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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/35589/full/35589/journalist-drawn-to-jews-in-india-or-what-s-left-of-them/ <br /><br /> <b>Journalist drawn to Jews in India — or what’s left of them</b> <br /> Friday, August 22, 2008 | by <p>rose katz </p> <br /><br /><p>Edna Fernandes stumbled on the diminishing Cochini Jewish community living in Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast of India. She wasn’t the first to do so, but she might be one of the last.<br /><br /> In 2002, the British Indian journalist went to Kerala to research a story on tea plantations. She found herself on Synagogue Lane, home to India’s oldest working synagogue, the Paradesi Synagogue. Drawn to the story of this ancient community, she returned to Kerala in 2006 to investigate the question, as she rather bluntly puts it, “What is it like for a people whose end has come?”<br /><br /> The result is the recently published book “The Last Jews of Kerala” which duplicates much of the work done in “The Last Jews of Cochin,” by Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg.<br /><br /> Landing at first in trading ships during the time of King Solomon, Jews found welcome in Kerala, a fertile area of coconut palms and spice plants. The Jews lived in harmony with their Hindu, Muslim and Christian neighbors. As merchants, they were accorded privileges by the Hindu rulers of that area. They eventually grew to a community of about 2,500 people by the beginning of the 20th century.<br /><br /> Today that community numbers only a handful of mostly elderly Jews.<br /><br /> Visibly pregnant in a community that has seen few marriages and births in decades, Fernandes unknowingly arrives in Kerala on Yom Kippur. She immediately sets out to meet and interview the Jews of Synagogue Lane, many of whom had been featured by Katz and Goldberg. Among the less charming aspects of Fernandes’ account is her tongue-in-cheek description of herself as the hunter searching out her reluctant prey.<br /><br /> “We’re not a dying community. The joke is we’re already dead,” says one man. “See how the tourists stare at us, like animals in the zoo, like the living relics we’ve become.”<br /><br /> On this visit to Kerala, she learns that there are two groups of Jews living there: the White, or Paradesi, Jews, and the darker-skinned Black, or Malabari, Jews. She also learns that the resentment between them runs deep. Listening to stories about how the two groups live and pray separately, she concludes that the community is dying as a result of its form of racial “apartheid,” which does not allow for intermarriage.<br /><br /> While the rigid segregation of the White and Black Jews caused divisiveness, especially for the Black Jews, the mass migration to Israel has done more to decimate the community. Although India was one of the few places in the diaspora where Jews did not experience anti-Semitism, most of its Jewish population left for better economic opportunities and to fulfill religious aspirations after Indian independence and the creation of the State of Israel. <br /><br /> Would this much-diminished community have been able to continue in India even if intermarriage had been accepted? It is doubtful.<br /><br /> Fernandes eventually travels to Israel to meet with some of the thousands of Cochini Jews who made aliyah. Most were settled in the Negev, where, according to Israeli officials, the spread of tropical diseases would be minimized. The vast majority of Cochini Jews settled in moshavs across the south, near Beersheva. Several settlements almost exclusively contained Cochini Jews.<br /><br /> After a difficult start, and despite the ongoing racial issues in Israel, the Cochini community is thriving, albeit with relatively high rates of marriage to non-Indian Jews.<br /><br /> “The Last Jews of Kerala” is at its best when Fernandes allows the Cochini Jews to speak in their own voices. Theirs is a story of fierce attachment to history, to a sadly diminished presence in a country that was home for 2,000 years, and to a new and complicated present in Israel.<br /><br /> <br><br /><br /> <b>Rose Katz</b> is the program coordinator for the Bureau of Jewish Education Jewish Community Library in San Francisco.<br /><br /> <br><br /><br /> <b>“The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India’s Forgotten Jewish Community”</b> by Edna Fernandes (256 pages, <br /><br /> Skyhorse Publishing, $24.95)</p> <p> </p>

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