Diaspora and persecution and depicts the Gypsies as one of the lost tribes of Israel.
There are certainly some points of resemblance between the children of Roma and those of Israel. Both have had an exodus, both are exiles and dispersed amongst the Gentiles, by whom they are hated and despised, and whom they hate.
Romany Gypsies: Some of the Subdivisions
Taking account of the geographic areas and the population, we can define three main blocks and some autonomous groups that cannot be included in any of them:
1. Eastern Roma, mainly represented (by number and geographic distribution) by Kalderaš/Čurari/Lovari-related groups;
2. Central European Roma: Sinti and Romanichel families;
3. Calé (Spanish and Portuguese Roma).
Other groups: Khoraxané, Boyaš, Carpathian Roma, Kaale, Southern-Italian Roma, Balkan Roma, Greek Roma, Armenian Lom, etc.
This first general classification refers to European Roma, who are the overwhelming majority (the communities in the American Continent and some other areas of the world descend from European Roma).
Eastern Roma
The origin of the word Vlax/Vlach is very well-defined: it is the term by which the Germanic peoples referred to the Celts (and survives today in the English name of Wales). Since most of the Celtic tribes were Romanized, this denomination began to be applied to the Latin-speaking peoples (like the Belgian Walloons, to distinguish them from the Flemish-speaking Belgians).
Also the profession of blacksmith, widely practised by Roma in that period, has been associated with alchemy and magics, and by a linguistic coincidence, the name Kaldu has a resemblance with the word for "kettle-maker" in Latin-derived tongues such as Romanian, Italian or Spanish.
The Slavic territories were much more tolerant and suitable for the Romany lifestyle. This curiosity has an explanation, usually neglected, and it is that Roma reached Europe after a long exile in Scythian India (not in Aryan India!), and they found a better environment in Scythian Europe rather than in the "Aryan" Europe...
· Sinti / Manuš Group
The “Sinti” may be also defined as “Germanic Roma”, as they were the first group that settled in the German-speaking lands, namely, the decadent "Roman Empire of the German Nation", and their historical and cultural development took place in the subsequent many small states that emerged from it, then gathered by Prussia and Austria, and ultimately, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This geographic distribution along centuries of relative isolation from the other Romany groups has defined their particular features, so much that they are often considered as a separate ethnic entity.
This concept is reinforced by the fact that they do not call themselves “Rom” but Sinti.
In modern times, it has become politically correct to say “Roma and Sinti”, in order to meet the requirements of both parties, non-Sinti Roma that do not want to be called Sinti, and Sinti who do not want to be called Roma. This expression is also used mainly in Germany, Austria and other countries in order to distinguish the local Gypsies from the Eastern immigrant ones. However, it is like saying “British and English” or “North-Americans and Canadians”, as Sinti are a Roma group, not a different people. Their distinction is the result of a process that took place in Europe.
· Romanichals and Welsh Kale
The Romanichals or Romanichels are the English and Scottish Roma; Kale is the designation of the Welsh Roma. Both groups arrived in Great Britain from France and their language shows Old Romany roots, having many lexical resemblances with Sinti dialects and also with Spanish Romanó. In spite of the harsh discriminatory laws against Gypsies in the United Kingdom, they have achieved a cultural and social development within British society through their ability in arts and crafts. Some of them have ever been knighted, either for having served the Crown or else for musical or artistic excellence. They have always professed Christian faith and many of them were even church pastors since early times of settlement, which has been a peculiarity of British Roma until recent times, when a large number of Roma worldwide have joined Evangelical movements.
Gypsy Israelite flag
Roma in Great Britain have been called in different ways, usually in reference to their professions or lifestyle, as “braziers”, “horse-dealers”, “tinkers”, “fortune-tellers”, “vagrants”, etc. In official documents, they were first called Egyptians, then Gypsies, a designation that they have accepted and adopted for themselves along with Romanichal. Their original language is almost lost; they speak rather what is called Anglo-Romany, a mixture of English and Romany. They are divided in three main sub-groups: English, Scottish and Welsh.
The English Gypsies are now distributed not only in England but also in the former British colonies, where they did not emigrate voluntarily, but were deported. Therefore, we can find them, or their descendants, in the United States, Canada, Australia and even in the Caribbean. Although also whole families were transferred, most of the exiled were only men, so that their ethnicity disappeared with intermarriage. In North America it became common that male Gypsies took female Natives as wives, since they were not allowed to mix with the "White" population. Some of their offspring is found among the Melungeon people.
The Scottish Gypsies have an interesting history. Some researchers assert that the first Roma arrived in Scotland with the Knight Templars, who brought them from the Holy Land, where the Knights employed these “Egyptians” as metal-workers to manufacturate and keep maintenance of their weapons. It is well documented that a community of Gypsies dwelled in the Rosslyn Chapel area under protection of the Sinclair family, and many Roma even adopted this surname. The reason for such a privilege is said to be the decisive contribution of a Gypsy contingent to defeat the English in the Battle of Bannockburn (1314 c.e.). That Roma in Scotland had to do with nobility is confirmed also by the Kirk Yetholm Gypsies, who have been recognized as a respectable social group, having even their own Kings and Queens ‒ an oddity of Scottish Roma, because such titles do not exist in Romany society, but only in romantic literature or else for social or political convenience in the relationship with the Gadje society, but not recognized within Roma community.
The so-called Irish Gypsies are not Roma but Travellers. However, there are some ethnic Roma in Ireland, but they are Scottish Gypsies that settled or stay temporarily in Ireland.
This Romany group has developed a strong identity, having kept isolated from the other European Roma for centuries. Caló is their common designation in Spain and Southern France (where their mother tongue is either Spanish or Catalan), while in Portugal their ethnonym is “Calon”.
Undoubtedly, they are well known worldwide more than anything as the best performers of Flamenco culture in every aspect, so that they are fully identified with it and consider it their own characteristic and original culture. Nevertheless, the fact that Flamenco is exclusive patrimony of Spanish Gypsies and not known by other Roma is a proof that they have found the roots of such expression in the Spanish soil. The oldest ″palos″ (sticks, name of the different styles) del ″cante jondo″ (the deep song) are a legacy that the Sephardim Jews left them after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 c.e., the expression of a discriminated people that was soon adopted by those who remained, the heirs of the persecution, the Gypsies. As it happened everywhere in Europe, the Roma took the houses left by the exiled Jews and dwelled in them, not just because they were empty and without owner, but because only the Jews' homes were considered suitably clean according to the laws of marimé, then observed by all Roma, as Roma did not come into Gadje's houses until recent times because they are considered ritually impure. From the original palos, Roma have developed the Flamenco culture in a varied and rich style and in an unique way, so that it can be considered now legitimate property of the Cultura Gitana.
The Andalusian are the most numerous and also those who have achieved a higher instruction level; most of university graduated Gitanos belong to this community. Also the most celebrated Flamenco players, singers and dancers are Andalusian. The Extremeños are considered the most conservative, closer to the Portuguese Calons rather than to the other Spanish sub-groups. The Catalanes are the second largest community, they are present not only in Spain but also in Southern France. Although Flamenco is the folk expression of all Calé Roma, the Catalanes have developed their own, softer style, the rumbas. The Castilian sub-group is considered an offshoot of both Andalusian and Catalanes, established for many generations in the central-northern area of Spain.The Basque Gypsies, a particular community that keeps a Romany dialect that is more complete than common Caló, although mixed with some Euskara terminology; it is called Errumantxela or Arromnichela ‒ a curious parallelism with British Gypsies: Caló/Arromnichela and Kale/Romanichal.
The Calon are the Portuguese Gypsies, a community socially more emarginated than their Spanish counterpart.
The Calé Roma have been almost surely the first Gypsies that arrived in the Americas; the Spanish rulers used to send to the colonies the people they did not want in Spain, and it is documented that several Roma were part of the crew that sailed with Columbus and the other conquest and colonization trips that followed. Of course, these male Roma had no chance to perpetuate their culture and married Native women, so that today we cannot know their descent. In modern times, some Calé families emigrated as many Europeans did, fleeing from the critical situation in search of a better life, and Calé communities were established mainly in Argentina and Mexico. Concerning the Calons, they have a similar history of early deportation in Brazil, and later immigration in the same country.
These Roma have also joined massively the Evangelical movements, which has led them to have a more fluent relationship with the international Romany community.
It is common in Brazil that Roma join Freemasonry, and this peculiarity is not exclusive of one group, but is generalized. Brazilian Roma are also interested in achieving a high education level, and many of them are university graduated, doctors, lawyers, professionals of any kind. Two Roma reached the highest government position, that of President of the Republic, and one of them was also the founder of the new capital, Brasilia.
For an increasing number of Roma worldwide, the main channel of contact with the external society and the local authorities passes through their Evangelical pastors and leaders. Also this massive conversion phenomenon is building up a new Romany identity beyond group designations, and keeping the Romany Law and culture.
It is historically documented that a relevant number of Romanichals were deported in the 17th century c.e. from England to the Colonies, generally destined to work in the plantations in Virginia. About one century later, many Sinti families from the western regions of Germany, mainly Rheinland-Pfalz, reached the American land fleeing from persecution and poverty. Their dark complexion did not match with the fact thet they were Germans, and probably this is the origin of the term “Black Dutch” or the less common “Black German”; while “Chicanere” seems to be derived from ″Zigeuner″, the German word for Gypsy. Roma would have tried by all means to hide their identity, because of the stigmatization that being Gypsy implied, and so the term Black Dutch was considered a convenient designation. As a matter of fact, American Gypsies of German descent do still identify themselves in this way, and they do not apply this name to other people (even though the term Black Dutch is also used in reference to some other groups).
The Domari people are often referred to as the ″Middle Eastern Roma″. However, they are a different people. There is no contact between Roma and Domari, and actually, they are not considered in the statistics of estimative Romany world population. The Domari are known under several names, such as Náwwar, Gážar, Karači, Qorbat, etc., terms that often are used in a derogatory manner. They are present in a large geographic area, from Central Asia to the Maghreb. The closest resemblance between Domari and Roma is the language, both having the same roots, but definitely not being the same tongue. There is also no certainty about the historic period in which the Domari appeared in the lands where they live at present, apparently having migrated from the Indus Valley. There is also not any relationship between them and the Dom people of India, besides an ethnonym similarity. Actually, the term Dom in India is applied by the higher castes to different unrelated tribes of various origins, but none of them has never used this word as self-designation. Therefore, it is unlikely that groups that never employed the term Dom as a self-reference in their homeland would then identify themselves in this way after having emigrated.
As a matter of fact, the Domari are a people of Scythian (the Scythians are also regarded as Israelites) stock, and as well as Roma, they were not autochthonous of India, but settled there in early times, with the establishment of Scythian tribes in the Indus Valley and Northwest India, where also Roma settled when exiled from their original homeland. In the same way as Roma, the reasons by which they left the Indus Valley and did never return back again there, should be understood as an attempt to come back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East. The Domari ethnonym might be related with Edom, a people of mixed Hurrian stock and whose language probably kept many Sanskrit words which pertained to the Hurrian language, widely spoken in the Middle East in the ancient age. Many “Romany” features such as the predisposition to wandering from place to place, the lack of interest in recording their own history and writing their own language, the particular attraction for gold, and many other characteristics are indeed typical of Scythian culture.
The Domari are a discriminated, stigmatised minority in the whole Muslim environment where they live, and the only community in the world that achieved in creating an association for having a voice in behalf of their people is the small settlement in Jerusalem, since this city is again in Israeli hands. The related community settled in Gaza enjoyed a decent life while this land strip was under Israeli control, but since the Arabs have took the rule, the Domari there have fallen in disgrace, impoverished and isolated.
There is not any brotherhood relationship between Israeli Roma and Domari, besides that of being neighbours like Jews and Arabs.
· Qarači
They are a people of Azerbaidjan who call themselves Dom, but they are a distinct group from the Domari dwelling in the same region, who self-designate also Dom, and are as well called Qarači by the Azeri. There is little research done about this group, that some consider to be an old offshoot of ″Central Asian Gypsies″ (Lyuli?). They were studied by the Armenian Rom scholar Kerope Patkanov, who stated that they spoke a language of the same root of Domari and Romany, but also Azeri and even Tat.
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· Lyuli or Luli
The Luli are a group settled mainly in Tadjikistan, also present in all the Turkestan region and Russia. They call themselves Mughat, meaning ″fire-worshippers″, or also Ghurbat, ″exiled″. It is known that they arrived in Central Asia in the 13th century c.e. from the area of Multan, in the Indus Valley, by which they are also called Multani, besides Jughi and Lyuli. They have Asian features, so it is possible that they descend from Persian groups assimilated into the Turkic peoples that once ruled over India. They have not any Romany tradition, and the only reason by which they are called Gypsies is because of their nomadic lifestyle. Their social organization is based on clan divisions. In some areas of the Middle East, the term Luli is applied to the Domari people.
· Gadia Lohar
The Gadia Lohar or Gaduliya Lohar have been thought to be possible relatives of Roma people because they are traditionally blacksmiths and live in Rajasthan. Such is the criterion used by many scholars to establish the origin of peoples! They dwell in bullock carts, called gadia, and according to their tradition, they are nomadic in order to be loyal to a vow pronounced by their ancestors. Ethnically, they are a Rajput tribe.
Traveller Groups
The Travellers are groups of nomadic people present mainly in Western European countries, whose origins remain unknown until now. They belong to the same ethnicity of the population of the countries where they live, but they are distinguished by their unconventional lifestyle and their rejection to social inclusion according to the established patterns.
· Yenish / Jenisch / Yeniche
The Yenish are often mistakenly considered a branch of the Roma. Actually, they are ethnic Germans whose origins seem to be a kind of association of wandering artisans that became a solidly endogamous group in the 17th century c.e. They speak a mixed language, composed by German dialects, mainly Alsatian, Rotwelsch, Yiddish and Romany. The presence of these two last elements is owing to the fact that their working activity enabled them to get in touch with other groups such as Jewish merchants and Romany traders, from whom they adopted some terms into their language.
The Yenish have Germanic features and are present in all German-speaking countries and in France. Their traditional occupations are metalsmiths and basket-makers. Their relationships with Roma are rather conflictive, so that both groups avoid meeting each other.
· Irish Travellers
Gypsy caravan
These are the so-called “Irish Gypsies”, who are Celtic by ethnicity. They are by tradition caravan-dwellers and metal-workers. Their origins are remote, very likely the ancestors of these Travellers were wandering blacksmiths already present in the island before the arrival of Roma in the British Isles, and this hypothesis would reasonably explain why Roma did not settle in Ireland.
They have their own dialect, called Shelta, Sheldru, Gammen or Pavee. It is an hybrid tongue, consisting in Old Irish vocabulary and English grammar, with many jargon expressions and also some Romany terms ‒ for instance, they call the settled population “Gadje”, even though the Travellers are not Roma. Their Irish designation is Lucht Siúil or Lucht Siúlta, the Walking People. They are also known as Tinkers, a term that is also applied to other peripatetic people and is often derogatory.
They are present in Ireland, Great Britain and the United States.
· Scottish Travellers
A nomadic group with distinctive cultural patterns since old times. They speak a Gaelic tongue with some Romany terms, commonly known as Cant (this name is also applied to Shelta). Besides the typical profession of metalsmiths, they have a rich oral tradition and are well-known as storytellers and singers. Some of them have emigrated to the United States and Canada.
One day Roma decided to put an end to their long exile in India, and headed towards the west in search of their original homeland, but their homeland was occupied by fierce, intolerant people. Roma avoided any contact with Arabs, so that not a single Arabic word was introduced into Romany language. They found a better environment in the land where Assyrians and Armenians dwelled, until they could no longer stay there as the invaders were approaching. Indeed, they were pushed into Europe by the Turks, so that not even their words were taken ‒ the few Turkish terms in Romany belong to Balkan dialects, adopted during the Ottoman rule, when Roma were already settled in Europe.
During their long exile in the Indus Valley, it is obvious that intermarriage with the local (Scythian) population took place, as it happened later in Europe. Also the Jews of India have a predominant Indian DNA and would be considered of “Aryan” stock, but this logical consequence of a long sojourn cannot deny their true origins. As a matter of fact, Roma have never had the intention of going back to their land of exile in India. Roma have inherited an ancestral, atavic feud, by which they cannot settle back in the Middle East either. Europe seems not to be the most welcoming place to live; maybe the American Continent would be a better land to settle for a people that lives still in exile.
In this essay we have presented different human communities whose unconventional patterns of social life have been criticized, stigmatised and harshly repressed by the establishment, once through persecution and attempts of annihilation, now through “politically correct” methods of assimilation. These peoples, commonly called Gypsies, be they Roma or not, are simply lovers of freedom.
The True Origin of Roma and Sinti
It is well known that the most respectable scientists during the Middle Ages firmly believed that the Earth was plain, with the doubtless support of the apparent evidence that it is indeed plain since we are standing on it. Whoever suggested that it was round was condemned to be burnt on the stake. Now some so-called scholars of the "Indian origin" theory would willingly burn me on the stake as well, since I have destroyed their myth and they have no evidences against the proofs presented here.
