Title: The Last Jews of Cochin: Jewish Identity in Hindu India (Studies in Comparative Religion)
Author: Nathan Katz, Ellen S. Goldberg
Published: January 1993
Country Published: USA
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
ISBN-10: 0872498476
ISBN-13: 978-0872498471
Description:
An unusually cohesive and observant Jewish community that began settling in southwestern India (in the present Kerala State) in the second century of the Common Era – and thrived there until its numbers dwindled to less than fifty today – provides the focus for this perceptive and affectionate study. The trading port of Cochin became the eventual center of the various Jewish groups that arrived in successive immigrational waves from Jerusalem, Yemen, Babylonia, Persia, Spain, and eastern Europe. As one of the oldest Jewish settlements outside the Middle East and Europe, it could boast in 1792 that, with about 2,000 Jews and nine synagogues, it had a much larger Jewish community than New York.
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