This
painting evokes the sepher torah of my childhood, the one my father bid
for during simha torah. When I was a little girl, I held the smallest
one while everyone danced around the bimah in celebration As I sat
in the synagogue, I would gaze at the mysterious chair always left vacant,
wondering for whom it was reserved.. Later, in the grounds outside
the synagogue, we "picked" fruits that had been fastened to a canopy made
of palm fronds woven around a bamboo frame. These recollections are
colored by the glow of my mother's sabbath lamp.
My grandmother made matzo and sandaan (a steamed rice dish), as she dreamed of someday going to Israel. Stories were retold of how the Jews came to India millennia ago - some shipwrecked, but keeping their faith alive, in spite of having lost prayer books in the stormy sea.
I remember saying the shema every night - it seemed to make things better. My mother would recount stories about the family, how the Jewish women, even in their saris, were distinctly different from their Hindu neighbors. When Grandmother used to go about the city, the Hindu women would remark, "She looks like a Chitpavan Brahmin, but where is the red sindhoor on her forehead? Who is she?" When they learned that she was a Jew, they would whisper "Israel" as she passed.
A bluish self-portrait stands next to this ornamented Indian woman. I try to imitate her, a veil over jeans - a poor copy - a hybrid sometimes clinging to this ornamentation. Distance sharpens my vision, far from my former home, I see more clearly what once was.