The fact that there are Roma supporting the "Indian origin myth" does not imply that such theory is creditable, in the same way as the fact that Karl Marx was a Jew did not make of him an authority in Judaism. A psychotic novelist called Koestler was also a Jew and invented the legend that his own people were not Semitic but Turkish, a theory that was soon accepted by all antisemites. Yet, his theory was proven to be a fallacy even though it was a Jew who framed it.
As the Roman "kshatryas" even being an irrelevant number of inhabitants of an almost unknown village in Aetruria have attached a "Latin" identity to a considerable area of Europe, the Indian (or Hurrian) kshatryas have done exactly the same over the whole sub-continent, whose population they subdued imposing on them their language, culture and caste social system. With which amount of certainty may modern scholars assert that the population of India are an homogeneous mass with a common origin?
The kshatryas achieved in giving Roma their language, but failed in imposing them every other aspect; modern scholars are trying to complete that assimilation process by stealing Roma their true identity and ascribing them another that is completely alien to them.
Comparison of Romany Law with Israelite Law and Indo-Aryan Traditions
The Romany Law is the heart of the cultural and spiritual character of Roma people, and the actual source from which the true origins of this people are to be found. Here we present how all elements of Romany Law are in sharp contrast with Indo-Aryan culture and tradition, while in perfect harmony with the ancient Israelite Law and with pre-Talmudic Judaism. Since the supporters of the Indo-Aryan origin argue that these Laws may have been the result of Christian influence, here we show also a comparison with Christianity, considering the patterns of the Christian culture with which Roma have been in touch since their arrival in Europe until recent times. This means, a Christianity in which the Bible was not popular but restricted to the clergy, not written in the people's language but in Greek or Latin, and a Christianity in which any Jewish original element has been replaced by Greek conceptions and interpretations of the Bible. Roma had no way to know the Hebrew meaning of the Bible, nor the Mosaic precepts either, which were not known even by those people that used not to miss any church gathering. As a matter of fact, Christian influence has contributed in straying Romany culture away from Bible patterns rather than bringing them nearer. It is well known the fact that the first time in history that Roma approached the Scriptures (namely, in their known history) has been after the Shoah, when the majority of Roma have joined Evangelical and Messianic movements ‒ but the laws and traditions shown here belong to the ancestral Romany culture. In the same way, most of the differences between Romany Law and modern Judaism concern the fact that the definitive patterns of Judaism have been established in the Talmudic period, when part of the ancient Israelite Tribes were already in exile in India and no longer acknowledged as Hebrew. As a result of this separation (during the Assyrian exile, after the 8th century b.c.e.) some aspects of the Romany Law are even closer than modern Judaism to ancient Israelite patterns.
Another curious fact is that, while in modern times a relevant number of Jews feel attracted by Indian culture and philosophy, Roma feel not any attraction at all; Indian life-style and disciplines remain completely alien and unappealing to them.
Mosaic Law
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Romany Law
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Judaism
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Indo-Aryan Laws
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Christianity
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"You shall have no other gods before Me".
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Strict monotheism
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Strict monotheism
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Polytheism-pantheism, with a main deity and many lower ones.
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Monotheism
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(Exodus 20:3)
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"You shall not make any image of anything that is in the Heavens, or in the Earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor worship them".
| There is not any traditional image or symbol of the Divinity, nor it is conceivable that God might be in any way portrayed. | God cannot be represented by images. | There are many representations of the divinities, as human, animals, male, female or androgynous. | The second commandment has been neglected by most of Christians; however, there is not any image of God, but of the saints (who are revered). | ||||
(Exodus 20:4-5)
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"You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His Name in vain".
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The Name of God is unknown.
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The Name of God is not mentioned.
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There are many different gods, and they are invoked by their names.
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There is no reserve in using the Hebrew Name of God, although translated.
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(Exodus 20:7)
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"Remember the day of Shabbat, to keep it holy. You shall labour six days, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Shabbat to the Lord your God".
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Some Roma still keep the seventh day as holy. Friday is called by the name of Parashat, and in the evening Roma use to light candles.
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The seventh day of the week is kept holy. It begins on Friday evening, when Jews light candles. Parashat is read on this day (Shabath).
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There is no such a custom among Indo-Aryan peoples. Monday is the holy day in Northern India.
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Christians have hallowed Sunday, and have never taught to light candles to honour the Shabath.
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(Exodus 20:8-10)
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"You shall not blaspheme God, nor curse a ruler of your people".
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Blasphemy is a great sin among Roma, as well as cursing an elder.
| Blasphemy and curse are sins, as written in Torah. | The concept of blasphemy does not exist at all. | Blasphemy is a sin, yet, it is not unusual among people. | ||||
(Exodus 22:28)
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"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, that ha-Satan came also among them".
"And ha-Satan stood up against Israel". "The children of Beliya'al have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying: «Let us go and serve other gods»". |
Roma believe that there is one enemy of God (that is whatSatan means in Hebrew), who is a fallen angel and less powerful than God, and is the enemy of Roma people. His name "Beng" is a word related with frog, that was a figure of the devil in the Jewish symbolism of the Roman period (see Revelation 16:13). This evil one is called also"bivuzhó" (impure) and"bilashó", a term that is equivalent to Belial.
| The devil in traditional Judaism is quite the same one as theBeng described by the Romany belief. | There is no concept of devil among Indo-Aryans. There are only harmful gods (the asura), but they are not thoroughly bad as well as the devas are not completely good. They are equivalent in power and dignity. Among Iranians, the "principle of evil" resembles the Jewish-Romany devil in some aspects, but differs from it as Zoroastrism considers it equal in power to the "Good principle". | In Christianity, the devil has been conceived as having mixed biblical and mythological features, however, close to the Jewish and Romany belief. | ||||
(Job 1:6; 1Chronicles 21:1;
Deuteronomy 13:13) | ||||||||
Justice Laws
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"You shall not make marriages with them [other peoples]; your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor his daughter shall you take to your son".
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There are no social classes. The only sharp division exists between Roma and Gadje (non-Roma).
| There are no social classes. The only sharp division exists between Jews and Goyim (non-Jews). | Indo-Aryan peoples have social castes that separate their own people. The legal system is founded on this division of society. | Only in democratic times the social classes have been theoretically abolished from a legal viewpoint. Ethnic intermarriage is free. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 7:3)
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"Judges shall you make you in all your gates, according to your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment".
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The Romany Court is the Assembly (Kris), composed by Judges according to their clans (that are like Tribes).
| The Jewish Court of Justice is the Sanhedrin, composed by Judges. The Tribes are no longer recognized. | The judicial system is regulated by the Dharma, and is based on the caste system. | The Judicial Court is an institution independent from confession and ethnicity. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 16:18)
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"One from among your brothers shall you set ruler over you; you may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother".
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Controversies among Roma cannot be judged by Gadje, but only by the Kris.
| It is against Jewish Law to have a foreign ruler. | The controversies are judged according to the Dharma, that establishes the caste separation. | The controversies are judged in civil courts, according to the national laws. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 17:15)
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"You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike; you shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God's".
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The Kris must be impartial, without regard of the family or clan of the contenders. All Roma are equal before the Kris.
| The Sanhedrin must be impartial, without regard of the family or social condition of the contenders. | The Indo-Aryan courts judge according to the caste to which the contenders belong. | The controversies are judged in civil courts, according to the national laws. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 1:17)
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| See also: Exodus 23:6-8; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:16; 16:19; 25:1 | ||||||||
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For the children of Israel, ... shall these cities be for refuge; that everyone who kills any person unwittingly may flee there. Then the congregation shall judge between the striker and the avenger of blood according to these ordinances. But if the manslayer shall at any time go beyond the border of his city of refuge, and the avenger of blood find him ... and the avenger of blood kill the manslayer; he shall not be guilty of blood, because he should have remained in his city of refuge
| If there is a serious offense committed by a Roma person or family, the Kris should judge if that person or family must leave the territory where the offended part lives or works. The "blood avenger" does still exist in Romany Law and may take legal action against the offender if he/she enters the territory in which he/she has been banished. | Theoretically, Halakhic Law still admits the actual fulfilment of the Mosaic rule; however, the modern Jewish society applies softer, less violent measures. | The Indo-Aryan courts judge according to the caste to which the contenders belong. There is no such a concept as blood avenger. | Christianity has abolished the concept of blood avenger. There is no territorial banishment. | ||||
(Numbers 35:15,24,26-28)
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But as for you, only keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest when you have banished it, you take of the anathema; so would you make the camp of Israel accursed, and trouble it. There is an accursed thing in the midst of you, Israel; you can not stand before your enemies, until you take away the accursed thing from among you.
| This law may be applied to things or people. Roma cannot have any kind of relationship with the banished person, not even greetings and must avoid cross their ways. The offenses by which a person may be banished are quite similar to those established by Jewish Law. The accursed is called"mahrimé", a word related with the Hebrew "herem" both by sound and meaning. | This law may be applied to things or people. Jews cannot have any kind of relationship with the banished person, not even greetings and must avoid cross their ways. The offenses by which a person may be banished are quite similar to those established by Romany Law. The accursed is called"herem". | In Indo-Aryan social system the Dalit (untouchables) are excluded because they are outcasts, not for having committed any particular offense. | There is not any regulated social exclusion in Christianity. | ||||
(Jehoshua 6:18;7:13)
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"If you lend money to any of my people, you shall not be to him as a creditor; neither shall you charge him interest"; "You shall not lend on interest to your brother: to a foreigner you may lend on interest; but to your brother you shall not lend on interest".
| Roma cannot ask interest for loans from their own people, but can do so from Gadje. | Jews should not ask interest for loans from their own people, but can do so from Goyim. | Only the upper castes may not lend at interest, but they can do so if they consider that there are valid reasons, and towards people they regard mean and sinful. | Like among Indo-Aryans, the clergymen were not allowed to lend at interest, activity that was performed by the bankers. Now loans are regulated by civil law. | ||||
(Exodus 22:25;
Deuteronomy 23:19,20) | ||||||||
| Sexual Behaviour | ||||||||
"Shem and Yefet took a garment, and laid it on both their shoulders, went in backwards, and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were backwards, and they didn't see their father's nakedness".
| Nakedness is taboo among Roma, allowed only within husband and wife, and among children. Even to show one's legs before an elder is a lack of respect. Images of sexual organs or erotic scenes are banished within the Romany home. | Nakedness is taboo in mainstream Judaism, reserved only to the intimacy between husband and wife. | Nakedness, even public, has been very common among Indo-Aryan peoples in ancient times. In India it is still considered a sacred thing and widely practised. | Christianity has usually regarded nakedness as taboo. | ||||
(Genesis 9:23)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"Neither shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed to it".
| Among Roma, any association of holiness with nudity and sex is considered blasphemy. | The Kohanim and Levites must be extremely careful not to let see any intimate part of the body when offering the worship. | Indian temples are plenty of representations of sexual organs and deities having sexual intercourse. | Christianity considers nakedness to be unholy, though artistic nudes are admitted in paintings and sculptures. | ||||
(Exodus 20:26)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman. That is abominable... for whoever shall do any of these abominations shall be cut off from among their people". "If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination". "There shall be no sodomite of the sons of Israel". | Roma consider homosexuality a shameful abomination and it is quite a rarity. It entails the definitive exclusion of the individual from the Romany community (in the past there was death penalty, then replaced by the declaration of impurity and expulsion). | Mainstream Judaism regards homosexuality as an abominable sin. | Homosexuality has been common among Indo-Aryan peoples since ancient times. The Vedic law recognizes it as a "third nature" of mankind (tritiya-prakriti). Even many of the Indian gods are androgynous, or able to change sex in order to have intercourse! The "transgendered" men (hijra) have official religious status. | Mainstream Christianity considers homosexuality to be a sin, following the Bible patterns. | ||||
(Leviticus 18:22,29; 20:13;
Deuteronomy 23:17) | ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"A woman shall not wear men's clothing, neither shall a man put on women's clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God".
| Connected with the previous issue, among Roma it is not allowed to wear clothes of the opposite gender, even to disguise for joking. | Orthodox Judaism is very strict in keeping male and female garments distinguishable and not allowed to be worn by the opposite sex. | Although clothing of men and women are different among Indo-Aryans, there is not a strict prohibition. | Different branches of Christianity have more or less restrictive or permissive opinions concerning this issue. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 22:5)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"Whoever has sex with an animal shall surely be put to death".
"You shall not lie with any animal to defile yourself with it; neither shall any woman give herself to an animal, to lie down with it: it is a perversion". "If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; and you shall kill the animal. If a woman approaches any animal, and lies down with it, you shall kill the woman, and the animal: they shall surely be put to death". | Zoophilia is such a revolting and despicable practise that has never been heard to have happened among Roma, and even talking about such a thing is offensive. | Zoophilia is strongly condemned by all schools of Judaism, without any objection. | Zoophilia is a common issue among Indo-Aryans. Such a perverted relationship is not as punishable as having sex with outcastes! [Visnusmrti 5:40-44] Some temples in India (Khajuraho) are depicted with such themes! Indian sages boast to be born from animals; queens and even the Aryan gods indulged in zoophilia. [Manusmrti 10:69-72; Mahabharata Adiparvan 95; Ramayana 1:13:24.33; etc.] | Zoophilia is strongly condemned by all Christian religions and branches. | ||||
(Exodus 22:19;
Leviticus 18:23; 20:15-16) | ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"Do not profane your daughter, to make her a prostitute; lest the land fall to prostitution, and the land become full of wickedness".
| Virginity before marriage is essential in Romany culture, and prostitution is strongly condemned. Roma parents would never consent in profaning their daughters. | Virginity before marriage is required in Judaism, according to the biblical principle. | Sacred prostitution has always been common among Indo-Aryans. [Matsya Purana 70:40-60; Mahabharata III:2:23]It is usual among some Indian tribes to sell the daughters for prostitution. | Even though virginity is not always required, prostitution is not approved. | ||||
(Leviticus 19:29)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"None of you shall approach anyone who are his close relatives, to uncover their nakedness".
(Leviticus 18:6)
Complete list of forbidden incest relationships: Leviticus 18:7-17; 20:11-21.
| Among Roma incest is forbidden. The relationships considered to be incestuous are exactly the same listed in the Mosaic Law, with the same exceptions, namely: it is incest any relationship with ancestors or descendants and with their spouses and siblings, with one's siblings and step-siblings, and with one's in-laws; while it is legal to marry cousins. | Judaism forbids the relationships listed in the Mosaic Law, and allows marriage between cousins as it is not listed and is legal. | Incest has always been very common among Indo-Aryans, and also their gods had sexual intercourse with their sisters or daughters, which is a tacit religious approval of such relationships. All kinds of incest are still very usual among Hindus. | Christianity forbids the same relationships that are illegal for Jews and Roma, but having a controversy about allowing marriage between cousins. | ||||
| Marriage Rules | ||||||||
| Marriage is an obligation. A man without a wife is incomplete, as well as a woman without husband. Members of the Kris must be married. Elder married women may be alsoKris members. | Marriage is an obligation. A man without a wife is incomplete, as well as a woman without husband. Members of the Sanhedrinmust be married (though only men). | The woman is a belonging of her husband and has no real rights within the family. Women cannot have authority roles. | Marriage is a recommended condition but not an obligation. Unmarried people may take part at the authority institutions. | |||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"Yakov served seven years for Rachel. Yakov said to Lavan «Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled»".
"Thus shall you tell David, «The king desires no dowry except one hundred foreskins of the Pelishtim»". | Romany Law establishes that the groom's family pays a dowry to the bride's family. The dowry for a widow or divorced woman amounts to a half of the dowry for a virgin. | In origin, Judaism followed the scriptural patterns: The laws of the Sages established a payment by the groom (for a divorcee or widow half of the amount paid for a virgin) but said nothing about a dowry from the bride's family. | Among Indo-Aryans, it is the bride's family that should pay a dowry to the groom's family. This practise was common to all Indo-European peoples, without exception. | Being the largest number of Christians of Indo-European culture, in the past it was the bride's family that used to pay a dowry to the husband's. Today such a custom is almost no longer practised. | ||||
(Genesis 29:20-21;
1Samuel 18:25) | ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"If a man entices a virgin who is not pledged to be married, and lies with her, he shall surely pay a dowry for her to be his wife, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins".
| According to Romany Law, when a man has dishonored a woman, he should anyway pay the dowry to her family. Runaway couples are considered legitimately married. | Judaism applies the Bible pattern if such an event still occurs. | There is no compensation for the virgin's honour. | In Christianity, runaway couples are not accepted as legally married. | ||||
(Exodus 22:16-17):
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"«You shall not take a wife for my son of the daughters of the Goyim. You shall go to my country, and to Nachor my brother, and take a wife for my son Yitzchak»".
