judaism.
2
We have now been working with this group for
over a year and have had a chance to observe their prac-
tice and to discuss the life and history of the community
at length with the Yacobi family and other Bene Ephraim.
Like Eli, we were impressed with the level of sincerity
and devotion to Judaism and Jewish culture that the com-
munity amply demonstrated. In their everyday life com-
munity members strive to observe Jewish dietary laws
(kashrut), rules of circumcision, and the main Jewish holi-
days and Sabbath, notwithstanding the fact that this has led
to them losing the support of their previous Christian ben-
efactors (back in the 19th century the ancestors of the Bene
Ephraim were converted to Christianity by an American
Baptist mission).
For many of them it has also meant having to sacrifice
Saturday wages, as the majority of the Bene Ephraim are
agricultural labourers and are now expected to work six
days a week. Community members have been actively
learning Hebrew and studying Jewish law. One significant
outcome of these practices is that many Bene Ephraim
children and young people now consider themselves to be
first and foremost Jewish, as this is the tradition that they
grew up with. All the community members have unequivo-
cally expressed the desire to live in the state of Israel. Why,
then, did Eli posit that their migration to Israel was not
likely to happen, and why did he think that, despite their
devotion to Judaism, the Bene Ephraim were not Jewish
after all?
Firstly, he suggested that their practices were still not
entirely orthodox. Indeed, community members them-
selves admit that since their ancestors did not have a
chance to practise Judaism openly, they had forgotten
We would like to thank
Gwynned de Looijer and
Jan de Ruiter for their help
in translating episodes of
the Zoek de Verschillen
programme into English. The
study on which this paper
is based was funded by the
Rothschild Foundation and
the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (reference
AH/G010463/1) and we are
grateful for this support. We
also wish to thank the two
anonymous AT reviewers for
their helpful comments.
S
H
A
H
I
D

