A semi-secret community, even today?

By DAVID HOROVITZ
A century ago, by most accounts, there were about 2,500 Jews living in Karachi, and another few hundred in Peshawar, served by synagogues and various communal organizations in both cities. Most of them left, though - for Israel, India, the UK and elsewhere - amid a series of acts of violence that coincided with the establishment of Israel and subsequent Arab-Israel wars. These included an arson attack on Karachi's Magen Shalom synagogue. That shul was demolished in the 1980s by property developers; its religious artifacts seem to have disappeared. Two of Pakistan's last known Jews, sisters Sara and Rachel Joseph, who lived in Karachi, are thought to have died in the past few years; a third woman, Rachel Joseph, a relative of the Karachi synagogue's last custodian, was still alive in 2005 and would be about 90 today. Occasionally, through the decades, however, reports have surfaced suggesting anything from a few individuals to a couple of hundred Jews may still be living in semi-secrecy in Pakistan. A census a few years ago, intriguingly, showed 10 government employees had identified themselves as Jews. And three years ago, as president Pervez Musharraf was gently warming unofficial Pakistani ties to Israel, The Jerusalem Post wrote about one Ishaac Moosa Akhir, who had e-mailed our paper describing himself as "a doctor at a local hospital in Karachi," from a Sephardi Jewish background, who personally knew "approximately 10 Jewish families who have lived in Karachi for 200 years or so. Just last week was the bar mitzva of my son Dawod Akhir." Akhir asserted that while Pakistani tolerance meant this small community could openly practice Judaism if it so wished, the Jews had "chosen to live a life of anonymity... We prefer our own small world and, since we are happy and content, we never felt there was a need to express ourselves... We don't want to let anyone make political use of us. We enjoy living in this simplicity and anonymity."