Cochin Jews

Total population
8500 (estimated)
Regions with significant populations
Israel 8,000 (estimated) Kerala 51 (including Kochi (17 in 2006[1]), Ernakulam, North Paravur, Aluva)  India
Languages
Traditionally, Judeo-Malayalam, now mostly Hebrew
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Paradesi Jews Knanaya Sephardic Jews in India Bene Israel Baghdadi Jews

Cochin Jews, also called Malabar Jews (Malabar Yehudan) and Yuda Mappila, are the oldest group of Jews in India, with roots claimed to date to the time of King Solomon, though historically attested migration dates from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Historically, they lived in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India,^[2] now part of the state of Kerala. Several rounds of immigration of the Jewish diaspora into Kerala led to an ethnic, but not a linguistic, diversity: the community was divided into White Jews (Paradesi Jews) and Black Jews (Malabari), both of which spoke Judeo-Malayalam, a dialect of Malayalam.^[3] The vast majority of Cochin Jews emigrated to Israel after its formation, the number remaining in Kerala itself is minuscule, and the community faces extinction there.^[4]

History[link]

First Jews in South India[link]

The inscription from the Sasanam outlining the grant of rights to Joseph Rabban

Traders in King Solomon's time carried out regular sea voyages to the South Indian coast, bartering for ivory, apes, and silver, and the first Cochin Jews may have been the children of Israelite sailors and local women.^[5] It has been claimed that following the destruction of the First Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem (587 BC), some Jewish exiles came to India.^[6] But it was after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE that the first wave of large numbers of settlers came to Cranganore, an ancient port near Cochin.^[7] Cranganore, now transliterated as Kodungallur, but also known under other names, is a city of legendary importance to this community. Fernandes goes so far as to call it "a substitute Jerusalem in India"^[8] and Katz and Goldberg note the "symbolic intertwining" of the two cities.^[9]

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St. Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, is supposed to have visited India, and many of the Jews who converted to Christianity at that time were absorbed by Nasrani or Saint Thomas Christians.^[10]

Central to the history of the Cochin Jews is their close relationship with Indian rulers, and this was eventually codified on a set of copper plates granting the community special privileges. The date of these plates, known as "Sâsanam",^[11] is contentious, with local tradition setting it as long ago as 379 CE, although paleographic evidence suggests the mid-eighth century. Whatever the date, the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban was granted the rank of prince over the Jews of Cochin, given the rulership and tax revenue of a pocket principality in Anjuvannam, near Cranganore, and rights to seventy-two "free houses".^[12] The Hindu king gave permission in perpetuity (or, in the more poetic expression of those days, "as long as the world and moon exist") for Jews to live freely, build synagogues, and own property "without conditions attached".^[13][14] A link back to Rabban, "the king of Shingly" (another name for Cranganore), was a sign of both purity and prestige. Rabban's descendants maintained this distinct community until a chieftainship dispute broke out between two brothers, one of them named Joseph Azar, in the sixteenth century.

The oldest gravestone of a Cochin Jew is written in Hebrew and dates to 1269 CE. It is near the Chendamangalam Synagogue, now a museum^[15]

In 1341 a disastrous flood silted up the port of Cranganore, and trade shifted to a smaller port at Cochin (Kochi). Many of the Jews moved quickly, and within four years the first synagogue had been completed.^[16] The Portuguese Empire established a trading beachhead in 1500, and until 1663 remained the dominant power. They were not kind to the Jews.

Paradesi Jews arrive[link]

Black jew of cochin with Payot

The Paradesi Jews, also called "White Jews", settled in the region at about this time. In the sixteenth century, Sephardi Jews faced religious persecution under the Inquisition, and, along with the Islamic Moors, were exiled from the Iberian peninsula, where they had thrived for centuries. Some fled north to Holland and England but the majority fled east to the Ottoman Empire and beyond, with some following the Arab spice routes to southern India. They brought with them the Ladino language and their Sephardic customs. They found the Black Malabari Jewish community quite different, and tensions between the two communities existed from early on, according to Mandelbaum^[17] The European Jews had good trade links with their countries of origin, and useful languages to conduct international trade, which helped their position both financially and politically.

In 1524, the Muslims, backed by the ruler of Calicut (today called Kozhikode and not to be confused with Calcutta), attacked these wealthy Jews of Cranganore on the pretext that they had an advantage with the pepper trade. The Jews fled south to the Kingdom of Cochin, seeking the protection of the Cochin Royal Family (Perumpadapu Swaroopam). The Hindu Raja of Cochin, Bhaskara Ravi Varman II (979–1021) gave them asylum. Moreover, he exempted Jews from taxation but bestowed on them all privileges enjoyed by the tax-payers.^[18]

Shortly thereafter, the Portuguese occupied the Kingdom of Cochin and suppressed the Jews until the Dutch displaced them in 1660. The new Protestant rulers were more tolerant of the Jews than the Catholics had been. (See the Goa Inquisition for the situation in nearby Goa.)

