The legacy of the Elias Meyer Free School and Talmud Torah in Kolkata’s Bowbazaar, which is celebrating its centennial year, is intertwined with that of the small Baghdadi-Jewish community that built a life in the city from the 19th century.

The three-storeyed school has two inter-connected buildings and a large playing field. The rafters on the high ceilings, the worn stone staircase, the ornate elevator built by pioneers of British industry and the neatly arranged lines of stately, polished wood cupboards in the physics laboratory recall a bygone era. One can imagine the laughter and chatter of generations of boys scuttling down the staircase.

Shalome Obadiah Ha Cohen, the first Jewish settler of Kolkata, came to the city in 1796. He prospered and, realising the opportunities the mercantile city offered, called his family from Syria to join him. Other Jews from across West Asia, the majority coming from Iraq, made the city their home in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Community institutions such as synagogues and a burial board followed. For a while, Jewish children attended Christian mission schools but concerns about proselytising made community leaders set up schools for Jewish girls and boys in the 1890s.

Initially, a school for boys and girls was set up and evolved to become the Jewish Girls School, now located on Park Street. From 1891 till 1925, the school for boys experienced changes in circumstances, names and benefactors. In October 1920, a donation of Rs 234,000 from Elias Meyer, a millionaire in Singapore with family in Kolkata, helped build the boys school at 50, Bowbazaar Street. It was completed in 1925.

After Elias Meyer died in 1925, the name of the school changed for the fourth and final time to become the Elias Meyer Free School and Talmud Torah. It was dedicated to the educational needs of the poor boys in the community and taught Jewish principles and values. Flora Meyer, Elias’s widow, left the school a sizable endowment trust. The school received additional monetary gifts and legacies. The school and the legacies are under the authority of the Official Trustee of Bengal.

Ezra Arakie played a notable role in the financial and educational development of the school. Boys received free education, books and meals and clothing during the High Holidays. Boys who were Bar Mitzvahed – completed religious learning marking a transition to adulthood – had to attend the Neveh Shalome synagogue twice a day to ensure a minyan, the quorum of 10 men required for services to take place.

Prayers were held at the school twice a day, and for some festivals the service was at 3.30 am. A standard joke at the school was, “God made birds to get up before man, but made Jews to get up before birds!”

Boxing, basketball, football and table tennis were popular. The school boasted of an excellent scouting team that was, for many years, the model troop in Calcutta.

In 1947, several Jewish community institutions opened a centre for the impoverished, sick, and aged community members at the school that ran after school hours. It was shifted to the premises of the Maghen David synagogue. In 1949, a hostel facility was established at the school.

In 1952, Governor of West Bengal HC Mookherjee visited the school and praised its efforts for the teaching and preservation of Hebrew language and culture and imparting liberal education of the same standards as Calcutta’s Anglo-Indian schools.

Jewish boys had always attended other schools, the most popular being Calcutta Boys School, La Martiniere, Saint James and Xaviers There would never have had more than 150 Jewish students at Elias Meyer. Calcutta’s Jewish community peaked by the 1940s, numbering 4,500, as Baghdadi Jews from Burma joined the community.

Many community members, however emigrated following a series of tumultuous national and global events such as Indian Independence, the Partition, the nationalisation of banks, the end of World War II that brought Baghadadi Jewish refugees from Burma and the Far East to Kolkata as well as European Jews fleeing the War, and the opening up of emigration opportunities to England, United States and Australia. The creation of Israel made some make aliyah, “rise to Jerusalem”, a basic tenet of Zionism. By the 1960s, there were 600-700 Jews left in Calcutta.

The rapid departure of several members of the community meant that the school did not have enough Jewish students. A decision in 1955 allowed non-Jewish students to enrol if they paid fees, resulting in a rapid increase in numbers. The last Jewish principal was Moses Elias (1955-1979). Today, the few Jews left in the city manage the community institutions, including the schools.

Over this centennial year, a series of events will be organised at the school to celebrate this landmark year that will conclude with a meeting for students, alumni, staff and well-wishers where a centenary booklet will be released.

Plans for another century continue, with a strong commitment to provide all children a quality English-medium education.

Jewish alumni who live abroad are elderly. The non-Jews who attended the school since the 1950s make up the majority of the alumni and continue to do the school proud.

This Baghdadi-Jewish educational legacy continues in Calcutta and in the other port cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai where the community flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Photographs courtesy Jael Silliman.

Jael Silliman is an author, scholar and women’s rights activist.

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