"Yitzchak called Yakov and said: «You shall not take a wife of the daughters of the Goyim. Go to the house of Betuel your mother's father. Take a wife from there from the daughters of Lavan, your mother's brother»". "Every daughter of the children of Israel shall be wife to one of the family of the tribe of her father". | Marriage among Roma is endogamic, within members of the same clan (group of families descending from a common progenitor who is usually recognizable within few generations). This is not a rigid rule, but still observed by the large majority of Roma. | The Tribes of Israel are no longer recognizable, except Levites and the Kohanim, who are bond to endogamic marriage laws. | Among Indo-Aryans marriage is rigorously exogamic. Although it must occur within the same caste, it is forbidden within the same tribe or clan - a paradoxical rule, considering the fact that incest is widely tolerated. | Among Christians, the overwhelming majority of marriages are exogamic. | ||||
(Genesis 24:3-4; 28:1-2
Numbers 36:8) | ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"Then shall the father of the young lady, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the young lady's virginity to the elders".
| It is a rule that the tokens of virginity are shown to the assembly after the wedding. | It is an old Jewish custom to present the proofs of virginity. | There is no record of such a custom among Indo-Aryans. | This custom is not practised by Christians. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 22:15):
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"When a man takes a wife, and marries her, then he write her a bill of divorce, and send her out of his house. When she is departed, she may go and be another man's wife. If the latter husband write her a bill of divorce, and send her out of his house, or if the latter husband die; her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination".
| Divorce is admitted in Romany society. It happens when the husband sends his wife out or else she goes away. Both can remarry. The wife cannot come back to her former husband again once she was married to another man. | Judaism admits divorce according to the same biblic patterns. | Divorce is not admitted among Indians. However, if it happens, there is no regulation that forbids the wife to return back to her former husband once she was married to another. | Christianity is divided on this issue. Most Christians formally consider that divorced people cannot remarry, others admit remarriage. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 24:1-4):
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"If brothers dwell together, and one of them die, and have no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside to a stranger: her husband's brother shall take her to him as wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. It shall be, that the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed in the name of his brother who is dead, that his name not be blotted out of Israel".
| The law of levirate has been practised by Roma in the past. The definitive adoption of monogamy has rendered this rule hard to fulfil, as the brother of the dead husband is supposed to be still unmarried. However, alternative solutions have been framed to supply a descent to the childless couples. | The law of levirate has been practised by Jews in the past. As well as it happened with Roma, it was the consolidation of monogamy that has caused this rule to be no longer practicable in most cases. | Levirate existed among some Indo-Scythian groups; however, the brother of the dead husband had to marry another woman before the widow could marry him(another paradox, as the Indian family is monogamic! - the very reason that caused levirate to be vain among Roma is a requirement among Indians to render it valid). | Levirate has never been taught to Christians, and if some peoples practised it, it was for their own cultural tradition. | ||||
(Deuteronomy 25:5-6):
| ||||||||
| Childbirth | ||||||||
"If a woman conceives, and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her monthly period she shall be unclean. She shall continue in the blood of purification thirty-three days. She shall not touch any holy thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed. But if she bears a female child, [the period of purification is twice as long] ".
| Childbirth is impure and must occur outside Roma's dwelling place. Then, the mother is isolated with her child for seven days, followed by thirty-three days of less rigorous isolation. She cannot show herself in public unless she is called, she cannot attend religious services nor get in touch with any clean thing used by other people. The only difference with Mosaic Law is that the forty-day period of purification is the same for male or female child. | Childbirth is impure and the mother is "niddah" for seven days if the child is male or fourteen days if the child is female. The additional thirty-three or sixty-six days observed during the Temple period have little application today, as they are related with the sacrificial system. | Among Indians, childbirth conveys relative impurity for the mother, that stands aloof during ten days, being relieved of daily activities. Sometimes this period is extended to twelve days, but there is no record of any Indo-Aryan people keeping seven days plus thirty-three days. | Christians have not any rule concerning impurity after childbirth, obviously a period of rest is kept by the mother as a biological need. | ||||
(Leviticus 12:2,4,5)
| ||||||||
| Death Rules | ||||||||
| "Until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return".
(Genesis 3:19)
| Romany Law establishes that the dead must be buried with all the completeness of the body. Consequently, organs cannot be removed and autopsy must be avoided. To burn the dead is a great sacrilege. | Judaism establishes that the dead must be buried with all the completeness of the body. Consequently, organs cannot be removed and autopsy must be avoided. To burn the dead is a great sacrilege. | All Indo-Aryan peoples burned the dead (except Zoroastrians, that do not bury them either), and Indians still do so. The ashes are then spread in the river. Organ removal is allowed for donation. | Christianity establishes that the dead should be buried. Organ removal for donation is generally accepted, as well as autopsy. | ||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"He who touches the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days: the same shall purify himself therewith on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he doesn't purify himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a man who has died, and doesn't purify himself, defiles the tent of the Lord: because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet on him".
| Death is impure, and all the close relatives of the dead are impure for seven days. The dead cannot be touched. During three days it is forbidden for them to bathe, comb, cut their nails or make themselves tidy (they can only use clean water to wash themselves, no soap). On thethird day, they must wash themselves thoroughly and arrange their aspect, otherwise, they cannot do so until the seventh day. | Death is impure, and all the close relatives of the dead are impure for seven days. The dead cannot be touched. The mourners cannot bathe, comb, cut their nails or make themselves tidy. This period is called shiva. | Death conveys impurity to the dead's family for at least ten days, according to the caste they belong. It must be admitted that besides the difference in the number of days, the rules of mritakam(mourning period) are similar to those of Jewish shiva and Romany mourning. | Christians do not have the concept of ritual impurity, and there are no special rules for the mourning period. | ||||
(Numbers 19:11-13)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent, and everyone who is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. Every open vessel, which has no covering bound on it, is unclean. For the unclean they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin offering; and running water shall be put thereto in a vessel: and a clean person shall take hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, and on all the vessels, and on the persons who were there, and on him who touched the bone, or the slain, or the dead, or the grave: and the clean person shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify him; and he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even".
| When death happened in Roma's dwelling place, all the food present in the house (in reference to "every open vessel") is defiled and should be thrown away. On the third day, the house is purified by burning incense (in reference to "the ashes of the burning of the sin"), and a virgin (clean person) sprinkles running water. This ceremony is repeated on the seventh day. Food is brought to the mourners by relatives or friends from another dwelling place. | Since the sacrificial system is related with the Temple, the rules connected with it are not obligatory, consequently, the purification on the third day is not accomplished. Relatives and friends have to bring meals to the house where shivais kept. | During the ten-day mourning period, friends and relatives bring meals to the mourning family. As they burn the body of the dead, they sprinkle water on the ashes. The house is purified on the eleventh day with a religious ceremony. | Christian mourning customs vary according to the church or denomination, and cultural traditions. No Mosaic rules are observed. | ||||
(Numbers 19:14-19)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
| Mourning period customs: mourners stay at home, sit on low stools, cover the mirrors, do not use oils, perfumes or any kind of cosmetics, do not wear new clothes, do not listen to music, nor take photographs, nor watch television, do not paint, cannot cook and cannot greet people. | Mourning period customs: mourners stay at home, sit on low stools, cover the mirrors, do not use oils, perfumes or any kind of cosmetics, do not wear new clothes, do not listen to music, nor take photographs, nor watch television, do not paint, cannot cook and cannot greet people. | Mourning period customs: mourners stay at home, sit on the floor, avoid looking on the mirror, do not use items for personal adornment nor wear garish clothes, do not watch television, cannot give or receive gifts, nor participate in public activities. | ||||||
| The first seven-day period is closed with a remembrance ceremony, then mourning is extended until the thirtieth day; they may bathe and comb, but not cut their hair or nails, nor listen to music or watch television, and must not wear new clothes. On the thirtieth day, mourners should celebrate a remembrance to close the strict mourning period. | After the end of shiva, mourners keep sheloshim until the thirtieth day; during this period they may leave the home, wear shoes and bathe, but not cut their hair or nails, nor listen to music or watch television, and must not wear new clothes. On the thirtieth day, mourners should go to the gravesite and place a stone on top of the grave marker. | A memorial service is held on the thirty-first day, or the eleventh day after the dead body was burnt. There are various rituals, among which the offering of pinda (rice balls). | ||||||
| Afterlife | ||||||||
| "For to him who is with all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything, neither do they have any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun". "But now he is dead, can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me". | Romany belief is that death is definitive and that there is no return. The idea of transmigration of the soul is absolutely unconceivable and even repulsive. The soul goes to definitive dwelling after death, either Paradise (Roma, unless they have been declared impure, and righteous Gadje), or damnation. | Jewish belief is that death is definitive and that there is no return. The idea of transmigration of the soul belongs to some Kabbalistic branches, but is not based on the Bible. The soul goes to definitive dwelling after death, either Paradise (Jews, unless they have been wicked, and righteous Goyim), or damnation. | All Indo-Aryan peoples believed in reincarnation, and Indians still do. They think that the soul takes another body, either human or animal. | Christian belief is that the soul goes to judgement after death. | ||||
(Qohelet 9:4-6;
2Samuel 12:23) | ||||||||
| Purity and Impurity Rules | ||||||||
"You are to make a distinction between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean".
| Romany patterns of purity and impurity are called"marimé", and are close to Mosaic rules. | Jewisn patterns of purity and impurity are known as"kashrut", regulated not only by Mosaic rules but also by Rabbinic institutions. | Indo-Aryans do also distinguish between ritual purity and impurity, but their patterns differ from those of Jews and Roma. | Christians do not recognize ritual impurity (groups that do so are labeled as "Judaizers"). | ||||
(Leviticus 10:10)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, 'When any man has an issue from his body, because of his issue he is unclean... every bed whereon he lies shall be unclean; and everything he sits on shall be unclean... whatever saddle he rides on shall be unclean... whoever touches anything that was under him shall be unclean... If any man has an emission of semen, then he shall bathe... If a woman has an issue, and her issue in her flesh is blood, she shall be in her impurity... everything that she lies on in her impurity shall be unclean; everything that she sits on shall be unclean... whoever touches her bed or anything whereon she sits shall be unclean..."
(Leviticus 15:2-23)
| Romany rules of human impurity are based on the Mosaic Law. In fact, emissions of substances from the lower body are impure, and whatever gets in touch with them. Consequently, since such emissions are likely to happen when sleeping, the act of sleeping is regarded as impure, and also the beds, as well as the seats and the garments that cover the lower body. When Roma wake up, the first thing to do is to wash oneself (Roma do not greet anybody until they have not washed themselves after having slept, as being still impure it is a lack of respect). Emissions from the mouth and the upper body are pure. | Modern Judaism emphasizes the character of impurity of semen and menstruation, that require purification, which is performed through mikveh(ritual bath). Other emissions are of less importance; anyway, the first thing a Jew must do after waking up from sleeping is to wash his/her hands. | Among Indians there is also the distinction between pure and impure body parts and issues, but according to different patterns: for example they regard impure several pertinences of the upper body like hair, tears, substances issued by ears, nose and mouth, and even eating! (but cow's dung and urine are pure...). "If one issues semen, whether it is a little or a lot, in sleep or while awake, he should touch it and should take the semen with his thumb and ring finger and rub it between his breasts or brows..."(Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 6:4:4-6). Further comments on the purity patterns for Indo-Aryans are superfluous. | There are no ceremonies of purification among Christians. | ||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"You shall therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean fowl and the clean: and you shall not make yourselves abominable by animal, or by bird, or by anything with which the ground teems, which I have separated from you as unclean for you". "Notwithstanding, you may kill and eat flesh within all your gates, after all the desire of your soul, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given you: the unclean and the clean may eat of it; only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it out on the earth as water".
| Roma consider that animals are either pure or impure, although their classification is different from the Jewish one (Written Torah was lost by the Lost Tribes). However, they have tried to keep this observance by logical patterns: for instance, dogs and cats are marimébecause they lick themselves; horses, donkeys and any animal used for riding is impure because people sit on them; animals that eat flesh are impure, and so on. Impure animals cannot be eaten. Most Roma still reject meat which is not bloodless. Roma are quite fond of meat, mainly beef, and there are no drinking restrictions. | Kashrut in Judaism is a distinctive sign, and the classification of those animals that may be eaten and those that cannot be eaten is still known thanks to the existence of the Written Torah. | By tradition, Indians do not eat any kind of flesh, including fish, but those that do eat, try to avoid beef. Consequently, the ideal diet is vegetarian. They consider wine and alcoholic beverages to be impure, and many of them also avoid tea and coffee. | Most Christians do not follow dietary rules (connected with religious precepts). | ||||
(Leviticus 20:25;
Deuteronomy 12:15-16) | ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"You shall have a place also outside of the camp, where you shall go forth abroad".
(Deuteronomy 23:12)
| Among Roma, the camp is pure, by which the physiological needs must take place outside the dwelling place. In modern houses, the rest room has a separate status and is built outside, when possible. | In Judaism, the rest room is the only one in the house that has a separate status, and nomezuzah is placed on its entrance. | Among Indo-Aryans, there was not any separate place for one's physiological needs, as there is not a "public domain outside". | Among Christians, the rest room has to do with privacy, but not with impurity. | ||||
| Miscellaneous Traditions and Customs | ||||||||
"I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and every woman shall ask of her neighbor jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and clothing; and you shall put them on your sons, and on your daughters. You shall despoil the Egyptians. The children of Israel did according to the word of Moshe; and they asked of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and clothing. The Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. They despoiled the Egyptians".
| Romany tradition explains that the custom of "mangel"(asking items from Gadje) comes from an ancient commandment from God. There is not any other source from which such a particular precept might be found except the Bible verses reported here. Beyond the fact that one may be a believer or not, Roma almost always achieve in finding "favor" from Gadje to obtain what they ask for... | As it is an event considered to be unique in history, for a determinate purpose, such custom is not practised in Judaism. | There is not any reference among Indo-Aryan peoples having such a tradition. | Christianity does not encourage such kind of activity. | ||||
(Exodus 3:21,22; 12:35-36)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"They shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel, on the houses... For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you".
| Roma used to paint the doorposts of their shelters (or the main posts of the tents) with animal blood in some special occasions, or when going out for a trip, as a protective sign to ban the entrance to the "angel of death". | As it is an event considered to be unique in history, for a determinate purpose, such custom is not practised in Judaism. | There is not any reference among Indo-Aryan peoples of any similar event or tradition. | There is not such a tradition among Christians. | ||||
(Exodus 12:7,23)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"It happened at the time of the offering of the evening, that Eliyahu the Prophet came near, and said, Lord, the God of Avraham, of Yitzchak, and of Yisra'el,... Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench".
"It happened, as they still went on, and talked, that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both apart; and Eliyahu went up by a whirlwind into heaven". | Roma are particularly sensitive towards lightning and thunder. When these natural phenomena arise, they invoke Prophet Elijah to calm the storm. Prophet Elijah indeed, is recognized as the one who has dominion over Baal (that was the god of thunderbolt, whom Elijah defeated with God's lightning that set fire to the altar). Elijah was also taken to heaven by a fire whirlwind. This Bible story has no parallel in any tradition. | Elijah in Judaism is known as the "Prophet of fire", because of his connection with lighning and fire in many occasions during his life. | Among Indo-Aryans, the thunderbolt is an attribute ofIndra, that corresponds to the Canaanite Baal - exactly the opposite to Prophet Elijah! | Even though Elijah is a Bible character, he is not usually taught in churches and is not associated with fire or lightning among Christians. | ||||
(1Kings 18:36,38;
2Kings 2:11) | ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"You shall give the firstborn of your sons to Me".
| Roma consider the firstborn son to be a special blessing for the family. | The firstborn son is regarded as a special blessing for the couple in Judaism. |
There is not such a special status for the firstborn son among Indians.
| Some Christians consider the firstborn son a special blessing. | ||||
(Exodus 22:29)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"You shall not cut the hair on the sides of your heads, neither shall you clip off the edge of your beard".
| Most Roma are still recognizable by their whiskers, which they keep as a tradition originated in a commandment. | Orthodox Jews let their sidelocks of hair grow ("pe'ot") in observance of this commandment. | There is no such a tradition among Indo-Aryans. | There is no such a tradition among Christians. | ||||
(Leviticus 19:27)
| ||||||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"A wise man's heart is at his right hand, but a fool's heart at his left".
(Qohelet 10:2)
| Among Roma, the left hand is related with the public domain, the realm of the Gadje, and by this reason is connected with impurity, although both hands are transitional and need purification every time they have to fulfil impure needs. |
In Judaism, the left hand is related with the public domain (reshut ha-rabim), the realm of the Goyim, and symbolizes impurity and alienation from God.
| Among Indo-Aryans, the left hand is considered impure. However, it is not related with public domain or the others' realm. | Among Christians the difference between right and left is not connected with purity, but rather with good and evil. | ||||
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"You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself: you may give it to the foreigner living among you who is within your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner: for you are a holy people".
(Deuteronomy 14:21)
| Roma cannot eat animals that had not been killed with that purpose. Even though hospitality rules require that impure food (like an animal died of itself) will not be offered to Gadje either, the application of this rule is expressed by the separation of dishes and cups that are arranged to offer food and drink to Gadje. | No Jew would offer an animal died of itself to Goyim, as this Bible rule was intended for peoples that had such a custom; however, non kosherfood may be given to non-Jews, if it is acceptable for them. | By tradition, Indians do not eat any kind of flesh because they cannot kill animals, however, some of them accept eating those animals that died by natural causes. | Christians cannot eat animals that had not been killed. | ||||
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"You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people".