From 1660 to now[link]

Cochin White Jew Town

The Malabari Jews (also referred as Black, even though their skin colour was brown) had seven places of worship; the Paradesi Jews (also called White Jews) had only one, the Paradesi Synagogue. For centuries the Cochin Jews were divided by the colour line with the Malabari Jews in the majority. Both communities claimed special privileges and greater status over each other, and were endogamous.The Paradesi Jews didn't allow the Malabari Jews equal access to the Paradesi Synagogue, which is the oldest synagogue in Cochin. The Malabari Jews worshipped in their synagogues, some of which are centuries old as well, the oldest being built in 1625 ^[19].

The few score meshuchrarim (former slaves) belonging to the White Jewish community were discriminated against by other White Jews, being relegated to a subordinate position in the synagogue and community. These Jews would form a third sub-group within Cochin Jewry. In the early twentieth century there arose a "Jewish Gandhi",^[20] a young lawyer named Abraham Barak Salem (1882–1967), who devoted his life to ending discrimination against meshuchrarim jews and other divisions among the Cochin Jews. He was both an Indian nationalist and Zionist.^[21] His family were meshuchrarim, a Hebrew word used, sometimes neutrally and sometimes with derogatory intent, to denote a manumitted slave.

The stratification in the Jewish community prevented the meshuchrarim from marrying other White Jews and forced them to sit in the back of the synagogue in a manner resembling the discrimination against converts from lower castes sometimes found in Christian churches in India. Salem fought against this by boycotting the synagogue for a time and utilised satyagraha as a means of combating discrimination within the community. Salem's efforts were successful, and by the mid-1930s, Mandelbaum reported that many of the old taboos had fallen.^[22]

Today most of Cochin's Jews have emigrated. Most of them went to Israel (made aliyah), where large groups went to the moshavs (agricultural settlements) of Nevatim and Shahar in the Negev (southern desert), of Yuval in the North, and of Mesilat Zion between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Others have settled in the neighborhood of Katamon in Jerusalem, in Beer Sheva, Dimona and Yeruham.

Part of the decline in Kerala's Jewish population can also be attributed to conversion.^[10] Largely, however, it appears to be due to internal schism between White and Black Jews.^[23]

In Cochin, the Paradesi Synagogue still functions, and is also a tourist attraction. The ticket-seller, Yaheh Hallegua, is the last female Paradesi Jew of child-bearing age.^[24]

Traditions and way of life[link]

An Indian Jewish family in Cochin

Group of Cochin Jews

The 12th century Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela wrote about the Malabari coast of Kerala: "The inhabitants are all black, and the Jews also. The latter are good and benevolent. They know the law of Moses and the prophets, and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha."^[25] Maimonides (1135–1204), the preeminent Jewish philosopher of his day, wrote, "Only lately some well-to-do men came forward and purchased three copies of my code [the Mishneh Torah] which they distributed through messengers.... Thus the horizon of these Jews was widened and the religious life in all communities as far as India revived."^[26] (The Baghdadi Jews came to India in the 18th century, and it was only then that the Bene Israel Jews of India were "discovered" and taught mainstream Judaism by the Cochinis and Baghdadis,^[27] so Maimonides must be referring to the Cochini Jews.)

Further support for the Mishneh Torah circulating in India comes in the form of a letter sent from Safed, Israel to Italy in 1535. In it David del Rossi claimed that a Jewish merchant from Tripoli had told him the India town of Shingly (Cranganore) had a large Jewish population who dabbled in yearly pepper trade with the Portuguese. As far as their religious life, he wrote they: "only recognize the Code of Maimonides and possessed no other authority or Traditional law."^[28] According to Katz, Rabbi Nissim of Gerona (the Ran) visited the Cochini Jews, and they preserve in their song books the poem he wrote about them.^[29] In the Kadavumbagham synagogue, there was a yeshiva (school) for both "children's education and adult study of Torah and Mishnah."^[30]

The early twentieth century Jewish Encyclopedia states, "Though they neither eat nor drink together, nor intermarry, the Black and the White Jews of Cochin have almost the same social and religious customs. They hold the same doctrines, use the same ritual (Sephardic), observe the same feasts and fasts, dress alike, and have adopted the same language Malayalam. ... The two classes are equally strict in religious observances,"^[31] and prominently featured is a black Cochin Jew with his entire head shaved, save for his very prominent payot. According to Chemana, the Jews of Cochin "coalesced around the religious fundamentals: devotion and strict obedience to Biblical Judaism and to the Jewish customs and traditions ... Hebrew, taught through the Torah texts by rabbis and teachers who came especially from Yemen...".

