Paradesi Jews

Paradesi
Total population
	12 (as of September 2006)
Regions with significant populations
	India
Languages
	Initially Ladino, later Judeo-Malayalam, now mostly Hebrew
Religion
	Judaism
Related ethnic groups
	Cochin Jews; Sephardic Jews

Paradesi Jews (Malayalam: പരദേശി യെഹൂദൻ, Paradēśi Yehūdan) are a community of Sephardic Jews settled among the larger Cochin Jewish community located in Kerala, a coastal southern state of India. They were followers of Halakhic Judaism and are known in Kerala as Juda Mappilas.

[edit] History

White Jew Town, Cochin, 1913

Paradesi Jews, who were integrated in the Cochin Jewish population, were originally Sephardic immigrants from southern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries who fled persecution in the wake of the Alhambra Decree expelling Jews from Spain. They are sometimes referred to as White Jews, although that usage is generally considered pejorative or discriminatory^{[citation needed]} and refers to relatively recent Jewish immigrants (15th century onward), predominantly Sephardim and Mizrahim.

The Paradesi were endogamous to their own group during their settlement in Kerala. Many those who left and married the local population established the Nasrani community. This tradition began to break in the late 1940s.

The primary original language of the Paradesim was Ladino, which contributed a number of loanwords to Judeo-Malayalam, the pre-existing Jewish language of the Kerala Jewish community. The Pardesi Jews had one place of worship: the Paradesi Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Cochin.

Most of the Cochin Jews, both Paradesi and Malabari, emigrated to Israel following its establishment in 1948. The remaining Paradesi community dwindled as its members assimilated into the Nasrani Christian community.

The last female Paradesi Jew of child-bearing age, Yaheh Hallegua, is the ticket-seller at the Paradesi Synagogue.^[2]

[edit] Persecution by Portuguese

Further information: Goa Inquisition

They were persecuted by the Portuguese in their attempt to convert them to Catholicism. Many were forced to practice their faith in private and became apart of the Syrian Malabar Nasrani community. The inquisition targeted the Nasarani community as well, who had close ties to the Paradesi.