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Lloyd's Road Jewish Cemetery
The Jewish Cemetery is a cemetery for the Paradesi Jews of Chennai, India. It is located off Lloyd's Road. The cemetery remains the only memoir of the once significant Jewish population of Chennai, which has now almost become extinct. Burials include the tombstones of 18th-century Jewish diamond merchants. The cemetery houses fewer than 30 graves, of which a handful are almost 300 years old. The cemetery is located on a poor market area of the road west of the Marina Fish Market and is adjacent to Baháʼí Faith and Chinese cemeteries. Among the graves is that of Victoria 'Toyah' Sofaer, from an elite Baghdadi family, who died in what was then Madras in 1943 - the story of her life and tragically young death was investigated by the BBC. The cemetery formerly used to have an iron gate on which a plaque was attached on which a Star of David and the words "Jewish Cemetery" were inscribed. After the renovation around 2016, these doors were replaced with sturdier ones. Before t ...
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Madras
Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian census, Chennai is the sixth-most populous city in the country and forms the fourth-most populous urban agglomeration. The Greater Chennai Corporation is the civic body responsible for the city; it is the oldest city corporation of India, established in 1688—the second oldest in the world after London. The city of Chennai is coterminous with Chennai district, which together with the adjoining suburbs constitutes the Chennai Metropolitan Area, the List of urban areas by population, 36th-largest urban area in the world by population and one of the largest metropolitan economies of India. The traditional and de facto gateway of South India, Chennai is among the most-visited Indian cities by f ...
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Jewish Cemeteries
A Jewish cemetery ( he, בית עלמין ''beit almin'' or ''beit kvarot'') is a cemetery where Jews are buried in keeping with Jewish tradition. Cemeteries are referred to in several different ways in Hebrew, including ''beit kevarot'' (house of sepulchers), ''beit almin'' (eternal home) or ''beit olam aba'' (house of afterlife), the ''beit chayyim'' (house of the living) and ''beit shalom'' (house of peace). The land of the cemetery is considered holy and a special consecration ceremony takes place upon its inauguration. According to Jewish tradition, Jewish burial grounds are sacred sites and must remain undisturbed in perpetuity. Establishing a cemetery is one of the first priorities for a new Jewish community. A Jewish cemetery is generally purchased and supported with communal funds. Placing stones on graves is a Jewish tradition equivalent to bringing flowers or wreaths to graves. Flowers, spices, and twigs have sometimes been used, but the stone is preferr ...
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Jews And Judaism In India
The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity.''The Jews of India: A Story of Three Communities''
by Orpa Slapak. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 2003. p. 27. .
Weil, Shalva. ''India's Jewish Heritage: Ritual, Art, and Life-Cycle''. Mumbai: Marg Publications 2009. was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in

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Cemeteries In India
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are burial, buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek language, Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground and originally applied to the Ancient Rome, Roman catacombs. The term ''graveyard'' is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard primarily refers to a burial ground within a churchyard. The intact or cremated remains of people may be interred in a grave, commonly referred to as burial, or in a tomb, an "above-ground grave" (resembling a sarcophagus), a mausoleum, columbarium, niche, or other edifice. In Western world, Western cultures, funeral ceremonies are often observed in cemeteries. These ceremonies or rites of passage differ according to culture, cultural practices and religion, religious beliefs. Modern cemeteries often include crematoria, and some grounds previously used for both, co ...
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Cyclone Nilam
Cyclonic Storm Nilam was the deadliest tropical cyclone to directly affect South India since Cyclone Jal in 2010. Originating from an area of low pressure over the Bay of Bengal on October 28, 2012, the system began as a weak depression 550 km (340 mi) northeast of Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. Over the following few days, the depression gradually intensified into a deep depression, and subsequently a cyclonic storm by October 30. It made landfall near Mahabalipuram on October 31 as a strong cyclonic storm with peak winds of . In Chennai's Marina Beach, strong winds pushed piles of sand ashore and seawater reached nearly a inland. Schools and colleges in the city remained closed for more than three days. More than 3000 people were evacuated around Mahabalipuram in the wake of the storm. Schools and colleges in Chennai declared holidays until November 1 as 282 schools had been converted into relief centers. Government offices and private organizations clos ...