It is notable that the Jews of Cochin did not adhere to the Talmudic prohibition against public singing by women (kol isha), and therefore have always had a rich tradition of Jewish prayers and narrative songs performed by women in Judeo-Malayalam.^[32][33][34] (However, this Talmudic prohibition is not absolute; there are in fact traditional Orthodox interpretations that sanction certain kinds of singing performances by women before men, and other historical Jewish communities besides the Cochini one relied on this lenient interpretation.^[35])

Although Jewish law only proscribes a waiting period of a few hours between meat and milk, Benedicta Pereira, a Paradesi Jew, writes, "Mostly the older people prohibited the use of milk and meat the same day in the house[;] and to scare the young Jew's[,] [sic] so as not to be inspired by the culture[,] there were stories of bad Omens for those who dare[d] to think even of milk and meat together."^[36]

See also[link]

• History of the Jews in India
• Gathering of Israel

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Fernandes, Edna. (2008) The Last Jews of Kerala. London: Portobello Books. ISBN 978-1-84627-098-7
• Koder, S. "History of the Jews of Kerala". The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopaedia of India, ed. G. Menachery, 1973.
• Puthiakunnel, Thomas. (1973) "Jewish colonies of India paved the way for St. Thomas", The Saint Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India, ed. George Menachery, Vol. II., Trichur.
• Daniel, Ruby & B. Johnson. (1995). Ruby of Cochin: An Indian Jewish Woman Remembers. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society.
• de Beth Hillel, David. (1832) Travels; Madras publication.
• Jussay, P.M. (1986) "The Wedding Songs of the Cochin Jews and of the Knanite Christians of Kerala: A Study in Comparison". Symposium.
• Hough, James. (1893) The History of Christianity in India.
• Lord, James Henry. (1977) The Jews in India and the Far East. 120 pp.; Greenwood Press Reprint; ISBN 0-8371-2615-0
• Menachery, George, ed. (1998) "The Indian Church History Classics", Vol.I, The Nazranies, Ollur, 1998. ISBN 81-87133-05-8
• Katz, Nathan; & Goldberg, Ellen S; (1993) The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India. Foreword by Daniel J. Elazar, Columbia, SC, Univ. of South Carolina Press. ISBN 0-87249-847-6
• Menachery, George, ed. (1973) The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India B.N.K. Press, vol. 2, ISBN 81-87132-06-X, Lib. Cong. Cat. Card. No. 73-905568 ; B.N.K. Press
• Weil, S. (1982) "Symmetry between Christians and Jews in India: The Cananite Christians and Cochin Jews in Kerala". Contributions to Indian Sociology, 16.

Further reading[link]

• Chiriyankandath, James. (2008) "Nationalism, religion and community: A. B. Salem, the politics of identity and the disappearance of Cochin Jewry", Journal of Global History 3, 1: 21–42.
• Day, Francis. The Land of the Permauls, Or, Cochin, Its Past and Its Present, offers insight to Cochin Jewish life in 18th century, read Volume VIII (page 336 to 354). Francis Day was a British civil surgeon in 1863.
• Katz, Nathan. (2000) Who Are the Jews of India?; Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21323-8
• Katz, Nathan; Goldberg, Ellen S; (1995) "Leaving Mother India: Reasons for the Cochin Jews' Migration to Israel", Population Review 39, 1 & 2 : 35–53.
• Weil, Shalva. (eds) (2002) India's Jewish Heritage Ritual, Art & Life Cycle; Marg Publications. ISBN 81-85026-58-0

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cochin Jews

• Cochin Jews
• Calcutta Jews – Jewish Encyclopedia
• Cochin Jewish musical heritage (article from South Indian newspaper 'The Hindu')
• Dr Francis Day's recollections on Cochin jews, Circa 1863 AD
• news item regarding presentation of Cochin Jewish history to Mr Ariel Sharon, by Indian officials

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Mappila (Malayalam: മാപ്പിള Māppiḷa, alternatively Mopla, Moplah) refers to the largest Muslim community in Kerala state, India primarily distributed in the northern region called Malabar, which arose as a result of the pre^[1] and post Islamic Arab contacts.^[2][3]

Muslims of Kerala, of which Mappilas constitute a majority, also make up the largest community in Kerala state, 24.70% of the population. As a religious group they are the second largest after Hindus (56%).^[4] They share the common language called Malayalam with the other inhabitants of Kerala. Islam reached Malabar Coast as early as 7th century AD and was assimilated with the culture and traditions of the local people. Over the centuries, the strong relations of the Mappilas with the traders from Arabia have created a profound impact on their life and culture. This has resulted in the formation of a unique tradition in literature, art, music, and history of the Mappilas. They form an integral part of the unique blend of the culture of the Malayalam language speaking population.^[5][6] Most of the Mappilas follow Shafi`i School, while a large minority follow movements arose within Sunni Islam.

