#cochin jews

[bobemajses]

Cochin Paradesi Jewish family from Kerala, southern India, ca. 1880.

[cottoncandytrafficcones]

Hey Jumblr,

What are some non-Ashknazi marriage traditions/rituals that y'all do? I was reading up on weddings and a lot of stuff (the bedeken, the walking around the groom) was written to be Ashkenazi tradition. I know a lot about henna, but that's basically it.

[estera-shirin]

Ketubbah — Ernakulam, India, 1910 CE

This beautiful ketubbah was created in 1910 for the Cochin Jewish community.

[gliklofhameln]

Ketubbah with birds from Ernakulam, Cochin, India, 1909

Groom: Menahem, son of Rabbi Elijah. Bride: Rebekah, daughter of Rabbi Elijah.

[microwave-gremlin]

You know the drill, reblog for a bigger sample size!

(I'm making versions of this poll for different Jewish diasporas, and I might do a denomination version, too!)

#jupi gets jewish#jumblr#jews#jew#jewish#judaism#polls#tumblr polls#poll#jews of tumblr#mixed jews#mixed#mixed race

[knittedbond]

high and reading wikipedia again but got distracted when an article source i tried to read was paywalling their archives.

"not to worry" i think. "i'll look at the wayback machine. surely they've got it cached--"

oh. okay. i wasn't aware that was something a website could do

[hariratan]

#incense #sticks #jew #jewish #drums #energy #judaism #fragrance #israel #metal #moonbin #smalljewelrybusiness #tourmalinecabochon #drummer #cochin #jews #love #music #rock #astro #kerala #crystals #travel #streetphotography #india #jewishlife #jewishmemes #cochin #rings #jewtown https://www.instagram.com/p/CotL_tby44Z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[beta-lactam-allergic]

The baby in the oven bit is probably propaganda but the rest is accurate. Hamas did kill babies, there's just no independent verification of a baby being burned in an oven.

The rest of this is true. Every other claim in here about Hamas & in general is true. It's only the baby being cooked in oven part that's probably misinfo. And really, you don't need the extra mile for propaganda, when just killing babies & children is already bad.

Jews were ethnically cleansed from the rest of the Middle East. Indeed the largest Jewish group in Israel aren't Ashkenazim (East European) or Sephardic (Hispanic) Jews, but the surviving Mizrahi (Middle East).

When people call for Israel to end (under the ridiculous misnomer of "decolonisation"), they don't consider that the Mizrahi don't have anywhere else to go. Nor do the Beta Israel from Ethiopia, nor do most of the others. Even amongst the Ashkenazim, there was literally a pogrom in Russia not even a month ago, Ukraine is a war zone, the descendants of Polish Jews are legally barred from ever claiming Polish citizenship & that's just off the top of my head.

Nor do they consider that all of these Jewish groups have some genetic descent from the ancient Israelites. The archaeology, genetics & history agree, ancient Israelites predate Arabs in the Southern Levant & the modern Jews are the descendants of the ancient Israelites. The Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" are the colonisers, not the Jews. Hamas claiming ancestral connection to the land is as laughable as an American Neo-Nazi screaming "blood & soil" in complete disregard for Native American history.

Do people fr not realize that if Israel rolled over to Hamas that a genuine ethnic cleansing and genocide would take place? Do people fr not realize this? That the middle east has been ethnically cleansing itself of Jewish people for literal fucking decades? But there's no cries of land back for the Egyptian Jews, for the Iranian Jews, the Moroccan Jews, the Algerian Jews, the Iraqi Jews, the Syrian Jews. There wasn't any cries of injustice when these Jewish communities were slaughtered and forced to flee. I have people in my community who are as least as young as in their fifties who remember having to escape some of these places.

This whole issue has been turned into an outcry for innocents, but the only way to save the most people is to wipe Hamas out first and foremost. Palestine deserves its right to self actualization/realization, but so does Israel. And I'm so fucking tired of people pretending like the actual victims of ethnic cleansing are "colonizers". There's irrefutable proof that the Jewish people have ALWAYS been in the land of Israel. The Palestinians are part of the Arabic world, who colonized the majority of the Middle East. The Jewish people having Israel is the most fucking successful land back story.

I know folks are going to sit here and say "well Israel has committed war crimes!" and tbh? Yeah, they SHOULD be condemned for that.

But Hamas has committed more. And I don't see any of y'all calling them out. No, instead y'all fucking defend them, claiming propaganda, ai, or any other kind of bs.

But they HAVE beheaded people. They open fired at a music festival filled with approximately zero IDF soliders --- aka innocents. They've raped. They baked a fucking BABY in an oven. Let me repeat that. THEY FUCKING BAKED A FUCKING BABY IN A FUCKING OVEN. Hamas are TERRORISTS. Full stop.

Either my post will go largely ignored, or it'll bring a wave of hate. Either way, that speaks fucking volumes for how much folks actually value all life. Specifically Jewish life.

