At the turn of the twentieth century, the Pardesi and the Malabari Jews around Cochin were a reasonably content lot. But as days went by and as the only country which never persecuted the Jews, became independent from the British, the entire Jewish community of the region started to leave on their Aliyah or calling. Today there is less than a handful left. Books have been written about them, anthropologist studies have been completed and films have been made. People who arrived in Israel wrote books of their past in Kerala and their present, while others wrote about them and a few still trickle back to see their old homes in India and satisfy their last longings before they move on to the next world. Why did this all happen? Whatever happened to the people who left? We track regularly the stories of Indians who moved to USA, Europe and the Middle East Arab countries, but there are so few references about these Malayalees in Israel. Are we upset with them, perhaps the Malayali ego is still hurt? I decided to do a little study, armed with Ruby’s, Edna’s and Jussay’s books as well as scholarly articles from Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg.
First the reader should realize that there were two types of
Cochin Jews, historically divided: the Black Jews, or Malabaris, the
descendants of the original settlers, and the White Jews, or Paradesis, the
fairer descendants of immigrants from various Middle East and European
countries. There are also a few Brown Jews, or Meshuhurarum (orumakars), descended
from emancipated slaves. That they all had problems with each other during
their lives in Cochin goes without saying, and discrimination was rife. But it
was something they lived with and somewhat minor in the larger context. (I must
clarify now that when I use the term Cochin Jews, I encompass the Jews of
Ernakulum, Mattanchery, Parur, Chendamangalam and Mala).
Cochin was their little Jerusalem, but it was clear that
they did think about the bigger Jerusalem even though they lived a life of
harmony, ensconced among the other subjects of benevolent Cochin raja. The
British entrenched themselves and made sweeping changes implementing, a
standard education system where all children studied. The Pardesi
Jews soon found that the chasm between them and the poorer Malabari Jews was reducing, a sort of equality was creeping up and the caste distinction was
being slowly broken up, with the imparted education. Also, Pardesi Jews, who had
lucrative agency contracts with the Dutch lost out as the British directly took
over trade and its administration. Within a few decades, the fortunes had reversed
with the Pardesi Jews remaining where they were and many of the hardworking Malabari
Jews becoming wealthier.
Also gone was the time when Malabar and Cochin were very
important for the European settlers like the Dutch and the Portuguese
as the trade once concentrated on spices and wood changed to other commodities.
As the new metropolises of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta as well as Rangoon came
up, the economic centers shifted to these cities and some of the first movers
to these places were the Jews of Cochin, for they not only understood the
trading systems, but also the languages, much more than the traditional Chettys
and Gujaratis.
Those who migrated north to metropolises found easy
employment amongst well-heeled Jewish businesses in those cities. But what is
interesting is the observation by a few families that they no longer enjoyed
the special favors which they used to get in businesses from the Dutch, and they found that the natives had started to get involved in general business,
competing with them, after the fall of the feudalistic society. Both the
Malabari and the Paradesi Jews suffered and interestingly the Malabari Jews
proved to be more religious and interested in a potential Aliya to Israel. The
petty traders faced difficulties, and all the affluent families had moved on.
The community lacked intellectuals and entrepreneurs except for the Koders who
created the first department stores, ran the Cochin electric company as well as
the local ferry, and of course they provided employment to many members of
their community. As this was a temporary situation of stability, the Malabari
Jews started studying the possibility of lesser servitude and better
entrepreneurship if they moved to Israel, now oft mentioned by their university
educated offspring.
Interestingly the Cochin Electric Company, of which the
Cochin royal family was the major shareholder, was the power suppliers to the
Mattancherry and Fort Cochin areas up to Palluruthy, and was maintained quite
well, with hardly a failure in distribution. If indeed power supply to a house
or office was disrupted, the consumer could call Samuel Koder, the director of
the company, directly and he made sure that power was promptly restored.
Koder’s management was very liberal and none of the employees ever wanted for
money, with the organization hiring some 130 people.
The Indian government’s nationalization drive did not help
either when they took over the ferry service as well as the Cochin electric
company run by the Koder’s. Land ceiling acts coming from the latter day
communist governments led to loss of coconut and other farms held by these
families. It soon became an islanded community though still capable and funded,
if so required, by the more affluent. But the pride in their life had gone away
and that was the crux of the whole matter. While there was the problem of shortage
of offspring and the difficulties faced by families in finding spouses for
their children, you would also hear about the curse. There was talk of this mysterious
curse on the community, the Thekumbhagam synagogue curse is oft mentioned, but I
won’t go too much into that other than state that the destruction of that synagogue
in 1964 is attributed to a lot of problems among the Cochin Jewish populace. Was
it because of the quarrels between the black and white Jews? Was it gods curse because
of the silly discrimination the community followed, for decades?
