"Connecting Baghdadi Jews: The Jewish Press between India and China"

Marcella Simoni, Ca'Foscari University of Venice

In this paper I adopt a connected history perspective to discuss how «The Israel Messenger» reflected (and contextually nourished) the economic, familial, cultural, and religious interests and ties of Baghdadi Jews in the first half of the twentieth century. I complement «The Israel Messenger» with the material available from Jewish and Zionist press from India, in particular «The Voice of Sinai» of Calcutta (1904-07), «The Jewish Advocate» (from 1930) and the «Zion’s Messenger» of the “Bombay Zionist Association”. There are several studies on the Baghdadi Jewish Diaspora, which adopt national (for lack of a better term) frameworks; in these and other studies, the economic dimension of the Baghdadi Jewish historical experience is the most obvious example of a connected history based on the circulation of individuals, goods and ideas during a period of about one hundred years. While this dimension inevitably remains in the background of any history of Baghdadi Jews, in this paper I discuss their connectedness considering two aspects of their presence in Asia: looking eastwards on the one hand, I consider the shifting attitudes of this group towards Japan as a culture and as a State; turning westwards on the other, I will address the question of the relationship of this group to Zionism, investigating to what extent the adoption of an ethno-national paradigm of self-representation affected their collective fluid identity, their international relations, and their place in Asia.

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