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Featureby Andrew HarrisShabbat at ChabadColombo. Ceiling fanswhoosh languidlyoverhead, muffling thecrowd of us individualdaveners; four men–me, a backpackingIsraeli father and son, and Rabbi MendieCrombie—not even half a minyan,working our way through kabbalatshabbat, concluding roughly together.On the other side of the loungeroommechitzah are the rebbetzin and mywife, Naava. At the only synagogue inthe country, this, Rabbi Crombie latertells me, is an above-average turnout.Rabbi Crombie’s Chabad House is setup to serve the needs of a transienttrickle of Israeli backpackers andJewish businessman who pass throughColombo. It is the only synagogue (andmikvah) in the country. And yet, overmany centuries, Sri Lanka has almostcertainly had a Jewish presence ofsome sort – in fact, the southern port ofGalle is believed to be the biblical cityof Tarshish, from where in 1000BCEKing Solomon once shipped elephants,apes, peacocks jewels and spices.Sri Lanka is an island 432km at itslongest, and 224km at ats widest. TheSinhalese overwhelmingly Buddhistmajority is almost three-quarters ofthe 20.4-million population, the Tamils– overwhelmingly Hindu; some areChristian – just under a fifth, the SriLankan and Indian Moors, who areMuslim, are just under a tenth. About50,000 Dutch Reform Burghers and2000 indigenous animist Veddahbalance the equation.Rabbi Crombie, as I, was aware of onlyone self-identifying Jew, the poetessAnne Ranasinghe, and he couldn’t putme in touch with anyone who could tellme about the synagogue I had heardabout in Colombo, long since vanished.He did point me towards a Queenslandbasedresearcher, Dr Fiona KumariPhoto credit: Andrew HarrisCampbell, whom I’d already tried tocontact before going to Sri Lanka.Tracing Hidden Jewish RootsA couple of days later I sat down with JBMüller, a journalist during the turbulent‘70s and ‘80s, who has devoted himselfto researching the history of his ownpeople – The Burghers – many of whomhe believes to have Jewish roots.Over the course of a long afternoon atthe Dutch Burgher Union, a social club,central meeting place, and genealogicalstorehouse for the Sri Lankan Burghers,JB told me that, fleeing persecutionin Europe across two centuries ofpogroms, from the 16th century to the18th century, many Jews had endedup in the Netherlands, particularly inAmsterdam. When the Dutch neededlabour to send off to far-flung landswith the Dutch East Indies Company,the Jews were only too happy to go– and much earlier, he argues, theRabbi Crombie’s (and Chabad of Sri Lanka’s) backyardsame happened with the Portuguesecolonisers, and the surfeit of fledSpanish Jews on Portuguese soil.As a consequence, he argues, ahuge number of Burgher families withPortuguese or Dutch ancestry haveJewish roots. As evidenced, he posits,by their surnames – a list of whichhe has published in his book, TheBurghers, which contains a chapter onthe subject, ‘Semitic Ancestors’.Fiona Kumari Campbell’s mother’smaiden name is ‘Van Dort’, one of thoseon JB’s list – a ‘nonsense’ surname heexplains these as. ‘Van Dort’ means‘Over There’.I caught up with Fiona on my return toAustralia. It turns out that an illustriousJewish ancestor of hers, LeopoldImmanuel Jacob Van Dort, wasprofessor of Hebrew at the ChristianTheological Seminary in Colombo 1758to 1760, the year Hebrew was removedASIAN JEWISH LIFE ISSUE 65