P
E
R
W
E
Z
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 26 NO 6, DECEMBER 2010 15
most of it, and are now slowly learning it almost from
scratch. Secondly, Eli particularly emphasized that they
had no genealogy, and that they could not prove that their
mothers were Jewish. How does this assertion fit with the
narratives the Bene Ephraim have about their origin?
From Israel to Andhra
In 2002 Shmuel Yacobi published a book entitled The cul-
tural hermeneutics, offering an account of the history of
the community which may be summarized as follows. The
Bene Ephraim descended from the tribes of Israel, who in
722 BCE were exiled from the ancient kingdom of Israel
by the Assyrians. After their sojourn in Persia, they moved
to the northern part of the subcontinent, which was then
populated by Dravidian groups. In the seventh century
BCE the subcontinent was conquered by the Aryans, who
established the caste system and relegated the Dravidians
and the Bene Ephraim to the positions of Shudras and the
untouchables respectively. Both groups were later moved
to the south of India, where they now reside.
The current state of affairs in the community is explained
as an unfortunate result of the further advance of Aryan
rule, under which the Bene Ephraim lost their status and
political significance, were reduced to poverty and, left
with very few means of maintaining their tradition, almost
forgot it. The book claimed that at the time of writing only
a few Bene Ephraim were aware of their Israelite origin
and they are now concentrated in Kothareddypalem hamlet
of Chebrole village in Andhra Pradesh (Yacobi 2002).
From the accounts of the Yacobis, and of their village
neighbours, it appears that the community began practising
Judaism only in the late 1980s. Their main synagogue was
built in 1991. Their neighbours do not remember them
being anything other than Madiga Christians before that.
However, the Yacobis maintain that their parents and
grandparents had been aware of their Israelite origin and
had practised Judaism in secret for a long time. In an illu-
minating conversation in the courtyard of the synagogue,
Shmuel told Shahid Perwez:
Thirty years ago, in the same place where we are sitting now,
my grandmother once said that we would soon go back to
Israel. Though she said this in response to our complaint of the
intolerable noise from the adjoining Hindu temple, I became
serious and asked why we do not return to Israel now. I already
knew through the newspapers that the two of the tribes (Judah
and Benyamin) had been returning to Israel since 1948 and so I
asked my grandmother. She said we (the Ephraims) are chosen
for taking sufferings on us. We have to stay back and fulfil the
Covenant.
The second half of the 20th century witnessed mass con-
versions of untouchables in India to Buddhism (famously
initiated by Dr B.R. Ambedkar), Islam and Christianity.
The objective of these conversions was to liberate these
communities from the stigma associated with their status
in the caste system. Madiga untouchables the community
the Bene Ephraim stem from probably have the lowest
status in Andhra Pradesh. Madigas have traditionally been
associated with shoemaking and agricultural labour, and
continue in these activities today. Demographically, the
Madigas constitute 46.94% of the total scheduled caste
population of the state, which the 2001 census put at
twelve million.
3
The Judaization of the Bene Ephraim has been
described as Jewish liberation theology, as its objec-
tive appears to be to challenge the position of this com-
munity in the Indian caste system (Francisco 1997). The
Christianization of their ancestors in the 19th century did
not allow them to escape untouchable status, which is not
surprising given that in the caste system elective associa-
tion with a group cannot form a solid basis for asserting
a new identity, and Christian universalism could not help
them to change their status.
Grounding their identity in the discourse of the Lost
Tribes would mean claiming physical kinship with a com-
munity completely foreign to the caste system, and might
thus provide Bene Ephraim with an opportunity to disso-
ciate themselves from it. In fact, some of their legends are
reminiscent of those of other Madiga groups suggesting
that their ancestors had had a higher status. Robert Deliege
argues that the narratives of origin of a range of untouch-
able groups in India often explain how their ancestors
lost their higher status by mistake or as a punishment
(Deliege 1993).
Fig. 2. Bene Ephraim
men at a Sabbath service
at the synagogue in