[chanaleah]

jews 🤝 stew

sephardim 🤝 stew

kaifeng jews 🤝 stew

amazigh jews 🤝 stew

bukharian jews 🤝 stew

mountain jews 🤝 stew

mizrahim 🤝 stew

ashkenazim 🤝 stew

teimani jews 🤝 stew

italkim 🤝 stew

musta'arabi jews 🤝 stew

romaniote jews 🤝 stew

beta israelis 🤝 stew

cochin jews 🤝 stew

[leroibobo]

kadavumbagam synagogue in kochi, kerala, india. it's also known as the "cochin blossoms synagogue" for its floral details.

malabari jews trace their origins to jews who'd come to present-day kerala from the middle east from antiquity. the synagogue was renovated in 1700, but the original dates back to the 12th-13th centuries. it was said to have been built by jews who'd fled persecution to kochi's ernakalum district. the specifics of the story vary.

after a period of abandonment beginning in the 1970s, it was restored in 2018 by local josephai "babu" elias and is now in use again. it's currently the oldest functioning synagogue in india.

[we-left-egypt-for-this]

Thinking about the shabbes goy at my hillel again.

This kid has done so much for our community post 7-10, helping to organize petitions against hate and coordinating with our dean and uni president to make conversations happen.

I was also talking to him yesterday and he said "that first shabbat dinner became a Core memory."

That first shabbat dinner I was just hanging around at hillel, so I helped with set up. So did he. I go to a big school, and I don't know everyone, so I just assumed he was some new guy. And so I was taken aback when we were setting up tables together and he said "yea, I know I don't look very jewish."

He's east Asian. So was my friend David in Hebrew school. He was in a Jewish space, so my immediate assumption was you are jewish. And I said as much. "You don't look very Ashkie," I said, "but that doesn't mean you don't look jewish."

(I elaborated about kaifeng jews and Japanese jews and the cochin jews.)

And he was shocked, but excited. He listened to us discuss how rough things had been on campus the past week (it was Oct 13th). He asked questions. He listened.

That's what allyship is. Coming into a space, and just expecting to listen, not be heard. Choosing to learn. Face ideas that threaten your assumptions.

[bobemajses]

Praying Jews in Ernakulam, Kerala, southern India, early 20th century.

[cottoncandytrafficcones]

People like to portray Judaism as a "European" religion so here's all the love to the non-European Sephardic (Turkish, Latin American, North African, Middle Eastern, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.), Mizrahim (Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, etc.), Teimanim, Maghrebim (Moroccan, Tunisian, Libyan, etc.), Beta Israel, Indian Jews (Cochin, Bene Menashe, Bene Israel, Paradesi, etc.), Jews of China (Kaifeng, Ningbo), Latino Jews, converts, Persians, Bukharians, Mountain Jews, and more.

Also f u you here's love to the Ashkenazim and the Krymchaks and the Georgian Jews and the Sephardim who settled in European lands after the expulsion and Italkim and more.

[yato-dharmastato-jayah]

Hindutva literally means being Hindu or Hindu-ness.

How tf is that a negative thing?

We Hindus are proud of our heritage, culture, religious history and scholarly achievements.

How is that an evil thing?

We are decolonising and reclaiming the religious sites which were stolen from us. We are rebuilding those sites with our own money and celebrating their restoration.

How is that hurting anyone? How is that wrong?

Hindus have always believed in the sentiment of live and let live, of living together as one family (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam). We have welcomed into our fold many different communities and peoples, like the Parsis (Zoroastrians) when they were persecuted and forced to leave their homeland Persia, the Jews (Bene Israelis, Baghdadis, Cochin Jews, Bnei Menashe, Bene Ephraims, etc.), the Tibetans when they were persecuted and their homeland stolen by China, even the Christians and Muslims from different parts of the world when they came to trade here. We have cohabited peacefully with people of other faiths, like Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains, who are so close to us that we intermarry frequently and don't even consider it an interfaith relationship.

Hindus, for the most part, are inherently welcoming people, open and accepting of others as long as they don't try to stifle us or impose their religious beliefs on us. We believe in being nonviolent as long as we aren't pushed into a corner, as long as we're given space to practice our religion, as long as we're not forced to bend so much that we break.

If the Hindus are attacked, if attempts are made to erase or subjugate our religion, then obviously we'll respond in kind. It's the simple concept of self defence.

In the end, I shouldn't even need to state this overtly, but obviously there are bad apples in every cart, and people from every community commit wrongs. But it doesn't define a community. We condemn such wrong acts and will continue to do so. But calling all Hindus or Hindutva itself evil because of a few bad apples is not only illogical, it reeks of prejudice and preconceived hatred. That's when it becomes Hinduphobia.

[gliklofhameln]

Elijah chair, Parur, Cochin, India. Late 19th century.

[estera-shirin]

Ketubbah — Cochin, India ca. 1790

According to the museum: "The Jewish community of Cochin, a city of the western coast of southern India, has an almost thousand year history. This decorated Ketubah from Cochin is one of the oldest known from that city.  It is also one of the most beautiful, with its elaborate Islamic style floral design on the gold background. The Ketubah was purchased in India in the first half of the 19th century by an English missionary, Joseph Wolff.  It was brought to England and given as a gift to a Christian Hebraist, John Hookham Frere (1769-1846).  This is all recorded on a sheet attached to the back.  The Ketubah resurfaced in the last decade in a local auction in England. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, most of the Jewish community of Cochin has immigrated to that country.  Today only a handful of Jews remain in Cochin. The artistic design of this Ketubah is an excellent example of the integration of local cultural and artistic influences into objects of Jewish life. This wedding took place on February 17, 1790 (3 Adar I 5550).

Groom:                             Avraham Ben Meir

Bride:                                Matzla Bat David Cohen"