Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Almost Englishmen: Baghdadi Jews in British Burma

Almost Englishmen: Baghdadi Jews in British Burma

Cernea, Ruth Fredman

Paperback

Anthropology

ISBN10: 0739116479
ISBN13: 9780739116470
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: Jan 1 2007
Pages: 202
Weight: 0.72
Height: 0.49 Width: 6.15 Depth: 8.91
Language: English

Before the Second World War, two golden promised lands beckoned the thousands of Baghdadi Jews who lived in Southeast Asia: the British Empire, on which the sun never set, and the promised land of their religious tradition, Jerusalem. Almost Englishmen studies the less well-known of these destinations. The book combines history and cultural studies to look into a significant yet relatively unknown period, analyzing to full effect the way Anglo culture transformed the immigrant Bagdhadi Jews.

England's influence was pervasive and persuasive: like other minorities in the complex society that was British India, the Baghdadis gradually refashioned their ideology and aspirations on the British model. The Jewish experience in the lush land of Burma, with its lifestyles, its educational system, and its internal tensions, is emblematic of the experience of the extended Baghdadi community, whether in Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Singapore, or other ports and towns throughout Southeast Asia. It also suggests the experience of the Anglo-Indian and similar European populations that shared their streets as well as the classrooms of the missionary societies' schools. This contented life amidst golden pagodas ended abruptly with the Japanese invasion of Burma and a horrific trek to safety in India and could not be restored after the war. Employing first-person testimonies and recovered documents, this study illuminates this little known period in imperial and Jewish histories.

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Cernea, Ruth Fredman

View All

Also in

Anthropology

View All