Sea to Shining Sea


 * Sea to Shining Sea
 * by Jonathan I. Edelstein
 * 19 October 2001

Jews, history of ...The century between SE 50 and 150 was a tumultuous and often catastrophic one for the Jews of the Mediterranean world. The rise of Ananism led to both the closing of the great Babylonian academies and increased persecution by the Christians at home, and European Jewish scholarship sank into a decline from which it would not recover for centuries. Many Jews in Europe and the Levant emigrated to the freer lands to the east, and those who remained retreated increasingly into mysticism and veneration of false messiahs. The latter phenomenon was to have far-reaching consequences by the end of the second century...

... The period from SE 100 to 150 also marked the first encounter between Judaism and Submission, as the Jewish communities of Francia passed into Submissive rule. It remained to be seen how Submission would be influenced by this encounter, and whether the tolerance extended to Christians by the Thing of Erik III would also be applied to Jews...

Ananite Dispersal ... Unlike the rabbinic Jews, the Ananites met with little tolerance in the West. Jews were often oppressed and subjected to a host of petty humiliations and restrictive laws, but they were a religion licensed by the Christian majority and tolerated so long as they kept their place. The Ananites, on the other hand, were regarded as troublemakers by Christians and rabbinic Jews alike, all the more so since their missionaries sought to tempt Christians into apostasy. By the end of the first century, the practice of Ananism had been outlawed in most of the Christian world.

There would be no repetition of the Roman arenas during the early Submissive Era; Ananites were sometimes the victims of rioting mobs, but with the exception of missionaries they were not subject to execution for practicing their religion. They were, however, expelled from the Empire and most of the other Christian kingdoms, joining their compatriots in Khazaria, Babylonia and India...

... The primary exception to this rule was in Egypt, where an expansionist monarchy valued the Ananites due to their connections to the east and north. The Egyptian kingdom allowed Ananite traders to live in Cairo and Alexandria and protected them against violence by rabbinic or Christian mobs. The Alexandrian community became one of the few vital centers of Ananism in the West, producing such famous scholars as al-Mu'alima and Moses ibn Judah ...

Cochin Jews ...The origins of the Jewish community in southern India are lost in legend. Even the Cochin Jews themselves disagree as to when and why they arrived, with some dating their presence in India to the destruction of the Second Temple and others to the Babylonian captivity. Most modern historians agree that their arrival was actually somewhat later, possibly as late as the upheavals of the Arab Awakening. What is certain, however, is that by the end of the first century, rabbinic Jews were well-established along the Malabar coast, and a sprawling section of Cochin port was known as "Jew Town."

The first document which explicitly mentions the Cochin Jews -- although there are tantalizing hints in earlier records -- is a set of copper plates awarded to one Joseph Rabban by the local Chera ruler in SE 92 [864 CE], granting certain coastal villages to the Jews in perpetuity. Rabban and his successors evidently held the rank of prince and, like the Nestorian leaders, were considered important vassals by the local monarchs...

... The Cochin Jews fit seamlessly into the Hindu caste system as merchants, soldiers and artisans. The largest of the Jewish villages on the Malabar coast was known as the Village of the Five Castes in honor of the five clans of artisans who lived there, but there were many more castes of Jews in Cochin port and in the Chera kingdom. At the same time, the tradition of endogamy within castes prevented the Jews from assimilating to the surrounding Hindu community, and ensured that they would retain many of their distinct traditions...

... During the early Submissive Era, the Chera kingdom alternately allied and warred with the dominant Cholas. When there was peace, the trade routes to the east were open through the great Chola port of Madras, but those routes were closed during the more frequent periods of uneasy truce or war. In such times, the Cheras had to use their own ships to bring cargoes back from the east, and by the end of the first century, Cochin was a thriving center of sea trade and shipbuilding. Jewish and Nestorian shipwrights and merchants played a vital part in this trade, bringing back spices and teak from Malaya and Sumatra and sailing as far as the Arabian coast...

... The Cochin Jews, although highly literate and observant of religious rituals and ceremonies, were an earthy lot who were more concerned with work and trade than study. The dominant forms of literature among the Cochin Jews were travel tales and poems of love and war rather than works of philosophy, and their songs were sung in taverns throughout Cochin port...

... By the early second century, the Cochin Jews were divided into two distinct communities. The "Black Jews" were descended from the original Malabari Jewish community, while the "Brown Jews" or "Meshuhurarim" were descendants of freed Malay and Sumatran slaves. The two communities regarded each other as equals, and Meshuhurarim were counted among the leaders of the Cochin Jews, but they rarely intermarried.

At the same time, refugees from the west were beginning to form a third community -- the "White Jews." These newcomers, raised in the Talmudic ghettos of the Mediterranean world, brought with them an outlook very different from that of the established Cochin Jewish community. Although they adapted somewhat to the tolerant atmosphere of southern India, they retained their tradition of scholarship and philosophy. In SE 147 [919 CE], an academy was founded in Cochin port which was to lead ultimately to the next great flowering of rabbinic scholarship...