THE JEWISH POPULATION OF MALA

Scholars do not reach a consensus on the date of Mala Synagogue's foundation. The earliest date attributed to the synagogue is 1000 AD, based on its association with Joseph Rabban (of the 11th-century Copper Plate fame), who according to an old Jewish folk song, obtained wood from the Rajah of Kodungallur to construct the building. Dravidian Judaist, Prem Doss Swami Doss Yehudi (1990) claims "The original Synagogue (11th century) was pulled down and a new building was erected in 1400 C. E. A Hebrew congregational school also used to function there. It was renovated in 1792 C. E." Yehudi however, does not cite the source on which he bases such an absolute date, some connects it to the great Periyar flood of 1341 which erased the port city of Muziris and may have led Jews to migrate from Kodungallur to Mala. The renovation date two years after Tipu Sultan's invasion (1792) makes sense, but historically we know that the synagogue was in a badly decayed state even three decades after Tipu's attack. David Sassoon (1932) dates the synagogue to a later period, to 1597, but he also fails to provide the evidence for arriving at such a specific date, probably the Portuguese attack on Kodungallur was responsible for a wave of  migration of Jews to Mala by the end of 16th century. The earliest documented evidence for a Jewish community in Mala is in the 1768 Hebrew letter of Ezekiel Rahabi, where he mentions 50 Jewish families and one synagogue. Later, his son David Rahabi (d.1791) also attests the same statistics. It is surprising that Mosseh de Paiva (1687) who records 9 Malabari synagogues from 6 localities in Kerala fails to mention a congregation in Mala, so do the Dutch Governor Adrian Moens who wrote less than two decades after Rahabi in 1781. Interestingly, though Moens states that Malabari Jews were spread over seven places, he lists only six, and for reasons unknown Mala is excluded. Nevertheless, in the same year (1781), we have a Hebrew manuscript entitled "Toldot Yehude Kuchin" by Saraf, Yahya Ben Abraham, where Mala reappears with one synagogue and 50 families. A few years later in another Hebrew letter dated 1790, by Samuel Abraham to a Jewish merchant in New York, the numbers remain firm at 50 families and 1 synagogue.

In the early 19th century, two Christian missionaries visited Mala, their eyewitness accounts provide important information on the synagogue and reveal the actual condition of Mala's Jewish community after the 1790 catastrophe. The first to arrive was an English missionary, Rev. Thomas Dawson of the 'Church Missionary Society' (CMS), who established a school for the Jewish children of Mattancherry in 1818, but had to return to England in the same year due to the ill health of his wife. He visited Mala on November 5, 1817 and gives us the following account "At Malla. The Synagogue here seems, from its ruins, to have been much larger than any that I have yet seen. It was destroyed by Tippoo, two or three years before that at Chanotta. The present Synagogue is built within the ruins of the old one, and is in a very bad condition". 

The second visitor, Michael Sargon (1795-1855) was the son of the famous Paradesi Jewish merchant, Isaac Sargon (d. 1791). Michael was later converted to Christianity in 1818, and became the first missionary in India of the 'London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews'. He visited Mala on March 6, 1822 and gives us a more detailed record. He first meets an old Jewish woman who laments on the state of her community with the following words  "I am the oldest person here-when I think of the former state of this place, people, and Synagogue, and compare it with that of the present day, I find no consolation. We have none to assist us in this our deplorable situation, and no one to pity the miserable condition of this holy place (i. e. Synagogue) so that we can only mourn.....the circumstances of this place and inhabitants are so miserable at present; and all these things coming at once into my mind, made me weep so bitterly". Sargon winds up his visit to Mala with a broken heart seeing the condition of Jewish community and he writes "It excites one's pity to see the Synagogue in her ruinous state-her walls on the four sides are broken down to half the original height of the Synagogue, all her windows shattered in pieces; with a view to remedy which, the openings are covered with bamboos and leaves of palmire trees. I  endeavoured to obtain some information respecting the Synagogue and the place, as well regarding their former as present state, but found the people so ignorant as even not to be able to communicate passing events. I therefore left the spot with a sorrowful heart, to see they were without either temporal or spiritual relief". 

Thus in 1822, even 32 years after the Mala synagogue was demolished, it was not properly restored or rebuilt. Both Dawson and Sargon list the number of Jews left in Mala to a meagre 22 members (Dawson-8 males, 9 females, 2 boys and 3 girls; Sargon-9 males, 7 females, 3 boys and 3 girls). Sargon further adds that only 6 families were left in Mala in 1822. Remember, this is a sharp decline within a short span of five decades from 50 families in 1767 (Ezekiel Rahabi). The reason for such a steep downfall in the population is not necessarily attributed to Tipu's barbarity alone. Dawson was informed by the community leader that in the year in which Tippu destroyed their synagogue, a fatal smallpox epidemic hit them severely resulting in the death of above 300 Paradesi and 1600 Malabari Jews in Kerala. For Kerala's Jewish community whose population never went beyond 2500, a calamity of this magnanimity would have been so dreadful and unimaginable. Mala Jews were so poor that they admitted to Sargon that the annual revenue from their synagogue was a dismal amount of 2 Rupees which was not even sufficient to furnish the daily light. Sargon notes that the neighbouring Paroor's corresponding revenue at the same period was 157½ Rupees! Dawson finds three Torah scrolls with Mala Jews in 1817, which was reduced to only one when Sargon reports five years later!

Rev. Joseph Wolf records only 10 Jews in Mala without a synagogue in 1833. The Jewish population of Mala remained low for a few more decades. Multiple records from 1839 to 1848 place Mala's Jewish population to 31 members (13 males and 18 females) in 16 families. It is unlikely that they were in a position to take serious efforts to renovate the synagogue until at least mid 1850s. In early 1852, another Missionary, Rev. Dr. Stevenson of Bombay visits the Jewish School of Mala, and finds 18 boys and one girl, well versed in Hebrew and Malayalam, he writes "Upon the whole, this is the best village school I have yet seen" (Remember there were only 6 Jewish children in 1822). In 1860, Rabbi Jacob (Ya'akov) Sappir reports 20 Jewish families in Mala. A few years later in 1865, David Shemtob Hallegua, who identifies himself as the Precentor and Shohet (ritual slaughterer) of Paradesi synagogue, enumerates 20 families and 100 souls in Mala. The community slowly started to flourish in the later decades.The decennial Census of Cochin State from 1901 estimate the Jewish population of Mala more accurately. In 1901, Mala had a Jewish population of 100 (44 males and 56 females), which remained 110 (1911), 106 (1921), 156 (1931) and 187 (1941) until India's independence. Rev. James Henry Lord (1907) independently ascertained 25 Jewish families living at Mala in 1901. In 1951, the first census after India's independence reports a lower number of Jews in Mala (only 72), but it is possible that more in the region were clubbed and counted with Parur Jews as the regional borders were modified after 1947. A higher estimate during the same period is provided by Eliya Ben Eliavoo (1978) and according to him, at the end of 1948 there were around 300 Jews in Mala. Recent reliable estimates put the number of Jewish families of Mala in the early 1950s to 43. By the end of 1955 there were no Jews left in Mala.