Jewish Community in Coastal Indian Town Is Mere Shadow of Old Self

One civilization after another has found paradise in this seaside town, planted its flag and then faded away.

The Jews of Cochin, remnants of an old spice-trading outpost on India’s southwestern coast, are down to their last few members.

Their ancestors began arriving here in the 1300s, many at the end of long flights from repression in Europe and the Middle East. They built a world of their own and crammed much of it into the narrow byway still known as Jew Town Road.

The community that boasted 750 members and three synagogues in the 1950s now numbers just 16 people. Most of the young have gone to Israel and the United States to search for wives, husbands and jobs. One of the city’s grandest synagogues was shipped to a museum in Jerusalem. On most Saturdays, Cochin’s Jews can’t even scrape together the 10 men needed to conduct a prayer service. Two Jewish residents passed away in recent months.

The end seems near.

“Day by day we are getting smaller,” said Sara Cohen, a 62-year-old who sells embroidery out of a small shop. Her husband, Jacob, died in October, and the couple had no children.

“One day soon, there won’t be any of us left,” she said.

Settlements Teetering Toward Extinction

The plummeting number of Jews in Cochin is mirrored throughout India. In 1947, at the time of independence, Jews numbered about 24,000 nationwide, with large groups in Bombay, Calcutta and New Delhi. Then came the birth of Israel in 1948, which drew the diaspora home. Today, the Jews of India number fewer than 4,000. The southern state of Kerala, where Cochin is located, contains two other tiny settlements, each one teetering toward extinction. At last count, the state’s Jewish population stood at 65.

The birth of Israel had a similar effect across Asia and northern Africa. Ancient enclaves in places such as Morocco and Iraq withered away when local Jews heeded the call to come to the new homeland.

“Across the East and the Orient, the Jews were invited and encouraged to come to Israel,” said David N. Myers, professor of Jewish history and director of the Center for Jewish Studies at UCLA. “These communities were transplanted en masse.”

Sammy Hallagua, the unofficial historian of Cochin’s Jews, traces his ancestry to Spain, from which the Jews were expelled during the Inquisition in the late 1400s. He has marked his family’s path from Europe to Syria and then to the coast of southern India. Hallagua, 68, still uses some old phrases of Ladino, the language of the Spanish Jews. One such word is escapar, which means to flee.

“For 400 years my family has lived on the same street,” said Hallagua, who ran a coconut plantation before he retired. “It’s sad that we are destined to disappear.”

Hallagua’s family history tells the story. His two children both emigrated to the U.S. His son, David, is a physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Daughter Fiona lives in New York, where she works for a cosmetics firm. Sammy Hallagua is related to nearly half the remaining Jews in Cochin.

“There aren’t a lot of opportunities in Cochin, career opportunities or marriage opportunities,” David Hallagua, who married an American Jewish woman, said in a telephone interview. “The community is dying.”

Cochin is littered with the monuments of departed cultures. Portuguese explorers landed here in 1498, and Vasco da Gama, who charted Europe’s sea route to the East, was buried at St. Francis Catholic Church near the sea. The Dutch came next, and their old oceanfront cemetery lies beneath a tangle of overgrown vines. The giant fishing nets still in use are thought to have been brought by Chinese fishermen during the reign of Kublai Khan more than 700 years ago. Even the weeds that choke the backwaters here are said to have come from Africa.

Over the centuries, Cochin’s Jews developed a unique culture that borrowed from India’s caste system. One group was known as the White Jews--those, like the Hallagua family, who came from Europe and rarely married the locals. The other group was known as the Black Jews, usually of darker complexion. The Black Jews claimed that their descendants came to India as early as the 1st century, when the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem scattered them around the world.

Some scholars believe that the truth is simpler: that the White Jews did not intermarry with local Indians and Black Jews did, giving the latter a darker complexion.

For centuries, the Black and White Jews prayed in separate synagogues and kept mostly apart. But over time, the differences faded. In 1991, parts of the main Black synagogue here were carried off to an Israeli museum. The White Jews and the few Black Jews left began praying together at the Pardesi temple, which was formerly used just by Whites. Built in 1568, it is one of India’s oldest synagogues.

“All the Jews were welcomed in all the temples,” Sammy Hallagua said.

Most of Those Left Attend Funeral

The last of Cochin’s Black Jews, Aaron Abraham, 70, died late last month. Just before his death, he told a visitor who knocked on his door that he was too tired to tell his story.

“I’m sorry,” Abraham said from his second story window. “Maybe when I am feeling better.” Most of the remaining Jews in Kerala attended Abraham’s funeral.

Isolated from the mainstream religion, Cochin’s Jews developed unique rituals. The Pardesi synagogue has no rabbi. During marriage services, the rites are read by the groom. The Jews here still make their own Sabbath wine from local grapes.

The Cochin Jews did take the local language, Malayalam, as their own, and most know little Hebrew. While they have kept mainly to themselves, they say their neighbors--Hindus, Christians and Muslims--have always embraced them.

“The only country that has never discriminated against the Jews is India,” said Johnny Hallagua, Sammy’s cousin. “I’ve never gotten a hard time here for being Jewish.”

Jew Town Road has the hemmed-in feel of a medieval European town: Its houses are sandwiched next to each other with no space between them, and people walk shoulder to shoulder in the crowded streets. Many houses, some now occupied by Hindu antique dealers, still bear the Star of David on exterior walls.

Tourists, many of them Jewish, flock to the old synagogue and try to chat up the locals. Some of the old Jews have grown tired of the attention.

“No pictures,” Johnny Hallagua barked at a visitor who held up a camera.

With so few Jews left, each death stings a little more. In October, the community’s oldest member, 86-year-old Jacob Cohen, passed away. He was a former income tax inspector and president of the local men’s club. His friends called him Jack.

“With one death, Jewish population down by 6 percent” read a headline in the local paper.

All of Kerala’s Jews attended Cohen’s funeral. “There’s so few of us left, we’re all related to each other now,” said Reena Salem, a 70-year-old Jewish woman from Cochin.

Cohen’s friends and family buried him in the old Jewish cemetery, which, like the Dutch one on the other side of town, is overgrown with weeds.