The Last Jews of Kerala Page 2
Yet as thousands made the aliyah, deserting one paradise for what they hoped would be another, those in India have become a people cursed by no marriages, only funerals. They are the old and the unmarried, the embodiment of an exhausted history. These twelve White Jews and thirty Black Jews scattered across Cochin are reconciled to play out the final scene in India, rather than Israel.
Among them is Gamy Salem, the sole living descendant of a “Jewish Gandhi”, Abraham Barak Salem, a contemporary of both the Mahatma and Jawaharlal Nehru, who eschewed national politics to lead the civil rights battle for equality in the synagogue and bring these estranged brothers into belated union. Then there is the romantic saga of the young lovers, Balfour and Baby, the first Black and White Jews who defied the elders to marry; Sarah, a widowed White Jewess who is the remaining Kerala heir to the Cohen name, which once bore the blood of the priestly line and who must now survive the cunning machinations of her Muslim and Christian hangers-on as they plot to inherit her wealth. Babu, the gentle aquarium-keeper tasked with conducting the ritual kosher slaughter of chickens, also has his place as the last shohet.
Perhaps the most evocative of all is the plight of the youngest members who cannot, or will not, marry. Anil, a twenty-something Black Jew, longs for “a Jewish wife who will not give me headache”. Now he must decide—marry outside his people or abandon the land he loves to find a bride. Yaheh is the youngest of the White Jews, who spends her days selling two-rupee tickets to tourists at the synagogue and her nights patting her pet dog Baby Doll. For more than a decade, Yaheh and her cousin Keith suffered the pleas of the elders to marry and bear an heir. They steadfastly remained apart.
These tragedies went beyond the personal; in another place, another time, the consequences would be theirs alone. But here, those decisions blossomed into a communal sorrow. For centuries the Cochini Jews remained segregated, in the synagogue and marital bed. Neighbor against neighbor. Black against White. Exclusive in worship and love. If they had married one another earlier, if the elders had sanctioned love across the boundary, could this have saved them? These are the realities of Jew Town’s star-crossed inheritors.
Living alongside them, celebrating Sabbath and holy festivals with them, witnessing their tears after burying Shalom, the brief burst of joy at a wedding feast for relatives overseas, I wanted to render up an account of a people who will soon be consigned to the archives, filed alongside other lost societies who failed to heed the siren of collapse.
As suffocating as the draining humidity of these coastal plains is the mood of a people afflicted by some kind of collective malaise, a brooding fatalism born of the realization that they are the architects of their own downfall. For some of them, the time of the Kerala Jews is already over. All that remains is to endure these final years as a spectacle for tourists in retribution for past sins of discrimination and discord. Privately, they mused, was it their curse or karma?
“We’re not a dying community. The joke is, we’re already dead,” Gamy Salem observed from the parlor of his house on Synagogue Lane as he distractedly sipped masala chai in his parlor. “See how the tourists stare at us, like animals in the zoo, like the living relics we’ve become. Buy your two-rupee ticket, come see the Jew show while it lasts. This is our ending after two thousand years.”
* * * *
CHAPTER ONE
The White Jews of Synagogue Lane
“This land itself was a secret, shared between the sea and mountains, an illegitimate child of the two natural forces, protected by and provided for in a special way. Therefore, there was an assurance of plenty and peace.”
—M. G.S. NARAYAN, CULTURAL SYMBIOSIS IN KERALA
K. J. Joy sat on the steps of the Paradesi Synagogue in Mattancherry and with the gesture of an open palm offered me a seat beside him. If ever a man lived up to his name, it was the shamash or caretaker of the local synagogue. In his fifties, he possessed still-boyish features and an equanimity that absorbed life’s petty trials with easy humor. He was tall, with a languid air and a face of delicately wrought dark features lit by a smile that eclipsed the gloom around us.
He drew his knees up beneath his chin and clasped his arms around his legs in weariness. It had been a long day. Since early morning he had stood on sentry duty outside the sixteenth-century synagogue, shooing away the streams of tourists who came calling daily. Now as the sun melted into the ragged Mattancherry skyline and the evening settled around our shoulders like a blue-grey shroud, Mr. Joy could loosen the tensions of duty and relax.