(Leviticus 19:16)
| Slander is considered a very serious fault among Roma. The offender may be taken into judgment by the Kris. Although slander is generally condemned in every culture, the Romany concept is identical with lashon ha-ra'a in Judaism. | Slander is commonly known as lashon ha-ra'a in Judaism, and is a very serious offense that can be hardly forgiven. | Slander is considered a wrongdoing, mainly against religious values. | Slander is condemned, but not with the emphasis as it is in Romany and Jewish Law. | ||||
| * | * | * | * | * | ||||
"For these nations, that you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice sorcery, and to diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you so to do".
(Deuteronomy 18:14)
"Yosef said to them, «What deed is this that you have done? Do not you know that such a man as I can indeed divine?»".
(Genesis 44:15)
| Contrary to popular belief, Roma do not believe in divination, but they use this practice for the Gadje that do listen to them! Roma indeed do not "listen to diviners", but consider this as a kind of prophetic gift they have to deal with Gadje. The kind of divination that Roma know is based on Tarot and Kabbalah, while they have no idea of Indian fortune-telling methods. | Even though it was forbidden, divination was practised in ancient Israel, mainly in the Tribes that were deported to Assyria, Media and India. Jewish magics have been derived mainly from Kabbalah. Tarot is very likely of Jewish origin, probably related to the theraphim and with the Hebrew alephbet. | Ancient Indo-Aryans were quite superstitious and even today most of Indians are among those that listen to soothsayers and diviners. There are many sorcery schools and disciplines, based on patterns quite different from those known by Roma. | Christians must not listen to diviners, however, fortune-telling has always found clients among them. | ||||
The facts exposed in this comparison table are not all; many other details are still to be mentioned as further evidences that confirm beyond any doubt the true origin of Roma. It is natural that an exiled people acquires some elements from the dominant culture within which is dwelling, even more when such sojourn endures for centuries. However, almost nothing of the Indian character (if anything at all) has been adopted by Roma during a stay that may have lasted five to fifteen centuries. Romany language is the only element that connects Roma with their past exile in India. A shorter period of sojourn in Spain has been enough for Kalé Roma to adopt Spanish language as their own, as well as most Hungarian Roma speak Magyar instead of Romany, and many other groups (actually, more than half Roma do not know Romany language), but they are anyway genuine Roma ‒ obviously, what makes them to be Roma is not their language, but their culture, and as it has been shown, nothing of Romany culture may be ascribed to an Indo-Aryan origin. Roma usually have a Gypsy name besides their civil name; in spite of the Indic background of Romany language, there is not a single Romany name that may be traced to India! Not even in the oldest documents reporting their arrival in Europe. In fact, they already had Bible names in that time. A large number of Romany names are Hebrew, others are Greek, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Persian, which is understandable as such names were taken from the countries where they dwelled... but where did they learn the Hebrew names? Most of these names are not common among Europeans.
Another not negligible fact has to do with the regrettable practice of bullfighting: many of the famous toreros are Roma, as such a tradition does not contrast with the main patterns of Romany culture ‒ on the contrary, Roma would never kill a horse! The ritual of bull sacrifice was Israelite (Numbers 15:8; Judges 6:25-26; 2Samuel 6:13; Job 42:8; etc.), and the bull was also the emblem that Israelites chose to represent God (Exodus 32:4), later reintroduced by the separated Kingdom of Israel (1Kings 12:28). Bullfighting was practised by some Mithraist peoples of the Middle East, but never in India, and some elements in Romany tradition may be traced back to a sojourn in Persia before they reached India (because these elements are of Zoroastrian influence, not Islamic). Even though Indians do not kill animals, ancient Indo-Aryans and the Scythians of India practised horse sacrifice, but never any bovine was slaughtered! Roma's favourite food is beef, but they would never eat horse or kill one; Indo-Aryans would never kill a bovine, but in ancient times, they slaughtered horses...
Honest scholars should review their theories before insisting in what is untenable and incoherent. Instead of stopping their research at a certain point in history, they should go further back with the historic events to ancient times, research about the peoples that arrived in India from the Middle East, why they settled there and how they lived there being a land where they found no persecution, it is natural that Roma established there until the situation was no longer good, in the same way as today many Roma settled in the United States or Brazil and it is very unlikely that they will leave those countries unless the situation turns negative and threatening for their survival.
The True Origin of Roma, Domari, Gypsy and Sinti
The True Origin of Roma and Sinti
Many myths have been elaborated about the origin of that mysterious people present in every western country called by different names, usually known as Gypsies, Gitanos, Cigány, etc., whose correct ethnonym is Rom (or better Rhom) for most groups and Sinti for others. We will not expose here the universally recognized legends, but the last and most widespread myth that is still believed to be true: their alleged Indo-European ethnicity.
That Roma people reached Europe after a long journey that then began somewhere in India is a fact which does not imply that they came from their original homeland. Everybody must come from some place where his/her ancestors lived before, perhaps having arrived there from some other country.
The whole hypothesis regarding their alleged Indo-European ethnicity is founded on a sole thing: the Romany language. Such theory does not take account of other more important cultural facts and evidences that show that Roma have nothing in common with Indian peoples besides some linguistic elements. If we have to take seriously any hypothesis that considers only language to determine a people's origin, then we must assume that almost all North-Africans came from Arabia, that Ashkenazim Jews are a German tribe, that Sephardic Jews were Spaniards belonging to a religious minority but not a different people, and so on. Black American people do not even know what language their ancestors spoke, consequently they must be English.
Definitely, language alone is not a sufficient basis to establish ethnic background, and all the other determinant facts are against the Indian origin of Roma - including also some clues in the Romany language itself. The most relevant elements that persist in any people since the most remote past are of spiritual nature, that are manifested in their inner feelings, typical behaviours, subconscious memory, namely, their atavic heritage.
A recent theory that is having some success among the intellectual environment interested in the subject - and that is destined to be proven fallacious like all the preceding hypotheses - pretends to have discovered the original "city" from where Roma might have come: Kannauj, in Uttar Pradesh, India. The author has anyway reached some valuable conclusions that discredit all the previous theories, yet following the same trace, a purely linguistic hint, missing the target. Consequently, the author founds the entire argumentation on an alleged linguistic proof, that is quite insufficient to explain the Romany cultural features not related to language and that are undoubtedly much more relevant, and not any reliable evidence is given to support his theory.
In this essay, I will quote some assertions of the author, although replacing his strange and unsuitable way of writing Romany words with a more accurate and understandable transliteration - for example, the "rr" does not represent any Romany phoneme; the guttural "r" is better represented by "rh", though not all Romany dialects pronounce it, like the ethnonym "Rom" is uttered either "Rhom" or just "Rom". Yet, the "h" is conventionally used to mark a complementary sound to a preceding consonant, and therefore, if graphic accents, circumflexes or other additional signs should be avoided, the "h" is the best complementary letter in many cases. Personally, I would prefer the Slovenian alphabet with some slight changes to better transliterate Romany language, but as graphic signs may not always be shown through the internet, I use the alternative system.
The main so-called proof they give is that Arabs called Roma "Zott", that means "Jat", since they supposedly appeared in the Middle East.
Dating back even to the twelfth century c.e., in which the "Egyptians" are mentioned, meaning Roma. Usually Roma were called by different names according to their immediate provenance, for example in Western Europe the first Roma were known as "Bohémiens", "Hungarians" (this denomination is still very common in many countries), etc., while Arabs called them "Zott", meaning "Jat", because they came from the Indus Valley. They have never been called "Indians" in Europe. Yet, having Roma entered Europe from Iran and Armenia through the Bosphorus, it is unlikely that they passed by Egypt - it was in their own historic memory that they were once in Egypt, from where their wandering began, and they declared their most ancient origin.
How did Roma know THE BIBLE in muslim territory? Surely in India, Persia and the Arab lands where they travelled before reaching Europe they could have never heard any comment of the Bible, and certainly not even in Byzantium or Europe, where the Scriptures were banished to common people and were not written in the current language. There is not any possibility that the Roma knew the Bible, if not because the very biblical history was deeply engraved in their collective memory. This memory was kept during their long exile in India, in such a strong way that they did not adopt even the slightest element of the hinduist culture or any other existing in India.
Most Roma read the Bible now, and all of them astonished exclaim: "All our laws and rules are written in the Bible!" - No other people in the world except Jews may say such a thing, no one in India, neither in any other land.
"In any case, in Byzantium at a very early date, Gypsy soothsayers were called Aigyptissai, 'Egyptians', and the clergy forbade anyone to consult them for fortune-telling. On the basis of Ezekiel's book (30:23), the Roma are called Egyptians not only in the Balkans but also in Hungary, where in the past they were sometimes referred to as 'people of the Pharaoh' (Faraonépek), and in the West, where words originating from the Greek names of the Egyptians (Aigypt[an]oi, Gypsy and Gitano) are widely used to refer to the Atlantic branch of the Romani people".
There should be a reason by which in Byzantium they were called Egyptians, reason that is not explained by the author. That is because the Roma acknowledged themselves to have been in Egypt some time in the remote past. There is also another Greek word with which Roma have been identified in Byzantium: "Athinganoi", from which derive the terms Cigány, Tsigan, Zingaro, etc. The Byzantines knew very well who the Athinganoi were, and they identified Roma with them. Indeed, the little information we have about that group fits in many aspects with the description of the present-day Roma. There are not enough proofs to assert that the Athinganoi were Roma, but in the same way there are no evidences to assert that they were not. The only reason by which the possibility that the Athinganoi might be identified with the Roma has been discarded a priori is because they are mentioned about the beginning of the sixth century c.e., when, according to the inveterate "Indian-origin-supporters", Roma should not be in Anatolia by that time. The Athinganoi were given such name in connection with their ritual purity laws, that regarded impure any contact with other people, quite resembling the Romany law concerning "Gadje" (non-Roma). They practised magic, soothsaying, snake-charming, etc, and their belief was a kind of "reformed" Judaism mixed with Christianity (or with Zoroastrianism?), as they kept Shabat and other Torah rules, believed in the Oneness of God, but they did no longer practise circumcision and performed baptism (which is not exclusively Christian but also a common rite among fire-worshippers). Concerning the Athinganoi, the Jewish Encyclopaedia says "they may be regarded as Jews".
Another very significant fact is that Roma relate their wandering to the Pharaoh, something that is exclusive of the Hebrew people. The oldest records concerning the arrival of Roma in Europe report their declaration of having been slaves of the Egyptian Pharaoh; so there are two possibilities: either it was part of their historic memory or else it was something that they invented in order to find people's favour - the second possibility is very unlikely, since such declaration may identify them only with one people, which was exactly the most hated one in Europe, and not the most convenient identity to choose.
"Observing remnants of a former Egyptian migration to Asia Minor and the Balkans, they realised it would be profitable for them to pretend they were Christians from Egypt, chased out by muslims or sentenced to restless wandering to atone for their apostasy".
This was a "correction" they made after having realized that the original version of their Egyptian sojourn in slavery under the Pharaoh was self-defeating because they were labelled as Jews.
The most learned brahmans of India claim to be from Kannauj (as they still do today), but it was also a town that attained a very high level of civilisation in terms of what we would now call democracy, tolerance, human rights, pacifism. Yet, during the winter of 1018-19, a raiding force came from Ghazni (now in Afghanistan) and captured the population of Kannauj, subsequently selling them as slaves. It was not the Sultan's first raid, but the previous ones had reached only as far as Punjab and Rajasthan. This time he moved on to Kannauj, a major city of more than 50,000 inhabitants, and, on 20 December 1018, captured the entire population, 'rich and poor, light and dark [...] most of them 'notables, artists and craftsmen' to sell them, 'entire families', in Ghazni and Kabul (according to Al-'Utbi's text). Later, according to the same text, Khorassan and Iraq appeared to be 'full of this population'.
•By that time, the city of Kannauj was ruled by the Pratihara dynasty, who were not Indo-Aryans but Gujjar, namely, Khazars. According to linguistic rules, the Indo-Aryan terms "Gujjar" and "Gujrati" are derived from the original name "Khazar" through the standard rules of phonetic change: Indo-Aryan languages, lacking the "kh" and the "z" phonemes, transcribe them respectively as "g" and "j". Consequently, if Roma were the inhabitants of Kannauj, they were not Indo-Aryans but closely related to the present-day Hungarians, Bulgarians, a small part of the Ashkenazi Jews, Bashkir, Chuvash and some other peoples of the Caucasus and the Volga Basin... The designation "Hungarians" by which they are commonly known in most western countries would not be so inaccurate after all - more exact than "Indian", anyway.
•The Sultan of Ghazni was undoubtedly muslim. The people he deported were relocated in Afghanistan, Khorassan and other areas of Iran. This would have not favoured the adoption of cultural elements from Mazdeism (that are quite evident in Romany culture), but on the contrary, would have contributed to avoid them, since the fire-worshippers were almost annihilated by muslims - certainly an exiled people would not adopt a banned religion to be exterminated definitively! Consequently, Roma were in Iranic lands long before the rise of Islam, when the fire-worship was still the dominant religion. Roma were in Iran before reaching India, and their culture was already fully defined when they arrived there. There is one people that had exactly the same characteristics: the Israelites of the Kingdom of Samaria exiled in Media, that kept their Mosaic heritage but adopted some practices of the Magi, and only one thing they did not keep: their original language (as also Southern Jews did not; Hebrew has not been spoken by Jews until the State of Israel was founded again in 1948 c.e.). Indian Jews speak Indian languages, yet, they are Jews, not Indo-Europeans.
This is such a naïve assertion for a scholar. It is well established that Roma have mixed with different peoples along their long journey. Exactly the same as Jews. It is enough to visit Israel to notice that there are black Jews, blonde Jews, tall Jews, short Jews, Jews looking like Indians, like Chinese, like Europeans, etc. The account mentioned by the author shows that the population of Kannauj was not homogeneous, not belonging to a single ethnicity! In fact, there were Rajputs as well as Gujratis and many others, if the city was so cosmopolitan as it appears. This does not prove that Roma were the people of Kannauj.
•Among the Roma, there were descendants of 'notables' from Kannauj.
Israelite notables were very appreciated in the heathen kings' courts, and as they had a particular prophetic gift, many Israelites became Magi in Persia, as well as soothsayers and enchanters. Not to forget that the most common magic practised by Roma is Tarot, of Hebrew invention.
History attests that Hebrews were taken into exile from every social status, and they lost their language in a relatively short time - a singular fact is that they kept the different languages they adopted in exile for long time instead of their original one, for example, Mizrachi Jews still speak Assyrian Aramaic; Sephardi Jews speak Ladino, a medieval Spanish that they keep after six centuries of having been expelled from Spain; Ashkenazi Jews speak Yiddisch, and Roma speak Romany, the language they adopted in exile.
Other examples of peoples from every social level taken in exile or emigrated in considerable number that have lost their language in a short time are American, Brazilian and Caribbean Black peoples, 2nd-3rd generation Italians in America, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, etc, 2nd-3rd generation Arabs in the same countries, etc. Other communities have a stronger link to their language, like Armenians, Roma or Jews. There is not an universal pattern as the author asserts.
"•The geographical unity of the place from which the Roma' ancestors left accounts also for the striking coherence of the Indian element in the Romani language, since the main differences between the dialects are not to be found in the Indian component of the language but in the vocabulary borrowed on European soil."
This fact does not imply that their origin was in the area of India. It is true that the Romany language was initially formed in an Indo-European context, but the same "Indian" words are common to other languages that existed outside the sub-continent, namely, in Mesopotamia. Hurritic tongues are the most likely background from which Indian languages emerged (just check the ancient Mitanni records to realize that Sanskrit originated in that region). Sanskrit-related tongues were spoken in a vast area of the Middle East, including Kanaan: the biblical Horites (Hurrites) dwelled in Negev, Yevusites and Hivvites, two Hurrian tribes, in the area of Judah and Galilea. Northern Israelites were initially relocated by Assyrians in "Hala, Havur, Guzana and the cities of the Medes" (2Kings 17:6) - that is exactly the land of Hurrites. After the fall of Nineveh under Babylon, most Hurrians, with part of the exiled Israelites, emigrated eastwards and founded Khwarezm, from where they furtherly colonized the Indus Valley and the upper Ganges region. It is interesting that some particular words in Romany language are ancient Hebrew or Aramaic, words that can have never been acquired in a later period on their way through the Middle East to Europe, but only in a very early stage of their history, before their arrival in India. A very important one and never considered by the "Indian-origin-theory" scholars is Roma's self-ethnonym: "Rom". Dom is another way to say Rom. DoM has the same consonants as aDaM which is man or people in Hebrew. Let's remember that in Hebrew there's not vowels really.There is no mention in any Sanskrit document of any Rom people. The word itself meaning "man", has only one reference: ancient Egyptian, rom=man. According to the Bible, Northern Israelites had some dialectal differences from Judahites, and were more attached to the Egyptian culture as well as to the Kanaanite environment. The Israelite religion after they split from Judah recalled the Egyptian one, the calf-worship. Therefore, it is not unlikely that the Egyptian word meaning man was still used by Northern Israelites even after the exile in Hanigalbat and Arrapkha, and afterwards.
Also this assertion does not prove anything, but reinforces the hypothesis that they actually were not Indian: an accurate comparison with the Jewish people leads to the same result, as Jews were taken away from their land from every social status, yet, Jews have never been devoted to farming and have always dwelled in cities wherever they are in Diaspora. Jews became farmers only recently, in the State of Israel, because it was necessary for the development of the Nation. There are evidences in support of the fact that when Roma arrived in India, they were already people with the same characteristics they still have; as both Northern Assyrians as well as Babylonian Assyrians practised a selective deportation of both Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, as we read: "And he (the king of Babylon) exiled all Jerusalem, and all the officers and all the mighty warriors - ten thousand people - and all the craftsmen and smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land. And he exiled Yehoyakin to Babylon, and the king's mother, and his wives, and his notables, and the leaders of the land, from Jerusalem to Babylon, and all the warriors, and craftsmen and smiths..." (2Kings 24:14-16); "But the commander of the army left some of the poor of the land as vinedressers and farmers" (2Kings 25:12). The same thing did the Assyrian kings 120 years before with the Northern Kingdom, and those farmers that they left are the present-day Samaritans (As well as Christian & Muslim Palestinians), while the largest number of Israelites still result "lost", and it is certain evidence that most of them migrated into India.
Again, the author relies on a speculative theory that links an Indian tribe with Roma only through some apparently common linguistic features, but nothing related to the Romany culture and spirituality, rules and traditions, and no historic proof. Languages are a relative reference point, and are often misleading, since they may be easily adopted by completely unrelated peoples. Perhaps the author does not know some enigmatic cases like the following one: there is a province in Argentina, Santiago del Estero, where a pre-colonization indigenous tongue is still spoken: Kechua, a dialect of the Incas' language; the particular fact is that almost all those who speak this language are not indigenous but Syrian-Lebanese Arabs settled in that province about one century ago! In a supposed future disastrous event in which no records of the Arab immigration remain, scholars of the 25th century would surely speculate that those Arabs are the last genuine survivors of the ancient Inca civilization... What they would not be able to explain is why those "Incas" had orthodox Christian traditions in a Roman catholic country, even though both traditions are by far much closer than Roma's culture to Indians' one.
Deportations were frequent in those times, and to assert that they refer to Roma is more than hazardous. What is more significant in this Sadri tradition is that the "cold wind beyond the mountains" is hardly suitable for a westward beyond-the-rivers deportation, of course by a warm wind; it is rather referable to a deportation northwards beyond the Himalayas, where the cold wind blows.
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Roma have no idea about the Indian goddess Kali. There is not any element in my family that may lead to think that such a tradition ever existed, and there is not in any of the numerous Roma and Sinti families I met worldwide, from Russia to Spain, from Sweden to Italy, from the United States to Tierra del Fuego (the southernmost land in Argentina), of every Romany branch, from Kalderasha/Churarya/Lovarya to Spanish Kalé, from Estraxharya/Eftavagarya Sinti to Finnish Kale, from Machwaya to South-American Khoraxhané. I challenge anybody to ask Roma who they think Kali was - their answer would be: "a black woman", because "kali" is the female gender of "kaló", that means black (not because they actually know that the Indian idol is also black). I know most of the very important Rom families worldwide, and I suggest the author to pay a visit to Roma in Argentina, where by some reason, Kalderash-related Romany culture is kept more authentic than anywhere else.
The devotion of some groups to "Sara kali" in Camargue is connected with Roman catholic tradition, not with the hinduist one. Indeed, there are "black virgins" in almost every Roman catholic country (including Poland!). Sara "kali" is called that way because is a black woman, who, by chance or not, has the name of the mother of the Hebrew people, and this may be the reason by which the catholic Roma have chosen her as their own saint.
Another purely speculative argumentation that has no real support. Similar stories are very common in the Middle East (I recommend the author to read the "1001 Nights" for a better documentation). It is well known that Roma usually adopt tales from the lands where they dwelled, and adapt them to their own fantasy. It is also a fact that most "Romany" tales are labelled as "Jewish" tales as well, and both claim to be the original source. There are also some Persian, Armenian and even Arabic tales in the Romany oral literature.
I wonder why the author does not mention the popularity of Prophet Eliyah among many Roma groups... perhaps because he would not be able to explain the "Indian" origin of such tradition. Eliyah was a Prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
Words do not prove a Persian origin, not even the Indian words prove an Indian origin, but only a long-lasting stay!
Seems like the language closest to Romani is Western Hindi', more commonly called Braj and sharing most of its features with modern Kannauji."
As I said before, the reasoning is interesting, yet it does not prove anything, for the following reasons:
•All the remarks that the author has listed show that Romany language is grammatically more complex than most tongues spoken in India nowadays, this means that, when Roma were sojourning in India, very likely there was a more homogeneous language still not evolved into the various tongues that by linguistic logic are easier from the grammatical viewpoint. This happened, for example, with Latin, that was once spoken in a vast area of Western Europe and that evolved into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalonian, Occitan, Romanian, etc, all of them having a much easier grammar. All the Western Indian languages were once only one, from which Romany separated in an early stage of formation. Such a primitive stage of the language may very well imply the Hurrian period, before any Indian sojourn, but it is only an assumption. What emerges is that in any case, all the Western Hindi family, namely, the languages of the Indus Valley and Rajasthan, are direct descendants of that so-called "Kannauji" tongue, and this implies that Romany has not necessarily to be linked with the Kannauj area, but may very well be connected with the whole region, from Kashmir to Gujarat, from Sindh to Uttar Pradesh.
•It is also certain that the above mentioned area, from which Romany should have come, was then not related with Aryan Indians but with the Scytho-Sarmatic peoples that settled in the Indus Valley and Sakastan, including Kannauj (that was ruled by a Gujrati dynasty) and that have something in common: they all came from the West! There are overwhelming evidences that the Indus Valley peoples were Sakas and not Aryans, but this is not the subject of this essay.
•The fact that traces of that ancient language still exist in the Kannauj area does not imply at all that it is the original land, and in linguistic history there are many examples:
- once the Celtic language was widespread in almost the whole Europe, today it survives in some regions of the British Isles and in Brittany, that are not the Celts' homeland.
- taking again Latin as an example, the nearest language spoken today is not Italian but Romanian, far away from the land where Latin was born.
- once the whole Ukraine spoke Magyar and closely connected languages, for almost four centuries (between Attila and Árpád), and today there is no trace of Magyar in Ukraine, but is spoken in Hungary, Transylvania and some neighbouring regions.
- in the same way, Turkish has not been spoken in Asia Minor until the end of the Middle Ages, and it does no longer exist in its original homeland.
- it is proven that Bask language (Euskara) originated in the Caucasus, the opposite side of Europe from where Bask is now spoken and without any intermediate link, no traces of the long journey that ancient Basks performed, and no place in the Caucasus where Bask still exists, but only some related languages.
- the only people that are still able to read the Viking Sagas in the language they were written are Icelanders and Faeroese, while Swedes, Norse and Danes, where the Sagas were written, can hardly understand them.
- the ancient Sumerian language was possible to be deciphered only with the help of modern Hungarian, which shows how imprecise is to relate a tongue with the area where it is spoken at present.
What the author does not realize is the following: there was not an unified Indic language, but a distinctive feature between the Scytho-Sarmatic region and the Aryan area, and that:
a) postposition is a feature very common among tongues spoken by Scytho-Sarmatic peoples;
b) only male and female gender existed in the Indus Valley variant of "Old Indic", before the brahmins achieved in unifying the whole India or most of it, consequently, also the language was unified in some way, and it is logical that both parties contributed, yet the easiest form prevailed, and the neuter gender disappeared from the Aryan variant. It was not necessary that Roma were still in India when the language was unified.
The cultural and spiritual aspects of Roma people may be classified into two main categories:
1) Hebrew-related beliefs, laws, rules and practices; very important within the Roma community life;
2) Fire-worship-related practices and some elements connected with belief; mostly regulating the relationship with the non-Roma environment.
Before exposing these aspects, it is convenient to give a brief historic outline in order to enable the reader to understand how and why Roma were in India at a certain time and why they must not be originated in that land. Roma's "prehistory" began in Mesopotamia, in the lower Euphrates Valley; their "proto-history", in the lower Nile Valley and Canaan...
During the Semitic expansion in the Middle East, an Akkadian family moved from Sumer to Canaan and later to Egypt, where it increased in number and importance within Egyptian society, so much that they were hated and submitted to slavery, until their deliverance time arrived and left the country to settle in Canaan. By that time they were constituted of thirteen Tribes, one of which appointed to priesthood, so the other twelve were the "people", called Israel. That nation had a peculiarity that distinguished them from every other nation in that time: they believed in only One God. They received a set of laws, rules and articles of faith to be observed, concerning every social aspect and their strict separation from any other people, laws regarding ritual purity and impurity, and other characteristics that made of them a peculiar people, different from any other in the world. They had a common memory, that they were in exile in Egypt, and a common legacy, that set of precepts that established that if they would have not observed them, their destiny would be exile again, not in Egypt, but in every land.
Nevertheless, as soon as they conquered their territory, the divergences between the leading Tribe and the others began to be more and more evident, until their Kingdom split into two: the Northern Tribes were more attached to their Egyptian past and as a sign of separation, they elected the Egyptian idol shaped like a calf to represent the One God (eventually worshipped also lower divinities), and rejected the priestly Tribe, that joined the Southern Kingdom, Judah. That Northern Kingdom allowed some forbidden practices related to magic, soothsaying and divination. In 722 b.c.e., the Assyrians invaded their country and sent into exile almost the whole population, leaving only the peasants, and relocated them in another country that the Assyrians had already conquered: the former kingdom of Hanigalbat-Mitanni, a land where a language very close to Romany was spoken, and whose main divinities were Indra and Varuna. That land was not in India, but in the upper Mesopotamia. The people of the land are known in history as Hurrians. Here I make a parenthesis to give a brief description of that nation, before going on with the history of our people:
The Hurrians, original Indians
The earliest evidence for an Indic language is found not in India but in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, ca. 1600 b.c.e. Here was the empire of Mitanni, extending from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Zagros mountains, in conflict with the Hittites in the west and with the Egyptians in the southwest for the control of the Euphrates river. The language of Mitanni was Hurrian; there is a clear evidence of the use of Indic vocabulary in the Mitanni documents:
ila-ni mi-it-ra as'-s'i-il ila-ni u-ru wa.na-as's'i-el (in another text a.ru-na-as'.s'i-il) in.dar (other text: in-da.ra) ila-ni na-s'a-at-ti-ya-an-na
All the four treaty gods are mentioned in one hymn of the Rigveda (RV. 10.125.1). P. Thieme demonstrated that the gods of the Mitanni treaties are specifically vedic gods, Varun.a and Mitra, Indra and N-satyau, with these forms of their names, can be traced only in the veda. Yet, they appeared in the Hurrian records!
In the treaty between the Hittites and Mitanni, the Mitanni king swears by: Mi-it-ra (Indic Mitra), Aru-na (Varun.a), In-da-ra (Indra) and Na-sa-at-tiya (Nasatya or As'wins). A Hittite text on horse-training and chariotry, written by Kikkuli (a Mitanni) uses Indic numerals to indicate the number of turns made by a chariot on a track: aika (Indic eka 'one'), tera (tri 'three'), panza (panca 'five'), satta (sapta 'seven') and na (nava 'nine').
Another Hurrian text from Nuzi uses Indic words to describe the colour of the horses, for example, babru (Indic babhru 'brown'), parita (palita 'grey') and pinkara (pingala 'reddish'). The Mitanni charioteer is called "marya" (Indic-Vedic marya 'warrior, young man'). Added to these are a series of names of the noblemen or aristocracy of Mitanni which are clearly Indic.
It is now generally agreed by most authorities on the subject that the Aryan linguistic vestiges in the Near East are to be connected specifically with Indo-Aryan, and not with Iranian, and also that they do not represent a third, independent Aryan group, and are not to be ascribed to the hypothetically reconstructed Proto-Aryan. This conclusion is incorporated in the title of M. Mayrhofer's bibliography of the subject, Die Indo-Arier im Alten Vorderasien (Wiesbaden, 1966), and it can now be taken as the commonly accepted view. It is based on the fact that where there is divergence between Iranian and Indo-Aryan, and where such elements appear in the Near Eastern record, the latter always agrees with Indo-Aryan.
Hurrians may be presumed to have been in the Near East from early times on the basis of the old Sumerian craft-word ta/ibira, 'copper worker', for which convincing proof of a Hurrian source can be adduced (Otten 1984, Wilhelm 1988). Atal-s'en describes himself as the son of one S'atar-mat, otherwise unknown, whose name is also Hurrian. The rule of Atal-s'en cannot be dated with certainty, but probably belongs to the end of the Gutian period (ca. 2090-2048 b.c.e.), or into the first decades of the Ur III period (2047-1940 b.c.e.). Records from the Ur III period reveal that the mountain areas to the east and north of Tigris and Euphrates valley were at this time occupied by Hurrian-speaking peoples, who had meanwhile also penetrated the eastern Tigris country to the north of the Diya-la. As a result of S'ulgi's wars (2029-1982 b.c.e.), large numbers of Hurrian prisoners found themselves in Sumer, where they were employed as a labour force. This why so many people with Hurrian names can be traced in Southern Mesopotamia in the Ur III period. The etymology of some names is certainly or most probably Indo-Aryan, for example Artatama = Vedic r.ta-dha-man 'whose abode is r.ta', Tus'ratta (Tuis'eratta) = Vedic tves.a-ratha 'whose chariot surges forward violently', Sattiwaza = Old Indo-Aryan sa_ti-va_ja 'acquiring booty', Vedic va-ja-sa-ti 'acquisition of booty' (Mayrhofer 1974: 23-25). The Hurrian language was in use in the 14th century b.c.e. at least as far away as Central Syria (Qatna, also probably Qadesh), and this expansion probably results from the population shifts during the rise of Mitanni. Among the gods who were still being honoured in the late 14th century by the kings of Mitanni, we find Mitra-, Varun.a-, Indra-, and the Na-satya-twins, who are known to us from the vedas, the oldest Indian poems.
The long journey to India
Back to our people's history, the above described is the land where we find them in 722 b.c.e. This was the beginning of their newly acquired language evolution, and the beginning of their oblivion as the people that once they were, except for their consciousness of being different, a peculiar people that cannot get mixed with the "Goyim" (later Gadje). They have certain rules to which they will not renounce, the purity laws and the belief in One God, that One Who promised and fulfilled: they will be again in exile, perhaps forever... They will no longer be called "Israel", now they are just "men", that their forefathers in the Egyptian exile called "Rom".
After the Assyrian rule, Babylonians deported also their Southern brothers, but they kept their identity, their social structure and their priestly Tribe, and 70 years later, they returned back to Canaan, being now recognized as "Jews". In their relatively short exile, they achieved in bringing back to them part of their Northern brothers, but the largest number remained in exile.
Babylon fell under a new rising power, Medo-Persia, a non-Semitic people, but rather linked to the Hurrian/Mitanni. They had a particular religion that involved fire-worship and magic, indeed, their priestly caste were called Magi. The exiled people, formerly Israelites and now simply "men", Rom, were very gifted in such arts, and understood that practising them was profitable, so these elements were adopted into their own culture, but mainly concerning their behaviour towards the others, the Gadje. The Persian Empire was vast, and extended up to Sakastan, beyond the Sindh. That was a very desirable country, and would have also helped them to forget their exile in Assyria, the right land to settle and begin a new life...
Now, in these last years, a Jewish International organization called "Kulanu" ("All of us") that primarily aims at finding the lost Tribes of ancient Israel, is achieving in this task, and there is a particular area of the world where many of them have been finally found: India. There are descendants of the Israelites exiled by Assyrians in every part of India, from Kashmir to Kerala, from Assam to Afghanistan. They are being identified, not through their language, that is Indic, but through other cultural features - yet, none of them gathers as many Hebrew elements as Roma!
As a matter of fact, concerning the place where the commonly known as lost Tribes of Israel migrated, overwhelming evidences show that the largest number resettled in India during the Persian and Macedonian rule, and most of them preferred the Scytho-Sarmatic area, namely, the Indus Valley, Kashmir, Rajasthan and the upper Ganges region. Of course they were no longer one homogeneous mass, as they migrated in separate groups to different lands and generated new distinct ethnic entities, this means, that Roma are only one of several Israelite groups that no longer know their origin - the difference is that Roma returned back to the west, and caught the attention of Europeans, while the others remained in the east and are still ignored, and perhaps have lost most of the features that allow to identify them, characteristics that Roma have kept up to an acceptable degree.
