Early Life
Salem was born in 1882 to a Jewish family in Cochin (now Kochi), then a small princely state in British India and now part of the Indian state of Kerala. His family were meshuchrarim, a Hebrew word used, sometimes neutrally and sometimes with derogatory intent, to denote a manumitted slave or her descendants. The ancestors of the few score meshuchrarim had originally been brought as slaves by Sephardic Jews (the White Jews) in their 16th-century immigration from Europe to Cochin following the expulsion from Spain. The Sephardim were also known as Paradesi or "foreigners." They discriminated against the meshuchrarim in their community. These were relegated to a subordinate position in the Paradesi Synagogue in Cochin. Given the cultural differences between them, the White Jews and Malabari Jews also maintained ethnic distinctions for centuries, which became associated historically with differences in skin color.
Brought up by his mother, Salem attended the Maharaja's College in Ernakulam. He moved to Chennai to earn his Bachelor of Arts degree, becoming the first college graduate among the meshuchrarim. Whilst in Chennai he also earned his law degree, the first Jew from Cochin to do so, before returning to practise as a lawyer in the Cochin Chief Court in Ernakulam.
Read more about this topic: Abraham Barak Salem
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“The addition of a helpless, needy infant to a couple’s life limits freedom of movement, changes role expectancies, places physical demands on parents, and restricts spontaneity.”
—Jerrold Lee Shapiro (20th century)