Shalom Obadiah Cohen

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Shalom Aaron Obadiah Cohen (1762-1836) was a Jewish jeweler, merchant and community leader known for founding the Jewish community in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1798.

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Shalom Aaron Obadiah Cohen was born in Aleppo, modern day Syria, in 1762 to Aaron Obadiah Cohen and Chana Dayan. Much of what's known his life can be found in his diary, spanning from 1789 to 1834 and now in a private collection. The diary is written in colloquial Arabic, but in a Hebrew script known as Judeo-Arabic.^[1][2]

Cohen traveled to India in 1789 via Baghdad, Hillah, and Basra. From Basra, at the time an important port for British merchants, Cohen embarked on a six-week voyage on a British ship heading to Bombay.^[3] He first arrived in Surat for a five-month stay between September 1790 and April 1791, likely to gauge the potential for growing his business in India.^[4] While some scholars have argued that he left due to the increasingly perilous position of Jews in Aleppo and Baghdad, the main reason for his journey was likely commercial.^[5]

Cohen returned for a more permanent stay in April 1792, bringing with him a cook and servant, and bought a house from an Armenian merchant. However, when he sent for his wife, Seti Duek Cohen (daughter of Joseph Duek) and his daughter Rebecca to join him in Surat, his father-in-law responded that they would not be coming “even if the entire distance from Aleppo to Surat were paved in jewels.”^[3]

In Surat, he became the spokesman of the Jewish merchant community, organizing a petition to the British for lower taxes signed by 65 Jewish merchants in 1795.^[4] His trade consisted mainly of diamonds, indigo, Dacca cloth, and silk. One episode from this period is noted in a letter from Cohen to John Griffith (the head of the East India Company in Surat) demanding that he reprimand one of his fellow British nationals. In the letter, Cohen complains about how Dr. Guise, a British surgeon, disappointed with the quality of castor delivered to him by Cohen, came angrily to his door and insulted, spit on, and beat Cohen.^[4]

While waiting for his wife and daughter to join him, Cohen married the daughter of his business partner, Jacob ben Semah Nissim, Najima. With Najima, Cohen would come to have nine children. Apart from a handful of business trips to Baghdad and Basra, Cohen lived in Surat through the end of 1797, when he left for Calcutta via Bombay, Cochin, Madras, and Hooghly.^[1]

Cohen arrived in Calcutta (Kolkata) on August 5, 1798.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} Soon after he settled in Calcutta, he was joined by other Jewish merchants from Aleppo and Baghdad, including his brother Abraham, Aaron Solomon Laniado, Isaac Isaiah Sutton, Jacob Semah, and Moses Simon Duek ha-Cohen.^[1] Though he is often recognized as the first Jew in Calcutta, this claim refuted by records of other Jewish merchants living in Calcutta for shorter periods of time before his arrival. The first Jew to reside in the city was likely Lyon Prager, a Jewish merchant from London, who came to Calcutta in 1786 to work for the firm Israel Levin Solomons. Cohen was, however, the founder of the community, and the first to establish a Baghdadi Jewish trading firm in Calcutta.^[11][12]

By 1806, as evidenced by a letter to Thomas Brown, the then acting Chief Secretary of the British Government in India, requesting British protection as he closed his businesses in Aleppo, Baghdad, Bushehr, and Basra, Cohen had decided he would settle in India with no intention to return to the Middle East.^[13]

In May 1811, he bought a home in Calcutta, which served as the prayer hall for the growing local Jewish community, which at that point still had no synagogue.^[3] While he was from Aleppo, the group of Jews from the region were considered Baghdadi Jews. A feud with his business partner and father-in-law Jacob Semah in 1812 led to the imprisonment of the latter and his return to Bombay and then Baghdad later on. Around the same time as the feud, Cohen moved his family to Chinsura, a day’s journey from Calcutta. During this period, he maintained his property in Calcutta as a communal hall for worship for the Jewish community.^[3] Jacob Semah then returned to Baghdad, where he financed many of the Jewish institutions in the city, including synagogues and schools.^[14]

Having become particularly well known as an expert in the jewelry trade, he moved to Lucknow as the court jeweler for the Nawab Wazir Ghazi ad-Din Haidar and his son in 1816. In Lucknow, the Nawab granted him a “Robe of Honor” and he was given the unique distinction of riding with the Nawab on his elephant.^[3][15] His monthly salary in this period was around 2,000 rupees.

After a three-year stay as the court jeweler, Cohen left Lucknow with a retinue of more than one hundred people who were in his employment. In 1828, he was received in audience by the Governor General of India, Lord William Cavendish Bentinck.^[3]

Towards the end of his life, Cohen traveled to the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Punjab and was asked to appraise the Kohinoor diamond. Legend has it that he responded by saying that the diamond had no value at all – for it could only be given in love or captured by war.^[16]

Cohen and his son-in-law Moses Duek were two of the founders of Calcutta’s first synagogue, Neveh Shalome, in 1831.^[3] He also provided land upon which to establish the first Jewish cemetery on Narkeldanga Road. He is said to have been offered this land as a gift from a Bengali friend when he inquired about land for a Jewish cemetery. His friend refused to accept payment, but Cohen, unwilling to receive the land for free, took a golden ring off his finger, giving it to his friend as a token of payment.^[3] The cemetery is still in use by the few remaining members of the Kolkata Jewish community today, and Cohen is buried there.

Shalom is featured in the children's book "Shalome Rides a Royal Elephant" by his descendant, Jael Silliman.^[17]

• History of the Jews in India