The Last Jews of Kerala

by Edna Fernandes

  Faced with this natural disaster, the first party of Jews left for Cochin. The Jews settled in swiftly. Indeed, by 1345 a synagogue was built there. It was known as the Kochangadi synagogue and the first outside of Cranganore.

  These people marked the first wave of migration from the old settlement. As Cochin’s importance rose in the region, so Cranganore’s declined. The Jews who remained in the old city over the next two centuries found their power and influence diminish as trade switched to Cochin. The kingdom of Cochin, under the raja, found itself at loggerheads with the local dominant power at Calicut in the north, whose rulers were known as the Zamorins.

  It was the Zamorins who first had contact with the Portuguese with the arrival of Vasco da Gama in the fifteenth century. At the time the Arabs dominated this lucrative trade route and the Portuguese were keen to take over. In Correa’s Three Voyages, which describes the Portuguese assault on the Malabar Coast, there is a fascinating description of da Gama’s first encounter with the ruler of Zamorin at Calicut. He looked every inch the European dandy when he was received at the royal court.

  “[He was dressed] in a long cloak, coming down to his feet, of tawny colored satin, lined with smooth brocade and underneath a short tunic of blue satin and white buskins and on his head a cap of blue velvet with a white feather fastened with a splendid medal; and a valuable enamel collar on his shoulders and a rich sash with a handsome dagger.” The king received him “seated on a rich bed set out with silk and gold”, wearing bracelets studied with jewels, including a diamond as thick as his thumb. Around his neck were pearls “the size of hazelnuts” and a necklace of rubies and emeralds.

  Da Gama wanted to secure a trade agreement, but the king was noncommittal. Relations deteriorated when the Portuguese were requested to pay customs to the port where their ships were docked, before departing. Da Gama refused and simply left. He returned to Portugal to report his findings and was hailed as a hero for discovering the sea route. He had come bearing goods worth sixty times the cost of the voyage, so plans were made for an armada of thirty-three ships to return. This time the person in charge was Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a man of “overweening pride” who perceived insults in every innocent gesture, according to Malabar and the Portuguese by K. M. Panikkar, published in 1929. He had “neither tact nor foresight,” said Panikkar. On arrival, he made the fundamental error of sending a low born fisherman to give a message to the sovereign, which was interpreted as a great insult in caste-based India. After a rocky start, the Portuguese finally got permission to build a factory in Calicut. But the initial ill omens were realized.

  The Portuguese believed they now had the right to the trade route and saw themselves as the new heirs to the seas of the region, with the right to confiscate goods of those who sailed there without their permission. This belief led to Cabral seizing an Arab ship in harbor because they were loading pepper he wanted for himself. He did not believe natives had the right to sell to whoever paid the best price. The news angered the locals, unused to such aggressive tactics. A riot ensued and the factory was destroyed and many Portuguese were wounded.

  Da Gama responded by massacring the crew of all other boats and burning their ships. The rulers decided the Portuguese were “uncivilized barbarians, treacherous, untrustworthy”. The Zamorin and Portuguese were now enemies. Sensing danger, Cabral was advised by a Jew turned Christian in his crew, Gaspar da India, that he should sail to Cochin. He reached there on Christmas Eve in 1500. There he sought an audience with the local raja and he was granted permission to buy all he wished. A treaty was drawn up and permission granted to build another factory. At that time the raja of Cochin was fearful of the powerful Zamorin and saw the Portuguese as potential allies in his bid for freedom. In the end, the raja simply exchanged one bondage for another as the Portuguese governor assumed the position of colonial overlord. The Portuguese would build garrisons in their new base, as well as more factories. But their old enemy plagued their ambitions for expansion.

  The Calicut rulers wanted vengeance on the foreign invader and in the years that followed a war raged with the Portuguese and their new ally, the raja of Cochin. Once the Jews moved from Cranganore to Cochin, they too would be embroiled in this bloody intrigue.

  The Zamorins together with their allies the Arabs also wanted to expand their territory beyond Calicut, leading to clashes with the Jews of Cranganore as well as the Portuguese.

