And speaking of the Diaspora, here's a story about Jews in India.
The largest Jewish community in India is the Bene Israel—a Marathi-speaking people found in the enclaves of Bombay. They are descendents of persecuted Jews from Galilee, mostly oil pressers, who were left stranded on Indian shores by a shipwreck around the 2nd century BCE. Marathi speakers call them the Shanawar Tali, or “Saturday oil-pressers,” as they did not work on Saturdays in accordance with Judaic law. For thousands of years, the Bene Israel continued to keep the Sabbath, abided by kosher laws, circumcised their males, and kept the Hebrew language alive in religious practice—though it mainly survived through oral tradition. The Bene Israel’s rituals and rites are very particular—for example, one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Jews in India is in Alibag, where a cleft rock with wheel-marks is believed to have been the rock upon which the Prophet Elijah ascended to heaven on his chariot. Every year, the Bene Israel make this pilgrimage, light candles, and sing songs in Marathi about the Judaism, about the world they had left thousands of years ago.
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