David Joseph Ezra
merchant, property investor, and member of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Calcutta, India
David Joseph Ezra (Hebrew: דוד יוסף עזרא, died 1882) was a leading merchant, property developer and communal leader of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Kolkata, India. He was one of the key developers behind nineteenth century Kolkata, and was responsible for many of its most celebrated Victorian buildings and synagogues.
Origins and background
David Joseph Ezra was from a longstanding family of Jewish Indian Ocean and South China Sea traders.
The family hailed from the Jewish community in Baghdad, where they were also known as the Khalif or earlier Horesh family. The family claimed Sephardic descent and to have originated before the Inquisition from Spain and for one generation held the position of Treasurer of Baghdad and with it the leadership of the Jewish community in the city.
David Joseph Ezra's father Joseph Ezra, first arrived in Calcutta in 1821 having come via Bombay. Joseph Ezra, was also known as Joseph Ezra Khalif, or Joseph Ezra Baher, for sea in Arabic, as he was an ocean traveller. Historian Cecil Roth speculated the family were known as Baher as they were amongst the first Iraqi Jewish families to cross the Indian Ocean. Joseph Ezra brought with him his sons Nissim and David Joseph Ezra. Joseph Ezra was described by the Ashkenazi traveller Israel Joseph Benjamin as "one of the richest of our brethren" amongst the Baghdadi Jews settled in India.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Joseph Ezra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.