What scholars do not take in consideration when they study the Roma origin topic is the ethnic complexity of India in that period and assume that it was an almost mono-ethnic, monolithic Aryan people, what is a fallacious assumption and definitely misleading for their research. Indeed, the strictly Aryan region was south-east from Uttar Pradesh and east from Rajasthan-Gujarat, while these regions and the lands to the west of them were inhabited by Scytho-Sarmatic, Iranic and even Greek peoples, plus the Israelite exiles. A general research on the peoples and tribes dwelling from the northwestern area of the Indian subcontinent to the Iranic region reveals that almost all of them, if not all, keep in their traditions the belief that they came from the west, usually relating their immigration either with the exiled Israelites or the contingents brought into that area by Alexander the Great. Some Pashtun clans, as well as most Kashmiri tribes claim Israelite ancestry and even trace their family origin to King Shaul; a similar tradition exists among the Kalash of Nuristan, that in many aspects recall the Roma people. The Assyrian-Hebrew exiles found a major tolerance within Scytho-Sarmatic peoples than among any other, and their countries were preferred to those of the much more intolerant Aryans. The same happened to their Jewish brothers. It is a significant fact that the largest number of both, Jews and Roma, found a safe haven in the Scytho-Sarmatic Europe for many centuries: indeed, the centre of both cultures has been Eastern Europe, particularly Hungary, and Russia. Romany language would have virtually disappeared if Roma would have not dwelled in those countries, as it is a proven fact, Romany grammar and a considerable part of the original Romany terms have been lost in Central and Western Europe, due to persecutions and banishment of the open expression of Romany culture, in the same way as Jews were forbidden to practise their own Jewishness - without forgetting what would imply for Roma to be labelled as "Aryan" after the Shoah/Porhaymós... The sojourn of both peoples in Eastern Europe has even determined some characteristics concerning clothing, in fact, the present-day typical suit and hat worn by the most Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews belongs to the Polish and Baltic notables of the late Middle Ages and the subsequent period, and is not so different from the suit and hat worn by men of the most "orthodox" Roma groups. Besides clothing, Roma men usually have side whiskers, an acceptable substitute of the Jewish "pe'ot".
Premises for an hypothesis:
•Romany spiritual and cultural features coincide exclusively with ancient Hebrew characteristics;
•Fire-worship elements present in the Romany society imply that Roma sojourned in Persia enough time to adopt them, and necessarily before the Islamic rule, that means, before they arrived in India;
•Remains of some early Scytho-Sarmatic rudiments in Romany customs are the only vestiges of their stay in India (besides language) and reveal that they settled in the non-Aryan region of India; such elements belong to that period and not later, because Scytho-Sarmatic culture had been largely absorbed by Slavic and Magyar civilizations when Roma arrived in Eastern Europe;
•Concerning language, it is very likely that Roma already spoke an Indic tongue before they reached the subcontinent and that such language was Hurrian, adopted during their first centuries of exile in the land of Mitanni.
Belief
Roma's belief shows the following characteristics:
•Strict monotheism, without the slightest trace of any alleged past polytheistic or pantheistic religion.
•The very personal character of God, Who is accessible and with Whom it is possible to have an argument (Hebrew conception) - not unapproachable like Allah and not even relatively accessible like in the Christian faith, that usually needs a Mediator for a personal contact with Him.
•The existence of a spiritual world, consisting in pure and impure spirits (Hebrew conception) representing good and evil who fight each other - this is also originally Hebrew, but with a marked Zoroastric influence that is typical result of the Assyrian/Babylonian/Persian exile and developed in the same way as Kabbalistic Judaism, showing a contemporaneous evolution of Roma spirituality and Mystic Judaism, within the same environment.
•The belief in death as a definitive passage to the spiritual world (Hebrew). Not the slightest trace of any idea of reincarnation.
•The dead person is impure during his/her journey to the realm of the souls (Hebrew concept), and all the items connected with his/her death are impure, as well as his/her relatives during the period of mourning (Hebrew concept).
•Roma's destiny after death is Paradise, while Gadje are redeemed and deserve Paradise only if they have been good towards Roma - identical to the Jewish concept of "righteous among the Goyim".
These belief patterns go beyond any "official" religion the Roma may confess. There are usually additional features and rituals that belong to their adopted faith, and which they express in a picturesque way and observe with great respect, as for example the "pomana", an orthodox practice, or other ceremonies. There are also other complementary elements of a rather superstitious nature, all of them linked with the fire-worship of ancient Persia. Some of them are considered valid for their own society, like having lighted fire in the house permanently, day and night, winter and summer (a tradition that is still kept by the most conservative families, while in general is evolving into a "symbolic" fire like the TV set, always switched on though nobody actually watching). Other customs are only practised outwardly, like fortune-telling, palmistry, tarot, etc. in whose powerful qualities Roma do not believe but use them to take some profit from the Gadje. This has been learnt from the ancient Persian Magi and alchemists.
There are founded reasons to presume that Roma were Christians since the first century c.e., that is, before they arrived in India or during the first period of their sojourn there, and that is why they did not adopt any hinduist element in their religious conception. It appears that Roma were very well aware of what Christianity consisted in when they entered Europe, even though they had no possibility of having ever read the Bible. There is something mysterious in Romany spirituality that in the last decades led them to a genuine approach to the Evangelical movements (the form of Christianity closer to Judaism, without saints and image-worship) and lately a further step to Messianic Judaism. There is no other people in the world having experimented such a massive number of conversions in such a short time. The interesting fact is that this phenomenon is not the result of missionary work but of spontaneous, autonomous will (indeed, Gadje would have hardly dared to evangelize "Gypsies", devoted to occult arts and witchcraft, according to their prejudiced views). Against all odds, Roma from different countries in roughly the same time, without connection to each other, experimented conversions and began to read the Bible. Now the missionary work among Roma and Sinti is carried on by themselves. This may be explained by understanding that there is an atavic legacy that is unique feature of Romany spirituality. Most Roma are now abandoning the ancestral fire-worship elements and the practices forbidden by Torah, like pomana, divination and other things related to it.
A feasible conjecture (remark: a conjecture) is that their first approach to the Christian faith might be connected with the biblical Magi that worshipped the child Yeshua of Natzaret; evidently, they were not just Persian fire-worshippers, but people that hoped in the promise of a Messiah for Israel, therefore, Israelites of the Northern Kingdom that at that time were fully immersed in the Zoroastrian cult, yet waiting for the redemption of their people. Historic accounts report that in the first century c.e., massive conversions took place in Assyria, where the Apostles went to rescue the "lost sheep" of the House of Israel, as many were still in that region. Some of the Apostles reached India in search of them. A curious fact is that the recently discovered Israelites of India were almost all Christian, not Hindu or other. The complete absence of Hindu elements in Romany spirituality must have some meaning.
The ritual purity laws, "marimé"
The Romany concept of "marimé" is equal to the negative form of the Jewish concept of "kosher", the first indicates ritual impurity, while the second refers to ritual purity. Besides this viewpoint difference, the essence is the same (it is like saying if the cup is half-empty or half-full). What is marimé for a Rom, is not kosher for a Jew, so both of them will take the necessary measures in order not to be defiled with such things, or if they are a necessary, unavoidable contamination, they both will follow certain rules to be purified. In the same way as Jewish kashrut, the rules that regulate marimé are a fundamental value in Romany society that set the behavioural boundaries within their social and spiritual realm and condition their relationship with the external world (the Gadje society).
Roma classify everything into two categories: "vuzhó" (=kosher, pure) or "marimé" (impure). Such classification regards primarily the human body, but is extended to the spiritual realm, the house or camp, animals and things.
•The human body: the rules concerning the parts of the human body to be considered impure are exactly the same ones that we find in the Mosaic Torah (Leviticus, chapter 15). In the first place, the genital organs, since they convey impure discharge out of the inner body, and the lower part of the body, because it is below the genitals. The upper external part of the body is pure, and the mouth in the first place. The hands are transitional, since they have to perform both pure and impure acts, therefore they must be washed in a particular way, for instance if one has to eat after having put on one's shoes or woken up from bed (the bed is impure since it is in contact with the lower body). When the hands have been defiled, they should be washed with a separate soap and dryed with a separate towel to render them pure. Different soaps and towels are always used for the upper and lower bodies, and they cannot be exchanged.
•Clothes: they are accurately distinguished since they must be washed separately, in separate recipients assigned for each category. Impure clothes must always be washed in the marimé basin, and pure clothes are still separated from the tablecloth and the napkins, which have their own washing recipient. Upper body clothes and children's clothes are washed in the vuzhó basin, lower body clothes in the marimé one. All the woman's clothes are impure during her menstruations and washed with the marimé items. The only people that apply these washing rules besides Roma are Jews.
•The camp: before the recent forced urbanization, the Romany home was the camp rather than the house. The camp enjoys the status of territorial purity, by which the physiological "business" are performed outside its proximity (or eventually the hygienic services are placed outside the camp), this is a Jewish law (Deuteronomy 23:12). Also garbage should be thrown at an acceptable distance from the camp.
•Birth: the childbirth is an impure event and should take place in an isolated tent right outside the camp, when possible. After the child is born, the mother is considered impure for forty days, mainly the first week: this rule is unique of the Mosaic Torah - Leviticus 12:2-4 -. During this period, the woman cannot get in touch with pure items or perform any common activity like cooking or even appear in public, mainly in presence of the elders; she cannot attend any religious service. Special dishes, cups and tableware are assigned to her, which are thrown away after the 40 days of her purification are over, the clothes she wore and her bed are burnt, as well as the tent or caravan where she lodged during those 40 days. This law is unknown to any people except Roma and Jews.
•Death: as well as in Judaic Law, somebody's death conveys impurity to everybody and everything that was related to that person in that moment. All the food present in the house of the dead should be thrown away, and the whole family is impure for three days. Particular rules are to be observed during those three days, like washing oneself with water only in order not to make foam; to comb or shave is interdict, as well as sweeping, making holes, writing or painting, taking photographs, and many other things. Mirrors are covered. The camp where the death occurred is abandoned and transferred to another place, or the house is sold. The soul of the dead is believed to wander during three days of purification before reaching the final abode: this is not written in the Hebrew Scriptures, but is anyway a common idea within some Judaic mystic currents. The concept that contact with a dead body attaches impurity is not found in any ancient tradition except in the Jewish Bible (Leviticus 21:1). As the Jewish Law establishes, also among Roma the dead should be buried and cannot be burnt.
•Things: they can be marimé by nature or by use, or be defiled by accidental circumstances. Whatever is touched by the lower body is impure, like shoes, chairs, etc. while tables are pure. The rules that concern these laws are described in Leviticus 15 and other Hebrew Scriptures.
•Animals: Roma consider that animals are either pure or impure, even though the patterns by which they are classified are different from the Jewish ones. For instance, dogs and cats are marimé because they lick themselves, horses, donkeys and any animal used for riding is impure because people sit on them, and so on. Impure animals cannot be eaten.
•Spirits: the evil spirits are marimé, which is also a Jewish concept.
Marriage laws
Romany betrothal and marriage are celebrated in the same way as they were in ancient Israel. Both partners' parents play an essential role in arranging the bride's dowry and the celebration is performed within the Roma community, without any participation of Gadje's institutions. In case that the girl runs away with her fiancé without the consent of her parents, they are regarded as a married couple, but the husband's family must pay a compensation to the wife's parents, usually equivalent to twice the dowry amount; that compensation is called "kepara", a word that has the same meaning of the Hebrew term "kfar" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). The payment of the dowry by the male partner's family to the female's parents is a biblical rule, exactly the opposite to Indian peoples, in which it is the bride's family that pays to the husband's one.
There is a particular precept that must be observed to consolidate the marriage, the "virginity proof cloth", that should be shown to the whole community after the first sexual relationship - this is a rule found in Torah, Deuteronomy 22:15-17. Of course, in the case of runaway couples such rule is meaningless and consequently not observed.
Social behaviour
Like Jews, Roma assume different behaviour standards for the relationships with their own people and for the interaction with the outsiders, so that we can state with certainty that the opposition Roma/Gadje and Jews/Goyim are regulated in a quite similar way, maybe identical in almost all details.
Since the Gadje do not know the laws regulating marimé, they are suspected of being impure or just assumed that they are, consequently, Roma would not lodge at Gadje homes and would not eat with Gadje; some Roma do not even enter a gadje house - the same custom is found in ancient Israel, and still practised by Orthodox Jews. Gadje who become Roma's friends are admitted once they are aware of the main rules they should observe in order not to offend the community, and after having passed some "tests" of reliability. Otherwise, gadje institutions are used as a "free-trade area", where impure activities may be performed with safety - a typical example is the hospital, that allows to avoid setting up a special tent for childbirth. Courtesy, respect and hospitality are obligatory within Roma. When they greet each other should ask for each other's family wishing all members good and blessing, even though they meet the first time and do not know the respective families. Self-introduction includes one's parents names, grandparents and as many generations as they remember - civil name and surname are irrelevant; Roma are called like in ancient Israel, A son of B, son of C, of the family of the D's. This is however, a common feature of many eastern peoples, but the way Roma formulate these terms are quite biblical.
Judicial causes among Roma are presented to the elders' assembly, right according to the Mosaic Law. The Romany elders' assembly is called "kris", and is a true Court of Justice, whose sentences should be obeyed, otherwise the disobedient party would be banished from the Romany community. Cases are usually not so serious as not to be solved by a payment of an amend, as regulated by Torah (Exodus 21:22; 22:9; Deuteronomy 22:16-19).
There are many other aspects that may be of a secondary importance, which anyway recall the ancient Israelite customs and rules. Unfortunately, such details are being lost with new generations (as many have been lost among Jews as well) because of modern society systems that restrict individual and "exotic" communities freedom. Roma do not feel any attraction at all towards Indian culture or music (what is more, Roma women have a low-pitch voice, in contrast with the Indian singers, a detail that may be insignificant), while they have always preferred Middle Eastern music. In Eastern Europe, most of the folk expressions are either Jewish or Romany, and many times the same work is attributed to either one or the other of these two traditions. "Klezmorim" bands were often composed by Roma together with Jews, and the European Jazz style has been cultivated by Roma as well as by Jews. Flamenco is probably originated among Sephardic Jews before they were expelled from Spain, and later developed by Roma that remained in that country. In other aspects, Roma have a great commercial skill (and if they have to work in partnership Jews are preferred) and those who choose a professional insertion in the gadje society usually prefer the same careers chosen by Jews (perhaps connected with the purity laws, that do not allow to perform every kind of work). Last but not least, Roma make a distinction between common "Gadje" and Jews, who are not considered fully Gadje but an intermediate category that observes the purity laws and consequently not subject to marimé suspicion.
Conclusion:
This brief essay intends to set the principles on which a new, accurate and serious research about the origins of Roma and Sinti should be founded, instead of the insistence in going on with an only-linguistic and misleading trend. The presented facts do not exclude that Roma might have been actually dwelling in Kannauj or somewhere else in India, although the Indus Valley seems to be the most appropriate land for their sojourn in the subcontinent, but show that however Roma do not belong to the Indic (and not at all to the Aryan) background, but to a Semitic and more precisely Hebrew origin. Israelite groups were numerous throughout India, and it has been possible to rediscover some of them by setting aside the linguistic trace (because all of them spoke Indian languages) and concentrating the research on some cultural hints that revealed the true origin, such hints are up to now less relevant than those we may find now in Romany culture, yet they have been enough to determine the Israelite ancestry.
The Nazarene faith arrived in the Indus Valley during the 1st century c.e. According to the scarce documents that survived, this faith was first adopted by the exiled Israelites that were present in India since at least the 4th century bce. Although some traditions should not be taken seriously as true facts until the events they assert are historically proven, once they are verified the account deserves to be credited at least up to the degree provided by evidences. One of the ancient literary texts that was regarded as a legend is the apocryphal book of the Acts of Thomas, which in chapter 17 records that the Apostle Toma visited the court of King Gondapharna in Pundjab. The historian Eusebius of Caesarea, in Historia Ecclesiastica, III.1, mentions Toma as the Apostle sent to the Kingdom of the Parthians. Gondapharna has been considered only a legendary figure by historians, until his existence was verified in 1872, and the period in which he reigned was established thanks to an inscription dated at his 26th regnal year, which was the year 47 c.e. According to this discovery and further research, it is unavoidable to acknowledge that the author of the Acts of Thomas was well acquainted with contemporary sources, as the king's name could not have been known by writers of a later period.
After this first approach of the early Christianity to the Indus Valley, Assyrian missionaries held an extensive evangelization work throughout the continent, as well as other emissaries who transmitted the epistles written in Greek, which became the common language of Christians in all the lands formerly reached by Alexander's army and widely used by Hellenized peoples.
The unique characteristics of the Romany Law provide many keys to know the reasons for such exodus. They were a different people, having an ancient Semitic tradition, deeply influenced by Zoroastrian mysticism and by Scythian lifestyle ‒ they had probably also a certain degree of intermarriage with their Scythian neighbours.
Myths & Traditions of Gypsies -Romany Mythology
In Romany oral tradition we can find mainly elements of the Hebrew mythology with a marked accent on the kabbalistic aspect and some features connected with fire-worship of ancient Persia. The so-called "Indian" features of Roma are indeed elements that are found, even in a larger amount, among Hungarians, Russians and Slavic peoples, features that they have inherited from Khwarezm, and farther in the past, from Sumer and Subartu.
«In the beginning, there were O Del and the Beng, who challenged each other. One of those days, while they were walking about by the shore of the great river, the Beng said: "I am able to go down to the depth of the river"…
O Del with His stick commanded the pear-tree and the apple-tree to bear fruit, then He commanded both of them to eat the fruit, respectively Damo to eat the pears, and Yahvah the apples. So they felt desire for one another and after O Del's command they made love. Yet the woman, insatiable, asked the man to repeat many times the act. Therefore, O Del said: "You, woman, will never be satisfied; your desire will always be for your husband". And He left them to their destiny.
O Del created from the earth the Sherkano or serpent and his female partner Halla, and the pairs of all the other animals.
