Ophira Gamliel on Malabar Jews

It is with a sense of discomfort that I write about my new book, as the shadows of unspeakable violence are cast over my homeland Israel/Palestine. The book deals with the forgotten history of a bygone era, far removed from the intense and devastating reality of the present. Yet, this study of the so-called “Black” Jews of Kerala in southern India seeks to counter the historical erasures and orientalist fabrications that Jews of colour have been subjected to in patterns of historical erasure that pertain even more forcefully to Palestinian history as several scholars argue (see, for example, here and here). Ostensibly, similar threads of historiographical bias run through the history of many other displaced peoples and uprooted communities between the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean. But the present study focuses on the specific case of Malabar Jews in a well-defined period that has so far remained under-researched.