Starting from the early 40’s import restrictions were
tightened in India and the situation continued in 1947 with the imports and
exports control act since the trade deficit needed strict control. The luxury
goods import business conducted by the Cochin Jews were severely affected. Then
came the Second World War, the devastating Jewish holocaust and the ideology
created by the new state of Israel in 1948. The migrations which occurred after
those periods and into the 70’s took away more than 90% of the Cochin Jewish
population. Today less than a handful remain. The need to rebuild the Promised
Land was primary in many of the departing minds, but was that really it? In
India, they could do what they wanted, without fear of any form of persecution,
why go on Aliyah to a land fraught with all kinds of danger? Was it also
because of other hardships?
Leaders of the Cochin community had started to take notice
of the Zionist movements early in the 20th century, as evidenced by
the enthusiastic letters of people such as NE Roby. He spread the word around
to relatives in the metropolises too. Many of them felt the Zionist pull and
took the decision to leave and join their brethren in Israel stressing that it
had always been part of their daily prayers, so, it was but natural. Smaller
problems such as lack of Jewish holidays and lack of possibilities in raising
observant children were cited by some. Insecurity among the members of the
community increased as their numbers continued to fall and as the more affluent
Jews were the first to leave taking the figure down from 16,000 in the 19th
century to 1,100 in the 20th and perhaps under 10 in the 21st.
In 1948, the first wave started as a number of members
approached authorities in Bombay stating their intention of selling off
everything they had and emigration to Israel, enmasse, utilizing their own
funds. Dr. Immanuel Olswanger, an emissary from Israel, visited these places in
1950 and met with the Jewish communities of Cochin, Ernakulam, Mala, Parur and
Chennamangalam offering them the opportunity to help realize the Zionist dream.
The Malabari’s were apparently more enthusiastic than the Paradesi Jews, the
latter being the richer and owners of landed property which they were reluctant
to leave behind or sell at low prices. The new Indian government had restricted
the amount of money that could be repatriated from such a sale. A Cochin Aliyah
fund was started money was collected and it finally took over 7 years for the 3,000
or so people to move to Israel from Cochin. A small complication rose when the
Israel government restricted the number citing an incidence of filariasis
amongst the émigré’s. It took a good amount of persuasive arguments from their emissary
and representative AB Salem with Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion to secure
their passage.
Dr Reitler was asked to formulate the appropriate medical
treatment and the government made steps to ensure that these Malabari’s were
settled in cooler and dry areas so that the disease would not be ‘perpetuated’
and that they would not become a financial burden to the fledgling Israeli
government.
A 1969 newspaper report reveals a quote from Nappy and Elais
Koder- Nappy who had by then become a engineer said – We want to say thank you
to India and then Goodbye – Elias added that he was not happy in India, that
they were taking too much taxes and that they would not let him expatriate his
proceeds to Israel, restricting the total outflow to $5000. The youngsters
interviewed by the newspaper complained of too few suitors and pointed out that
the community was already too much intermarried and somehow related to each
other. While the Bene Israel and the Cochin Jews moved to Israel, the richer
Baghdadi Jews mainly migrated to Britain and America.
Now we move to Israel to track the stories of those who
migrated. Starting from the 40’s some 25-30,000 Jews migrated from India. A
vast majority, close to 20,000 were the Bene Israelis from Maharashtra. Some
3,500 were said to have come from Cochin. When they first reached the Promised
Land, they came across communities run on the terms of the Ashkenazi Jews from
Europe and struggled to make their own niche amongst them. Ruby’s accounts
about these early days are quite poignant and by most accounts most of the
Cochin Jews took to farming and horticulture. In 1954, the first 27 Jewish
families from Cochin arrived in Israel. Majority
of the Cochin Jews were settled at Yuval. House, animals and farming equipment
were provided to the families to begin life afresh. This was the first
contingent of the 620 people who today call the Nevatim moshav, home. These new
arrivals now had a roof over their heads, but finding work presented a more
difficult challenge. The men all started as day laborers for the Jewish
National Fund; one day there was work, the next day there might not be. At one
point, they had to remove rocks and the snakes that lived beneath them. Those years, until 1960, were the most difficult ones.
So as we see, their reception was not rewarding. The Indian Jews were among the darkest of all
the new immigrants and experienced a kind of racism. Reuben Raymond, a Bene Israel
community leader, explained (New Statesman 9-10-04) that the reality of life in
Israel differed from what they imagined it to be. ‘In India, we never had to
fight for our rights but in Israel we did, and this was something new for us,’
he says. ‘In the early '50s, people had a problem because of their color. They
were subjected to differential treatment in everything. In employment, they got
bad jobs and had less money’.
The Malabari Jews are known as the Cochinim and the Pardesi
Jews the Cochinites and identified themselves with the Mirzachi or oriental
Jews. The Cochinim were mostly settled in the cooperative farms or Moshavim.
