Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue

This guide to Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue in Mumbai opens with David Sassoon, who fled persecution in Baghdad in 1828, losing his father along the way, and rebuilt his life as a merchant in Bombay. It follows the Sassoon family's rise into one of the British Empire's great merchant dynasties, and traces this synagogue back to 1884, when David's grandson Jacob commissioned it in memory of his father, Eliyahoo. You'll hear how the building's Minton tiles were shipped from Stoke-on-Trent, and how it slowly emptied as Mumbai's Baghdadi Jewish community left for Israel and beyond, disappearing under layers of blue paint. Stand beneath the double-height sanctuary and picture the High Holidays crowds it once held.