Kothareddypalem, Chebrole.
1. For a detailed discussion
of the history of the Lost
Tribes discourse see Parfitt
2002, Ben-Dor Benite 2009.
2. For more information
about the Jews of India see,
among others, Isenberg 1998,
Katz 2000, Roland 1999,
Katz et al. 2007, Weil 2002.
For Indian perceptions of the
Jewish culture see Egorova
2006.
3. For detailed information
on the Madiga see Charseley
2004, Singh 1969, Still 2009.
4. See editorial in Dalit
Voice, 1-15 October 2004,
vol. 23: 19.
5. The Bnei Menashe
(also known as Shinlung)
movement emerged in
the early 1950s from the
Christianized tribes of Chin,
Kuki, Lushai and Mizo settled
in Mizoram, Manipur, Assam
and the plains of Burma.
Once introduced to the
Bible at the end of the 19th
century, these communities
found parallels between
ancient Jewish customs and
their indigenous traditions.
This led some of them to the
conclusion that their tribes
were of Jewish origin. In
the 1970s, the leaders of the
movement began to seek
contact with Israeli authorities
with a view to obtaining
permission to settle in Israel,
and with Jewish organizations
in the diaspora (Samra 1992,
1996, Weil 1997, 2003,
Halkin 2002).
6. Tanakh is a name used
in Judaism for the Hebrew
Bible.
S
H
A
H
I
D

P
E
R
W
E
Z
16 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 26 NO 6, DECEMBER 2010
The Judaization of the Bene Ephraim has been dis-
missed by some commentators as an attempt by a former
untouchable community to change its members position
in the local hierarchy, or to improve their material cir-
cumstances by moving to the state of Israel. Their claims
have been ridiculed by their upper-caste Hindu neighbours
and by critics from the Dalit movement.
4
In the TV pro-
gramme, Eli suggests that the Bene Ephraim probably
consider Judaism a solution out of their current situa-
tion. However, does this association with untouchability
warrant immediate scepticism about the Jewishness of the
Bene Ephraim?
From Dalits to Bene Ephraim
The Yacobis stressed from the very beginning of our inter-
actions with them that their low-caste status had nothing to
do with the emergence of the Bene Ephraim. However, on
a number of occasions Shmuel Yacobi admitted to us that
his research and activism towards finding the Israelite con-
nection was partially driven by observing and pondering
over his fellow members sufferings and exploitation at the
hands of higher castes. When he was a child, he himself
was refused a glass of water by a woman who belonged to
a high caste. His mother told him stories of how she was
made to sit separately at school, often outside the class-
room, and to use the sand floor to write on instead of a slate
or board. The local tea and food stall in the village in those
days, if ever it served them, did so through the back door of
the shop so as not to discomfort its high-caste customers.
Eli is right that it is impossible to prove beyond doubt
that the Bene Ephraim history goes back to ancient Israel.
There is no evidence that would document their Jewish
practice earlier than the late 1980s. In this respect the story
of the Bene Ephraim reminds us that Judaism cannot be
unproblematically described as an ethnocentric religion.
Despite the fact that it does not see itself as a proselyt-
izing tradition, it certainly allows conversions. Moreover,
over the last century Judaism has attracted a significant
number of groups who, like the Bene Ephraim, are willing
to embrace Jewish beliefs and practices. Some such groups
emerged with the help of Christian missionaries who
turned to Judaism to explain new and exotic communi-
ties (Parfitt and Trevisan Semi 2002). Lost tribes also fig-
ured in colonial representations of various communities of
the subcontinent: for instance, it has been suggested that
the Ten Lost Tribes were found in Afghanistan, Kashmir
7. Aliyah (ascent in
Hebrew) is a term used to
designate the migration of
Jews to the state of Israel
under the Law of Return.
8. The term Sephardi, in
its strict sense, refers to the
descendants of Spanish Jews,
who were expelled from
Spain in 1492. However, in
popular parlance in Israel it
has come to include all non-
Ashkenazi Jews (Ben-Rafael
and Sharot 1991).
9. Since the emergence
of the state of Israel its
authorities have been very
keen on establishing and
maintaining good relations
with India and securing its
support in the Arab-Israeli
conflict (Kumaraswamy
1995).
10. Shavei Israel is
Hebrew for Israel returns.
For more information on the
activities of this organization
in respect of Bnei Menashe,
see http://www.shavei.
org/en/Community.
aspx?Name=Bnei+Menashe