Five of them, where over 75% of the Cochinim can be found, are Nevatim in the
Negev, Mesillat Zion, Taloz and Aviezer in the Jerusalem corridor and Kfar
Yuval in the Northern border with Lebanon. Today the total community totals to
some 4,000 people and many have moved to urban neighborhoods for different and
better prospects. The Paradesi Jews on the other hand settled in small groups
in Binyamina and Petah Tikva. Some Cochin Jews who emigrated from the village
of Chendamangalam live at Givat Koach, near the Ben-Gurion airport.
The story of Eliahu Bezalel, 82, (quoting from the Hindu
article) a widely recognized horticulturist, decorated by the Israeli
government on various occasions, explains those early days where his life
started after he got married to Batzion, from Mattancherry, who had arrived a
year earlier. Initially Bezalel worked in road maintenance, forestry and as a
shepherd, with both husband and wife taking turns to graze the 500 to 600 sheep
while their child was sequestered in an inverted stool. The next stage, in
1962, was a turn to agriculture. Community members had to fight the bureaucracy
to get the necessary allowances to enable them to grow vegetables, fruit and
flowers.
Bezalel as his story continues, became part of Prime
Minister Ben Gurion's farming vison and was allotted land in a village in Negev
Desert, south of Israel where he started a rose farm. When he was conscripted
in the army, his wife took over the responsibility of running the farm, looking
after the children and paying the taxes. Later Bezalel studied techniques of
growing flowering plants in greenhouses and set up Israel's first modern
greenhouse, along with two other Indian Jewish partners, signaling the start of
a virtual revolution in the field of horticulture. He mastered the technique
called ‘fertigation', where every drop of water provided to a plant is
supplemented with a proportional percentage of fertilizers. In 1964 he was
awarded the Israeli PM's award for best exporter of flowers to Europe; in 1994,
he was conferred with the prestigious Kaplan Prize for contribution to
horticulture, and in 2006 India honored Bezalel with the Pravasi Bharatiya
Samman.
If you travel to Moshav Nevatim, the dust-blown, palm-tree
studded community on the northern edge of Israel’s Negev desert, you can now
see a humble little synagogue with that enormous past. The Kerala Synagogue, as
it is known by, was built in the style of the synagogues of India’s Cochini
Jews. And they made sure of one thing, no more intercommunity marriages, they
all married outside linking up with Ashkenazi, Moroccan, or other Jews. The Bene
Israel Jews, the bigger community, once liberated by their Cochin brethren in
India, did not fare that well in comparison.
Some who remember their old abode mention a desire to live
their last days in Kerala, still remembering lines from the Indian national
anthem and a few old Malayalam film songs. It is said that most Cochin Jew
houses have a curry leaf tree and other tropical trees, like mango and papaya. Some
are proud to state that they are different in tradition, in food, ways of
worship, in a few rituals and in the ‘look' of course. In the early days, they
would regularly eat what is termed “traditional nadan food,”- like kootans,
appam and add ‘vepala' in the curries. Among the other distinctions of the community
is their wearing ‘white' at funerals as against ‘black' worn by the other Jews
from elsewhere. Their lyrics and the music in their prayers are more Indian. Some
of the earlier arrivals continued to wear ‘mundus' and saris but now women
sometimes wears the ‘Salwar kameez’. Sometimes they celebrate festivals like
Onam and of course, remember to popularize the food - Matamey Cochin (“Cochin
delicacies”) is a business operated by eight local women between the ages of 55
and 65 who host Cochin-style meals in their homes or in the local hospitality
tent. For more about this read the fine article linked here
And they meet once a year, in March, when they get together
near the Dead Sea. They sing, narrate stories of their ‘motherland' Kochi, and
share memories. Even though they are now a mixed race, Bezalel continues – “The
trend is that no Cochin Jew marries another from the same group. None of us
talk Malayalam at home so my children don't know the language at all. We are
united by one language, Hebrew. It is mandatory for any emigrant in Israel to
learn Hebrew for which the government even provides an allowance.” Sometimes
they think back of the land they left, of the serene backwaters and the freedom
they enjoyed. A place where planes don’t scream through overhead or rockets
blow up, where they perhaps lacked the excitement, but where they were
equals.
Ruby will always have the last word in this article – She said
– Some people write that the Cochin Community of Jews is dying. They don’t realize
that a root from that tree is shooting up in Israel and starting to blossom. As
long as we keep up some of our traditions, I hope that this community will
never die…
References
Ruby of Cochin – Ruby Daniel
Leaving Mother India – Ellen Goldberg, Nathan Katz
The Sephardi Diaspora in Cochin India - Ellen Goldberg,
Nathan Katz
Daytona Beach morning journal – Jan 19, 1969
The Last Jews of Kochi by Joshua Newton - Jewish Journal
Women sing, men listen - Malayalam folksongs of the Cochini,
the Jewish Community of Kerala, in India and in Israel - Martine Chemana
He made deserts bloom – Hindu article Jan 18th
2012
Kerala’s Cochini Jews Meld into Israel - Debra Kamin
Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences,
and Culture, Volume 1 By Mark Avrum
Ehrlich
