Paradesi Synagogue
Interesting facts
- No two of the hand-painted Chinese floor tiles are identical, with motifs including willows, peonies, lotuses and plum blossoms.
- The clock tower was added in 1760 by Ezekiel Rahabi; its four faces use Hebrew, Roman, Malayalam and Arabic numerals.
- The Hebrew dial faces the synagogue, the Roman faces the raja's palace, and the Malayalam faces the harbour.
- Prime Minister Indira Gandhi attended the synagogue's 400th anniversary celebrations in 1968.
- Among the synagogue's treasures is an oriental rug given by the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.
- The copper plates granting privileges to Joseph Rabban are believed to date from around the 10th century.
- The community traces its roots to Kodungallur, where Jews lived for centuries before moving to Kochi in the 14th century.
- In the 20th century the lawyer Abraham Barak Salem campaigned against discrimination within the Paradesi congregation.
Why it is worth it
The Paradesi Synagogue stands at the end of a narrow street in Mattancherry, the old trading quarter of Kochi on the coast of Kerala, in the area still called Jew Town. It was built in 1568 by Samuel Castiel, David Belila and Joseph Levi for the Paradesi — "foreign" — Jews, Sephardi and other newcomers who had joined the far older Jewish community of the Malabar coast. The land was granted by the Raja of Cochin, right beside his palace in Mattancherry. It is the oldest synagogue in the Commonwealth still in use.
The building suffered in 1662, when it was burnt during the Portuguese wars on the coast, and was restored after the Dutch took over the region the following year. Its most memorable feature arrived a century later: in the 1760s the merchant Ezekiel Rahabi brought from Canton about 1,100 hand-painted blue-and-white porcelain tiles, each with its own willow-pattern scene, and laid them across the floor. Above them hang nineteenth-century glass chandeliers from Belgium, and a gallery for women runs on gilded columns. The teak ark holds Torah scrolls in silver and gold cases, and the community keeps two gold crowns presented by the rulers of Cochin and Travancore, as well as copper plates recording ancient privileges granted to the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban.
Outside, a slender clock tower of the eighteenth century rises over the lane, its dials marked with numerals in different scripts, among them Hebrew, Roman and Malayalam — an emblem of the mixed port world around it. The congregation has dwindled almost to nothing — by 2016 only five Jews lived in Fort Kochi — yet the synagogue is still the only one in Kochi able to gather a prayer quorum, with members drawn from outside the city. Visitors enter barefoot.
Getting there
The synagogue is in Jew Town, Mattancherry, in the old port district of Kochi, Kerala. Cochin International Airport (COK) is about 26 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Kerala backwaters 15.1 km · lake
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Paradesi 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 meaning foreign.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
9.95722, 76.25944per Wikidata