The Last Tribe

themselves turning into “souvenir people” for Nikon-toting tourists. The book is a lament for the country’s oldest Jewish

diaspora — how the Jews, who fled Jerusalem and Europe to make the sliver of land that is now Kerala home, masterminded their own tragedy.

It is not that the Jews did not face floods even in the generally pleasant Kerala — a torrential downpour in 1341 was not quite of biblical proportion but was bad enough to slit the harbour mouth of Cranganore “where Solomon’s ships alighted” and which became the settlement of Jews, and drive them out of there. It is not that the Jews did not face discrimination in Kerala where the Muslim would embroider the Jewish bride’s muslin blouse and the Hindu would lend his music for the wedding procession — the apartheid was from within. The Black Jews, who probably arrived after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem and married the locals, were looked down upon by the White Jews, who docked in Kerala fleeing the Inquisition of Europe. The White Jews, who stood out with their fair skin and white clothes and walked the markets like wraiths, claimed they were “pure” and won the favours of the Brahmin king who was no stranger to the terminology or to colour-coded divisions. And there was exodus: with the formation of Israel in 1948, many left for the Promised Land, leaving behind the old, the infirm and the supremely nostalgic.

Now at the synagogue of White Jews, with its odd Belgian chandeliers and handpainted, 18th century Chinese tiles, there are not even 10 men to form the quorum needed for prayer on Sabbath. The curly-haired Yaheh Hallegua, who sells two-rupee tickets to tourists, admonishing them for not covering their shoulders or wearing shorts that are way too short, is the only marriageable woman. As elders sigh, she steadfastly refuses to marry one of the two eligible men, her cousins Keith and Len. Emotional blackmail that she will effect the end of a 2,000-year-old tradition doesn’t work. Still, it seems too early to write the epitaph: the Black and White Jews are slowly coming together, wearing their kippah at least to celebrate the wedding of a faraway relative in Israel, while a few daring ones have intermarried.

Fernandes tracks down the Cochini Jews to Israel. There are over 5,000 with Cochini blood, but not everyone is at home. Like Abraham Eliyavoo, who is still moved by the sight of the Western Wall, but is ready to return to Kochi, shocked by bombs and busy Jerusalem where faith has taken a back seat to fear and finance.

Fernandes sometimes tries too hard to drive home the momentousness of it all with her “clock is ticking” and “one minute to midnight”, and wrongly calls Kochi a district, but she makes the Jew Town of Kochi, that is seemingly waiting to be interred in its own red earth, come alive.