Even today, most boardrooms remain dominated by men, but 130 years ago a Jewish woman shattered the glass ceiling to preside over one of India’s largest mercantile empires. A philanthropist and scholar to boot, Flora Sassoon was a force to be reckoned with

When Farha Sassoon (or Flora, as she was known in English) visited Jerusalem in 1925, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim – later among the State of Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbis – was astounded to meet this female magnate, Zionist philanthropist, and expert in all fields of Torah study, including Talmud and halakha (a rarity even today). The rabbi even considered reciting the blessing upon meeting a great Torah scholar: 

When she discussed Torah law and lore with me, I became increasingly aware of her wisdom, sharp intellect, and understanding of all aspects of Jewish learning. I resolved (though without taking an oath) that when time allowed, I would consult the legal precedents for reciting “Blessed be He who has bestowed His wisdom on those who fear Him” upon seeing a learned woman such as the rebbetzin. […] on the face of it, one should certainly recite the blessing […], and there’s no difference in this respect between a man and a woman. (Moshe Shabbat, The Yeshivot of Baghdad, vol. 3 [Jerusalem, 2018], pp. 537–38 [Hebrew])

Who was this unique figure with whom leading rabbis corresponded on matters of Torah study, sending her riddles, dedicating books to her, and even writing poetry in her honor? And how did Farha come to run one of the largest companies in the world when women in both Europe and her native India couldn’t even vote?

 

From Baghdad to Bombay

It all started a few generations earlier with Sheikh Sassoon son of Salah Sassoon of Baghdad, who trafficked in spices and textiles from the Far East. The local authorities subjected him to any number of extortionary measures, finally arresting his son David and demanding an enormous ransom. Sassoon ben Salah used bribery to extricate the young man, then fled with him to the Iranian city of Mashhad. Arriving there in 1828, Sassoon quickly recognized the many economic opportunities opening up in the Middle East as a result of European industrialization. Combining expertise and instinct, he began doing a brisk business importing Far Eastern commodities to England. When Sassoon died two years later, his son replaced him at the helm, settling in India’s major port city of Bombay – today Mumbai – in 1832.

David Sassoon was only one in a stream of immigrants, many of them Jewish, arriving on the heels of British colonial interests in the coastal boomtowns of India and the Far East. Founding the Bombay Jewish community, he and his compatriot business associates recreated Jewish Baghdad in miniature. The synagogue followed the Babylonian order of prayer, Iraqi Jewish customs prevailed, and a local Jewish periodical was even written in the Iraqi version of the Judeo-Arabic dialect.

The immigrants weren’t only merchants. There were teachers, cantors, butchers, and ritual circumcisers – everything a Jewish community needed. Rabbis were brought in from Baghdad, including Ezra Dangoor and Shimon Agassi, but major halakhic questions were sent to the leading scholar back home, Hakham Abdallah (Ovadiah) Somekh, or his main disciple, Rabbi Yosef Hayyim, also known as Ben Ish Hai (after the title of his famous work). 

Some of these queries reflected the peculiarities of life in modern British India: Was it permissible to travel by train on the Sabbath inasmuch as the railway was owned and operated by non-Jews? What about using a parasol or wearing a handkerchief in one’s breast pocket, each in keeping with British etiquette but possibly violating the ban on carrying in public on the day of rest? Was a telegrammed death notice enough to trigger the laws of mourning? The Baghdadi Jews of Bombay were devout yet open to the modern world commercially and culturally.