Ben-Dor Benite, Z. 2009. The
Ten Lost Tribes: A world
history. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Bruder, E. 2008. The Black
Jews of Africa: History,
religion, identity. New
York: Oxford University
Press.
Charsley, S. 2004.
Interpreting
untouchability: The
performance of caste in
Andhra Pradesh, South
India. Asian Folklore
Studies 63: 267-290.
Deliege, R. 1993. The myths
of origin of the Indian
untouchables. Man 3:
533-549.
Egorova, Y. 2006. Jews and
India: Perceptions and
image. London and New
York: Routledge.
Figs 3 and 4. Bene Ephraim
houses and their owners.
Fig. 5. Bene Ephraim
women at a Sabbath
service in the synagogue in
Kothareddypalem. Y
U
L
I
A

E
G
O
R
O
V
A
Y
U
L
I
A

E
G
O
R
O
V
A
Y
U
L
I
A

E
G
O
R
O
V
A
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 26 NO 6, DECEMBER 2010 17
and Tibet (Parfitt 2002). More specifically, Christian mis-
sionaries played an important role in the development of
the Bene Israel Indian Jewish community of the Konkan
coast, and possibly in the emergence of the Shinlung (now
better known as Bnei Menashe), a Judaizing movement
that emerged in the northeast of India in the early 1950s.
5
A number of groups became attracted to Judaism of their
own accord. Sometimes this interest was aroused by the
perceived exclusivity of Jewish culture, which could offer
a new grounding for communities with uncertain origins.
Some groups turned to Judaism because the historical expe-
rience of suffering of the Jewish people seemed to mirror
their own conditions of discrimination (Parfitt and Trevisan
Semi 2002). In the 20th century a considerable number of
Judaizing movements emerged in different parts of Africa,
as well as among African American groups.
As Edith Bruder demonstrated in her recent study of
these new African Jewish communities, the reasons for
their emergence are complex and multi-faceted. For some
of these groups, particularly those that developed in the
USA, embracing Judaism represented a protest against
white supremacism and a search for new modes of self-
understanding (Bruder 2008). Similarly, the story of Bene
Ephraim suggests both desire for a different status and a
need to explore the past. The Jewish tradition is seen as a
suitable means of satisfying both ends, and thus appears to
be imbued with liberatory potential for socially marginal-
ized communities.
However, the case of Bene Ephraim also demonstrates
the strength of the perception that membership in the
Jewish community is based on Jewish genealogy. Though
the Yacobi family do not possess any material evidence of
their Jewish origin or of their earlier practices, they feel
under pressure to shroud their narrative in what Tamar
Katriel has described as the rhetoric of facticity (1999).
Sadok Yacobi and his wife told us that though their syna-
gogue was built in 1991, it replaced a much older syna-
gogue which had been based in a hut and kept secret. We
expressed considerable interest in its history. Several days
later, a big sign appeared on the front wall of the syna-
gogue dating its establishment to 1909.
Likewise, Shmuel Yacobis book also tries to provide
evidence for the antiquity of Bene Ephraim and makes a
claim that their ancestors had a significant impact on the
religions and cultures of the local Dravidians. A large part
of the book is devoted to the description of the alleged
similarities between the Hebrew and Telugu languages.
According to Yacobi, the ancient texts that laid the foun-
dation of the current Hindu tradition, such as the Vedas and
the Upanishads, contain the knowledge which was stolen
by ancient Aryans from the Dravidians and the Bene
Ephraim. The emergence of Buddhism on the subcontinent
is also attributed to the Lost Tribes (Yacobi 2002).
Visitors to the community are often taken by the Yacobi
family to Amravati, a small town on the banks of the river
Krishna in Guntur district, which was the site of a Buddhist
stupa built in the reign of the emperor Ashoka. The town
is shown off as a prominent place of interest in the Jewish
history of India. Furthermore, Telugu names of commu-
nity members are traced back to Hebrew names found in
the Tanakh.
6
These are the names that Bene Ephraim go
by in those of their interactions with the outside world,
where they need to emphasize their Jewishness.
(Re)inventing traditions
In addition to stressing the factual evidence of their
Israelite origin, the leaders of the community are also
keen to safeguard the boundaries of their group, and are
even making them increasingly rigid. In his book Shmuel
Yacobi suggests that all Madiga, and possibly even all the
former untouchable groups of Andhra Pradesh, are Jewish.
Recently the brothers have begun to lean more towards
the position that this may not be the case. Sadok Yacobi
now maintains that only a very limited number of families
constitute the true Bene Ephraim, and that they became
associated with the Madiga by mistake in time immemo-
rial. Shmuel Yacobi, on the other hand, expressed a flex-
ible view as to who counts as Bene Ephraim: anyone who
can come up with an oral tradition that they might have
heard from their forefathers linking their practices to those
of Israelites may count as Bene Ephraim.
Community leaders are also keen on ensuring that the
religious practices of the Bene Ephraim are as close to
those of Orthodox Jews as possible an ideal which would
still take some time to achieve. At the very least, they insist
that all members of the group those to be included among
the real Bene Ephraim identify solely with Judaism and
the Jewish people, and abandon Christianity completely.
Again, this will require more time and work.
Although most Bene Ephraim we met seemed to be
devoted to Jewish practice and were keen on making an
aliyah
7
to the state of Israel, some of them demonstrated
much more syncretism in their self-identification than
others. As part of our fieldwork, we initiated a household
survey of community members or to be more precise, of
the real Bene Ephraim as indicated to us by the Yacobis.
In the survey, among other things, we asked community
members about their religious affiliation. While most of
them were keen to stress that they were Jewish, some
were not quite sure about the answer. One Bene Ephraim
responded that he was Christian. He was immediately
(gently) corrected by one of the Yacobis, who stayed
around to ensure that we recorded the right information
about their congregation.
What led the Yacobis to change their definition of
community membership and demand stricter practice? It
Francisco, J. 1997. Lost tribe.
The India Magazine of
Her People and Culture
December: 46-51.
Freund, M. 2010.
Fundamentally Freund:
Menassehs children.
Jerusalem Post, 25 March
2010.
Halkin, H. 2002. Across the
Sabbath River: In search
of a lost tribe of Israel.
New York: Houghton
Mifflin.
Isenberg, S.B. 1988.
Indias Bene Israel: A
comprehensive inquiry
and source book. Bombay:
Popular Prakashan.
Katriel, T. 1999. Sites of
memory: Discourses
of the past in Israeli
pioneering settlement
museums. In Ben-Amos,
D. and Weissberg, L. (eds)
Cultural memory and the
construction of identity,
pp. 99-136. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press.
Katz, N. 2000. Who are the
Jews of India? Berkeley:
University of California
Press.
et al. 2007. Indo-Judaic
studies in the twenty-first
century: A view from
the margin. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Kumaraswamy, P.R. 1995.
India and Israel: Prelude
to normalization. Journal
of South Asian and Middle
Eastern Studies 19: 58-70.
Parfitt, T. 2002. The Lost
Tribes of Israel. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
and Trevisan Semi,
E. 2002. Judaising
movements: Studies in
the margins of Judaism.
Richmond: Routledge
Curzon.
Roland, J. 1999. The Jewish
communities of India. New
Brunswick: Transactions
Publishers.
Samra, M. 1992. Judaism in
Manipur and Mizoram:
By-product of Christian
mission. The Australian
Journal of Jewish Studies
1: 7-23.
Fig. 6. Bene Yaacob synagogue
in Kothareddypalem, Chebrole.
Fig. 7. A Bene Ephraim house.
Y
U
L
I
A

