Context
Recently the last woman of Kerala’s Paradesi Jewish community, Queenie Hallegua died in Kochi at the age of 89.
About
- India’s Jewish population is expected to comprise 4,000-5,000 members from 20,000-50,000 in the mid-1940s.
- They belong to the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel network, settled at the Konkan coast for hundreds of years.
- However they’re not the oldest Jewish community of India.
The Jews of Kerala
- Malabar Jews, also referred to as the Cochin Jews, trace their history to the days of King Solomon (10th century BCE, almost 3,000 years in the past).
- Initially, they settled in Cranganore (present-day Kodungallur in Thrissur district), which the community itself known as Shingly.
- The Jews in the area enjoyed numerous economic and ceremonial privileges.
- After the advent of the Portuguese in the 16th century, Malabar Jews moved further south from Cranganore to Cochin (Kochi).
Paradesi Jewish
- Paradesi Jewish or “overseas” Jews, migrated to the Indian subcontinent in the fifteenth and 16th centuries from the Iberian Peninsula.
- They fled to India because of persecution by the Catholic rulers of Spain and Portugal, and settled at the Malabar coast alongside pre-settled Jewish communities, as well as in Madras (now Chennai).
- The Paradesi Jews of Cochin were lively in Kerala’s spice alternate, and those settled in Madras had been involved inside the trade of Golconda diamonds and other precious stones.
Dwindling population of Jews in India
- Unlike Jewish communities in Europe or West Asia, in India they seldom faced persecution. Instead they rose to high positions as agents of foreign trade, and advisers to Dutch and Hindu rulers.
- Later, in the course of British rule, Jews in Kerala prospered as traders and had been hired as instructors, clerks, and legal professionals within the ever-expanding British bureaucracy.
- However, for the reason that Nineteen Fifties, there has been a constant migration of Kerala Jews to Israel.
Source: The Indian Express