The Paradesi Synagogue, also known as the Jewish Synagogue of Cochin or the Mattancherry Synagogue, is a synagogue located in the Jewish quarter of Mattancherry, a suburb of the city of Kochi, Kerala state, India. It was built in 1568 AD by Samuel Castiel, David Belila, and Joseph Levi for the thriving Paradesi Jewish community in Kochi. At that time, the Cochin Jews mainly consisted of the old historic community of Malabar Jews and recently arrived Sephardic refugees fleeing 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, literally meaning "foreigners," applied to the synagogue because it was built by Sephardic or Portuguese-speaking Jews, some from families expelled from Aleppo, Safed, and other parts of Western Asia. Additionally, a new Jewish group immigrated to Kochi — Sephardim from the Iberian Peninsula. They and the Malabar Jews, or Yehudan Mappila, shared many aspects of their religion, and the newcomers learned the Judeo-Malayalam dialect, but the Sephardim also preserved their own culture and the Spanish language for at least three centuries. By 1660, the Dutch ruled the Kochi area, naming it Dutch Malabar. In the following years, the Paradesi Synagogue was mainly used by Sephardim (also called Paradesi) and their descendants, and later by European Jewish exiles.
The synagogue is located in the Old Kochi quarter known as the Jewish Town and is the only one of seven synagogues in the area still in use, although the Kadavumbhagam Synagogue (1544) and the Thekkumbhagam Synagogue (1647) (now closed) are much older. The complex consists of four buildings. It was built next to the Mattancherry Palace in Kochi, now part of the Indian city of Ernakulam, on land granted by the Raja of Kochi, Rama Varma. The Mattancherry Palace temple and the Mattancherry Synagogue share a common wall.
The Malabar Jews or Yehudan Mappila (also known as Cochin Jews) formed a prosperous trading community in Kerala and controlled much of the world spice trade. The first synagogue in India was built in the 4th century in Kodungallur (Cranganore), when Jews played a trading role in the South Indian region (now called Kerala) along the Malabar coast. When the community moved to Kochi in the 14th century, they built a new synagogue there.
The Jewish community of Kerala enjoyed the protection and friendship of the Raja of Kochi but still faced hostility from the Portuguese, who in the 16th century established a trading post at Fort Kochi. The Portuguese attacked the Jews again in 1662 because they sided with the Dutch in the struggle for control over the local territory. This was a result of Dutch attempts in 1661-62 to challenge the Portuguese for European dominance in South India. In February 1661, the Dutch took the fort of Paliport near Cranganore, in December they captured Quilon, and a month later Cranganore fell into their hands. Then they besieged Kochi. However, the Portuguese defended Fort Kochi with all their might, and in March 1662 the Dutch retreated to Ceylon. After the Dutch defeat, the Portuguese took revenge on the Jews. The Paradesi Synagogue was set on fire and partially destroyed. It is believed that other synagogues in Kerala (Malabar) were also attacked and damaged by Portuguese troops. The Jews regained safety once the Dutch finally expelled the Portuguese in 1665 and took power for the next 130 years. The Paradesi Synagogue, which had been abandoned during Portuguese hegemony, was then repaired.
The Paradesi Synagogue is a group of whitewashed and painted thick-walled structures made of chunam (polished lime plaster) over laterite (a soft reddish-brown local stone) with sloping roofs with deep eaves to avoid damage from the annual monsoons, wooden lattice screens and railings, prominent gables (where tented and gabled roofs intersect), open rafters, flat wall surfaces, roofs covered with clay tiles, shuttered windows, and raised ground floors, projecting arches at the entrance to the sanctuary, a decorated suspended ceiling inside the sanctuary, as well as restrained and limited detailing. The synagogue is a compact complex consisting of a series of rooms and passages connected to each other or surrounded by open spaces.
The synagogue is located at the northern end of Synagogue Lane, a narrow street lined on both sides by houses once owned and inhabited by Jews; as of 2010, only ten Jews lived in the area. Many former Jewish residences are now owned by Muslims, and some operate as souvenir or antique shops on the ground floor, creating a genuine tourist zone. After a slight bend in the road, Synagogue Lane abruptly ends in a dead end at the synagogue. However, from this point, very little of the Paradesi Synagogue complex is visible. Almost all of it is hidden behind tall, mostly solid walls. The only hint of the synagogue standing on the lane is the clock tower straight ahead. This three-story structure, almost square in plan, with a pointed clay tile roof topped by a dome, is the most prominent and photographed feature of the Paradesi Synagogue complex. At first glance, based on its strategic position and height, many assume it is the synagogue's prayer hall, but the freestanding sanctuary is located to the west and is not visible from the street.
The three-story clock tower of the Paradesi Synagogue is not original to the complex; it was erected almost two centuries later. Built in 1761, it was constructed under the guidance of Ezekiel Rahabi, a leading figure of the Kerala Jews at the time and a representative of the Dutch East India Company. The clock tower is sometimes called entirely Dutch, although it is better described as Indo-colonial design and does not represent a distinct and pure style. Like many other colonial-period buildings throughout India, the clock tower incorporates local design and construction elements such as thick load-bearing walls of laterite stone veneered with chunam, then blended with various colonial influences popularized by both the Portuguese and the Dutch, such as brackets, clay tile roofing, and dome details.
