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The road heading left from Mattancherry Jetty leads into the district known as Jew Town,where N.X. Jacob's tailor shop and the offices of J.E. Cohen, advocate and tax consultant, serve as reminders of a once-thriving community. Nowadays many of the shops sell antiques, Hindu and Christian woodcarvings, oil lamps, wooden jewelry boxes and other bric-a-brac. Turning right at the India Pepper & Spice Trade Building, usually resounding with the racket of dealers shouting the latest spice prices, and then right again, brings you into Synagogue Lane. The Pardesi (White Jew) Synagogue (daily except Sat 10am-noon & 3-5pm) was founded in 1568, and rebuilt in 1664. Its interior is an attractive, if incongruous, hotchpotch; note the floor, paved with hand-painted eighteenth-century blue-and-white tiles from Canton, each unique, depicting a love affair between a mandarin's daughter and a commoner. The nineteenth-century glass oil-burning chandeliers suspended from the ceiling were imported from Belgium. Above the entrance, a gallery supported by slender gilt columns was reserved for female members of the congregation. Opposite the entrance, an elaborately carved Ark houses four scrolls of the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) encased in silver and gold, on which are placed gold crowns presented by the maharajas of Travancore and Cochin, testifying to good relations with the Jewish community. The synagogue's oldest artifact is a fourth-century copperplate inscription from the Raja of Cochin. An attendant is usually available to show visitors around, and answer questions; his introductory talk features as part of the KTDC guided tour. Outside, in a small square, several antique shops are well worth a browse, but don't expect a bargain
The Jews of
Kochi
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However another legend claims that the Jews initially came in the eleventh century BC, as part of a trade fleet that belonged to King Solomon. Whatever the truth, the Jews settled in Cranganore, just north of Cochin, to trade in spices. They remained respected members of Keralan society and even had their own ruler, until the Portuguese embarked upon a characteristic "Christian" policy of persecution of nonbelievers, early in the sixteenth century. At that time, when Jews were being burned at the stake in Goa, and forced to leave their settlements elsewhere on the coast, the raja of Cochin gave them a parcel of land adjoining the royal palace in Mattancherry. A new Jewish community was created in the area now known as Jew Town, and a synagogue was built. The Jews were in demand as they spoke Malayalam, and trading was in their blood; the community thrived during the great trading period under the more liberal and supportive Dutch and later British rule. There were three distinct groups of Jews in Kerala. The Black Jews were employed as labourers in the spice business, and their community of some thousands resulted from the earliest Jewish settlers marrying and converting Indians; Brown Jews are thought to have been slave converts. White Jews considered both groups inferior to themselves; they were orthodox and married only among their number. However, by the early 1950s, most of Kochi's Jews disappeared, when they were given free passage to Israel, where they could more easily uphold their customs and rules. The remaining White Jews are on the verge of extinction as they are determined to stay racially pure. At the time of writing only seven families survive, a total of 22 people with just enough males over the age of thirteen to perform the rituals in the synagogue - and no rabbi.
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