The Last Jews of Kerala Read online

  Babu grabbed a brown paper bag which he slipped into his trouser pocket and a blue kippah cap which was placed in the other. “Now, we must go,” he said, striding towards the door. On the Thursday morning before the weekend of Simhat Torah, I joined the last remaining shohet in action at Cochini Market for the slaughter of the chickens.

  Every few weeks or in the run-up to a major festival, the White Jews send an Ambassador taxi to Babu’s aquarium, which is a forty-minute drive from Mattancherry. The taxi driver hands over a fold of rupee notes to pay for the chickens that Babu must purchase and then slaughter for the white community. In the run-up to Simhat Torah, one of the biggest celebrations of the year, each community was busy preparing for a lavish banquet. Babu was tasked with cutting the meat for the White Jews and sending it back in plastic bags on the backseat of the taxi.

  It was just one example of how the Black and White Jews had become mutually dependant in their twilight years: forced to forgo the past and cooperate so a minyan of ten men may be formed in the Paradesi synagogue for special festivals, so they may eat meat at their now infrequent banquets, in rare communion for a few days of the year. The two communities reminded me of a quarrelling old couple, cherishing old grievances to their bosom, harking to past betrayals, yet sticking by one other in advanced age and adversity because there was no one else.

  The Cochin market itself was a gourmand’s paradise, with great sacks packed tight as drums with spices that tickled the senses: cardamom, jeera, turmeric, chilly powder, cloves, anise stars, cinnamon sticks. Also on sale were roughly broken pieces of the natural brown sweetener jaggery, used in cakes and desserts. Sesame seed-encrusted ladoos in trays and cling film, plastic bowls bobbing with saffron-drenched rasmalai and syrupy gulab jamun. Mounds of tender green coconuts, papaya, watermelon, bunches of tiny black seedless grapes and every type of banana imaginable—red, green, large extra gelatinous yellow and the tiny yellow finger sized bananas that are most prized. The eye was drawn to wicker baskets of green gooseberries the size of plums, bulbous and delicately veined, like plucked eyeballs. All manner of vegetable fuelled the appetite: tiny sweet potatoes little bigger than the tip of one’s thumb, bundles of spinach and the bitter green methi, fragrant bouquets of dhania and mint, gleaming aubergine and cartloads of red onion, tomato and garlic, the staples of the Indian kitchen.

  Pass through this section and one entered a large courtyard that was jostling with fishmongers and fisherwomen, squatting low on their haunches, skirts and lunghis hoisted above the knees as they sat over stone gullies which carried the blood and dirty water into the drains. The workers cleaned, gutted and stacked piles of glistening silver sardines, mullet and pomfret as well as rarer catch such as sea bass. Grey pyramids of fresh prawn and shrimp dried on newspapers alongside aluminum bowls of round clams the size of a penny coin and crabs that would fit in the small palm of a child. The cacophony of hollering fishwives bartering in Malayalam was deafening.

  Beyond the fish section was the meat quarter, where hanks of mutton marbled with bright yellow fat hung from hooks over butcher counters, swinging pendulously in the shimmering heat. At the very back of this compound, up a flight of steps was the live chicken quarter—the smell of feathers and the butcher’s block hit you before the sight of scores of wire and wooden chicken coops, packed to bursting point with white chickens. The coops were stacked in a square around a central workstation, a roughly hewn table of hardwood stained with dried blood. A pile of old giblets sat in one corner, waiting to be cleared away, providing a bloody feast for the fat black flies that swarmed busily.

  There was an old fashioned set of scales to weigh the birds. The birds selected for the Jewish table must be of the same weight and size, without any physical defect or blemish. Even after slaughter if a bird is found to have some internal ailment, the entire carcass is jettisoned. Around thirty fowl had been selected and set aside in a separate pen. As I arrived, the dreadful lottery of death came to a close as the last few birds were selected and drawn in squawking dismay to be weighed.