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The Hindu
''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the second most circulated English-language newspaper in India, after '' The Times of India''. , ''The Hindu'' is published from 21 locations across 11 states of India. ''The Hindu'' has been a family-owned newspaper since 1905, when it was purchased by S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar from the original founders. It is now jointly owned by Iyengar's descendants, referred to as the "Kasturi family", who serve as the directors of the holding company. The current chairperson of the group is Malini Parthasarathy, a great-granddaughter of Iyengar. Except for a period of about two years, when S. Varadarajan held the editorship of the newspaper, the editorial positions of the paper were always held by members of the family or held under their direction. Histo ...
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Mint Street, Chennai
Mint Street is one of the prime streets of the commercial centre of George Town in Chennai, India. The street is one of the oldest streets in Chennai and is believed to be the longest street in the city. Running north–south, the street connects Poonamallee High Road at Park Town in the south with North Wall Road– Old Jail Road Junction at Washermanpet in the north. Running parallel to the Wall Tax Road, another historical thoroughfare in the city, the street passes through thickly populated residential and commercial areas of the historical neighbourhood. History In the 16th century, Madras Synagogue and Jewish Cemetery was established on the street by a Portuguese Jewish trader, Jacques de Paiva. It was later moved to Lloyd's Road and became the Lloyd's Road Jewish Cemetery. In the early 18th century, washers and bleachers employed by the British East India Company for its cloth business settled around the street, given it the name 'Washers' Street'. Several of them ...
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Jacques (Jaime) De Paiva (Pavia)
Jacques (Jaime) de Paiva (Pavia, Paivia), a Paradesi Jew of Madras, was a Portuguese Jewish diamond and coral merchant from Amsterdam belonging to the Amsterdam Sephardic community. He was married to Hieronima de Paiva. After de Paiva's death, his wife Hieronima de Paiva, also a Portuguese Jew, fell in love with Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras, and went to live with him, causing quite a scandal within Madras colonial society. Governor Yale later achieved fame when he gave a large donation to the University of New Haven in Connecticut, which was then named after him — the Yale University. Hieromima de Paiva and the son she had with him died in South Africa. Golconda diamonds De Paiva established good relations with East India Company (EIC) and those in power, which enabled him to buy several mines to source Golconda diamonds. Through his efforts, Jews were permitted to live and trade Golconda diamonds and corals within Fort St. George. De Paiva died in 1687 after a visit ...
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Western Sephardim
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the immediate generations following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Although the 1492 and 1497 expulsions of unconverted Jews from Spain and Portugal were separate events from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions (which were established over a decade earlier in 1478), they were ultimately linked, as the Inquisition eventually also led to the fleeing out of Iberia of many descendants of Jewish converts to Catholicism in subsequent generations. Despite the fact that the original Edicts of Expulsion did not apply to Jewish-origin New Christian ''conversos'' —as these were now legally Christians— the discriminatory practices that the Inquisition nevertheless placed upon them, which we ...
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Star Of David
The Star of David (). is a generally recognized symbol of both Jewish identity and Judaism. Its shape is that of a hexagram: the compound of two equilateral triangles. A derivation of the ''seal of Solomon'', which was used for decorative and mystical purposes by Muslims and Kabbalah, Kabbalistic Jews, its adoption as a distinctive symbol for the Jews, Jewish people and their religion dates back to 17th-century Prague. In the 19th century, the symbol began to be widely used among the History of the Jews in Europe, Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, ultimately coming to be used to represent Jewish identity or religious beliefs."The Flag and the Emblem" (MFA). It became representative of Zionism after it was Flag of Israel#Origin of the flag, chosen as the central symbol for a Jewish national flag at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. By the end of World War I, it had become an internationally accepted symbol for the Jewish people, being used on the gravestones of fallen ...
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