Recently, an Instagram post about the Jews of India has gone viral.

Technicolour and dynamic, it feels like a Coke commercial meets Live Aid – drone shots, swelling music, group embraces – and it succeeds in one crucial task: raising awareness. Awareness is not trivial. For many viewers, this may be the first time they’ve heard that there are Jews in India at all. In a digital ecosystem, awareness is currency. You can see it in the comments: astonishment, gratitude, discovery – in a world where literacy often yields to the authority of the image.

The phenomenon brings back an older memory. My German-born grandfather once asked to see my paternal grandparents’ Indian ketubah before allowing my mother’s hand in marriage. He likely wasn’t denying our Jewishness; he simply could not locate it. “Jews in India” did not fit his mental map. He needed proof that Jewish life could exist outside the familiar lanes of Europe and the Middle East.

Since then, I’ve spent much of my life widening that map – heightening awareness of Jewish communities across South and Southeast Asia, not only in India. At a time when Jewish visibility often feels fragile, any reminder of Jewish presence in far-flung geographies carries weight. The very existence of Jewish communities in India – ancient, layered, locally rooted yet globally connected – complicates simplistic narratives of Jewish history.

So yes: awareness matters.

But awareness is only the beginning.

The Indian Jewish experience today largely lives outside India. The communities that once flourished in Cochin and Calcutta have, over generations, emigrated and re-rooted elsewhere – in Israel, in Australia, in Canada, in the United Kingdom. The synagogues still stand in Kerala and Kolkata. Cemeteries........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)