Erev Pesach in Cochin in India

Home made matzoh covers

View Photos (4) Image © 2007 Yehuda Kovesh

First Night of Seder

Pesach

2^nd April 2007

Cochin India

I am honored to have been present at the table of Josephai Elias tonight, with his wife Ofera and children, Avithal and Leah

In a quiet suburb of Ernakulum

Which was lonely like an abandoned village

When he took me home as a pillion passenger

Back to the Hotel Metropolitan

Just a breath away from Ernakulum South Station of the Southern Railways

Where I had arrived on a train with 24 coaches

On air-conditioned second class A sleeper

The most comfortable seats one could procure on this overnight trains

Bringing people home from their various exiles

Four couchettes portioned off

Each passenger maintaining a silence

Similar to that one sees in prison mates brought together

With no common interest among them

Here our desire to reach

Various sonorous railway stations still bearing the architectural signatures of the long departed colonial master.

Irinjalakuda, angumali. Alwaye. Ottapalam

Almost characters out of the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Along the river Magdalena which I hope to sail in the not too distant future

An extremely well prepared Malayalee lunch at the Palms at Hotel Metropolitan, more on that later

Suresh the owner of Travel Land Tourist agency a stone throw away from the hotel

Very good friend and accommodating, had sent a car with a driver to pick me up and also drove me around to the bank and to the erstwhile synagogue of the departed Jews  at Market street near the Jews Street in Ernakulum

Where I was happy to see the face of babu, Elias Josephai

The people of Ernakulum and Cochin in particular and of Kerala in general are so congenial and non pretentious and genuinely friendly

After the pretentious, nerdish Bangalore with its growing fakeness and abdominal girth

It was a relief to be in Cochin, a town I have come to like more and more with each succeeding visit

This one, after the frustrating air Deccan flight of 1 January 2007, when Morgan and I left for Mumbai on  our way back to Paris. Never again on Air Deccan, that is for sure. I rather be a "sanyasi" (a fakir ) and walk to my destination in India than take Air Deccan, or is it Air Decay? Or Air Decay in?

The staff at the front desk at Hotel Metropolitan is professional and polite, unlike the casual and unhelpful ones at Casa Linda in Fort Cochin, the professionalism here to Ft Cochin, the comparison is the food at Palms Restaurant to the food at the various touristy places in Fort cochin... why do we have to suffer for the sake of tourists to this " god forsaken country"?, oh sorry, Gods own country, if you believe in such things, any more than Coca Cola is good for you...

Babu came to pick me up and very soon, we were at the doorstep of his modest home, soon to be equally modest but more spacious befitting a man of his financial status. Hebrew Lettering, oriental Jewish charms to ward off the evil on the door, nice to see mezuzah one can kiss on the door, in my opinion, this is the last of the cochin Jewish families.

Oferah has been busy preparing the pesach dinner. The table has been set up with embroidered religious matzoth and Seder plate covers.

The fragrance and taste for this Seder is different to a western palate and taste: chrain and its taste is replaced with hand made date paste, cabbage to replace maror, nobody to kosher lamb, and only Josephai is left to casher Chicken.

I had brought an English version of the haggada (thanks MM for copying), and I surprised myself by being able to follow the service in my copy of English Haggadah, while Babu chanted away in Hebrew. The melodies are distinct from Ashkenazi melodies but then again, in each of the countries, Jews easily adapted the local tone and voice to the Jewish tunes. The prayers are the very same prayers, the rituals are very different. Incredible it seemed to me and also it was very comforting and strengthening at the same time, this unity in diversity of the Jewish people. The mizrachi Jews are a bit more rigid than the Ashkenazi Jewish  traditions, since the former had more to loose in historic terms, living under various rules, some benevolent and others not so. India has never known locally grown anti-Semitism, unlike any other country ( I am sure Jews in Singapore, Kai Feng Fu, Hong Kong and Yangon all will claim the same, I suppose Asian Jews have always been under benevolent protection of their countrymen who did not share the Jewish faith. In India, both Hindu and Moslem rulers were accommodating, not just tolerating the Jews and Jews have suffered in India, only under the Portuguese and their fanatic Christendom )

Here is in one of the furthest corners of the Jewish world, a pepper haired Jew was reciting prayers which are at least three thousand years old, our ears are reborn with new sounds and hope that these prayers would be around for many more years for ourselves and others to follow. Josephai alias Babu did not skip any passages, as is our custom when we are in a hurry to finish the Seder or eager to begin our repast, but then again, by the time we get to the grace after meals, most of us are slightly drunk, anyway, having leisurely drunk our portion of the wine, while leaning to the left. But drinking alcohol is not a custom here, but pouring of the wine, is; washing of the cups, washing of ones hands after pouring wine to be thrown away after chanting all the names of the plagues which the Pharaohs suffered.

We sipped our wine when our turn came , just symbolic enough to say our prayers for the fruit of the wine.

I am so glad to have participated and felt very honored, by the time we reached the last phrase

La shanah ha ba a b yerushalayim

Next Year in Jerusalem, a plea in those distant centuries when seeing Jerusalem existed no more than as a figment of the imagination of the exiled Jewish people.

But to me, surrounded by the Kerala night, at this village like atmosphere of Ernakulum suburb, with Elias chanting, Ofera, saying the appropriate Amens and the girls looking on, as they have all their lives at various Seders,

To me,

The last sentence had a special significance...

Avithal Elias is the third Avital in my life

First is the daughter of my dearest brother, Eliayahu, she is a favourite of mine

Another is constantly on lips, more than in the literary sense, of my little brother friend, Shimon Siman Tov, son of Shmuel Siman Tov of Haifa

She who recently graduated with a PhD in the biochemistry of Infertility along with an MBA (why not?) and has turned the brains of my little brother friend into a mush, Avital Rogev of Haifa, who at this very moment, finishing off the first night of the Seder will be packing her bags for the long and non stop flight from Ben Gurion Airport in  Tel Aviv to Miami, Florida where Shimon lives, currently, but not too long, he too may have to move to Haifa, like, our third Avital

Avital Elias,

A bright girl who has her mind set on studying at Technion

Which all of us must assist

To complete that dream of hers

She is capable, that goes without saying

Having always done well at school and at pre university and now at the initial stages of her university career

To Haifa, with Love

We have to send her, she going there and graduating with honours, we all can take pride, for

Like all our Avitals,

Spread over the distance of this planet

Our connections never cease

Through centuries and through distances

And I, Maqroll El Gaviero Judio

The Jewish Look Out

Who without trying find the struggling Jews of genuine historical communities

Cochin, Yangon

Rhodos, Kingston, Curacao

Think of each one of you, the regular circle of love that elevates me into this life of magic and oblivion

In Paris

In Portland

In Yakima

In Baracoa

In Havana

In Miami

From Cape Town, from Sao Paolo, Ho Chi Minh City and Siem Reap where I spent a Khmer Non Kosher Seder of my own making last year this time when the full moon was shining over Angkor Wat

Among the Native people who are mistakenly called Indians

Ancient lands of Mallorca and Brittany

I am grateful for the Seder tonight

I am grateful for your love

I am grateful for the UmonHon and Kickapoo and the Hocank

I am eternally grateful to the Great Spirit for sending MM my way....

Shabbat Shalom with Pablo on 6^th April 2007. I was so  happy to recognize this eternal poet, from our sister southern country, Chile, the raconteur of the misery of unsung people all over the world. The book was written in Malayalam, but that did not matter, it is nice to know that in Kerala, some one or other in the nights quiet after tropical drenching of monsoon, will be reading Pablo Neruda..

Published on 4/12/07