  In 1524 the feuding between the Jews and Arabs of Cranganore reached a flashpoint when a row broke over the adulteration of the supply of pepper which led to the death of a Muslim. Angry and looking for a fight, the Muslims gathered and attacked the Jews, killing some of their number, burning their houses and synagogues. The Calicut rulers gave their blessing to the attack.

  It was too much for the remaining Jews of Cranganore to bear and another wave migrated to Cochin. So the Jewish people were now scattered across numerous communities in Cochin. Having lost the old settlement given to them centuries earlier, they were given sanctuary by his descendant, the Hindu raja of Cochin, who allotted them parcels of land that would become known as the Jew Towns of Mattencherry and Ernakulam.

  By the seventeenth century there were synagogues across Ernakulam and Cochin. In the case of the Malabari Jews, the new synagogues took on the names of the old Cranganore predecessors in order to keep tradition alive. While Cochin was to become forever associated with the Jewry of the region, Cranganore remained their spiritual homeland in India. The very last of the Jews had left Cranganore around 1566. By this time the Portuguese were well established on the western coastline and in Cochin, with ambitions to turn it into the most important trading port of the region. From 1503 to 1663 the Portuguese were the dominant foreign power in Cochin, where the raja remained a titular head. The Portuguese turned out to be cruel overlords, persecuting the Jewish people until the Dutch displaced them.

  It was in the sixteenth century that the final major wave of Jewish immigrants came from overseas to join the older communities that hailed from Cranganore. The newcomers were escaping the horrors of the Inquisition in Europe. In an essay, “The Cochin Jews of Kerala,” the historian Barbara Johnson says that some were Sephardic Jews, direct as well as indirect refugees from the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions. Others came via Constantinople, Aleppo and other Middle Eastern territories.

  Reports indicated that some of this wave of refugees came as families, but the single men among them married some of the Jewish women from the so-called “first families” of Cranganore. In 1568, the newcomers known as the Paradesis or “foreigners” in Malayalam built a synagogue on the plot of land next to the raja’s palace in Cochin. Johnson said in her essay: “They adopted the Malayalam language and identified enthusiastically with Kerala customs and traditions, but at some point they stopped marrying the Jews who had been there many centuries before them. In written accounts, the Paradesis were referred to as ‘white Jews’ and the more ancient Malabari communities as ‘black Jews’, though there is not always a clear distinction between them in terms of skin color.”

  In the early years of Cochini life, the two communities came together and in some cases intermarried. Fleeing the brutality and persecution of the inquisitors of Europe, the Paradesi Jews quickly assimilated into life in India. Unlike Jews elsewhere in the world, they found acceptance among the natives and the existing Jewish community. It started with promise, so what changed to create a fissure that would take centuries to repair?

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  As a community, the Jews had to delicately tiptoe through the minefield of colonial politics for ascendancy in the region. In 1662, the Jews united with the Dutch against the hated Portuguese who had targeted them mercilessly. During their time on India’s west coast, the Portuguese would use force to convert locals to Christianity and even introduced the Inquisition in neighboring Goa in the early sixteenth century. Goa would eventually become the Portuguese epicenter for trade.

  Until then, the Jews of Cochin found th
emselves in the firing line for their faith and allegiance to the Dutch in 1662.The Portuguese exacted their revenge by burning the synagogue, Torah scrolls and records and then sacked Jew Town. But by 1663 the Dutch had defeated the Portuguese, opening up a period of benign colonial relations for the Jews, who enjoyed a renaissance of culture and trade. Cochin grew more prosperous and the Jews reaped the benefits of links with the rest of the Dutch empire through shipments of books and contacts with Jewish communities in Europe. The first British troops came to Malabar in 1615 but did not replace the Dutch as the dominant colonial power in Cochin until 1797.The British presence was confined to Fort Cochin and Willingdon Island.

  In the centuries that followed the Jews’ move to Cochin, they had to play a canny game, not just to survive as a minority community but also to exploit Cochin’s significance on the world trading map.