In this primeval world O Del Sinpetri had some companions: Sunto Yakof, Sunto Avraham, Sunto Moishel and Sunto Krechuno. These were the suntse, the ancestors. With them there was also Pharavono, who later separated from them causing the division of mankind - until then being one race and speaking one language - into two groups: the Horaxané led by Sinpetri and the Pharavonuria led by Pharavono. This group kept self-isolated in the beginning, but then, multiplying themselves and being full of intelligence and boldness, decided to conquer the whole earth. Therefore, Pharavono moved war against Sinpetri; but he did not know that Sinpetri was O Del Himself. Heading his army, Pharavono crossed the river, invoking O Del's power; but when crossing the sea, plenty of pride, invoked his own power and was overwhelmed by the water. His last attempt to worship a stone idol was punished by a thunderbolt. The whole inhabited land was flooded. O Del Sinpetri remade the earth and enlarged it, and gave it to His Horaxané and carried the suntse to the Rhayo, the other world above the stars. The Pharavonuria, drowned, fell down in the Yado, the underground abyss where all the dead of evil death go. The few Pharavonuria that survived - that is, the Gypsies - are sentenced to never have their own national territory, nor political organization, nor church, nor alphabet, because all their culture was flooded by the sea.»
This myth of the origins belongs to the tradition of Balkan Roma, and even though drenched with Christian interpolations, the purely Hebrew elements appear evident as well as the Zoroastric conception of dualism. Now we will analyse mainly the phrases and words written in bold in the text above.
The personality of "O Del", that is God, is that of the God of Israel, Who is often represented in an anthropomorphic manner. The God that was "walking about " is a clear image of Genesis 3:8, where it is said that He did so in the garden, which was indeed by the shores of a great river (Genesis 2:10); consequently, the image is approximately the same in the legend and in the Bible. In this case He speaks with His antagonist, while in the biblical account He speaks with man.
The Beng, name that originally meant a frog, is the evil force, quite like AnghraMainyu of Mazdeism, but with typically Hebrew characteristics: the fact that "he goes down to the depth of the great river" identifies him with Leviathan (Isaiah 27:1), a biblical figure of Satan. The serpent "Sherkano" is the Beng himself, and has a female counterpart that coincides with Lilith* of Hebrew tradition (Isaiah 34:14), who was also in Eden. Not only this, but also her name "Halla" recalls that of "Helel" (Isaiah 14:12 - Hebrew), that is indeed the female name of "Satan". Moreover, since the original meaning of the name "Beng" is frog, this is also a Hebrew image of the apostolic period - when the first Christians were all Jews - representing the impure spirits that come out of the serpent's mouth (Revelation 16:13) like frogs.
God created all the animals from the earth (Genesis 1:24), among which the serpent is distinguished (Genesis 3:1), as in Hebrew tradition.
The woman's name, "Yahvah" is very enigmatic, because it is written in the same way as the Name of God, "YHVH". Eve's Hebrew name is "Havah". The Spanish Gypsies call Eve "Hayah", that is a Hebrew name derived from the verb "to live" - Genesis 3:20 "the man called his wife 'Havah' ('Hayah', 'Yahvah'), because she was the mother of all living". Also the expression that the woman's desire will always be for her husband is biblical (Genesis 3:16) and is the consequence of having eaten the fruit.
The names of the "suntse" (saints) are evidently those of the main Hebrew Patriarchs, Yakov, Avraham and Mosheh - it is interesting the fact that to Mosheh's name it has been added the Hebrew ending "-El". Only "Krechuno" and "Sinpetri" (Saint Peter) are interpolations of the Orthodox Christianity.
As well as in Jewish tradition, Pharaoh's pride ("Pharavono") is compared with Satan's - invoking his own name instead of God's. In fact, in Judaism there are two main prototypes of pride: Satan and Pharaoh. In this story two events are mixed: the Egyptian troops overwhelmed by the Red Sea water while pursuing the Israelites and the universal Deluge; this results from an oral transmission of both events of the Hebrew tradition which along the time got confused. The division of mankind into two groups recalls the antediluvian split between the "sons of Elohim" and the "sons of the Adam" (Genesis 6:2). The survivors of the Deluge here identified with the "Pharavonuria" may coincide with the descent of Kayin (Cain), who were wanderers, smiths and musicians, like Roma are by tradition - and often it was alleged that the Roma were Cain's offspring. Also the "multiplication" of mankind and their intellectual development recalls Cain's generation in Genesis 6:1-5. Pharaoh however has not any problem in crossing the "great river", that is the Nile, of which the Bible says that Pharaoh considers himself to be the master (Ezekiel 29:3), passage in which he is compared with Leviathan - therefore, the identity Pharaoh = serpent = Satan. There are also mixed the persons of Pharaoh and Nimrod - as he is also a prototype of pride -, who has been a rebel when the whole mankind still "spoke one language" (Genesis 11:1) and tried to "conquer the whole land" and gather all men under his rule. The idea that man was a wanderer in origin coincides with the period of the Hebrew Patriarchs, all of whom were stateless (Avraham, Yitzhak, Yakov). Also Pharaoh's identity as a "worshipper of stone idols" is Jewish, as well as being "struck by lightning" as punishment for idolatry. Nevertheless, in this story the Roma identify themselves just with the survivors of Pharaoh's army, sentenced to never have their own country, a written language and their own religion - this is exactly the curse of the Tribes belonging to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, sent to exile to lose their independence and identity as a punishment for having worshipped the golden calf, namely, because of their return to the Egyptians' religion… "You shall not be a nation" (Isaiah 7:8).
God's Throne "above the stars" is a biblical image (Isaiah 14:13), while the underground abyss is the dwelling place of the rebel spirits according to the Book of Henok. The Balkan environment has contributed to identify the "Gadgé" (non-Roma) with the "Horaxané", (muslims), and with their "god" Saint Peter (Roman/Byzantine Christianity), to whom "Sinpetri" has given a homeland, an alphabet and a political system, in contrast with Roma, that because of their disobedience are sentenced to perpetual exile, just like the Israelites of the Kingdom of Samaria.
The scarce Bible knowledge given to people was rather about the New Testament and tainted with traditions concerning the life or sayings of the saints of the church, not commentaries of the Scriptures like the Parashat, as these Romany stories may be considered. Therefore, it is more than likely that this tradition is much older than Roma's arrival in Europe, dating back to the first and second centuries c.e. in Mesopotamia. On the other hand, the interpretation of biblical figures is not Christian at all, but quite Jewish, with evident kabbalistic features. From this and other similar traditions it is inferred that the development of Romany spirituality is the same as that of the Israelites in exile, in which zoroastric elements contributed to their mysticism. And it is certain that the Roma did not read the Scriptures until very recently, when the Evangelical revival developed among them…
Prophet Elijah and the Fire
«When our ancestors lived in caravans and a lightning storm was coming, they prayed Prophet Ilija to send the thuderbolts far away from the camp, because Prophet Ilija has the command on fire. One day he was offering a sacrifice to O Del, and it began to rain so heavily that the altar got completely wet and he was not able to set fire on it. So he ordered a lightning to fall on the sacrifice and burn it, and suddenly, a flash with a noisy thunder fell on the altar and burnt the whole offer, leaving only ashes. Since then, Prophet Ilija took the command on the storms, and he made to rain when he wished, or not to rain any more until he commanded. One day he wanted to go to Heaven, and ordered a fire whirlwind to take him away, and since then, he commands the storms from Heaven. That is why our Roma since ancient times, when a storm is approaching, ask Prophet Ilija to be merciful and to send the storm away».
Gadje means "non-Roma".
This story has no parallel in any tradition and not any possible source except the Scriptures: Exodus 3:21-22 and 12:35-36, in which Mosheh gave these instructions to the Hebrews under God's command. This event of the Bible is hardly heard in any Christian church, and such a detailed explanation cannot be the result of hearsay within a Christian environment.
There are many tales like these among Roma all over the world. On the contrary, there is not any oral tradition that may be traced back to any event, real or mythical, of Indian peoples.
About the Gypsies
Anne Herschman
With greater linguistic and cultural analysis we might be able to learn more about the gypsies' history which remains mostly oral. Since the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, the loss of the ten tribes and then the fall of the Southern Kingdom, we Jews have been driven from pillar to post. During this time we must have interacted and mixed with many different groups of people. Some of them merely adopted some of our customs, some intermarried with Jews, who knows.
Gypsy symbol in artistic styled form
After what happened with the Lemba I think we should treat peoples' oral traditions with great respect. As for the gypsies, we must be alert and stand ready to help them. In the past ten years, given the dearth of Jews in Eastern Europe, there have been a series of progroms in Poland, Hungary and Romania in which Gypsies were killed. The death of Yul Brynner (who was a gypsy) deprived them of a highly visible public spokesman and no one has really taken his place.
I think the organized Jewish community, must speak out about anti-semitic incidents and must also speak out against the persecution of Gypsies. I know this is hard following the Durban conference, when we Jews have been put under siege by the forces of evil (yes, evil). In a world that has become preoccupied with the Palistinians but has chosen to turn a blind eye to the genocide and persecution of Sudanese Christians, Tibetans, Kurds, Gypsies and many, many more groups we cannot remain silent.
Gypsies and Israelites
Revello Avraham
As it's well known that many of the Lost Tribes settled in India, I want to suggest to include in your list the Gypsies, as they have many reasons to claim true Israelite background. This is well explained in the website http://web.tiscalinet.it/imninalu/english.htm, and I can add some information to support this, for instance, that many Gypsy groups (like the Gabor in Transylvania and many Gitanos in Spain) are by "coincidence" returning back to some Jewish consciuosness that got lost with time, like Shabbath, Kashrut and Brit Milah... Other Rom are following their way. There are many interesting details among Gypsies that suggest origin in some Israelite Tribes: for instance, among Sinti groups and many Rom, a respectful way to address a person is the word "Manush", that suggests "Manassheh" (French Sinti call themselves with this term). Gypsies in India are called "Lambadi" - any connection with "Lemba" or just a coincidence?
Another detail to remark: When was the Tribe of Shim'on lost? In Dibre haYamim 4:38-43, Ezra asserts they lived in Edom until his time, that means, after Yehudah came back from Babylon! In fact, Shim'on could have not joined the Northern Tribes and was in fact assimilated into Yehudah... The 10 Lost tribes are indeed 9, maybe adding some Levites of the Northern Kingdom, we have 10 again.
Those from Madras are only the Lambadi tribe of Gypsies. The ones that emigrated to the West were settled in Rajasthan (Rom) and Sindh (Sinti), the same area of the B'ney Yisrael of India. Lambadis may belong to the same migration as Jews of Cochin, who came from Yemen, as well as Lemba in Southern Africa came from Yemen. So, we have the same areas for both Israelites and Gypsies in India.
Another important fact is that Rom settled in Israel (except Domari, who acknowledge themselves as Arabs rather than Gypsies) are recorded as "Yehudim" in their ID, that is not granted to all Israeli citizens but only to Jews! One of the main Gypsy internet organizatios is as well settled in Israel. Even Domari of Jerusalem are leaving Islam for Christianity, coming closer to Israeli people than ever before.
Gypsies/Roma
While the word gypsy comes from the German word for Egyptian it is generally accepted that the Gypsies come from the Indian province of Madras. I'm not sure of what caused their migration.
The reason they might be of Israelite origin is that Madras cloth which was made in Madras India, is similar to gauze which was made in Gaza, (biblical Israel) the textiles are so similar that I'm sure the technology is the same.
Gypsy Israelite symbol
Perhaps they took the technology with them from Gaza to Madras?
If you read the book "The Glassmakers" you can trace the Jewish diaspora through the spread of glass technology. Perhaps the same can be done with the spread of certain textile technology.
The reason they might be of Israelite origin is that Madras cloth which was made in Madras India, is similar to gauze which was made in Gaza, (biblical Israel) the textiles are so similar that I'm sure the technology is the same.
Perhaps they took the technology with them from Gaza to Madras?
If you read the book "The Glassmakers" you can trace the Jewish diaspora through the spread of glass technology. Perhaps the same can be done with the spread of certain textile technology.
Porajmos
The Romani genocide or Romani Holocaust, also known as the Porajmos, or Samudaripen ("Mass killing"), was the attempt made by Nazi Germany and its allies to exterminate the Romani people of Europe during World War II. Under Adolf Hitler's rule, both Roma and Jews were defined as "enemies of the race-based state" by the Nuremberg laws; the two groups (and many others) were targeted by similar policies and persecution, culminating in the near annihilation of both populations within Nazi-occupied countries (interestingly both are are Israelite peoples).
Estimates of the death toll of Romanies in World War II range from 220,000 to 1,500,000. The genocide of the Roma was formally recognised by West Germany in 1982 and by Poland in 2011.
Etymology
The term porajmos (also Porrajmos or Pharrajimos—literally, devouring or destruction in some dialects of the Romani language) was introduced by Ian Hancock, in the early 1990s. Hancock chose the term, coined by a Kalderash Rom, from a number of suggestions in an "informal conversation in 1993".
The term is used mostly by activists and is unknown to most Roma, including relatives of the victims and survivors. Some Russian and Balkan Romani activists protest against using the word porajmos. In various dialects, "porajmos" is synonymous with poravipe which means "violation" and "rape", a term which some Roma consider to be offensive. Balkan Romani activists prefer the term Samudaripen ("mass killing"), first introduced by linguist Marcel Courthiade. Hancock dismisses this word, arguing that it does not conform to Romani language morphology. Some Ruska Roma activists offer the emotive term Kali Traš ("Black Fear"). Another alternative that has been used is Berša Bibahtale ("The Unhappy Years"). Lastly, adapted borrowings such as Holokosto, Holokausto etc. are also occasionally used in the Romani language.
Linguistically, the term is composed of the verb root porrav- and the abstract-forming nominal ending -imos. This ending is of the Vlax Romani dialect, whereas other varieties generally use -ibe(n) or -ipe(n). For the verb itself, the most commonly given meaning is "to open/stretch wide" or "to rip open", whereas the meaning "to open up the mouth, devour" occurs in fewer varieties.
Romani discrimination before 1933
The emergence of racism
In the late 19th century, the emergence of scientific racism and Social Darwinism, linking social differences to racial differences, provided the public justifications for prejudices against Jews and Romani. During this time, “the concept of race was systematically employed to explain social phenomena.” (the hammitic & Bantu theories derived in part from this too) This approach validated the idea that races were not variations of a single species and instead were of different biological origin. It established a scientifically backed racial hierarchy, which othered minority groups on the basis of biology.
In addition to racial pseudo-science, the end of the 19th century was a period of state-sponsored modernization in Germany. Industrial development altered many aspects of society. Most notably, the period shifted social norms of work and life. For Roma, this meant a denial of their traditional way of being. János Bársony notes that "industrial development devalued their services as craftsmen, resulting in the disintegration of their communities and social marginalization."
Persecution under the German Empire and Weimar Republic
The developments of racial pseudo-science and modernization resulted in anti-Romani state interventions, carried out by the German Empire and Weimar Republic. In 1899, the Information Services on Romani by the Security Police was created in the Imperial Police Headquarters in Munich. Its purpose was to keep records (identification cards, fingerprints, photographs, etc.) and continuous surveillance on the Roma community. Roma in the Weimar Republic were forbidden from entering public swimming pools, parks, and other recreational areas, and depicted throughout Germany and Europe as criminals and spies. By 1926, this ‘racial panic’ was transmitted into law. The Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy was enforced in Bavaria. It stipulated that groups identified as ‘Gypsies’ avoid all travel to the region. Those already living in the area were to “be kept under control so that there [was] no longer anything to fear from them with regard to safety in the land.” Herbet Heuss notes that "[t]his Bavarian law became the model for other German states and even for neighbouring countries."
The demand for Roma to settle in a specific region was often the focus of anti-Romani policy both of the German Empire and Weimar Republic. Once settled, communities were concentrated and isolated in one area within a town or city. This process facilitated state-run surveillance practices and ‘crime prevention.’
Public policy increasingly targeted the Roma on the explicit basis of race following the Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy. In 1927, legislation was passed in Prussia that required all Roma to carry identity cards. Eight thousand Roma were processed this way and subjected to mandatory fingerprinting and photographing. Two years later, the focus became ever more explicit. In 1929, the German state of Hussen proposed the Law for the Fight Against the Gypsy Menace. The same year the Centre for the Fight Against Gypsies in Germany was opened. This body enforced restrictions on travel for undocumented Roma and "allowed for the arbitrary arrest and detention of gypsies as a means of crime prevention.”
Legislation before Hitler’s rise to power was propelled by a rhetoric of racism. Policy based on the premise of “fighting crime” was redirected to “fighting a people.” Targeted groups were no longer determined by juridical grounds. Instead, they were victims of racialized policy.
Aryan racial purity
For centuries, Romani tribes were subject to antiziganist persecution and humiliation in Europe. They were stigmatized as habitual criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds. Given the Nazi predilection for “racial purity”, the Roma were among their first victims. However, in the early days of Third Reich, the Romanies posed a problem for Hitler’s racial ideologues: the Romani language is one of the Indo-Aryan languages, originating in northern India (the language might have Indian origin, but the people seems to have come befote from Israel). Nazi anthropologists realized that Romanies migrated into Europe from India and were thus descendants of the Aryan occupants of the subcontinent, thought at the time to have invaded India from Europe. In other words, the Romanies are native speakers of an Aryan language.
