The
Jews of Pakistan
By Adil Najam
Associate Professor
The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy
Tufts University
Medford, MA
The front page of last Friday’s Jerusalem
Post features a boxed item headlined “Surprise!
There are still Jews in Pakistan.” Such
news would probably generate as much, if not more,
surprise in Pakistan as in Israel. The fact of
the matter is that there is nearly certainly truth
to the headline, although it is difficult to determine
just how much.
The story in The Jerusalem Post was triggered
by an email sent to the newspaper’s online
edition in a ‘Reader’s Response’
section by a certain Ishaac Moosa Akhir who introduced
himself thus: “I am a doctor at a local
hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. My family background
is Sephardic Jewish and I know approximately 10
Jewish families who have lived in Karachi for
200 years or so. Just last week was the Bar Mitzvah
of my son Dawod Akhir.”
I remember seeing the post when it originally
appeared middle of last week and wondering whether
the writer was, in fact, who he claimed to be
or an over-zealous Pakistani trying to make a
point behind the Internet’s anonymity.
The Jerusalem Post and the experts it interviewed
seem to have harbored similar doubts, I think
largely because the tenor of the debate on that
discussion board was nearly entirely between Indian
readers who seemed bent on proving that Pakistanis
are intrinsically anti-Semitic and over-enthusiastic
Pakistanis trying to cleanse Pakistan’s
international image by pontificating about the
connections between Islam and Judaism. It was
in this context that Mr. Akhir wrote, “I
must convey to the Israeli people that Pakistani
society is in general very generous and my families
have never had any problems here. We live in full
freedom and enjoy excellent friendships with many
people here in Karachi.” He went on, then,
to add: “I have been to India as well, though
I found Indian society to be less tolerant, highly
emotional and more anti-Semitic. Pakistanis respect
people of all faiths because it is a doctrine
of their Sufi version of Islam, which is very
different from Arab Wahhabism.”
Unlike the readers of its online edition, The
Jerusalem Post had the advantage of being in possession
of Mr. I.M. Akhir’s email address (which
they did not print) and did a little (but, unfortunately,
too little) of the snooping I would have liked
to do. It seems that they wrote back to him and
he added some thoughts that were not in his original
post. The Israeli newspaper reports that Akhir
wrote about holding prayer services in his home
for the other Jews of Karachi and that “although
he and his fellow Jews there could practice their
religion openly if they wished to” they
have chosen to live a life of anonymity. Mr. Akhir
is further quoted as saying that “we prefer
our own small world and, since we are happy and
content, we never felt there was a need to express
ourselves… We don’t want to let anyone
make political use of us. We enjoy living in this
simplicity and anonymity.” He goes on to
say that he has no desire to leave Pakistan but
would like to visit Israel.
Like the Jerusalem Post, I am still not sure whether
this is in fact one of the few remaining members
of the Pakistani Jewry, or a Smart Alec patriot
trying to play diplomacy on the cheap. I, of course,
desperately want to believe that Mr. I.M. Akhir
is who he claims to be and hope that he will respond
and confirm both his identity and the views he
expressed. However, even if that is not so, it
raises the very interesting question of where
are the Pakistani Jews?
There isn’t much reliable information on
the subject. The official Pakistan census reports
that 0.07 percent of the population is of ‘other’
religions but does not say how many, if any, are
Jews. Various Jewish websites suggest that there
were about 2,500 Jews living in Karachi at the
beginning of the twentieth century and a smaller
community of a few hundred lived in Peshawar.
This is probably true because there certainly
were synagogues in both cities, and reportedly
the one in Peshawar still exists but is closed.
In Karachi, the Magain Shalome Synagogue was built
in 1893 by Shalome Solomon Umerdekar and his son
Gershone Solomon (other accounts suggest it was
built by Solomon David, a surveyor for the Karachi
Municipality, and his wife Sheeoolabai, although
these may be different names for the same people).
The synagogue soon became the center of a small
but vibrant Jewish community, one of whose leaders,
Abraham Reuben, became a councilor on the city
corporation in 1936. There were various Jewish
social organizations operating in Karachi, including
the Young Men’s Jewish Association (founded
1903), the Karachi Bene Israel Relief Fund, and
the Karachi Jewish Syndicate which was formed
to provide homes to poor Jews at reasonable rates.
