Memory Keepers | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Memory Keepers | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Shiny Varghese |Updated: July 2, 2019 12:00:18 am

Memory Keepers

A recent book One Heart. Two Worlds: The Story of the Jews of Kochi (Stark World, Rs 2,500) presents the stories of a community that arrived on Kerala shores in 1000 CE.

Sarah Cohen at home. The world stops to see her embroidery at her store in Jew Town, Fort Kochi. Her exquisite wedding gowns are on display at the Cochin Jewish Heritage Museum in Israel.

It is March 1984. Sarah Cohen and Ellen S Goldberg were at the Cochin Paradesi Synagogue when Cohen heard the temple prayers next door. “We can hear their prayers and they can hear us too,” says Cohen, now referred to as the “grand dame of the Jews in Kochi”. Nathan Katz, a scholar on Indian Jewish communities, mentions this incident in his book Who Are The Jews of India? (2000) to exemplify the lives that Cochin Jews led in their adopted home town. “They were both fully Indian and fully Jewish. They finely balanced their identity and yet embraced the cultures of their Hindu, Christian and Muslim neighbors,” writes Katz.