It was October 1: Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement and fasting for the Jewish community. The synagogue doors were bolted and the houses of Synagogue Lane, home to the remaining handful of White Jews, were closed to the outside world. Doors and lower windows were shuttered tight, lace curtains on the upper windows drawn, lights off. The heat of the day yielded to a cool stillness, and an uneasy quiet pervaded. With the approach of nightfall, Synagogue Lane had become a place of repose for phantasmal shadows.
Mr. Joy cast a pensive glance down the one way street that is Synagogue Lane and the heart of Jew Town. Once a bustling community, it was now home to only twelve White Jews.
He had worked as caretaker at the synagogue for twenty-five years, taking responsibility for its daily upkeep, lighting the oil lamps for Shabbat and the festivals, polishing brass work, dusting chandeliers, chaperoning the hordes who came calling every day, corralling groups of excited school kids, explaining the history and generally keeping the public at bay and out of the path of the prickly Paradesi elders. Through it all, he remained composed, serene, sometimes a smile of mischievous amusement playing beneath his black moustache.
I pulled out my notebook containing a list of names, the names of the Cochini White Jews I had carefully gleaned from historical accounts and memoirs like jewels from the dust, and began to read them to Joy, who adopted the furtive manner of a Cold War spy betraying classified information to the enemy. His dark eyes darted towards the windows and doorways of the Jewish houses down the length of the street as he answered in a conspiratorial whisper:
“Dead. Dead. This one is also no more.”
“What about him?” I asked, pointing out another name. He nodded in affirmation but then his voice dropped again in apology.
“Alive, but gone to Israel.”
His finger continued down the page, as the roll-call of the dead grew longer until virtually all the names were crossed out and I had begun to wonder if anyone lived.
“Of course, this one stayed,” he said happily, glad to offer some better news at last.
“Yes?” I said, brightening.
“But he died last year. This next fellow—dead. Here, Madamji, also expired, I’m afraid.”
The list of “Ds” to denote the deceased carried on down the page and overleaf. I started again with a fresh piece of paper, this time writing down a sorrowfully brief cast of those who lived. I showed it to him to confirm.
“Correct. This list is living. But then, I tell you, they’re old and they’re sick,” he added as if to caution against too much optimism. It was my first encounter with the community and already their fortunes seemed inauspicious.
“This is worse than I thought, Mr. Joy. Who can I talk to?”
“Talk? This is not a good time to talk, Madam,” he explained, head wobbling in mild reproach. “You’ve come at the worst possible time. Why, only two weeks ago they buried another of their number. The last of the Cohen men. Shalom Cohen, brother of Sarah, was buried in this cemetery.” He pointed into the distance of Jew Town, which lay ahead. “Since then, their mood has turned black. After the death of Shalom, they are just twelve. Imagine: to be old, to be the last of your kind, to know your time has come.”
* * * *
Cochin lies on the Malabar coast of Kerala, a bounteous state on southern India’s western seaboard. Through the ages it has been the scene of commercial trade and shipping and its cultural fusion of Indian, English, Dutch, Portuguese and
even Chinese influences is a testament to a turbulent history of invasion first by traders, then foreign conquerors who battled to control this crucial Eastern spice route.
It was spices, as well as more exotic bounty such as peacocks and apes, that drew King Solomon’s merchant seamen to these shores almost three thousand years ago. The connection with Israel and the Jews continued and after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Kerala was one of the natural safe havens that the Israelites turned to in their renewed period of banishment and persecution.
Their first major settlement was in the ancient trading port of Cranganore, also known as Shingly, which lies twenty kilometers north of modern day Cochin. But a series of natural and man-made disasters drove the Jews from their first established kingdom in India and they eventually resettled in Cochin from the fourteenth century onwards.