  The key advantage the Jews had was strong historic links to the royal family. Back to the days of Joseph Rabban, Jews had established close ties with the raja and joined his men in battle. The Cochini royal family never forgot the favor. The Jews lived on plots of land provided by the royal family and, in the case of the Paradesi Jews, were neighbors to the maharajah’s palace. Therefore, who better to act as mediator between the ambitious trading powers and the royal family of Cochin?

  The significance of Joseph Rabban in the history of Jewish-Indo relations meant that both sides—the older Malabari Jews and the Paradesis needed to claim him as their own. While the Whites and Blacks had initially integrated on some level, this was to change.

  In their studies, Katz and Goldberg noted that the community split along color lines, reflecting the indigenous caste system of the Kerala Hindus. Although such caste divisions were a breach of Jewish law or Halakha, the practice became entrenched.

  Anthropologist David Mandelbaum believed the distinction was introduced by the Jews from Europe and the Middle East, including those who fled religious persecution in Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth century. The new arrivals boasted of their Jewish lineage and greater Jewish knowledge compared to the Malabar Jews, who had been isolated from the rest of the world and therefore lacked the others’ European sophistry.

  There were two main sub-castes in the Cochini Jewry, based on whether one was considered to be descended from ancient Israel or not. Those who claimed to hail from Israel were deemed to be superior. The other key sign of superiority was a lineage going back to Cranganore—those Jews who traced back to Rabban were seen to have a distinguished ancestry that went back to a line of kings. Therefore, they had a higher status in Indian society.

  Cochini Jewish scholars note that the Paradesi Jews introduced a racial element, whereby skin color was also seen to be a sign of religious purity. The Paradesis claimed they were the only pure Jews of Kerala, pointing to their pale skin as evidence, and also laid claim to links with Cranganore. The Malabari Jews, far from being the inheritors of the King of Shingly, were the offspring of slave converts according to the Paradesis’ version of history.

  Mandelbaum, one of the most respected authorities on the subject, said it was impossible to uphold the claim that the Cranganore Jews had no mixed blood. Those Jewish merchants and crew who came to Malabar from the time of Solomon were unlikely to have made the dangerous journey with wives and children in tow, he said. So it is likely that they married and lived with local women. These local women gave birth to their children, who became Jews. If this was so, then where did that leave the Paradesis’ claim of Jewish purity as well as Cranganore ancestry?

  The truth lay in events that happened centuries ago, if not millennia. Much of the history was based on narrative and there was no documentation to prove that the White Jewish community had never intermarried with the locals when they first arrived. Yet, this claim of purity of ancestry, purity of Jewishness, was something which led the Paradesis to claim a natural ascendancy.

  In caste-based India, where the concept of religious purity is paramount, the taint of slavery eventually undermined the Malabaris’ standing in the royal court of Cochin. Loss of status and economic influence was only part of the cost they had to bear. Dubbed the sons of slaves, the Black Jews would be barred from marrying the White Jews, barred from the Paradesi synagogue, barred from forming their own place of worship in their homes.

  It is true that such color-based divisions existed even among other Jewish communities in India, such as the Bene Israel community in Bombay. But in Cochin it was highly institutionalized. Indeed, the issue was on the radar of rabbis of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, who ruled it was wrong to discriminate against the Black Jews. In 1520, Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Zimra wrote a letter in Hebrew from Cairo. In it, he noted there was a smaller group known as the “meyuchasim” or Jews “with a pedigree” who refused to mix with the other Jewish community whom they referred to as “slaves.”

  When asked for rabbinical advice on intermarriage, the Cochini Jews were told that intermarriage between the two communities was allowed after a prayer ritual of conversion was performed—that would eliminate any doubts the white Jews had about the purity of the black community. Such a ritual would mean it was wrong to refer to the Black Jews as slaves. But the Rabbi’s advice was ignored by the Paradesis.

