Caste, Race and the Kerala Jews of India: The Problematic Legacy of American Jewish Anthropologist David Mandelbaum

• In Event: Power, Race, Genetics and the Colonial Legacy in Scholarship on African and Indian Jewish Identities

Abstract

This paper considers the long-lasting impact of David G. Mandelbaum (1911-1987), an American Jewish anthropologist and professor of South Asian Studies, on the emerging field of Indo-Judaic Studies. His research on the "Cochin" Jews of Kerala, South India was based on a 3-week visit in 1937, toward the end of British colonial rule. While rich in positive ethnographic detail, his description and analysis of Kerala Jewish life at that time over-emphasized a social differentiation among internal factions - which he mis-labeled as separate "white", "black" and "brown" castes. He also cited a contemporary genetic study of their contrasting blood types, thus contributing to an already exoticized and racialized view of the community. Echoes of this view and of his influence persist in 21st century English-language scholarship and popular Jewish writing about the Kerala Jews, almost all of whom now live in Israel, where they initially experienced racialized ethnic discrimination but are accepted as Jews in the Rabbinic tradition.
Based on close examination of the extensive fieldwork notes, correspondence and photographs Mandelbaum produced during September 1937, and analysis of his 1939 and 1975 articles based on that research, I note biases and inconsistencies in his ethnographic practice. I also take into consideration his background as a practicing American Jew, and the dynamic historical and scholarly context of the late 1930s - on the eve of World War II and just a decade before Indian independence and the founding of the State of Israel. A second focus is on the context and implications of his influential 1975 article on "social stratification" among the Kerala Jews in India and Israel, with self-critical reflection on my own early research during that historical and scholarly period. Given changing views of race and caste in postcolonialist anthropology, I address the critical question of why Mandelbaum's writings continue to hold weight for some Jewish Studies scholarship today, noting parallels to analysis in the other two panel presentations.

author

• Barbara C. Johnson, Ithaca College