at sundown this thursday if synagogues in the city are allowed its twoday celebrations for purim a festival commemorating the salvation of jews in the persian empire apart from timehonoured rituals of children and adventurous adults screaming and stomping their feet to scare away the evil haman during readings from the megillah the congregation will witness a slice of marathi jewish history brought alive through ancient sounds of bene israel kirtansthe octogenarian kolet sisters hannah and shosannah from neral have their fingers crossed for a lockdown leeway so they can take centrestage at a south mumbai synagogue to perform esther ranichi katha the tale of queen esther who saved the jews in marathi verses and ovi metres interspersed with hebrew words featuring biblical figures and sung to hindu temple tunes accompanied by dholak cymbals harmonium and bulbul tarang these marathijewish songs with storytelling from the torah and coloured by hindu devotional music first performed in 1880 as a tool to teach first and second generations of bene israel jews about their scriptures fell into obscurity decades ago its only in the last five years that some elderly jewish women in sari and tichel have had the foresight to transcribe these songs their grandparents sang into notebooks and since then been singing these hebrew inflected marathi kirtans about noah moses and king david at various workshops and community gatherings to revive and preserve their distinct indian jewish sonic identityhow a musical form typical of hindu worship made its way into a jewish oral tradition harks back to the arrival of shipwrecked bene israel jews on the konkan coast more than 2000 years ago offered shelter by local inhabitants they settled into konkan villages and watched how hindu kirtans in vogue at the time helped impart the knowledge of hindu mythologies and scriptures the survivors felt they could do something similar to pass on stories and tenets of judaism to their progeny explained elijah jacob former director of the joint distribution committee jdc in india who has been steering the revival of this marathijewish performing art in recent timesas bene israel scholars sought ways to instruct their marathispeaking folks unfamiliar with hebrew or the bible they adopted the pedagogy of marathi naradiya kirtan that combined stories and philosophical discourse with song to rearticulate jewishness in a 1918 article on kirtans samuel mazgaonkar recounts how he and his friends david haeem divekar benjamin ashtamkar isaac abraham talegaonkar and a few other bene israel jews began performing kirtans in 1880 after their first tryst with a tranceinducing kirtan by a hindu kirtankar they formed an organisation called kirtano tejak mandal while ashtamkar wrote the first bene israel kirtan abraham charitra the deeds of abraham in 1882 despite early resistance by orthodox members of the indian jewish society bene israel kirtans drew large crowds and enthusiasm as these early kirtankars went around performing at naming ceremonies weddings and housewarming partiesthe hindu kirtankars were quite impressed