The facades of the clock tower on three sides are decorated with clock faces at the top level. The massive tower is covered by a pointed clay tile roof supported by wooden brackets. The roof is then crowned by an open dome shaped like a small widow's walk, topped by another pointed roof with deep overhangs. Here, copper, a local material used in other local buildings including the roofs of some small Hindu temples, is the finished roofing material. The finial with two spherical copper balls, filigree, and a metal mast and flag resembling a weather vane rest atop the copper roof. The square dome includes four rounded arched openings located inside a painted wooden structure with projections at the four corners. The lower part of each arch is filled with solid railings. On the surface of the dome is an inscription in Hebrew indicating it was built in 1761. There used to be a bell inside the dome, rung every day except Saturday (when Jewish law forbids ringing) to call Jews to prayer. In 1986, the bell stopped working; the community never repaired it, and it was soon removed. There was an attempt to restore the bell when the clock tower was restored in 1998-99 through the World Monuments Fund, but this attempt was unsuccessful.
The clock tower has three existing clock faces; they are made of teak wood and painted blue. On the north side, facing the Maharaja's house, the numerals are in Malayalam; on the south, facing the Jewish Town, Roman numerals are used; and on the west, facing the synagogue, Hebrew letters are used. According to Hallegua, a member of the Paradesi Jewish community, it is quite likely that there was once a fourth clock face on the east side facing the water. The only existing hand is on the Roman numeral clock face and is made of copper. The clock mechanism, powered by heavy stones, pulleys, and gears, worked until the early 1940s, and no serious efforts were made to repair or replace the mechanism. From that point, the non-working clock faces began to deteriorate, and by the 1990s they were in a deplorable state. Like the bell, there was a plan to bring the clocks back to working order when the clock tower was under restoration from 1998, but the work proved too costly.
Entrance to the synagogue grounds is not through the narrow doors at the base of the clock tower but along the adjacent wall on the west side of the street. Opposite, on the east side, accessible through large heavy iron gates, is a walled grassy open area that was once used as a playground for Jewish children living nearby and attending school here.
The synagogue grounds are planned as a cluster, with spaces built or connected around a series of small interior and exterior rooms. Entering the synagogue, the visitor undergoes a gradual transition from secular life to the sacred sphere, eventually reaching the sanctuary itself and finally the hekal (ark). However, unlike synagogues in Ernakulam-Kadavumbhagam, Parur, or Male, when they were intact, the path to the sanctuary is not straight and smooth but somewhat winding with sharp turns. Along the way, there are places for ritual practice, community purposes, and Jewish education. The first room accessible from the street is the tallam, a rectangular room at the gate. Today, this small room functions as an office where tourists buy entrance tickets, but its original purpose was to serve as a transitional zone from inside to outside, where synagogue meetings were once held, as well as a staircase leading to the women's lounge and study rooms inside the clock tower. Leaving the tallam, the visitor makes a sharp turn and passes through a narrow passage leading to several rooms to choose from. Ahead, though not on a direct axis, is a short corridor connecting to a small room originally intended as a storeroom. In the late 1960s, synagogue members commissioned a Hindu artist from Kerala, S.S. Krishna, to paint ten canvases depicting historical events of the Paradesi community over the centuries to celebrate their 400th anniversary in 1968. Since then, the paintings have been displayed to visitors in this windowless room.
In 1968, the 400th anniversary of the synagogue was celebrated at a ceremony attended by the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi.
The Paradesi Synagogue had three classes of congregants:
White Jews were full members. White Jews, or Paradesi Jews, were recent descendants of Sephardim from Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands.
Black Jews, or Malabar Jews, were allowed to worship but were not accepted as full members of the congregation. These Cochin Jews were the first Jewish settlers of Kochi.
Meshuchrarim, a group of freed slaves and their descendants brought by the Sephardim, had no communal rights or their own synagogue. They sat on the floor or on steps outside. In the first half of the 20th century, Abraham Barak Salem, a Meshuchrar, successfully campaigned against this discrimination.
As is customary in Orthodox Jewish synagogues or the Yehudan Mappila synagogue, the Paradesi Synagogue has separate seating areas for men and women.
Today, the Paradesi Synagogue is the only active synagogue in Kochi with a minyan (although this minyan must be formed from Jews outside Kochi, as the number of those still residing there is insufficient). In accordance with Hindu, St. Thomas Christian, Syrian Mappila, and Muslim Mappila traditions of Kerala, worshippers must enter the Paradesi Synagogue barefoot. Other aspects unique to the Cochin Jewish community, resulting from Hindu influence, include special clothing colors for each festival, circumcision ceremonies held during public services, and the distribution of grape-soaked myrtle leaves on certain festivals. Additionally, the current rabbi of the Paradesi Synagogue, established by the Midrash Sephardi, is Rabbi Yonaton Francis Goldschmidt.
The Paradesi Synagogue houses Torah scrolls, several gold crowns received as gifts, many chandeliers made of Belgian glass, and a bimah with copper railings. It holds 10th-century copper plates granting privileges to Joseph Rabban, the earliest known Cochin Jew. These two plates were inscribed in ancient Malayalam by the ruler of the Malabar coast. The synagogue floor is paved with hundreds of 18th-century Chinese porcelain tiles, hand-painted, each unique. The eastern carpet is handwoven and was a gift from Haile Selassie, the last Ethiopian emperor. The synagogue has an 18th-century clock tower, which, along with other parts of the complex, was restored between 1998 and 1999 by architect Karl Damschen under the guidance of the World Monuments Fund.
