The unlikely story of the 2000-year-old Indian Jewish community and its formative place in shaping the world's largest f | dG1fV1NuN1hJeTB5SGM
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00:00Bollywood, renowned for its singing, dancing, and melodrama, but its Jews?
00:14Who would have thought it?
00:16Jewish superstars of India's silver screen.
00:20This is their story.
00:35When Indian cinema began over a hundred years ago, it was taboo for Hindu and Islamic women
00:40to perform in public.
00:43But in a nation of over a billion Hindus, almost 300 million Muslims, and millions of
00:53Christians, were a few thousand Jews.
01:03It was a nice Jewish girl called Ruby Myers who shattered the taboo on female acting.
01:08In the early 1920s, she was the silent era queen of the silver screen.
01:14She went by the stage name of Sulochana, which means the one with the beautiful eyes.
01:22Sulochana blazed a trail other Jewish women soon followed.
01:26Welcome to Bollywood, Pramila.
01:29Sulochana, Rose, and Pramila were powerful, iconic actresses of their time.
01:36But then Nadira came along.
01:43She had this great dress, and it was so fittingly tight that she was not able to sit all through
01:53the shooting of that song.
01:56So to rest, they had this big huge board at a certain angle, and she used to rest on that
02:03because the dress should not get spoiled, the dress should not, you know, kind of split.
02:08This is Bollywood's unknown story.
02:11The Jewish superstars who put the shalom into Bollywood.