Huttenbach argues that the Nazis planned to eliminate the Romanis, one way or another, from as early as 1933; they announced on July 14, 1933, the goal of preventing lebensunwertes Leben from reproducing. The Department of Racial Hygiene and Population Biology began to experiment on Romanis to reach criteria for their racial classification.
Nazi racialist Hans F. K. Günther added a socioeconomic component to the theory of racial purity. While he conceded that the Romanies were, in fact, descended from Aryans, they were of poorer classes that had mingled with the various “inferior” races they encountered during their wanderings. This, he explained, accounted for their extreme poverty and nomadic lifestyle. While he conceded that there were some groups that were "purely Aryan", most Romanies posed a threat to Aryan homogeneity because of their racial mingling.
To study the problem further, the Nazis established the Racial Hygiene and Demographic Biology Research Unit (Rassenhygienische und Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle, Department L3 of the Reich Department of Health) in 1936. Headed by Dr. Robert Ritter and his assistant Eva Justin, the body was mandated to conduct an in-depth study of the "Gypsy question (Zigeunerfrage)" and to provide data required for formulating a new Reich "Gypsy law". After extensive fieldwork in the spring of 1936, consisting of interviews and medical examinations to investigate genealogical and genetic data, it was determined that most Romanies posed a danger to German racial purity and should be eliminated. No decision was made regarding the remainder (about 10 percent of the total Romani population of Europe), primarily Sinti and Lalleri tribes living in Germany, though several suggestions were made. At one point Heinrich Himmler even suggested the establishment of a remote reservation, where "pure Gypsies" could continue their nomadic lifestyle unhindered. According to him:
...The aim of measures taken by the State to defend the homogeneity of the German nation must be the physical separation of Gypsydom from the German nation, the prevention of miscegenation, and finally, the regulation of the way of life of pure and part-Gypsies.
Nine representatives of the Romani community in Germany were asked to compile lists of pure-blooded Romanies to be saved from extermination. However, these lists were often ignored and some who were named on them were still sent to concentration camps.
Loss of citizenship
On November 14, 1935, The Law for the "Protection of Blood and Honour", a supplementary extension to the Nuremberg Laws, was passed. This law forbade Aryans to marry non-Aryans. Criteria defining who is Romani were exactly twice as strict as those defining any other group. The second Nuremberg law, The Reich Citizenship Law, stripped citizenship from "non-Aryans." Blacks and Romanies, like Jews, lost their right to vote on March 7, 1936.
Extermination
The persecution of the Roma by the Third Reich government began as early as 1936 when they began to be transferred to municipal internment camps on the outskirts of cities, a prelude to their deportation to extermination camps. Notable internment and concentration camps include Dachau, Dieselstrasse, Marzahn (which evolved from a municipal internment camp) and Vennhausen. The Society for Threatened Peoples estimates the casualties at 277,100. Martin Gilbert estimates a total of more than 220,000 of the 700,000 Romani in Europe, including 15,000 (mainly from the Soviet Union) in Mauthausen in January–May 1945. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum cites scholars that estimate the number of Sinti and Roma killed to lie between 220,000 and 500,000. Dr. Sybil Milton, a historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Research Institute, estimated the number of lives lost as "something between a half-million and a million-and-a-half".
They were herded into ghettos, including the Warsaw Ghetto (April–June 1942), where they formed a distinct subclass. Ghetto diarist Emmanuel Ringelblum speculated that Romanies were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto because the Germans wanted:...to toss into the Ghetto everything that is characteristically dirty, shabby, bizarre, of which one ought to be frightened, and which anyway has to be destroyed.
Initially there was disagreement about how to solve the "Gypsy Question". In late 1939 and early 1940, Hans Frank, the General Governor of occupied Poland, refused to accept the 30,000 German and Austrian Roma which were to be deported. For his "ethnic reservation" Heinrich Himmler "lobbied to save a handful of pure-blooded Roma", but was opposed by Martin Bormann, who favored deportation for all Roma. The debate ended in 1942 when Himmler signed the order marking the beginning of the mass deportations to Auschwitz. During Operation Reinhard (1941–43), an undetermined number of Roma were also killed in the extermination camps, such as Treblinka.
The Nazi persecution of Roma varied from country to country and region to region. In France, between 3,000 and 6,000 Roma were deported to Dachau, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, and other camps. Further east, in the Balkan states and the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, travelled from village to village massacring the inhabitants where they lived and typically leaving few to no records of the number of Roma killed in this way. In a few cases, significant documentary evidence of mass murder was generated.[32] Timothy Snyder notes that in the Soviet Union alone there were 8,000 documented cases of Roma murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in their sweep east. In return for immunity from prosecution for war crimes, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski stated at the Einsatzgruppen Trial that "the principal task of the Einsatzgruppen of the S.D. was the annihilation of the Jews, Gypsies and Political Commissars". Roma in Slovakia were killed by the local collaborating auxiliaries. Notably, Roma in Denmark and Greece were not as intensely hunted as those in the Baltics. Bulgaria and Finland, although allies of Germany, did not cooperate with the Porajmos, just as they did not cooperate with the Shoah.
On December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered that the Romani candidates for extermination should be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. To the Romani people of Europe, this order was equivalent to the January 20 decision of that same year, made at the Wannsee Conference, at which Nazi bureaucrats decided on the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem". Himmler then ordered, on November 15, 1943, that Romanies and "part-Romanies" were to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps".
Sybil Milton has speculated that Hitler was involved in the decision to deport all Romanies to Auschwitz, as Himmler gave the order six days after meeting with Hitler and Himmler had prepared for the meeting a report on the subject Führer: Aufstellung wer sind Zigeuner. Organized Jewish resistance occurred in nearly every large ghetto and concentration camp (Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, Ravensbrück, and Buchenwald, among many others), and the Roma themselves similarly attempted to resist the Nazis' extermination. In Auschwitz, in May 1944, SS guards attempted to liquidate the Gypsy Family Camp and were "met with unexpected resistance—the Roma fought back with crude weapons—and retreated". However, a few months later the SS succeeded in liquidating the camp, and ultimately 20,000 Roma were murdered in the camp.
Persecution in other Axis countries
The Brown Triangle was the symbol that Gypsies had to wear in Nazi concentration camps as the Jews had to wear a Star of David.
Romanies were also victims of the puppet regimes that cooperated with the Third Reich during the war, especially the notorious Ustaše regime in Croatia. In Jasenovac concentration camp, along with Serbs and Jews, tens of thousands of Romanies were killed. Yad Vashem estimates that the Porajmos was most intense in Yugoslavia, where around 90,000 Romanies were killed. The Ustaše government also deported around 26,000; Serbian Romanies are parties to the pending Class action suit against the Vatican Bank and others currently pending in U.S. federal court seeking return of wartime loot.
The governments of some Nazi German allies, namely Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, also contributed to the Nazi plan of Romani extermination, but this was implemented on a smaller scale and most Romani in these countries survived, unlike those in Ustaše Croatia or in areas directly ruled by Nazi Germany (such as Poland). The Hungarian Arrow Cross government deported between 28,000 and 33,000 Romanies out of a population estimated between 70,000 and 100,000.
The Romanian government of Ion Antonescu did not systematically exterminate Roma on its territory. Instead, resident Roma were deported to Romanian-run concentration camps in occupied Transnistria. Of the estimated 25,000 Romani inmates of these camps, 11,000 (44%, or almost half) died.
According to eyewitness Mrs. de Wiek, Anne Frank, a notable Jewish Holocaust victim, is recorded as having witnessed the prelude to the murder of Romani children at Auschwitz: "I can still see her standing at the door and looking down the camp street as a herd of naked gypsy girls were driven by, to the crematory, and Anne watched them going and cried."
In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Romani internees were sent to the Lety and Hodonín concentration camps before being transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau for gassing. What makes the Lety camp unique is that it was staffed by Czech guards, who could be even more brutal than the Germans, as testified in Paul Polansky’s book Black Silence. The genocide was so thorough that the vast majority of Romani in the Czech Republic today are actually descended from migrants from Slovakia who moved there during the post-war years in Czechoslovakia. In Nazi-occupied France, between 16,000 and 18,000 were killed.
The small Romani population in Denmark was not subjected to mass killings by the Nazi occupiers, but classified as simply "asocial". Angus Fraser attributes this to "doubts over ethnic demarcations within the travelling population". The Romanis of Greece were taken hostage and prepared for deportation to Auschwitz, but were saved by appeals from the Archbishop of Athens and the Greek Prime Minister.
Estimated number of victims
According to Ian Hancock, director of the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, there also existed a trend to downplay the actual figures. He surmised that almost the entire Romani population was killed in Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Rudolph Rummel, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii who spent his career assembling data on collective violence by governments towards their people (for which he coined the term democide), estimated that 258,000 must have been killed in Nazi Germany, 36,000 in Romania under Ion Antonescu and 27,000 in Ustaše-controlled Croatia.
The following figures are from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust.
In a 2010 publication, Ian Hancock stated that he agrees with the view that the number of Romanies killed has been underestimated as a result of being grouped with others in Nazi records under headings such as "remainder to be liquidated", "hangers-on", and "partisans". He notes recent evidence such as the previously obscure Lety concentration camp in the Czech Republic and Ackovic's revised estimates of Romani killed by the Ustaše as high as 80,000–100,000. These numbers suggest that previous estimates have been grossly underrepresented.
Zbigniew Brzezinski has estimated that 800,000 Romanies died as a result of Nazi actions.
Medical experiments
Another distinctive feature of the Porajmos and the Holocaust was the extensive use of human subjects in medical experiments. The most notorious of these physicians was Dr. Josef Mengele, who worked in the Auschwitz concentration camp. His experiments included placing subjects in pressure chambers, testing drugs on them, freezing them, attempting to change eye color by injecting chemicals into children's eyes and various amputations and other brutal surgeries. The full extent of his work will never be known because the truckload of records he sent to Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were destroyed by von Verschuer. Mengele's own journals, consisting of some 3,300 pages, are likely never to be published, and they are suspected to contain denials of the Holocaust. Subjects who survived Mengele's experiments were almost always killed and dissected shortly afterwards.
He seemed particularly keen on working with Romani children. He would bring them sweets and toys, and would personally take them to the gas chamber. They would call him "Onkel Mengele". Vera Alexander was a Jewish inmate at Auschwitz who looked after 50 sets of Romani twins:
I remember one set of twins in particular: Guido and Ina, aged about four. One day, Mengele took them away. When they returned, they were in a terrible state: they had been sewn together, back to back, like Siamese twins. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Then their parents—I remember the mother's name was Stella—managed to get some morphine and they killed the children in order to end their suffering.
Recognition and remembrance
The German government paid war reparations to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but not to the Romani. There were "never any consultations at Nuremberg or any other international conference as to whether the Sinti and Roma were entitled like the Jews to reparations.” The Interior Ministry of Wuerttemberg argued that "Gypsies [were] persecuted under the Nazis not for any racial reason but because of an asocial and criminal record." When on trial for his leadership of Einsatzgruppen in the USSR, Otto Ohlendorf cited the massacres of Romanis during the Thirty Years War as a historical precedent.
West Germany recognised the genocide of the Roma in 1982, and since then the Porajmos has been increasingly recognized as a genocide committed simultaneously with the Shoah. The American historian Sybil Milton wrote several articles arguing that the Porajmos deserved recognition as part of the Holocaust. In Switzerland, a committee of experts investigated the policy of the Swiss government during the Porajmos.
Formal recognition and commemoration of the Roma persecution by the Nazis is practically difficult due to the lack of significant collective memory and documentation of the Porajmos among the Roma, a consequence both of their oral traditions and their illiteracy, heightened by widespread poverty and discrimination that forces some Roma out of state schools. One UNESCO report put the illiteracy rate among the Roma in Romania at 30 percent, as opposed to the near universal literacy of the Romanian public as a whole. In a 2011 investigation of the state of the Roma in Europe today, Ben Judah, a Policy Fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, traveled to Romania. Nico Fortuna, a sociologist and Roma activist, explained the distinction between Jewish collective memory of the Shoah and the Roma experience:
There is a difference between the Jewish and Roma deportees...The Jews were shocked and can remember the year, date and time it happened. The Roma shrugged it off. They said, "Of course I was deported. I'm Roma; these things happen to a Roma." The Roma mentality is different from the Jewish mentality. For example, a Roma came to me and asked, "Why do you care so much about these deportations? Your family was not deported." I went, "I care as a Roma" and the guy said back, "I do not care because my family were brave, proud Roma that were not deported."
For the Jews it was a total and everyone knew this—from bankers to pawnbrokers. For the Roma it was selective and not comprehensive. The Roma were only exterminated in a few parts of Europe such as Poland, the Netherlands, Germany and France. In Romania and much of the Balkans, only nomadic Roma and social outcast Roma were deported. This matters and has an impact on the Roma mentality.
Ian Hancock has also observed a reluctance among Roma to acknowledge their victimization by the Third Reich. The Roma "are traditionally not disposed to keeping alive the terrible memories from their history—nostalgia is a luxury for others". The impact of the illiteracy, the lack of social institutions and the rampant discrimination faced by Roma in Europe today have produced a people who, according to Fortuna, lack a "national consciousness...and historical memory of the Holocaust because there is no Roma elite."
Acts of commemoration
The first memorial commemorating victims of the Romani Holocaust was erected on May 8, 1956, in the Polish village of Szczurowa commemorating the Szczurowa massacre. Since 1996, a Gypsy Caravan Memorial is crossing the main remembrance sites in Poland, from Tarnów via Auschwitz, Szczurowa and Borzęcin Dolny, gathering the Romani and well-wishers in the remembrance of the Porajmos. Several museums dedicate a part of their permanent exhibition to that memory, like the Museum of Romani Culture in Czech Republic and the Ethnographic Museum in Tarnów. However some political organisations still try to block the building up of memorials near former concentration camps, as shows the debate around Lety and Hodonin in the Czech Republic.
On October 23, 2007, Romanian President Traian Băsescu publicly apologized for his nation's role in the Porajmos, the first time a Romanian leader has done so. He called for the Porajmos to be taught in schools, stating that, "We must tell our children that six decades ago children like them were sent by the Romanian state to die of hunger and cold". Part of his apology was in the Romani language. Băsescu also awarded three Porajmos survivors with an Order for Faithful Services. Before recognizing Romania's role in the Porajmos, Traian Băsescu was widely quoted after an incident on May 19, 2007, in which he insulted a journalist by calling her a "stinky gypsy". The president subsequently apologized.
On January 27, 2011, Zoni Weisz became the first Roma guest of honour at Germany's official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony. Dutch born Weiz escaped death during a Nazi round-up when a policeman allowed him to escape. Nazi injustices against the Roma were recalled at the ceremony, including that directed at Sinto boxer Johann Trollmann.
The May 3, 2012 saw the world premiere of the Requiem for Auschwitz by composer Roger Moreno Rathgeb at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam performed by the The Roma and Sinti Philharmoniker directed by Riccardo M Sahiti. The Philharmoniker is a pan-European orchestra of Roma and Sinto musicians generally employed by other classical orchestras, but aiming to focus on the contribution of Roma culture on classical music. Dutch-Swiss Sinto Moreno Rathgeb expressedly wrote his requiem for all victims of Auschwitz and Nazi terror. The occasion of the premiere was coupled however to a conference, Roma between Past and Future. The requiem has since been performed in Tilburg, Prague, Budapest, Frankfurt, Cracow, and Berlin.
On 24 October 2012 the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma victims of National Socialism was unveiled in Berlin. Since 2010, ternYpe - International Roma Youth Network organizes a commemoration week called "Dikh he na bister" (look and don t forget) around the second of august in Kraków and Auswitch-Birkenau. In 2014 they organised the largest in history Youth Commemoration Ceremony gathering over 1000 young Roma and non-Roma from 25 countries, from all over the world. This initiative of ternYpe Network was held under the European Parliament's High Patronage granted by the President Martin Schulz
Depiction in films
In 2009, Tony Gatlif, a French film director of Romani ethnicity, directed the film Korkoro, which is based on an anecdote by the historian Jacques Sigot. The film traces a Romani, Taloche's, escape from the Nazis, with help from a French notary Justes, and later, his inability to lead an immobile non-nomadic life. While it is not known if the French notary, Justes, really existed, the character Théodore in the movie is inspired by him. The film's other main character, Mademoiselle Lise Lundi, is inspired by the schoolteacher Yvette Lundy, who used to work in Gionges, La Marne. The film was shot in Loire, Monts du Forez, Rozier-Côtes-d'Aurec and Saint-Bonnet-le-Château.
The 1988 Polish film And the Violins Stopped Playing also has Porajmos as its subject, although this has been criticised for showing the killing of Roma as a method of removing witnesses to the killing of Jews.
A scene in the French-language film Train de Vie (Train of Life), directed by Radu Mihaileanu, depicts a group of Romanis singing and dancing with Jews at a stop en route to a concentration camp.
Antiziganism or Anti-Romanyism or Anti-Gypsyism is hostility, Prejudice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, discrimination or racism directed at the Romani people, therefore another type of Antisemitism.
