Keeping Judaism Alive in New Delhi

Dec. 15 2014

The synagogue in India’s capital city remains active, although the Jewish community there has dwindled to about 40 members. Although New Delhi, unlike Mumbai or Cochin, does not have a long history as a Jewish center, it experienced a brief golden age at midcentury, as Manoj Sharma reports:

Jews became a part of the New Delhi’s social fabric when it became India’s capital. They came to the new capital from different parts of the country to work with the central government—especially in the railways and defense. A few German and Polish Jews, who escaped the Holocaust, also settled in the city. A Jewish Welfare Association was formed in 1949; it built the synagogue in 1956.

Ever since, the Judah Hyam Synagogue has been at the center of Jewish life in the capital. The city’s Jewish families come together here during the Friday Shabbat service. During High Holidays, the synagogue is a bustling place, thanks to Israeli diplomats and other Jewish expatriates in the city. Besides, about 10,000 international travelers visit it every year.

Read more at Hindustan Times

More about: India, Indian Jewry, New Delhi, Synagogues

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy