David Joseph Ezra

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.

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.

[8] Unlike his father or brother, David Joseph Ezra chose to settle permanently in Kolkata and the uncanny foresight he chose to invest in property, in what then still an emerging trading centre and not yet the commercial hub of the British Empire in Asia, turned them into the wealthiest Jewish family in Kolkata in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

[12] In addition to trading with British, Indian and Chinese clients, Ezra and his firm acted as an agent for Arab ships arriving in colonial Kolkata from Muscat and Zanzibar loaded with dates and other products in exchange for rice, sugar and other food items.

[13] He thrived in Kolkata and he became the city's largest property owner and spent vast sums on communal institutions for the rapidly growing Baghdadi Jewish community of which he was a leader.