  Babu stepped up to the butcher’s block. It was as if the chickens knew their executioner had arrived. He was silent, dignified, mentally preparing himself for the religious duty. He took out his blue cotton kippah and placed it on his head before carefully removing the special blade from its sheaf of brown paper and sharpening it slowly, one side, then the other, with great deliberation across a whetstone. He was assisted by one of the market men, who prepared a jug of water and stood opposite Babu. Two other boys, also non-Jewish, waited by the chopping counter, their hatchets ready to skin and carve up the birds once the kosher ceremony was completed.

  Babu’s assistant removed the first bird from the cage. Its terror was palpable, eyes bulging, wings flapping frantically. The screeching reverberated through the market as the other chickens watched in silence, heads cocked.

  Babu began the Hebrew prayer that must precede the killing, praying for the life that God gave, the life he was about to take away. The assistant dipped the chicken’s head into the jug of water, forcing it to take water and swallow. The reflex action brought the bird’s main jugular vein into prominence in its neck, and as the assistant held the body and wings, Babu pulled the head towards him, stretching its neck out and securing the thick vein and cartilage between his finger and thumb. Silenced, the bird looked unblinkingly into Babu’s eyes as gently yet firmly he sliced the bird’s neck in three short cuts of the blade. It was over in less than a second and the chicken’s limp body was laid on the chopping block, its soft white feathers drenched crimson with blood. One of the boys took the bird’s carcass. It was defeathered, skinned and butchered into pieces within the minute.

  Babu and his assistants continued the production line of slaughter until within thirty minutes all the fowl were killed and cut. During the entire process Babu’s face remained a mask of impassivity and he spoke not a single word. After it was over, he took his blade, washed it down in a fresh jug of water and then poured the pink, blood-stained contents onto the stone floor. He wiped down the blade, removed the brown paper sheaf from his pocket and slid the blade back in. Then he washed and dried his hands, removed the kippah, folded it and placed it deep into his other trouser pocket. As he completed his ritual, Babu’s gaze fell to the ground, drawn by tiny dark spots of blood that stared up at him like accusatory eyes of the dead.

  * * * *

  An hour later we were settled in chairs in the green coolness of the aquarium again. After leaving the meat district on our return, we had been waylaid in the fish section of the market as Babu’s eye was caught by a spectacular seabass weighing in at six kilos and glisteningly fresh. The festival season was upon us and this weekend marked two of the most important dates in the Jewish calendar, Shmini and Simhat Torah, so Babu wanted to buy something special for dinner. He agreed a price of 1,050 rupees. The specimen, he pronounced, was perfect in age, weight and texture, as we watched it being wrapped up like fish groupies. “Such a fish doesn’t come along every day,” Babu explained with quiet excitement.

  As soon as we settled at his office he made a flurry of calls to local families and had agreed to split the cost with them and share the delicacy out for the special festival dinner that lay ahead. Already, there was a sense of excitement building, akin to the run-up to Diwali or Christmas. It was a far cry from the White Jews of Synagogue Lane, enveloped in a fog of despondency, where the synagogue warden stomped the streets in ill temper and impatience. Sammy would also be hosting a party on Friday night to celebrate the beginning of the festival of Shmini. In attendance would be the great and good of Cochin, non-Jews. The other Jews on his street were invited for a drink, but many said they would not attend the dinner.

  In the past, Sammy’s late father in law, Sattu Koder, hosted parties for all the Jewish neighbors as well. The street was alive with celebrations or parties of one sort or another for days. When the old warden died, the effervescence of those nights was also extinguished and today eac
h family preferred to return home for a special meal and raise a toast in their own house.

  But the Ernakulam Jews still prayed together and partied together on all special occasions. This Friday night, after prayers, they planned to sit down at one table for dinner. It had been so in the past and it remained so still; hence, the air of expectation and Babu’s delight in securing his seabass. As we discussed the preparations ahead, Babu visibly relaxed, eased into his chair and exuded an air of serenity that was much in keeping with the calmness of his garden and aquarium.

