Beit El Synagogue of the Immigrants from India

The story

The Beit El Ohel Moshe synagogue stands at 8A Sarah Aaronsohn Street, in the northwest of Beersheba, and is listed in the synagogue list of the Religious Council in the city in the Sephardi rite. In the associations registry of the Ministry of Justice there is registered on the same street an association by the name "Beit El Synagogue of the Immigrants from India", from 9 February 2000, and in its objectives it is written explicitly: the establishment of a synagogue for the community of the immigrants from India, Nahal Ashan, Beer Sheva, and the holding of prayers. Its last report is for the year 2024. The two registries, the one religious and the one administrative, give the same street. The Jewry of India is not one community but three, and each of them came from a different coast. The Jews of Cochin sat on the Malabar coast in the southwest of India, and in nearby Nevatim stands their heritage center. The Jews of Baghdad came from Iraq to the centers of commerce in Mumbai and in Calcutta, and brought with them their religious and communal institutions. And the Bene Israel — the largest of the three — sat in western India, in the Konkan region, and spoke Marathi. Before the immigration, in the middle of the twentieth century, the Bene Israel community numbered some twenty-four thousand souls. The name on this house does not say which of the three communities prays in it. It says India. In Neighborhood Dalet in the east of the city stands another synagogue, Sha'arei Rahamim, and in its registered name there appears also the name Bene Israel.

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