Chennai’s 'last Jew' fights for place in India’s history

Davvid Levi asserts himself as the final Jew to have resided in the southern Indian city of Chennai. According to government records, Mr  Levi's family was documented as the last Jewish household in the city, which serves as the capital of Tamil Nadu state. However, media sources were unable to verify if Mr Levi and his wife were the last two Jews documented in Tamil Nadu according to India's census. Mr Levi departed from India in 2020 due to "security reasons" following a property dispute, and he currently resides in Germany with his family. The Levi family, with Portuguese roots, has resided in Chennai for over 10 generations, during the time when the city was part of the Madras province under British rule. For years, Mr Levi has been documenting the history of his family and other Jews who once lived in Chennai on his Facebook page. But he now wants to scale up the mission to preserve his family's past. In 2020, he wrote to Tamil Nadu's archaeology department, requesting the state to take over his family's artefacts and preserve them in a museum.