ABSTRACT
Although scholarly specialists and some laypeople have long been aware of the existence of Jews in India, it was ironically a noisy controversy in Israel that drew the attention of many to these relatively unfamiliar communities. Interestingly, the eruption of the controversy over the Bene Israel may have been the result of the export of group conflict from India to Israel. Indian Jews themselves have endeavored for almost a century to write about their past for the benefit of both their own communities and the outside world. Defining the Jews of India, in particular, has its own set of special problems. In India, a group-based society, the groups to which an individual belongs greatly determine his behavior. Even if one thinks of Indian Jews as a whole as a castelike group, one can also see the overtones of the caste system in the relationship within and between the Jewish communities themselves.