  The conversation turned to whether the Black and White Jews would be celebrating together over the coming days and Babu explained that such unions were rare. The old insults still burned. As he sipped his chai, looking out over the garden, the softness in his eyes dissipated and was replaced by a fire I had not seen until now: “What bullshit, they talk,” he murmured softly.

  “We are the first Jews in Kerala. Our ancestors came from Cranganore, our history dates back to the beginning. I can show you a tombstone of one of our people that dates back to the thirteenth century. They freely admit their ancestors came from Europe only in the fifteenth century. So how can they be first?”

  The tombstone he referred to was the oldest Jewish gravestone in Kerala. It was dated 1269 and found in the tiny Malabari village of Chennamangalam. There the Jews had once lived under the protection of a local chieftain called the Paliat Achan. The tombstone written in Hebrew stands outside the Chennamangalam Synagogue, which has been renovated and turned into a museum.

  “If it’s so evident,” I asked, “why do many still believe they are the original Jews of Cochin?”

  “Because people go to them, to the other Jew Town, they listen to one side of the story, a partial history and they believe the whites were the first and only Jews. They swallow this story. But it’s bullshit. And I’m sorry for this language, but I’ve no other word,” he said. “They choose not to recognize an older community just forty minutes away in Ernakulam. One that was larger than theirs and longer in tradition in Kerala. Instead, we’re subjected to this humbug that they’re the first and true Jews.”

  It was awkward, but I asked about the Paradesi claim that the Malabari Jews were descended from slaves. The question was like lighting the touch-paper on a Diwali firecracker.

  “They call us sons of slaves. It makes me angry when they say this. Our ancestor was the great Joseph Rabban and, before that, the Jewish merchants who came to India after the fall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Our line goes back to the Holy City itself. They can only truly say for sure their line goes back to Spain. Yet, because they’re rich, because they have the white skin, their story is more exotic, more romantic. It’s swallowed whole, no questions.”

  Babu’s blood pressure was up and he needed to take tea to calm down. An aquarium was a good place for him to be, a kind of occupational therapy. So much for the Paradesis’ claim that the old Black-White tensions were over. Babu passed his hand over his moustaches, swiftly brushing them back and forth as he gathered his thoughts before lifting the glass to his lips. The chai did its work, slaking his thirst and soothing his anger.

  “I was taught Hebrew by my father, you know. My mother, who’s very orthodox, insisted. She was a tough lady. He taught me little, I admit, so I can’t teach my own children. But it’s the same with the White Jews, now they’ve no hereditary priest. They’ve no scholars. The last true scholar was Jacob Cohen.

  “Now, he was a man of their community I admired. Jacob Cohen was a man with a sharp mind, a wonderful person, a genius, a great teacher. It was he who told me to learn to cut the chicken in the kosher way. He was the only man who could do so and he said to me ‘One day I will die and go and who will cut the chicken for the Jews then? You must learn, you must carry on. I’ll teach you.’

  “For three years he taught me. I was in my mid thirties. Jacob was a man who could see far into the future, he could predict the problems. He blamed Koder, who was Queenie’s father, and said because of him the community was dying. Koder was a rich man and he could have helped more people, then maybe more would have stayed and not gone to Israel.

  “His daughter Queenie married her first cousin Sammy, from another wealthy family but nowhere like Koder’s wealth. This is their way—to keep the skin pure but more important, to keep the money inside the family. This history of intermarriage, interbreeding, what has it led to? This refusal to marry Black Jews? It has led to death. To their diminishment, to a tiny group of people who are brilliant but without purpose, too eccentric or in some cases just mad. Many are unmarried, many are without children. How can such a community go on?”

  Babu explained how most of the people on both sides of the water were poor. Not everyone had the riches of the Koders and Halleguas, or even the modest wealth of Babu. For these people, Israel represented not just a spiritual return, but a chance to build a new life.

  “For them the State of Israel was a Promised Land in more than one way. It was a land of milk and honey. So they went for a better life. What to lose?”

  Just as the youngsters had fled Mattancherry, Babu feared the last young Jews of Ernakulam would also be pulled away by the simple forces of economics—that and the lack of marriage partners.

