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The neighborhood of Mattancherry in the Indian city of Kochi, Kerala, has been known as Jew Town for at least four hundred years. The name, which might seem jarring to contemporary ears, was simply a geographical descriptor for the area of the city where the Jewish community lived and worked, centered on the Paradesi Synagogue that stands at the lane’s eastern end. Today Jew Town is a tourist destination celebrated for its antique shops, spice markets, and colonial-era architecture, but the Jewish community that gave it its name has all but vanished. Only a handful of elderly Jews remain, the last caretakers of a community that once numbered in the thousands.
The History of Jew Town
The Jewish community of Kochi had two distinct sub-communities: the Malabar Jews, also called Black Jews, who had lived on the Malabar Coast for at least a thousand years before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498, and the Paradesi Jews, also called White Jews, who arrived in Cochin from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa beginning in the sixteenth century, many of them as refugees from Iberian persecution.
The Paradesi community built their synagogue in Mattancherry in 1568, on land granted to them by the local Raja of Cochin immediately adjacent to his own temple. This juxtaposition of synagogue and Hindu temple, separated only by a narrow lane, is one of the most striking physical expressions of the tolerance that characterized Jewish life in Kerala. The two communities coexisted peacefully for centuries, and the religious architecture of each stands as a testament to the mutual respect that made this coexistence possible.
Traditions That Remain
With only a few Jews remaining, the traditions of the Cochin Jewish community are maintained more as cultural memory than as living practice. The Paradesi Synagogue, one of the oldest in the Commonwealth, still holds services on Jewish holidays and for the occasional visiting Jewish group. The elaborate Dutch chandeliers and Chinese hand-painted floor tiles that have made the synagogue famous among tourists are carefully maintained, as are the ancient Torah scrolls and the copper plate grants that document the community’s history.
The physical artifacts of Cochin Jewish life, the prayer books in Judeo-Malayalam, the distinctive Cochin Jewish wedding dress, the ceremonial objects used in synagogue services, are preserved both in the synagogue itself and in the holdings of the Jewish museum that has been established in the community. These objects tell the story of a civilization that has ended but that left behind sufficient material culture to allow future generations to understand what it was.
The Antique Shops of Jew Town
The shops that line Synagogue Lane today are a peculiar result of the community’s departure. As Jewish families emigrated to Israel in the 1940s, 1950s, and subsequent decades, they left behind furniture, household objects, and personal possessions that they could not take with them. Some of this material found its way into the antique trade, and Jew Town became known as a destination for antique hunters looking for old Jewish objects, European colonial furniture, and Kerala woodwork.
Today the shops are full of items that may or may not be genuinely old or genuinely connected to the Jewish community, and the tourist experience of Jew Town is a complex blend of authentic heritage site and commercial enterprise. The few elderly Jews who remain watch this commerce with mixed feelings, aware that it keeps their neighborhood on the cultural map but uncertain about what it means for the integrity of their community’s legacy.
The Last Caretakers
The small group of elderly Jews who remain in Kochi are among the most important figures in Indian Jewish history, not because they are famous or powerful but because they represent the living continuity of a tradition that is otherwise known only through historical documents and material artifacts. Their presence in Kochi, their maintenance of Jewish practice in conditions of near-complete isolation, and their willingness to share their memories and knowledge with researchers and visitors make them irreplaceable witnesses to a world that is almost gone.