Kerala’s Kochi witnessed its first Jewish wedding in 15 years on Sunday, May 22. Bride Rachel Binoy Malakhi and groom Richard Zachary Rowe said their vows at a lakeside resort in Kumbalam, in a ceremony solemnised by Rabbi Aryeal Tsion, an Israeli who flew down for the occasion.
Rachel, a native of Thiruvananthapuram, is a genome scientist working in the USA. She is the daughter of former Superintendent of Police Binoy Malakhi and clinical psychologist Manjusha Miriam Emmanuel. On May 22, she married Richard, an aerospace engineer working at NASA. He is an American Jew born to Sandy Rowe and Richard Rowe.
A Jewish wedding requires a congregation of at least ten adult Jewish males. This includes the groom and his two witnesses. The ceremony was held under a traditional canopy that is a symbol of home, called ‘Huppah’. At Rachel and Richard’s wedding, they said their vows and exchanged rings. The function was attended by close family members including Anna Riya Malakhi, the bride’s sister and 20 members of the groom’s family.
The wedding could not be held at the famous Paradesi synagogue (a synagogue is a Jewish house of worship) in Kochiś Mattancherry, which is a sought after tourist location now, owing to the antiquity of the building. The heritage building could not house the 300 guests, nor hold the rituals conducted in connection with the wedding.
Kochi has a small Jewish population of 25 persons. The last time Kochi witnessed a Jewish wedding was in 2008, when Solomon Abraham married Susan Abraham. The 2008 wedding was held in the Thekkumbhagam synagogue in Mattancherry. Rachel and Richard’s is the fifth Jewish wedding to be held in Kochi in the last 70 years.
Jews are believed to have come to the Kerala coast either to escape persecution or to establish trade links. Historians say that Jews were sighted on the Malabar Coast as early as 1167. A region with considerable Jewish presence was Dutch Kochi. Besides Kochi, Jewish presence was also found in Paravoor, Mala, Chendamangalam, and Angamaly. Wth the formation of Israel in 1948, a large part of the state’s Jewish population left to build new lives in the ‘promised land’.