Overview

A. B. Salem, born into the Paradesi Congregation of Jews in the erstwhile Kingdom of Cochin (now part of the southern Indian state of Kerala), was a lawyer, labour union organizer, ardent Indian nationalist and political leader, Zionist and the man responsible for the mass aliyah or emigration of the Cochin Jews to Israel in the 1950s. However, he chose to stay back in his beloved state of Kerala. Apart from being a towering leader of the Cochin Jewish community, Salem was a founder-member of the first Legislative Council in the Kingdom of Cochin from 1925 to 1931 and again from 1939 to 1945. A strong follower of the Gandhian principle of non-violent civil disobedience, he was a member of the Lahore Session of the Indian National Congress which passed the resolution calling for complete independence from the British. Salem is also remembered for his efforts to achieve ritual equality for a group of Jews who were kept apart from full participation in synagogue affairs for decades - based on their perceived low-born status and which was contrary to Jewish law. His personal diaries about life in Cochin and the aliyah are now with the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley, California.

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'A.B. Salem was fully Jewish and fully Indian. He was a religious Jew and pioneering Zionist as well as an ardent transformational local and nationalist political figure as documented in his Cochin Assembly speeches. This Jewish Gandhi is most deserving of the meticulous rendering of his story by Bala Menon and Dr. Essie Sassoon'. - Dr. Kenneth Robbins/ Washington D.C

Author Information

Bala Menon is a journalist/artist/historian and storyteller. He began his career with India's premier English-language newspaper The Times of India, in Mumbai, and then took up an assignment as Deputy Editor with Times of Oman, the national daily of the Sultanate of Oman in Muscat. He was later Deputy Night Editor at Gulf news, the largest circulated English-language newspaper in the Middle East, published from Dubai. He has travelled widely in the Middle East and Europe and is currently Editor-in-Chief at The Voice Media Group in Toronto, Canada. He has a popular blog http: jewsofcochin.ca. He lives in the City of Brampton, in the Greater Toronto Area. Dr Essie Sassoon retired as Deputy Head of Department at Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon, Israel. Born in the erstwhile Kingdom of Cochin, she attended St Teresa's Convent School and later Maharaja's College in Ernakulam. She graduated in medicine from the Trivandrum Medical College and specialized in obstetrics and gynaecology in Madras (now Chennai). After a stint at Calicut (now Kozhikode) Medical College as Specialist Associate Professor, she volunteered for duty in Israel during the Yom Kippur War and worked at Telashomer Hospital in Ramat Gan, staying on in Israel after the war. Twice honoured for meritorious service, she now devotes her time to her hobbies -cooking, sport and folk dancing.

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