"Hinjew" You Know? "Ju-Bu"?

Leave it to the NYTimes to publish this material on the links between India and Israel:-

In a less obvious way, too, soldiers have forged ties. About 30,000 Israelis visit India each year, many of them on lengthy vacations after having finished their army service. They, in turn, have brought back to Israel the food, fabric, music and mysticism of India, particularly its Hindus.

The popular Israeli band Sheva has incorporated Indian instruments and chordal structures into its music. Yoga classes proliferate in Israel. Hindu food, with its emphasis on vegetarian dishes, has been easily adapted for kosher cuisine. An annual festival called Boombamela celebrates all things Indian, if with a somewhat naïve, New Age tilt.

For American Jews of the baby boom generation, the fascination with India began with spiritual searches during the 1960s. Over time, Buddhist meditation became a staple of the Jewish renewal movement and a book by Rodger Kamenetz, “The Jew in the Lotus,” a revered text. By the past decade, enough Jews were practicing some Buddhism to give birth to a new proper noun: Jew-Bu.

Even more recently, the term “Hinjew” has emerged. It does not reflect a religious amalgamation, which would be nearly impossible given Hindu polytheism, as much as it does the cultural common ground of American Jews and Indian Americans who have grown up and gone to school together.

...The comfort level between Jews and Indians has allowed for a specific strain of self-mockery, too, which might be some psychic balm in this time of atrocity. As an imitation news story on the Web site SatireWire put it:

“Hinjew leaders today conceded the merger of Hinduism and Judaism has not worked out as planned, as instead of forming a super-religion to fight off the common Islamic enemy, they have instead created a race of 900 million people who, no matter how many times they are reincarnated, can never please their mothers.”