Jewish Sadia Shepard is here with her new book and an old pain caused by 26/11 and anti-Semitism 

The bloody carnage and hostage situation at Chabad House in Mumbai late in November last year ruffled the calm of the Bene Israel Jewish community in India, which American-bred author, Sadia Shepard, claims was by far the most insulated one from a global legacy of anti-Semitism. In Mumbai to speak about her book, The Girl from Foreign: A Search for Shipwrecked Ancestors, Forgotten Histories, and a Sense of Home, Shepard still claims that in an increasingly chaotic world there are lessons to be learnt from minority communities, such as the one that brought her to India in 2001.

Shepard has also extensively photographed and video-documented her journey, which has now taken the form of a short, moving documentary called In Search of the Bene Israel.  

Shepard’s grandmother, whom she lovingly refers to as Nana in her book, hailed from a community of Bene Israelis that claims to have descended from a line of Israelis, who were ship-wrecked on the Konkan coast over 2,000 years ago. “There is no historically proven account of their legacy, and since there are only 10 practitioners in the area of Indo-Judaic studies, it’s hard to come by works of scholarship or authority,” reveals the young author, who embarked on a journey to India following the promise she made to her grandmother on her deathbed. The film shows Sadia arrive at her grandmother Rachel Jacobs’ ancestral home near Alibaug, where family members recognise her through photographs. A rebel during her time, she had married a much older Muslim man to convert to Islam, changing her name to Rahat Siddiqi and settling in Karachi. “Ageing to see such a large influx of Jews from all over the world to Israel, Nana grew concerned about her shrinking community in India,” Shepard reveals. “And that’s when she entrusted me with the duty of telling their story.”  

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