Joseph Azar was a Jewish prince of the Anjuvannam in Cochin, South India. He was a descendant of Joseph Rabban. [1] Azar lived in the 14th century CE.
In 1340 Joseph Azar became embroiled in a conflict over succession with his brother. The ensuing strife led to intervention by neighboring potentates and the eradication of Jewish autonomy in South India. [2] [1] [3]
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The Bene Israel are a community of Jews in India. It has been suggested that it is made up of descendants of one of the disputed Lost Tribes and ancestors who had settled there centuries ago. In the 19th century, after the people were taught about normative Judaism, they tended to migrate from villages in the Konkan area to the nearby cities, primarily Mumbai, but also to Pune, Ahmedabad, and Karachi, in today's Pakistan. Many gained prominent positions within the British colonial government and the Indian Army.
Cochin Jews are the oldest group of Jews in India, with roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon. The Cochin Jews settled in the Kingdom of Cochin in South India, now part of the state of Kerala. As early as the 12th century, mention is made of the Jews in southern India by Benjamin of Tudela. They are known to have developed Judeo-Malayalam, a dialect of Malayalam language.
The history of the Jews in India dates back to antiquity. Judaism was one of the first foreign religions to arrive in India in recorded history. Indian Jews are a religious minority which has lived in India since ancient times and they have experienced very sparse instances of anti-Semitism from the local non-Jewish majority. The better-established ancient Jewish communities have assimilated many of the local traditions through cultural diffusion. While some Indian Jews state that their ancestors arrived in India during the time of the Ancient Kingdom of Judah, others claim that they are the descendants of Ancient Israel's Ten Lost Tribes which arrived earlier. Some Indian Jews claim descent from Ancient Israel's tribe of Manasseh and they are referred to as the Bnei Menashe. It is estimated that India's Jewish population peaked at around 20,000 in the mid-1940s, but it began to rapidly decline due to its emigration to Israel after Israel's establishment in 1948.
Judeo-Malayalam is the traditional language of the Cochin Jews, from Kerala, in southern India, spoken today by a few dozens of people in Israel and by probably fewer than 25 in India.
Paradesi Jews were Jewish people who immigrated to the Indian subcontinent during the 15th and 16th centuries following the expulsion of Jews from Spain. Paradesi refers to the Malayalam word that means foreign as they were newcomers. These Sephardic immigrants fled forced conversion, persecution and antisemitism in the wake of the Alhambra Decree expelling Jews from Spain, and King Manuel's 1496 decree expelling Jews from Portugal. They are sometimes referred to as "White Jews", although that usage is generally considered pejorative or discriminatory and refers to relatively recent Jewish immigrants, predominantly Sephardim.
The Paradesi Synagogue aka Cochin Jewish Synagogue or the Mattancherry Synagogue is a synagogue located in Mattancherry Jew Town, a suburb of the city of Kochi, Kerala, in India. It was built in 1568 A.D. by Samuel Castiel, David Belila, and Joseph Levi for the flourishing Paradesi Jewish community in Kochi. Cochin Jews were composed mainly of the much older Malabari Jews and the newly arrived Sephardic refugees from the Portuguese religious persecution of Jews in Spain and Portugal. It is the oldest active synagogue in the Commonwealth of Nations. Paradesi is a word used in several Indian languages, and the literal meaning of the term is "foreigners", applied to the synagogue because it was built by Sephardic or Portuguese-speaking Jews, some of them from families exiled in Aleppo, Safed and other West Asian localities.
Several groups claim they descend from the ancient Israelites. The issue has been especially relevant since the establishment of the State of Israel and an individual or a group's request to immigrate to Israel under its Law of Return. In that context, claims of affiliation with the Israelites give rise to questions of "who is a Jew?" Some of these claims have been recognized, while other claims are still under review and other claims have been rejected.
Joseph Rabban was a prominent Jewish merchant-cum-aristocrat in the entrepôt of Kodungallur (Muyirikkottu) on the Malabar Coast, India in early 11th century CE.
Desi Jews are Jews living in South Asia who belong to communities that had been integrated into South Asian culture and society.
The ten lost tribes were the ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel that were said to have been exiled from the Kingdom of Israel after its conquest by the Neo-Assyrian Empire circa 722 BCE. These are the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim; all but Judah and Benjamin. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that "there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers".
There are many synagogues in India, although many no longer function as such and today vary in their levels of preservation. These buildings dating from the mid-sixteenth through the mid-20th century once served the country's three distinct Jewish groups—the ancient Cochin Jews, and Bene Israel communities as well as the more recent Baghdadi Jews.
Indian Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the Indian Jewish communities, who now reside within the State of Israel. Indian Jews who live in Israel include thousands of Cochin Jews and Paradesi Jews of Kerala; and thousands from the Bene Israel of Maharashtra and other parts of British India and the Bene Menashe of Manipur and Mizoram.
Abraham ben Barak Salem aka A.B Salem was an Indian nationalist and Zionist, a lawyer and politician, and one of the most prominent Cochin Jews of the twentieth century. Popular by his epithet of Jewish Gandhi, he was known as Salem Kocha to the resident jewish community of Cochin. A descendant of meshuchrarim, he was the first Cochin Jew to become an attorney. He practised in Ernakulam, where he eventually used satyagraha to fight the discrimination among Jews against his people. An activist in the trade union and Indian national causes, he later was attracted to Zionism. After visiting Palestine in the 1930s, he later helped arrange the migration of most Cochin Jews to Israel by 1955. He stayed in Kochi for the remainder of his life.
The history of the Jews in Mumbai, India, began when Jews started settling in Bombay during the first century, due to its economic opportunities. The Jewish community of Bombay consisted of the remnants of three distinct communities: the Bene Israeli Jews of Konkan, the Baghdadi Jews of Iraq, and the Cochin Jews of Malabar.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras 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 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 and some of them also Arabic.
Meshuchrarim are a Jewish community of freed slaves, often of mixed-race African-European descent, who accompanied Sephardic Jews in their immigration to India following the 16th-century expulsion from Spain. The Sephardic Jews became known as the Paradesi Jews.
Jewish copper plates of Cochin, also known as Cochin plates of Bhaskara Ravi-varman, is a royal charter issued by the Chera/Perumal king of Kerala, south India to Joseph Rabban, a Jewish merchant magnate of Kodungallur. The charter shows the status and importance of the Jewish colony in Kodungallur (Cranganore) near Cochin.
The Mala Synagogue is one of the oldest extant synagogues in India and was built by the historic Malabar Jews of Kerala. It is located at Mala, a small town in Thrissur district of Kerala state in south India.
The Kochangadi Synagogue, or Misro Synagogue was a historic synagogue located in Kochangadi, south of Jew Town in Kochi, in the coastal state of Kerala. It was built in 1344 A.D by the Malabari Jews after fleeing from Cranganore, making it the oldest synagogue in India in recorded history. It was lost and never rebuilt. The subsequent Kadavumbhagam Synagogue and Thekkumbhagam Synagogue were built after this congregation was established. The name "Kochangadi" is an abbreviation of "Kocha Angadi" or "Jew Market", as jews were addressed as Kocha in colloquial malayalam.