⚠ The second silence

Jews have lived in India for a very long time — the Cochin community of Kerala, the Bene Israel of the Konkan coast, the later Baghdadi merchants of Bombay and Calcutta. Centuries of neighbours, synagogues, trade, mutual civility. And no exchange of ideas that anyone has been able to document. Nothing Vedāntic entered the Kabbalah through them; nothing Kabbalistic went the other way.

A deliberate echo of Kaifeng in ☯, and the pack's most disciplined move. When the same shapes turn up in two traditions, the exciting explanation is a hidden channel — and here is the case that refuses it, with the neighbours in place and the centuries available and the silence documented. So the resemblances in this room have to stand on their own, and they do. That is worth more than a channel.