(JTA) — KOCHI, India — Today, you’ll find lively Kasmiri businesses selling Persian antiquities, pashmina shawls, and traditional Islamic handicrafts along this coastal city’s “Jew street,” in sharp contrast to the neighborhood’s heyday when every household was Jewish.
“In Jew Town, only two people are remaining.” “One is extremely old and spends most of her time in Los Angeles, while the other is a significant expert on the Jewish communities of India,” said Shalva Weil, a senior researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Seymour Fox School of Education and a leading figure on the Jewish communities of India.
Only a handful of elderly Jews remain in a metropolis of 677,000, where the Jewish population formerly numbered around 3,000 people at its peak in the 1950s. According to Weil, there is no longer any community in Kochi.
