A Jewish Bollywood dance lesson
From Bollywood moves to Mumbai’s Rodef Shalom centenary, a journey through India’s Jewish story.
While on tour in Rajasthan, Sandra and I had taken a Bollywood dancing lesson: Swinging our hips from side to side; changing lightbulbs (reaching up to the ceiling and replicating the motion of turning a lightbulb); flapping our arms in a chicken dance-like movement; performing a movement like washing one’s face.
Bollywood dancing is not for the faint-hearted: frenetic and physical, you gyrate to the music, a mix of traditional Indian and Western styles.
Little did we know how useful it would be…
Later in the trip we travelled to Mumbai as the “guests of honour” at the centenary of the Rodef Shalom Synagogue. Founded in 1925, buoyed by the efforts of Rabbi Hugo Gryn, and run by the Jewish Religious Union, this unique congregation blends Indian customs and hospitality with a certain formal, British-flavoured Progressive Judaism.
They are part of an Indian Jewish community that numbers approximately 4000 – the majority of whom reside in Mumbai.
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