Significant number of Mappilas are also present in the southern districts of Karnataka and western parts of Tamil Nadu. A small portion of the community is scattered throughout the major cities of India, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Malaysia as diaspora groups. Mappilas of Malabar are also known as "Malabaris" or "Malwaris" in the Middle East, Pakistan, Malaysia and Singapore.

Etymology[link]

• There's a difference of opinion on the exact origin of the word "Mappila" ("Moplah" in Colonial sources), but by and large it is considered to be derived from a combination of ancient Tamil or Malayalam language words "Maha" ("great") or "Ma" ("mother")^[7] and "Pillai" ("son").^[8][9]
• Mappila is used originally for visitors and immigrants. It was referred to visitors and immigrants to Malabar, including the Muslims, Christians and the Jews, who became the trading communities of ancient Kerala. Since Saint Thomas Christians were the major immigrant community in Travancore region and Muslims the same in Malabar region, these two communities later being called as Mappilas in these respective regions. The Saint Thomas Christian community of southern Kerala are also called "Nasrani Mappilas".^[10] The Muslims of ancient Kerala were referred to as Jōnaka or Cōnaka Mappila (Yavanaka Mappilas), in order to distinguish them from the Nasrani Mappila (Saint Thomas Christians) and the Juda Mappila (Cochin Jews).^[11]

History[link]

The long-standing Arab, Greek, Persian and later Portuguese contact with the coastal areas of India has left its permanent mark in the form of several communities. These communities came into existence through the large scale immigration of Arab sailors and their families^[12] and traders and conversion of early Jews to Christianity (Nasrani Christians). Malabar and Kochi were the most important states on the western coast of India where the Arabs and Persians found a fertile soil for their trade activities. The community, which arose in Malabar as a result of the contact, is called the Mappilas.

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But the effect of Arabic immigration in Kerala should not be overestimated as compared to the local population; the immigrants were considerably small in numbers and have mixed with local natives. Mappilas are very much a racially uniform group. Indeed genetic studies have found identifiable genes from the Arab peninsula at about 0.1%.

Early history

Contrary to popular belief, Islam came to South Asia prior to Muslim invasions of Indian subcontinent. Islamic influence first came to be felt in the early 7th century with the advent of Arab traders. Trade relations between Arabia and the subcontinent are very ancient. Arab traders used to visit the Malabar region, which was a link between them and ports of South East Asia, to trade even before Islam had been established in Arabia. According to Historians Elliot and Dowson in their book The History of India as told by its own Historians, the first ship bearing Muslim travellers was seen on the Indian coast as early as 630 CE. H.G. Rawlinson, in his book: Ancient and Medieval History of India^[13] claims the first Arab Muslims settled on the Indian coast in the last part of the 7th century CE. Shaykh Zainuddin Makhdum’s “Tuhfat al-Mujahidin” also is a reliable work.^[14] This fact is corroborated, by J. Sturrock in his South Kanara and Madras Districts Manuals,^[15] and also by Haridas Bhattacharya in Cultural Heritage of India Vol. IV.^[16] It was with the advent of Islam that the Arabs became a prominent cultural force in the world. The Arab merchants and traders became the carriers of the new religion and they propagated it wherever they went. The native Nair rulers (naduvazhis) especially the Samuthiri of Calicut extended all facilities and protection to the Arab traders because their presence was needed for the economic prosperity of the naduvazhis.^[3]

The first Indian mosque is thought to have been built in 629 CE, purportedly at the behest of an unknown Chera dynasty ruler, who is considered the first Indian Muslim, during the lifetime of Muhammad (c. 571–632) in Kodungallur, in district of Thrissur, Kerala by Malik Bin Deenar.^[17][18][19]

The 12th century Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta was surprised to when he discovered that the Mappila communities near Calicut were the followers of Imam Shafi'i while the rest of the Indian Muslims were not, he was also impressed by their strong local cultural institutions and their voyages and influence in the Indian Ocean especially in the Maldives and coastal Sri Lanka.

In Malabar, the Mappilas may have been the first community to convert to Islam because they were more closely connected with the Arabs than others. Intensive missionary activities were carried out along the coast and a number of natives also embraced Islam. These new converts were now added to the Mappila community. Thus among the Mapilas, we find, both the descendants of the Arabs through local women and the converts from among the local people.^[20]

In the Gazetteer of Bombay Presidency, Khan Bahadur Fazlullah Faridi, mentions the settlement of pre-Islamic Arabs in Chaul, Kalyan Supara and Malabar Coast and Arab merchants passing along the Coromandel Coast on their way to China.