  “Of our twenty-two people, the youngest is my daughter who is fifteen,” he said. “You know, we’ve five people under twenty years. About 60 percent are under forty years, the rest are old. That’s not bad. But even for us, it is ending. The younger generation don’t want to learn Torah and our boys rarely go to synagogue. Ours is a dispersed community now. In the past there was pressure to observe. People watched. ‘Who’s missing synagogue? Why?’”

  Even in Babu’s day, the choice of brides was limited and in the end he defied his “militant” mother by marrying a woman from the Bene Israel Jews in Mumbai. As the father of two daughters, the headache is much worse now. But unlike his mother, Babu had no plans to bully his children to conform. “I see an even worse problem for my daughters,” he said. “My elder daughter doesn’t want to stay.”

  “What does she want to do?”

  “Oh, she dreams of NASA, the space mission. She’s brilliant at science: 99 percent for maths, 98 percent for physics, 97 percent for chemistry. She’ll go if she gets the chance. The younger one is totally the opposite. She’s relaxed. She doesn’t worry about her future, a job, a husband. One wants to go to the very top, be the first. The second says ‘Papa, I don’t mind being last, as long as I am happy’,” he laughed and patted his moustaches with evident pride at the thought of them both.

  “But I wish for them a good husband, from good family, with good job. Such a man is more important than any Black or White Jewish thing. Now there’re no Jews here for them to marry, so what to do? We have to look to the Jews elsewhere. Bring new blood back to Cochin.

  “We have to make our choice. Or be like the others and simply die.”

  * * * *

  The next day was the first night of Shmini, followed by Simhat Torah, when the community celebrated the end of the yearly cycle of reading their holy book. Also, falling on a Friday, it would coincide with preparations for Sabbath.

  Babu asked me to join him and his wife for lunch on Friday, when she would also be making some preparations for that evening. Then in the evening I was asked to come to their prayer service at their other synagogue in Ernakulam, Kadavunbagam, and join the celebratory meal afterwards. After the cold reception I had received from the senior-most elder of the White Jews, Sammy, I was touched. It meant a lot and I accepted.

  I arrived at Babu’s home the next day at lunchtime. It was a small, square, whitewashed house, with a gateway and path to the side leading to the main entrance and hallway. The first door on the left opened into a bedroom, followed by a second door that led into the living and dining room. The kitchen was at the back of the house and was abuzz with activity, the heat of cooking steam and the clatter of pots and pans. A wonderful smell of curry and savories filled the
entire house. The dining room was painted a cool blue, with open windows on either side allowing a pleasant cross-breeze.

  I sat at the large dining table and was quickly given a glass of pulped black grape juice by Ofra. She was a pretty woman in her forties, with black hair tied into a bun, warm brown eyes and a rounded frame. Her marriage to Babu had been a love match. Babu saw her at the synagogue in Bombay and was taken immediately.

  She was a diligent wife and mother, rising every day at five for prayers and then preparing the children’s breakfasts and meals and packing the youngest one off to preschool tuition by six thirty. The oldest one was studying at college some three hours distance away and came back at weekends to see the family. Ofra’s duties also involved assisting the Ernakulam Jewish community in things like preparation of food for the festival season and keeping an eye on those who may need extra help.

  That morning was particularly frantic and she looked exhausted, but her activity was undiminished. Her forehead shone with sweat and her forearms were damp with the exertion of beating the sundown deadline. Ofra and the servant were busy preparing snacks for the post-prayer dinner at the synagogue, the three meals for Sabbath and the Simhat Torah festival which would be shared with the Muslim servants, plus lunch for all of us today. The young Muslim assistants from the aquarium had popped by as Babu told them to get their lunch at his house that day. The teenaged boys leaned against the wall, drinking juice as they joked and chatted with the lady of the house while waiting for their meal. The mood was light and affectionate and they seemed more like her sons than her husband’s employees; there was nothing to indicate that one was Jew and the others Muslim. Everyone was caught up in the festival bonhomie.