Jewish history in Europe and the Middle East is a story of massacres, forced conversions, pogroms, blood libel accusations and so on. But when Jews lived India, their polytheistic Hindu neighbours were widely seen as being more tolerant.

This is more myth than reality, however, because it ignores one of the worst massacres in Jewish history.

The Cochin Jews in the Indian state of Kerala claim to be oldest Jewish community outside the Middle East. Oral legend holds that they landed in the subcontinent after the first temple was destroyed (586 BCE) and are descended from the tribes of Benjamin and Yehuda.

Many Jews were merchants and Kerala was a trading hub. Jews lived alongside Christian and Muslim minorities while Hindus were the majority.

By the 12th century they were a well-established religious group in Kodungallur (also known by other names such as Muziris, Cranganore and Shingly).

The Jews spoke in Judeo-Malayalam, a religious dialect of the local language, Malayalam. This was a feudal era as the Chera dynasty was gradually declining and petty kings and chiefs vied for supremacy.

Legend has it that around 1165 AD there was a wealthy Jewish widow named Kadavath Achi (Kadambath Achi in other accounts) who came from the Middle East with a group of 800 Jews. She had a daughter who caught the local Hindu king’s attention when he saw her bathing in the river. The king, believed to be of the Chera clan, ordered his soldiers to seize her as he intended to make her his concubine.

When they arrived at Kadavath Achi’s residence to carry out their task, the Jews killed his soldiers. That Shabbat, the king then attacked the Jewish community with his army and mercenaries and set fire to Jewish dwellings and over a dozen synagogues.

The flames were seen 10 kilometres away in Chennamangalam - where they initially took refuge. Kadavath Achi and her daughter committed suicide in the aftermath of the tragedy.
It is believed that around 40,000 Jews were killed, with just 1000 survivors, including Yosef Rabban and his family. Rabban is believed to have been the leader of the community. In comparison there are only around 7000 Cochin Jews today.

A survivor returned after three days to salvage the tombstone of Sarah Bat Israel, who had died just before the massacre took place. Today this relic is believed to be India’s oldest known Jewish gravestone. Different versions of the story exist and modern sources have dated both the tomb and Rabban to different years - these discrepancies in analysis can be attributed to the passage of time.

This event created a “second diaspora” within India. Over time Rabban’s descendants quarrelled among themselves and the community further dispersed into different settlements. There were new tensions when the Paradesi Jews (Sephardic) arrived in the 1500s from Portugal and the Middle East.

By the 18th century, there were eight synagogues in Kerala. With the exception of Parur, all the others were located within the Kingdom of Cochin and that is why the term “Cochin Jews” is now used for all Kerala Jews.

In 1341, a flood altered the Kerala coastline and opened up a new harbour in Cochin, but made Cranganore port unusable. The ancient Jewish home subsequently lost its prominence as a trade centre.

But there still was a Jewish presence during the Portuguese conquest in the 16th century, which only disappeared when they exported the Inquisition to India, killing Jews or forcing them to convert to Catholicism.

Recorded mentions of Jews in Indian records are scant. There is much confusion as medieval sources do not distinguish between Jews and foreign traders.

And Jews are mentioned specifically, it is rarely specified if they were local Jews or foreign traders.
Uniquely in Kerala, Cochin Jews have a genre known as kilipattu (literally parrot songs). Since parrots are not native to Israel, we can infer it is a local tradition.

The corpus of poems and women’s folk songs in Hebrew and Malayalam double up to preserve cultural memories of events long past. Pre-wedding songs were performed at the bridegroom’s home on the day before the occasion by women clapping and dancing.

This was permitted here, in contrast to the taboo among Orthodox Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in Europe and the Middle East that prohibits women from singing in public (kol isha).
In the 1960s, Poyyathuruthy Mathew Jussay, a Christian pioneer in Judeo-Malayalam and Cochin Jewish research, recorded many kilipattu using tapes with his own funds. He was able to record some of these folksongs that give us a glimpse into Kerala’s Jewish past.

According to Jussay’s son, Terry Jussay, the family has Jewish descent, citing that as a possibility for his passion for Jewish culture. The full song that describes the massacre specifically is lost but certain lines are remembered to this day. Several kilipattu also contain hints such as mention of a “fire in Cranganore” and the names of synagogues that no longer exist.

The first Kerala Jews moved to Israel in 1950, a year after independence. A mass exodus followed in the 1960s and 70s, causing many synagogues to shut down. There only 14 left in Kerala today, with the bulk of the community in Israel. Mass migration, coupled with intermarriage and language shifting to Hebrew meant that many of the folk songs are not passed down to the next generations anymore.

Oral traditions have it that 18 synagogues once stood in Cranganore but archaeological evidence to confirm these claims has yet to be uncovered. However, synagogue naming customs — Thekkumbhagam (south side) and Kadavumbhagam (river side) — are supposed to stem from a geographical cultural memory of two lost synagogues that once existed.

Other Jewish communities in the Indian subcontinent may have vanished, mostly due to assimilation.

Recently, a 12th century synagogue was uncovered in Ramanathapuram in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu but no historic references to a community there are known - except references to merchant guilds that (probably) included Jews in their ranks.
In Sri Lanka, written sources indicate that a Jewish community existed and some became ministers to a king — but today there is no remnant of this group.

Many Syrian Orthodox Christians in Kerala claim Jewish ancestry - especially the Knanayas who number 300,000 today and call themselves “the former Jewish community”. There are cultural similarities with Jews reflected in certain religious practices.

They claim that St Thomas, the apostle of Jesus, visited and converted them. It is also believed that some of the ancient synagogues in Kerala were converted to churches and some of the congregant’s descendants are Christian today.

For more on this I recommend The Real History of the Cochin Jews Uncovered by Thapan Dubayehudi, a groundbreaking narrative by the author and Elias Josephai (better known as Uncle Babu).

Avi Kumar is a Sri Lankan-born historian living in New York