Some Jews migrated to India at the time of partition
but reportedly some 2,000 remained, most of them
Bene Yisrale (or Bene Israel) Jews observing Sephardic
Jewish rites. The first real exodus from Pakistan
came soon after the creation of Israel, which
triggered multiple incidents of violence against
Jews in Pakistan including the synagogue in Karachi
being set to fire. From then onwards most Pakistanis
viewed all Jews through the lens of Arab-Israel
politics and the wars of 1956 and 1967 only made
life more difficult for Jews in Pakistan.
The Karachi synagogue became the site of anti-Israel
demonstrations, and the Pakistani Jews the subject
of the wrath of mobs. Ayub Khan’s era saw
the near disappearance of the Pakistani Jewry.
The vast majority left the country, many to Israel
but some to India or the United Kingdom. Reportedly,
a couple of hundred Jews remained in Karachi but
out of concern for their safety and as a reaction
to increasing religious intolerance in society
many went ‘underground’, sometimes
passing off as Parsees. According to a website
on Jewish history, many of the Karachi Jews now
live in Ramale and have built a synagogue there
called Magain Shalone. Much of this was corroborated
when I recently ran into a ‘Pakistani Jew’
(my term, not hers) now living here in Massachusetts,
USA. She told me that her father was a community
and synagogue leader of the Karachi Jews, she
herself had grown up in Karachi and studied at
St. Jospeph’s Girls School, and her family
had moved to Israel when things became intolerable
during Ayub Khan’s era.
The Magain Shalome synagogue, in Karachi’s
Rancore Lines area, became dormant in the 1960s
and was demolished by property developers in the
1980s to make way for a commercial building. Reportedly,
the last caretaker of the synagogue, a Muslim,
rescued the religious artifacts (bima, ark, etc.)
from the synagogue but it is not clear where he
or those artifacts are now. However, thanks to
the tenacity of a certain Ms. Rachel Joseph the
story of the Karachi synagogue is not yet over.
In her late 80’s, of frail health (hopefully
still alive) and living in Karachi in a state
of destitution, Rachel Joseph is the surviving
custodian of the Karachi synagogue and the Jewish
graveyard in Mewa Shah suburb of Karachi, parts
of which have now become a Cutchi Memon graveyard.
Ms. Joseph claims that the property developers
of the commercial building had promised her and
her now deceased brother (Ifraheem Joseph) that
they would be given an apartment in the new building
and space for a small synagogue. She feels that
she was swindled by the property mafia and has
been trying (unsuccessfully) to move the courts
to get her what she was promised. In 2003, a Mr.
Kunwar Khalid Yunus from Karachi wrote a moving
letter to the Dawn newspaper detailing the sad
plight of this lady and pleading that she be helped.
One is not sure if this is the same Kunwar Khalid
Yunus who is now an MQM member of the National
Assembly, but just in case he is, this would be
the time for him to do something to help Rachel
Joseph.
So, what does all of this tell us about Mr. I.M.
Akhir? Not much. But it does offer some lessons
that we might want to heed as a nation. First,
it tells us that there was once a small but vibrant
community of Jews in what is now Pakistan and
that most of this community left Pakistan many
decades ago and in circumstances that were not
comfortable for them and a matter of some shame
for us. Second, it tells us that despite this
mass exodus, a small set of Jews – maybe
as many as a few hundred – still remain
in Pakistan and are forced to lead a life of anonymity
and maybe even camouflage that could not possibly
be easy. That Mr. Akhir may well be who he claims
to be, and even if he is not there are likely
to be others who have been forced to be anonymous
for too long and who we need to bring back into
the national folds. And, finally, it tells us
that whether we ever recognize Israel or not,
we need to recognize and make peace with our own
Jews (and other minorities). After general Musharraf
is done dining with the American Jewry, maybe
he should also break bread with the Pakistani
Jews, including those many who were once Pakistani
Jews but are now spread across the world, Pakistani
no more.
(Prof. Adil Najam teaches International Negotiation
and Diplomacy at The Flecther School of Law and
Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA)
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