E
G
O
R
O
V
A
Y
U
L
I
A

E
G
O
R
O
V
A
18 ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 26 NO 6, DECEMBER 2010
1996. Buallawn Israel: The
emergence of a Judaising
movement in Mizoram,
northeast India. In Olson,
L. (ed.) Religious change,
conversion and culture,
pp. 106-132. Sydney:
Association for Studies in
Society and Culture.
Singh, T.R. 1969. The
Madiga: A study in social
structure and change.
Lucknow: Ethnographic
and Folk Culture Society.
Still, C. 2009. From militant
rejection to pragmatic
consensus: Caste among
Madigas in Andhra
Pradesh. Journal of South
Asian Development 4:
7-23.
Weil, S. 1997. Double
conversion among the
Children of Menasseh.
In Pfeffer, G. and Behera,
D.K. (eds) Contemporary
society: Tribal studies,
pp. 84-103. New Delhi:
Concept Publishing
Company.
2002. Indias Jewish
heritage: Ritual, art and
life cycle. Mumbai: Marg.
2003. Dual conversion
among the Shinlung in
North-East India. Studies
in Tribes and Tribals 1:
43-57.
Yacobi, S. 2002. The
cultural hermeneutics: An
introduction to the cultural
transactions of the Hebrew
Bible among the ancient
nations of the Thalmudic
Telugu empire of India.
Vijayawada: Hebrew Open
University Publications.
may be that this was a result of their interactions with the
outside world, and particularly with the Israeli authori-
ties. Back in the 1990s Shmuel Yacobi applied for visas
to go to Israel for his family and over a hundred other
Bene Ephaim. Their applications were refused, and media
reports appeared to the effect that millions of Indian
untouchables were planning to move to Israel. This nega-
tively affected the chances of Bene Ephraim moving to
the Jewish state.
It is not surprising, then, that they modified their pre-
vious, more inclusive, narrative of origin to consolidate
community boundaries, and insist on stricter and more
exclusive Jewish practice. To go back to Elis remarks,
it is this type of comment, questioning Bene Ephraims
genealogical affiliation to the Jewish people, that appears
to be providing the framework for the groups current self-
presentation and forcing them to adopt a more exclusive
definition of community membership.
This, however, is bound to be a two-way process. In
2005 the Sephardi
8
Chief Rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Amar,
announced his decision to recognize the community of
Bnei Menashe, mentioned above, as a Lost Tribe, and to
assist in their formal conversion to Orthodox Judaism a
practice which would ease their immigration to the Jewish
state. Conversions were started but had to be halted later
the same year after the Indian authorities informed the
Israeli Foreign Ministry that they did not support this
initiative.
9

Nevertheless, about 1700 Bnei Menashe are already in
Israel. Most of them had come to the Jewish state even
before 2005 on tourist visas and managed to stay. At the
moment, the interests of those who remained in India are
promoted by an organization called Shavei Israel, which
assists communities claiming Jewish or Lost Tribes status
in moving to the state of Israel.
10
Recently the head of
Shavei Israel, Michael Freund, made an appeal to Israeli
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him to allow
the entire 7000-strong population of Bnei Menashe to
migrate to Israel and to undergo conversion there (Freund
2010). The emergence of the Bene Ephraim is likely to
continue the renegotiation of definitions of Jewishness at
least on the ground, if not among the officialdom of the
Jewish state. l
Fig. 8. Bene Ephraim
followers celebrating the
dedication of a new Torah
scroll in Kothareddypalem,
December 2009.
Fig. 9. Shmuel Yacobi
addressing a Seventh Day
Adventist congregation on the
Israelite past of his ancestors.
Fig. 10. A Bene Ephraim
wedding.
S
H
A
H
I
D

P
E
R
W
E
Z
S
H
A
H
I
D

P
E
R
W
E
Z
S
H
A
H
I
D

P
E
R
W
E
Z