There are only twenty Jews left in Calcutta. With the largest synagogue in Asia, the community has dwindled from five thousand to twenty. Within a generation a woman who surrounded by Jews, who knew nothing but Jews, sees the last of her ‘tribe’.
When once Jews were an essential part of Calcutta, they now are almost extinct.
I sit here, in Jamaica, in the Jewish Home, the only Jew here, surrounded by those who don’t even know where they are, for there is no restriction on what they cook and how the kitchen now stinks of ham.
I am watching the community shrink and die. Unlike Calcutta we might survive here with Israelis, with ex-pats, converts.
I have not been to Shul since the ‘performance’ of Old Dawg and Buddah in their uncontrolled hatred of Dov. Dov, who is in Israel now, and can not leave.
On Friday the Taxi drops me home and I want to feel I’m missing something, but I feel nothing.
My mind may be full of work or what I will eat, and maybe I’ll look in the Siddur I was given by Yaakov, a member of Chabad who made a desultory visit.
On Saturday I rise as if it’s any other day I don’t go to work. There is nothing special.
There is no sense in my calling Caleb, he no longer attends shul. Like me he has reached saturation point.
One can ‘put up with’ just so much emptiness.
yudahla 