Dr Ruth Cernea.

A UNITED States-based association of anthropologists on November 1 held a memorial lecture in honour of Ruth Fredman Cernea, the only scholar to have researched and written extensively about the Jewish community in Myanmar.

Dr Cernea, a former president of the Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (WAPA), the group that organised the lecture, died of pancreatic cancer on March 31, 2009 aged 74.

The memorial lecture, titled “The Anthropology of Jews and the Jews in Anthropology”, was given by Professor Jonathan Boyarin at American University in Washington DC. According to event organisers, Dr Boyarin’s special research interest is “the paucity of Jewish anthropologists who study Jews or Jewish culture”, and he views Dr Cernea’s work as a rare and important counter-example of this.

Her book, Almost Englishmen: Baghdadi Jews in British Burma, was published in 2007 after 20 years of research.

Her husband, Dr Michael Cernea, said the book “is part and parcel of both Burma’s own history and of the history of the long Jewish Diaspora”.

“It will inform future generations as the only available full history of Burma’s Jewish community over its presence of some 150 years in the country,” said Dr Cernea, who is also an anthropologist.

In 1987, Dr Ruth Cernea was honeymooning in Myanmar when she discovered Yangon’s Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue, the Jewish cemetery and the Moses family, one of the last remaining Jewish families in Myanmar.

“We were both surprised by the discovery, and very impressed by the old cemetery. She visited [Myanmar] several more times in subsequent years, as well as other countries including England, Australia, South Africa, Israel, and India to track down and interview former members of the community and their families to reconstitute the history, culture and every day life of Myanmar’s former Jewish community,” Michael Cernea told The Myanmar Times via email.

The memorial service was co-sponsored by several organisations, including the US-ASEAN Business Council’s Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue Project, which raises funds for the maintenance and restoration of the synagogue.

According to Dr Cernea’s book, Yangon once had a thriving Jewish community consisting primarily of Jews from India, Iraq and Iran.

The population peaked at 2500 about 1896 when the synagogue was completed. Large emigrations occurred during World War II and the 1960s.