  The question in all this is: why create a divide among themselves when they had come to India to escape persecution in Europe? The answer was money and power. The Black Jews had it. The White Jews wanted it. Forty years after the petition to Rabbi ibn Zimra, the Paradesis’ economic and social status rose as the other group’s declined. The Paradesis had secured land from the king next to his palace to build a synagogue. They were in close proximity and in an ideal position to press their case. In the end, the Brahmin maharajah favored the fair skinned and “pure” minority.

  In Solomon’s time, the link between justice and shalom was seen to be inviolable. Without justice there could be no harmony, no fertility, no shalom. Cochin’s division was to become known as the “Jewish apartheid”, going against this very tenet of faith. Kerala’s Jewry turned on one another. And it would take centuries of campaigning by the Black Jews and eventually a black civil rights leader known as the “Jewish Gandhi” to deliver justice in Cochin.

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  CHAPTER SIX

  Opium Traders and Oil Pressers: The Lost Tribes

  “And it shall come to pass in that day

  That the Lord will set his hand again the second time

  To recover the remnant of His people . . .”

  —ISAIAH 11:11

  The Jews of Kerala are acknowledged as the oldest in India, yet there are others with an equally rich heritage. The first is the Bene Israel community, or “Sons of Israel”, who are based in Bombay. The second is the Baghdadi Jews who have now all but disappeared. All three communities have been the subject of much speculation on whether they originated from Israel’s Ten Lost Tribes who vanished into the ether of history almost three millennia ago. What happened to these tribes remains one of the mysteries of Judaism and the subject of eternal speculation.

  Before his death, Moses bequeathed command of the twelve tribes of his people to Joshua who went on to conquer the land of Canaan around 1200 BCE, according to the Bible. The land was eventually divided between these tribes. Judah and Benjamin took the southern territories, which would become the Kingdom of Judah, while the remaining ten tribes took the land that would become the Kingdom of Israel. In 722 BCE, Israel fell to the Assyrians and its people were dispersed. What became of these lost tribes is unknown, yet the Biblical prophecies maintain the Jews safeguarded their religious identity in foreign lands and that one day they would be reunited in the Holy Land. The story of the Lost Tribes remains an inviolable belief for many Jews and continues to fascinate.

  The mystery ensnared the imagination of chroniclers, with accounts of communities which survived despite their displacement in alien lands. In the arena of sacred mythology it is difficult to prove who is linked to the Lost Tribes, yet it has
been suggested that the Jews of India are among them, alongside the Falashas of Ethiopia and Pathans of Afghanistan.

  * * * *

  Today the Bene Israel Jews are the largest community in India, with a fairly stable population of around 5,000 people. Tradition says they arrived in India sometime between the eighth and sixth century BCE. They were traveling along the western Konkan coast when their boat was shipwrecked during a storm near Navagaon, which lies some forty-eight kilometers south of modern-day Mumbai. The community claims only seven women and seven men survived the tragedy, with the rest perishing in the treacherous Arabian Sea. The few bodies that were recovered were buried in a cemetery at Navagaon. These seven original couples grew into a community of thousands and lived in rural Maharashtra.

  There were differing theories on their origins. One was that they hailed from the Holy Land in the time of Elijah, which explained why that same prophet had a central place in their traditions. Another theory was they were Persian or Yemeni. Either way, the community found themselves in an alien landscape, hemmed in by streams and mountains. They faced the apocalyptic sight of their first Indian monsoon, when the sky turned black, coastal winds bent the palm trees into submission and an insufferable humidity descended, accompanied by ceaseless rains which engulfed everything, turning soil into slurry and causing roiling rivers to overwhelm their banks.

  Yet they acclimatized and settled. They eventually took up oil pressing, adapting their traditional skill of using olives. They established farming practices as well as the cultivation of coconut groves and sold produce on. Others took up skilled work such as carpentry. The community would work for six days and on the Sabbath they rested. One account from 1917, A Short Account of the Calcutta Jews, with a Sketch of the Bene Israels, the Cochin Jews, the Chinese Jews and the Black Jews of Abyssinia by I. A. Isaac, described their plight thus: