Cochin Jews

Cochin Jews, Malayalam-speaking Jews from the Kochi (formerly Cochin) region of Kerala, located along the Malabar Coast of southwestern India. The Cochin Jews were known for their division into three castelike groups—the Paradesis (White Jews), the Malabaris (Black Jews), and the Meshuchrarim (Brown Jews). Whereas they once numbered in the thousands, only about 50 Cochin Jews remained on the Malabar Coast in the early 21st century.

The Cochin Jews have a written history that dates from about 1000 ce. Among the earliest-known Hebrew inscriptions in Kerala are those on a gravestone dated to 1269. The Cochin Jews, however, settled along the Malabar Coast much earlier, and there are references to Jewish traders of the Cochin region in the documents of a Cairo synagogue’s genizah (repository) from the 8th and 9th centuries.

The Cochin Jewish community first centred in Cranganore (Shingly). From the early 14th to the mid-16th century, however, many of its members dispersed, because of a flood and the infiltration of silt in Cranganore and, later, to territorial disputes between rulers of surrounding kingdoms and raids by Portuguese forces. Many Jews moved to nearby Cochin, where a synagogue was built in 1344. In the following centuries European Jews (the Paradesis, or “foreigners” in Malayalam) began to arrive in India, many of them refugees who had fled the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish Inquisition. These Jews built the Paradesi Synagogue, which dates to 1568. Additional waves of immigration occurred later, bringing Jews from western Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East.

The Paradesi embraced the Malayalam language, and some of the first to arrive married into Malabaris families whose ancestral lines could be traced to Cranganore. Later, however, intermarriage ended, and a social hierarchy became more pronounced.

From 1663 to 1795, during the Dutch rule of Malabar, the Jews of Cochin enjoyed a golden age. David Ezekiel Rahabi (1694–1771) was, from 1726 on, the chief merchant of the Dutch East India Company and negotiated on their behalf with the surrounding local rulers. The Paradesis started to decline in the 19th century. In search of better economic prospects, Cochin Jews also moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Bombay (now Mumbai), where they worshiped with the other Jewish communities and provided religious leadership, though typically retaining marriage connections with the community in Cochin. In Kerala there were eight active synagogues, located specifically in Kochi, neighbouring Ernakulam, and the villages of Parur (now North Paravur), Chennamangalam (Chendamangalam), and Mala. By the early 21st century, however, the only synagogue that remained active was the Paradesi Synagogue.

The Malabaris (about 2,400 of them) overwhelmingly moved to Israel in the 1950s. Many of the Paradesis also eventually moved there. Those who emigrated continued to practice and pass on their traditions.