Kerala is flanked to the east by the densely forested mountains of the Western Ghats, the second highest range in India, which rises to more than 7,000 feet, and to the west is the Arabian Sea, the ancient seafaring highway for colonizers and traders. Along this fertile coastal strip, merchants came to buy commodities that are still grown for export to this day. It is said these lands once lay underwater until a major seismic force or volcanic eruption elevated the coastal planes to create a utopian landscape.
Today, Cochin is not a single place but a district, a cluster of lagoons, islands and inlets which are divided by narrow green waterways. Limpid, swamp-like waters crisscross low-lying islands, which are connected to the main bustling town of Ernakulam by bridges as well as ferries that act as taxis to and from the mainland. In the post-monsoon blossoming, flowers erupt in bursts of color from bushes and trees that overhang the network of backwaters. The dull expanse of water that separates the mainland from the islands is briefly transformed by a thick carpet of pink lotus flowers, as if the gods had cast confetti from the heavens.
Nature’s miracle combination of low-lands and a profusion of water have created a lush, tropical beltway that yields abundant harvests of coconuts, rice, exotic fruit, spices and seafood—all of which are packaged and sold throughout India and to markets beyond. Huge container ships from Europe and the Middle East dock in these islands, loading up export goods. Cochin is also a major manufacturer of coir matting and palm oil, which are predominantly for the domestic market. At dusk, the truck depot comes alive with activity and hollering as battalions of wiry-limbed workers load up huge drums of oil and bundles of coir beneath flood lights before dispatching into the night juddering convoys of gaily painted Tata trucks bearing the motoring legend “Horn Please!”
The Malabar coastline has long been a thriving commercial center. It was in this place that the first merchant Jews made their permanent home. The Black Jews, those of darker complexion who have a history that is said to date back to Solomon and a mixed ethnic lineage after intermarrying with the Indians, are settled on the mainland of Ernakulam. The White Jews, of more recent ancestry mostly dating to the early sixteenth century and hailing from Europe, eventually settled in Mattancherry.
The White Jews were traditionally landowners, businessmen or traders in muslin and perfume via Calcutta, as well as experts at caskmaking and bookbinding, a skill for which they were renowned. In his 1861 memoir, British and Native Cochin, Charles Allen Lawson enthused: “with the most rude tools, they do certainly bind in a style far better adapted to the climate than any one of the brilliantly decorated exteriors of the London publications.”
The Black Jews were also merchant traders as well as artisans: masons, sawyers and carpenters. Among both communities there were a few well off individuals who acted as money lenders, but by the early nineteenth century as Cochin declined as a result of Bombay and Calcutta usurping its position as the preeminent trading port, most of the Jews of Kerala had sunken into miserable poverty. Today there is little to indicate the glories of the past, when Malabar fuelled the ambitions of discoverers like Vasco da Gama and furnished the coffers of European kings.
Mattancherry itself lies just a couple of kilometers from the old historic quarter of Fort Cochin, which today is little more than a fishing harbor, marked by rows of Chinese-style fishing nets that are traced to the time of traders from the court of Kublai Khan. At high tide, the circular nets are lowered into the water by a winch system operated by three or four operators. The water’s surface gives no hint of the fishy treasures that lie beneath. Each day when the nets are raised, a babble of excitement ripples through the harbor as the fishermen reveal glittering hauls of silver sardines, pomfret and grey shrimp as finely translucent as the skin of an old lady’s fingers.
Wiry fishermen lever the nets out of the water and retrieve the cargo, which is then dispatched around the region in narrow rowboats that take the fish to market. Local stallholders buy the best of the stock fresh off the quayside and within minutes freshly fried fish, sometimes plain, sometimes with masala, is served up in newspaper cones to locals and tourists gathered around the local bars and taverns. At nighttime, when the stands do brisk business, the smell of fried fish is carried along for a good couple of kilometers if the wind is good. Strings of colored fairy lights give the dockside a festive atmosphere in the evening, a place to sit, gossip, sip cold beer and sniff the salt of Cochin’s waterfront. Entertainment is provided by the promenade of rich sunburned tourists and elegant Malayalam ladies sashaying in jewel-like saris behind beer-barrel husbands, long white cotton lunghis tightly lashed beneath their paunches and stubby fingers carefully brushing their moustaches as they survey the local scene.
