Rachel Sofaer, Jewish actress in Kolkata, in the Bollywood classic 'Punarianma: A Life Divine' in 1932.
Her family of Baghdadi Jews had migrated from Iraq first to Burma and then India. When Rachel's father fell on hard times financially, he permitted his daughter to act under the name Arati Devi. She was accompanied to the set by her mother and married a Baghdadi Jewish man in 1933 at age 21, never again acting in a film. Her cousin Abraham Sofaer became a Hollywood character actor. x
bit of an insane request but i love your au a lot and im hoping you have one palestinian-american character in it! im palestinian and i have family in america who have been there since the 1910/1920s. im unsure if you have any arab characters, but i suppose itd be fun?
I actually do have a character planned. Doctor Whooves is gonna be a Palestinian engineer and scientist who immigrated to America.
If you need to defer to a U.S.-based context of whiteness/not whiteness to understand regional systems of inequality and structural violence outside of the United States you are going to have a really hard time with decolonization writ large
Nadira, otherwise known as Farhat Ezekiel, a Jewish Bollywood star in the 1950s and 60s who often played 'temptress' roles.
"At a time when custom and tradition kept many Indian women from performing in movies, liberated Jewish actresses and Jewish scriptwriters pioneered the building of the now world-renowned Bollywood brand." - American Sephardi Federation
Nadira was born on 5 December 1932 in Baghdad, Iraq, into a Baghdadi Jewish family. When she was an infant, her family migrated from Baghdad to Bombay in search of business opportunities.
the paradesi synagogue in kochi, kerala, india. the first synagogue on the site, built by the city's longstanding malabari jewish community, was destroyed by portugese who'd colonized the area in their persecution of locals. it was rebuilt in 1568 by spanish and portugese jews who fled persecution and later expulsion, hence the name "paradesi" ("foreign" in malayalam).
these sephardic jews and a community of jews of mixed african and european descent who were formerly enslaved ("meshuchrarim", "freedmen" in hebrew) joined the malabari jewish community of kochi and somewhat integrated. they were later joined by some iraqi, persian, yemenite, afghan, and dutch sephardic jews. the middle eastern and european jews were considered "white jews" and permitted malabari jews and meshuchrarim to worship in the synagogue. however, in what seems like a combination of local caste dynamics and racism, malabari jews were not allowed full membership. meshuchrarim weren't allowed in at all, but were instead made to sit outside during services and not allowed their own place of worship or other communal rights.
as the "white jews" tended to be rather wealthy from trade, this synagogue contains multiple antiquities. they include belgian glass chandeliers on its walls, hand-painted porcelain tiles from china on its floors, and an oriental rug that was gifted by ethiopian emperor haile selassie.
LP cover of Harry Belafonte’s album “An Evening with Belafonte” (1957).
The album featured his version of the Hebrew song “Hava Nageela”.
Its popularity led to Belafonte once referring to himself as “the most popular Jew to America”.
His version of the song is believed to be the most popular, with Belafonte claiming “most Jews in America learned that song from me”. It became a staple at Jewish celebrations, especially weddings.
Belafonte was of Sephardic Jewish, Afro-Jamaican, Dutch, and Scottish descent. Although he was raised Catholic, he honored his Jewish heritage throughout his career, between singing this song at nearly every one of his concerts, and playing the Jewish angel Alexander in the film “The Angel Levine” (1970).
okay so i& Do know a few other jewish folx in the fandom have talked about this before but. the discussion of racism in the a.soiaf/h.otd fandom suspiciously Never includes c.riston c.ole / f.abien f.rankel when he is explicitly a jewish man of color & its. weird. just. yeah. like yeah dgmw the meme of c.rispy c.ole is v funny but there is a conversation here that's not being had & it's very weird that his actions arent worse than some of the white men on the show yet he receives this reaction & men of color (& in this case) jewish men will always be held to a higher standard than white men.