Above is the ark in the synagogue in the new city.

This is again from last year but I wanted to post it now to conclude what was a fascinating experience.

Below is one of the historical synagogues about 90 minutes north of Kochi.

Here I am with our tour guide, Augustine Lopez. Kalypso Adventure Tours arranged it.

The modern part of Kochi is called Emakulam, and the tourist part is called Fort Kochi, although there doesn’t seem to be a fort there. While it’s one of the larger cities in India, it has only about 600,000 people in the city limits and 2.1 million in the greater metropolitan area, which seems to be rather tiny considering that the country has 1.3 billion people. The inhabitants of Kochi as well as of the state of Kerala speak Malayalam.

The area has been a center of commerce in spices for many hundreds of years.

Here is the synagogue in Emakulam, the new city. I am in the photo with Elias Joseph E., the Jewish Indian who oversees the preservation of the building. He owns an exotic fish store which is right in front of the synagogue.

The next day there was a full-day historical tour, which at my request included not only the Paradesi Synagogue in Fort Kochi, which is on the standard tourist route, but also the Chendamangalam Synagogue, about an hour’s drive north of Kochi, and the Paravur Synagogue, another 20 minutes away. The Paradesi Synagogue is the only one of the historical seven synagogues in Kerala that is still in regular use. I believe 5 are still standing more or less intact. I saw 4 of these 5. Here is the largest structure:

We were still in Kochi on Friday, so we were able to attend services Friday night. The synagogue still follows Orthodox rules, and since there were not 10 men, parts of the service had to be eliminated.

Afterwards, we stopped in to visit Sarah, a 90+-year-old lady who lives on a street half a block down from the synagogue. She lives in a house connected to her store. She was very friendly.

Then, we stopped briefly at the house of a visiting Orthodox rabbi who is in India to supervise certain kosher products. He was hosting people for dinner, and so there was quite a diverse group assembled.