Sephardic Jews in India

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Sephardic Jews in India
Regions with significant populations
India

Flag of India.svg  India: Chennai, and the Eastern, South-Eastern Coast

Flag of Israel.svg  Israel
Languages
Initially Ladino, later Judeo-Malayalam, now mostly Hebrew & English
Religion
Orthodox Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Chennai Jews
Cochin Jews
Sephardic Jews
Paradesi Jews
Plan of Fort St George and the city of Madras in 1726,Shows b.Jews Burying Place Jewish Cemetery Chennai, Four Brothers Garden and Bartolomeo Rodrigues Tomb Plan of Fort St George and the City of Madras 1726.jpg
Plan of Fort St George and the city of Madras in 1726,Shows b.Jews Burying Place Jewish Cemetery Chennai, Four Brothers Garden and Bartolomeo Rodrigues Tomb
Rabbi Salomon Halevi, the last Rabbi of Madras Synagogue and his wife Rebecca Cohen, among the Paradesi Jews who settled in Madras. Rabbi Salomon Halevi and Rebecca Cohen, Paradesi Jews of Madras.jpg
Rabbi Salomon Halevi, the last Rabbi of Madras Synagogue and his wife Rebecca Cohen, among the Paradesi Jews who settled in Madras.

Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras (now Chennai) and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews (known as New Christians and Conversos) made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom (basically Castillian i.e. Spanish-Portuguese or Catalan) and some of them also Arabic.

In his lecture at the Library of Congress, Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair in Social Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, explains that crypto-Jews were especially attracted to India because not only was it a center of trade, but India had established and ancient Jewish settlements along its Western coast. The presence of these communities meant that crypto-Jews, who had been forced to accept Catholicism but did not want to emigrate to tolerant countries, could operate within the Portuguese Empire with the full freedom of Catholic subjects but away from the Inquisition while collaborating with existing Jewish communities to hide their true beliefs. [1]

In "The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition, and its New Christians 1536-1765" Professor Antonio Saraiva of the University of Lisbon in Portugal dedicates a section to the situation of crypto-Jews (New Christians) in Goa. He concludes that once the Portuguese Inquisition began, Goa, along with Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and North Africa initially received most of the fleeing Jewish population (regardless of whether they had converted or not), and this situation continued till the middle of the 1500s. Goa was a popular destination till 1560 (when the Goan Inquisiton was initiated). [2]

A notable Jewish population once existed in the Portuguese India colony of Bassein. These Jews were of the Bene Israel community who had arrived in India centuries earlier. They had their own synagogues and enjoyed freedom. When the Portuguese took control over Goa, crypto-Jews from Portugal flooded in large numbers. The strong presence of crypto-Jews [3] in this region was the primary justification for the Portuguese to institute the Goa Inquisition in 1560 – this was 24 years after the Portuguese Inquisition was instituted in Portugal. Indeed, as the Professor Saraiva also explains, in "The Marrano Factory", the Conversos of Goa were able to achieve such quick, and remarkable prominence that the Portuguese King, on the advice of the Christian clergy, enacted a law disallowing New Christians from holding positions of high authority. Had New Christians not been able to achieve prominence, such a law would not have been necessary. [2] The famed Sephardic physician Garcia de Orta belonged to this community. [4]

In Kerala they learned Judeo-Malayalam, the dialect developed by the Malabar Jews, descendants of immigrants who had been there for more than 1,000 years from Israel and Yemen. The combined groups in Kerala became known as the Cochin Jews. The European Jews were also referred to as the Paradesi Jews (associated with foreigners) or White Jews, given their European ethnicity. The Malabar Jews, having intermarried in south India, had darker skin.

In addition, some settled in Madras, now known as Chennai Jews, they worked with the English East India Company in Fort St. George. According to the famed Sephardic poet Daniel Levy de Barrios, during his lifetime Madras was one of the six main areas of Sephardic Jewish settlement in the English empire. By the late 18th century, they had mostly shifted their trading companies to London, and the Jewish community in Madras declined. [5]

The Portuguese extended the Inquisition to their Indian possessions in 1560. The presence of crypto-Jews of India, along with their support of the crypto-Muslim arrivals from Iberia alarmed the Portuguese Catholic leadership in India. The Goa Inquisition was instituted by John III of Portugal. More than 16,000 people were put on trial between 1560-1774. In the first 30 years of the Inquisition 321 people were brought to trial on the charge of crypto-Judaism. [6] The main targets of the Inquisition were Crypto-Jews, who remained in Portuguese territory while being forced to profess Catholicism and practicing Judaism secretly, instead of emigrating to countries where Judaism was accepted (e.g. Ottoman Empire, Poland, etc.). Many Jews from Portuguese Goa fled to Bombay, and Portuguese Cochin in Kerala where they joined the Malabar Yehudan. [7] The start of Dutch rule in 1663 eased the pressure on the Jewish community in the Malabar region. [8] [9] [10] [11]

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<i>Converso</i> Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crypto-Judaism</span> Secret adherence to Judaism

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochin Jews</span> Jewish community that settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in modern-day Kerala, India

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Anusim is a legal category of Jews in halakha who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will, typically while forcibly converted to another religion. The term "anusim" is most properly translated as the "coerced [ones]" or the "forced [ones]".