Makeshift stalls constructed of bamboo and plaited palm leaves sell tourist trifles such as polished conch shells, hippy beads, and tie-dye sarongs to flushed Westerners grappling with fists full of rupees. Hawkers sit on stools beside piles of freshly plucked tender green coconuts. Brandishing cut-throat sharp machetes, the coconut wallahs hack off the heads of the nuts to reveal a sliver of white flesh inside that holds the pale milky water. Children sit on the curb side, tiny hands grasping bulbous coconuts in their laps as they suck the milk through a straw, kohlrimmed eyes gleaming with delight.
Walk through the streets and one will see a jumble of architectural styles, from the grand Dutch-style villas surrounded by high-walled rose gardens to a Portuguese-built basilica and the old St. Francis Church, which once held the remains of the explorer Vasco da Gama, who died in Cochin in 1524.
But Cochin is not just a resting place for the relics of old conquerors. It is a living testament to India’s ability to endure its turbulent past and absorb it into the fabric of a pluralistic society. Here one can listen to the sound of church bell peels and the haunting cry of the muezzin overlaid with the sonorous lament of the conch shell blown by the high priest at the Hindu temple. Kerala remains a testament to India’s religious co-existence, to its traditional ethos of tolerance, despite the periodic eruption of religious extremism that scars India’s long history. It is here in Cochin that the Keralites have shown that Hindu and Christian, Muslim and Jew can retain a distinct religious identity and yet live in harmony. The Jews enjoyed a harmony that is rare in their history, living in peaceable accord with neighbors of every faith. It only served to sharpen the irony of their position further—the only discord they experienced was from within, the worst discrimination and humiliation they endured was at the hands of their fellow Jews.
With these thoughts, I approached Mattancherry’s Jew Town the day after Yom Kippur, stopping at the top of Synagogue Lane. Today the street had sprung into life again as the local tourist shops got ready for the stream of visitors. In the distance, I could see one or two of the Paradesi or White Jews, dressed in the traditional Malayalam dress of cotton lunghi, yet distinctive by their pallor.
I looked up at the row of plastered stone houses, Jewish homes, many now empty or rented by the Kashmiri or Christian traders. Examining the otherwise simple, rather austere architecture, the eye was drawn to the intricate metal grillwork that covered the upper-story windows of the
first few houses. On one house, the window grills portrayed the Star of David, painted in the same cornflower blue as the Israeli flag, the same resplendent blue of brilliant summer skies over Jerusalem. On the very next house was the ancient Sanskrit symbol of the Swastika, the Hindu symbol of well-being for thousands of years before it was hijacked and adulterated by the Nazis. On a third house was the crescent moon of Islam, picked out in green and white.
A Star of David, a Swastika and a Crescent of Islam all residing on Synagogue Lane. With a charge of excitement, I headed into the heart of Kerala’s last White Jews towards the old synagogue.
* * * *
The Paradesi Synagogue sits at the very top of the one-way street that is Synagogue Lane, next to the local police station and a bookshop run by a Christian family. It is a simple, whitewashed rectangular building, with an attached clock tower that has four faces: one face inscribed with an inscription in Hebrew, another in Malayalam and a third in English.
It was built in 1568 by the leaders from the White Jewish community known as the Paradesis, the Malayalam word for “foreigners”, which refers to a group of wealthy European Jews who fled the Inquisition in Europe to settle in India and rebuild their lives. Some of these European Jews, escaping persecution from countries like Spain and Portugal, intermarried with the older Jewish communities that had already been long settled in the region and came to Cochin from Cranganore after the great flood of the River Periyar in 1341 silted up the harbor there. But the majority of the Paradesis remained distinct, marrying within their community.
The Paradesi Synagogue is not the first to have been built in Kerala—there are synagogues with far older foundations—nor is it the most beautiful. But certainly, it is the most famous and it remains the oldest working synagogue in India. It is the only synagogue of the Cochini Jews that still holds religious services, albeit rarely, and it undoubtedly has a charm that casts its spell on all who visit.