“The Baghdadi Jews of India are what I would call a walking identity crisis,” says Ciara Shalome, the 24-year-old behind the popular Mizrahi Jewish TikTok account Chaidentity. “They encompass so many different identities and achieved so much in India and yet they are very rarely spoken about.”

The community her family comes from migrated from Iraq and other parts of the Middle East like Yemen and Syria to India starting in the 18th century. Some came for economic opportunities, others to find a place to live openly and safely as Jews. Ciara’s family arrived in the early 20th century and settled in the Byculla area of south Bombay (now Mumbai) near a Jewish compound complete with a synagogue, a shochet (a person trained to slaughter animals according to kosher laws), and a school founded by the Sassoon family, who are pioneers and leaders of the Baghdadi Jewish community. 

This is where her grandfather Abraham (Abie) grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, boxing in the Jewish sports organization Maccabi, and appearing as an extra in films with famed Indian actor Raj Kapoor. “The way they lived was typical,” Ciara says of her family. “They were very integrated with their Indian neighbors. They would celebrate Hindu holidays and Muslim holidays [and] their friends would come over and celebrate Jewish holidays.” 

Many Baghdadi Jews learned Hindi and English since they aligned themselves with the British, who controlled India at the time — as well as an amalgamation of them and Judeo-Arabic. And while most of their cooking, Ciara explains, is Middle Eastern, they adopted local culinary traditions as well, adjusting recipes to make them kosher. Instead of marinating meat in yogurt or cooking it in ghee, Jewish cooks used lemon juice and oil to avoid mixing milk and meat. They also developed dishes that are unique like aloo makala, or fried potatoes with turmeric. Its name is an amalgam of the Hindi word for potato, aloo, and an old Iraqi Arabic word makala, meaning fried — and it’s often referred to as “jumping potatoes.”

Chicken chitarnee, a well-spiced dish served on holidays and Shabbat in the community, stands out for Ciara. “Chitarnee is a dish that encompasses the Baghdadi Jews of India, it represents them and their journey and most importantly, it tastes bloody delicious!” she proclaims. The use of vindaloo paste and madras curry powder are from the community’s time in India, but the large format of the dish feels more Middle Eastern to her, and the Sarson’s malt vinegar gives it a British touch. 

It’s a dish Ciara worries is starting to disappear. With the Partition of India and the founding of Israel in the late 1940s, Baghdadi Jews started to leave India for places like England, Australia, and Israel. Her family emigrated in the early 1960s and today there are just 50 or so Baghdadi Jews in India, according to the Jewish Women’s Archive. “You will only ever find [chitarnee] in a Baghdadi Jewish household,” Ciara explains. “As soon as a Baghdadi Jew marries into a family where people don’t eat chitarnee, it can get lost.” 

In her family, Ciara’s great-grandfather Eliezer made the best rendition and she grew up eating it at her cousin Sally’s house in London. Today, Sally and a cousin’s wife, Christina, who converted to Judaism, make the dish. “And they both use different spices!” Ciara exclaims “No one can agree what actually goes into it.”  

The last time she had chitarnee was a few months ago at Christina’s home in Portugal. When another cousin visiting from Las Vegas didn’t recognize the dish, Ciara turned into a teachable moment, telling him about their family history and the dish. “When he ate it, he felt like he had learned something,” Ciara says. 

Teaching people about her culture and that of other Mizrahi — or Middle Eastern — Jews is something Ciara’s intensely passionate about. Last September, she started posting TikToks about an Iraqi evil eye ceremony, Jewish prayers recited in Arabic, and even a few food videos including one about stuffed vegetables for Rosh Hashanah. 

But, so far, there’s not one about the chitarnee. Ciara worries she won’t be able to do the dish justice. “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do it one day,” she adds.