event · jews of color · Jews/Jewish/Judaism/Orthodox Judaism

Cool Jewish Events: In Search of the Bene Israel

Aliza Hausman


Event: Screening of “In Search of the Bene Israel“
Date: Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Place: Washington Jewish Film Festival, Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts, 1529 16th Street NW, Washington, DC
Time: 6:15pm

USA/India, 2008, video, documentary
38 minutes
English and Hindu with English subtitles
Director: Sadia Shepard, author of “The Girl from Foreign: A search for shipwrecked ancestors, forgotten histories, and a sense of home”

The filmmaker travels to India to reconnect with her grandmother’s Bene Israel community and, along the way, gives us fascinating peaks into the Indian Jewish community. Partly based on material that would become the award-winning memoir, The Girl from Foreign. We explore the lives of Indian Jews still living there as well as others choosing to emigrate to Israel, where about 90,000 Indian Jews already live. Woven throughout the film are Nana’s recollections of a once-thriving community of Bene Israel 60 years ago.

SPEICAL GUESTS Dr. Maina Chawla Singh, Author, American University Clendenen Scholar-in-Residence and Associate Professor, University of Delhi, and Nissim Reuben, Program Director, Indian-Jewish American Relations, American Jewish Committee
CO-SPONSORED BY the Embassy of Israel and the Embassy of India
PRESENTED IN COOPERATION WITH the American Jewish Committee and Indian Visions Film Festival
PRESENTED IN PERTNERSHIP WITH the 16th Street J’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery exhibit “Blue Like Me: The Work of Siona Benjamin”

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