Pakistan’s ‘last Jew’ soldiers on

December 27, 2014 11:30 pm | Updated 11:30 pm IST - Karachi

Fishel Benkhald

Fishel Benkhald

There are few clues as to the identity of the last Pakistani Jew to be buried in Karachi. A heart-shaped piece of marble set into a slab of rough concrete in the city’s Jewish cemetery in February 1983 has none of the detail or Hebrew script of the more elaborate tombs built a century earlier, when Jews were a self-confident minority in a country where they are now often demonised.

Chand Arif, the cemetery’s self-appointed caretaker, says the rundown graveyard, which has not been visited by relatives of the dead for decades, is at risk of encroachment.

In the 1950s there were regular burials and visitors. But their numbers dwindled as Jews moved to India after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 into India and Pakistan. Later, many more went to Israel.

Some members of Karachi’s Jewish community had been brought to the city by the Empire, but most were members of the Bene Israel community, which claims to trace its roots in south Asia back almost 2,000 years. It is thought there may still be a handful of Jews living in the city, although many have married into non-Jewish families or pass as Parsees or Christians.

Despite the hostility to Jews in Pakistan, an engineer called Fishel Benkhald is happy to wear his religious affiliation on his sleeve.

Mr. Benkhald, the son of a Muslim father and Iranian Jewish mother, says he grew up in Karachi respecting both religions and now considers himself Jewish, even though his national ID card says otherwise. In an anti-Semitic society, he is Pakistan’s sole self-declared Jew, and is campaigning to preserve the cemetery. His efforts at raising awareness have been unsuccessful.

Arif Hasan, a celebrated Karachi architect who sits on the provincial government’s cultural heritage committee, has proposed the graveyard be declared a protected site. “Naturally there is an anti-Israel feeling which is very strong,” he said. “But this is our heritage, irrespective of whether we are Jewish, Muslim or Christian, and we have to protect it.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2014

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