While Indian PM Narendra Modi will soon be the first Indian PM to visit the Jewish state, India doesn’t only want to strengthen the ties between the Indian and Israeli governments, it wants to strengthen the connection between Israel’s 85,000 Indian Jews and the land of India, “the land of their forefathers.”
Magen David Synagogue, Mumbai, India, 2011 (Erin Okabe-Jawdat/Diarna Geo-Museum)
The Smouha Sporting Club, established in 1949, still hosts football, gymnastics, and swimming tournaments in Alexandria, Egypt (Photo courtesy of the Government of Alexandria)
Joseph Smouha was an Iraqi-Jewish cotton trader from England who, in the first half of the 20th century, built a garden city in Alexandria, Egypt. Said King Faud, “He was the only foreigner who came to the country, brought his own money and did good to the country.” When Egypt’s nationalist leaders later expelled the Jews, they expelled Smouha too, taking his property and possessions in the process.
Lamp inside the former Beth Shalom Synagogue, Surabaya, Indonesia, 2007
Indonesia’s oldest and largest synagogue was destroyed in May 2013. Beth Shalom Synagogue at Surabaya, on the Island of Java, was a modest Dutch-style residence in the heart of the business district. One of only two remaining synagogues in all of Indonesia, a large mob massed in front of the synagogue in 2009 — the same year the building was designated a national heritage site. The main organizer of that protest was the Indonesian Ulema Council of East Java, which claimed that Jews are its enemies and demanded the synagogue’s closure.
In the course of preserving Jewish historical sites in the Middle East and North Africa, Diarna has gathered unique documentation on other Jewish places around the world. In the case of Surabaya, we are proud to present exclusive footage, filmed several years ago, of every page of the Jewish cemetery’s burial book (which has since disappeared) and the majority of the gravestones in the cemetery.
Click here to explore the digital remains of the synagogue.
Thanks to the adoption of Western manners in Israel, “the Yemenite Jewish practice of wailing at funerals and in the first three days of the shiva (week of mourning) faces extinction.” A recently published study documents this tradition, soon to disappear, by painting “the picture of a wailer, the culture that [fostered] this tradition in Yemen, and its evolution in the Israeli context.”
The Ma’alla Street cemetery stands as a silent testament to a once vibrant Jewish community at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula (Photo courtesy of Ben Ragsdale/Diarna Geo-Museum)
September 10th at 7PM at the Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY
Ranging from a 16th-century harem to Nazi-occupied Paris, the Inquisition to Israel’s Independence, and the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to modern-day Manhattan, best-selling author Nicole Dweck’s The Debt of Tamar weaves a tapestry of love, resilience, and fate. Join ASF for a discussion with the author.
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Magen David Synagogue, Mumbai, India, 2011 (Erin Okabe-Jawdat/
The Smouha Sporting Club, established in 1949, still hosts football, gymnastics, and swimming tournaments in Alexandria, Egypt (Photo courtesy of the 
