In the early nineteenth century, business was good for the Sassoon family. After moving to Bombay from Baghdad, Iraq, they started trading in opium, cotton and other commodities. In a few decades, they established a global business empire, amassed enormous wealth and became one of the wealthiest Jewish families in the sub-continent.

David Sassoon, the pioneer who started trading in Bombay, ran his business empire with his sons like a well-oiled machine. One of David Sassoon’s sons, Sason ben David Sasoon (S.D) took a keen interest in the affairs of the world. Running a global empire meant he needed to understand how the ebb and flow of world events would affect the family business.

That was also a time when the press was starting out in India. A few decades after the Irishman James Augustus Hickey established Hicky’s Bengal Gazette in 1780, and Richard Johnston started the Madras Courier in 1785, enterprising individuals and social reformers started newspapers aimed at Indian readers. In 1811, a few merchants from Calcutta started the Calcutta Chronicle (edited by James Silk Buckingham), Raja Ram Mohun Roy started a Bengali newspaper Samband Kaumudi and a Persian paper Mirat-ul-Akhbar in 1822, Fardanoji Murzaban, the pioneer of the ‘vernacular press,’ started the Bombay Samachar in 1822, and the Times of India started its first edition as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce. The press was slowly starting to take on a new role in India. Newspapers were becoming the new tools to speak and be heard.

Taking a cue from the emerging newspaper revolution, in 1855, S.D.Sassoon started a bi-weekly Hebrew newspaper in Bombay – Doresh Tov Le’amo. This Hebrew title, taken from a biblical verse, Esther 10:3, roughly translates to ‘Bears good tidings to his people,’ and was aimed at informing and educating the small Baghdadi Jewish community in Bombay who were not well versed in English. As S.D. wrote:



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