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The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in the Indian subcontinent in recorded history. Desi Jews are a small religious minority who have lived in the region since ancient times. The 2,000-year history of Indian Jews was marked by a total absence of antisemitism from the Hindu majority and a visible assimilation in the local languages and cultures.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goa Inquisition</span> Portuguese Inquisition in colonial-era Portuguese India

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Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal</span> Expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Portugal

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António Fernandes de Elvas was a Portuguese-born merchant, including investor in pepper tax farm and Asian spices. Fernandes de Elvas and his family were Marranos; that is to say Sephardic Jews who conformed outwardly as Cristão-Novo due to the demands of the Portuguese Crown but privately continued to adhere to Judaism. He was contracted by the Spanish Empire with an official asiento to provide their colonies in the Spanish Americas with African slaves from 27 September 1615 to 1 April 1623. During this time, he was the Contratodore for the Atlantic slave trade in Portuguese West Africa: Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea. He was succeeded in his position as monopolist for providing slaves to the Spanish by a fellow Marrano, Manuel Rodrigues Lamego.

Manuel Batista Perez was a Spanish-born merchant, and multi-millionaire active in Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia. Though Spanish, Manuel called himself Portuguese because Spanish New Christians were not allowed in the New World. Perez became extremely wealthy, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Perez amassed a fortune which would have been the equivalent of $1,000,000 in 1906 Perez moved to Lima with his wife and three children. He was sent with a large sum to invest for his brothers-in-law back in Spain. He was born to a Marrano family, that is to say a Sephardic Jew whose family outwardly conformed to Catholicism for socio-political reasons, but privately practiced Judaism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kadavumbhagam Ernakulam Synagogue</span>

The Kadavumbhagham Ernakulam Synagogue is the restored oldest synagogue of the Malabar Jews, with a Sefer Torah scroll and offering occasional services. It was established in 1200 CE and restored several times through the centuries on the same site. It is modeled on the earliest synagogue of the Malabar Jews at Muziris from the ancient times of Mediterranean sea trade with Kerala. The earliest synagogue of the ancient Malabar Jews is today submerged in the sea following the gradual rise of sea level over several millennia. Although the Chendamangalam Synagogue is the oldest surviving synagogue structure in Kerala and the Indian subcontinent, its Torah scrolls were taken to Israel by it congregation in 1952. This makes the Kadavumbhagham Ernakulam synagogue the oldest Malabar Jewish synagogue today with a Torah scroll that is occasionally used for services. The Paradesi Sephardic synagogue at Mattancherry also has Torah scrolls but it was established much later in 1568 CE.

References

  1. ↑ LibraryOfCongress (6 December 2013), Jews & New Christians in Portuguese Asia 1500-1700 , retrieved 22 February 2016
  2. 1 2 Saraiva, Antonio (2001). The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and its New Christians 1536-1765. Boston: Brill. pp. 347–348. doi:10.2307/20061561. ISBN   90-04-12080-7. JSTOR   20061561. S2CID   160138275.
  3. ↑ Limor, Ora; Stroumsa, Guy G. (1 January 1996). Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics Between Christians and Jews. Mohr Siebeck. ISBN   9783161464829.
  4. ↑ Donald F. Lach, Edwin J. Van Kley (1993). Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III: A Century of Advance. Book 2, South Asia, Volume 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 847. ISBN   978-0-226-46754-2.
  5. ↑ "Los Muestros n°41". Archived from the original on 27 June 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2013. Mordecai Arbell, "The Portuguese Jewish Community of Madras, India, in the Seventeenth Century", Los Muestros, No. 41, December 2000, accessed 12 May 2013
  6. ↑ Wojciehowski, Hannah Chapelle (22 August 2011). Group Identity in the Renaissance World. Cambridge University Press. p. 216. ISBN   9781107003606.
  7. ↑ Parasuram, T.V. (1982). India's Jewish heritage. the University of Michigan: Sagar Publications. p. 67.
  8. ↑ Claudius Buchanan (1811). Christian Researches in Asia: With Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental Languages. 2nd ed. Boston: Armstron, Cornhill
  9. ↑ Menachery G (1973) The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India, Ed. George Menachery, B.N.K. Press, vol. 2, ISBN   81-87132-06-X, Lib. Cong. Cat. Card. No. 73-905568; B.N.K. Press
  10. ↑ Menachery G (ed) (1982) The St. Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India, B.N.K. Press, vol. 1;
  11. ↑ Menachery G (ed); (1998) "The Indian Church History Classics", Vol. I, The Nazranies, Ollur, 1998. ISBN   81-87133-05-8.
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