Chag Samayach!

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Touring the "Oldest Synagogue in the British Commonwealth"

Yesterday felt like the closest Pat and I have ever been and will ever come again to being on a pilgrimage. We awoke at 3:30 am, got to the Bangalore Airport by 5 am and to Kochi by 7:30 am.

The total ground and water transportation took longer than the flight, which was just a bit over an hour. We rode in an ancient Mercedes Ambassador car with no seat-belts for the 45-minute trip to the tip of the island, where we were staying, across from Mattancherry/Fort Cochin.

It's much hotter in Kerala, by the Arabian Sea, than in Bangalore, we soon understood. My sunglasses weren't quite strong enough and the walk from the hotel to the jetty primed us for our inevitable sunstroke later.

Sunblock #45 did not prevent the sun from beating on our heads, but all we had were India cricket team hats with us, and we did not want to appear disrespectful when we visited the synagogue. My mom doesn't have a computer, fortunately, and so my sisters can skip reading her this part; she'd be unhappy that we didn't protect ourselves better....Bev [Pat's mother], if you're reading this, please don't worry. Both of us took two extra-strength aspirin upon our return to the hotel, went for a swim and felt fully refreshed.

A Pair of Perspiring Pilgrims

We got off at the bottom of the island and walked nearly its length, which took about 30 minutes -- past innumerable handicraft storefronts and spice-stalls, goat-gangs and perfumers. So many smells and unrelenting heat. Since my prior time in India, in 2005, I've said that I've smelled the world's best and worst smells in India -- mostly the best. My nose is never bored here.

When we got closer to the synagogue, the number of antique and handicraft shops multiplied and men kept calling to us, "Come into my store. Just see for a minute....Good afternoon! How are you? I've been waiting for you! Come see. Only a minute!"

I found myself looking at the ground more than I wanted to, as I wanted to avoid eye contact with any of them. We just kept repeating, "No thank you," and walking past. None were happy with our disinterest.

Once, looking up for just a minute, I saw a pretty woman in the doorway of a store and her expression invited me to come in. She said nothing bold, like the men, and I was as close to looking in her shop as I came during the entire barrage, but we just kept forging ahead. I had to remember that just because her appeal to me was more appealing than theirs, it was no more sincere necessarily; it was a safe bet that her friendliness -- and theirs -- was based, above all, on encouraging commerce.

How do religious pilgrims feel when they're approaching their holy site? Do shopkeepers bother people when they walk the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem? If I remember correctly, they don't. My cousin Nitzah (Blossom) took me on a walk on that path when I lived there, and I recall that there were many stalls with rugs and leather belts and bags and clay drums and candy, but I do not recall having felt harassed to buy anything.

We reached the doorway by 11:30: "Nah l'hagiyah b'libush tznuah," read a sign in Hebrew, which was translated: "Please dress modestly," and then it defined "modestly," saying that anyone in "short trousers" or short skirts, or who was "sleeveless" would not be permitted to enter the synagogue.

Pat and I were wearing long pants and long-sleeved blouses by design, and still were forbidden to enter the synagogue. Next to the modest-dress sign hung another that read, "Synagogue closed today for the Jewish holiday."

I heard voices upstairs in the synagogue and called upward, "It's not yet Rosh Hashanah! The Jewish holiday doesn't begin till sundown. We flew all the way from Bangalore. Please let us in, just for a quick look!"

"We are cleaning. The synagogue is closed," they called down.

We knew it was a hazard to come on the morning of Rosh Hashanah Eve, but took a chance -- a nutty one, it turned out. We stood on the street outside the non-descript, white building, which Pat noted, oddly included a bell-tower, and felt ashamed at our inability to witness the only synagogue in South India, at our bad luck at being unable to have any Jewish connection on the morning prior to one of our holiest days of the year.

A clean-cut guy appeared and listened to our disappointment for a bit. He told us that he was Catholic and that he was sorry we were unable to go into the synagogue.

Pat looked at me with an expression of hope and an idea born of desperation and said, "Sarah, hold up 500 rupees and tell them, 'The first one to open the door gets 500 rupees.'"

I did, assuring them, "We just want to come in for two minutes," and there was rustling...and then silence. The Catholic man yelled up something in Hindi and a moment later, the door opened.

Finally, An Open Door

A Hindu man showed us around and we saw that indeed, they really were cleaning. It was the oddest sanctuary I'd ever seen: glass chandeliers of random shapes and sizes, and some with colored glass, hanging just over our heads, all over the room, which our guide said all came from Belgium; blue and white porcelain tiles, which he told us each were unique and imported from China -- they had scenes on them, but I was too unnerved to notice specifics; the ark had an inscription over it that read in Hebrew: "Keter Torah," (Torah crown); to the left of the ark, painted in blue, on white, in Hebrew was the central prayer of Judaism, the "Shema..." (Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One").

As we stared at the wooden ark -- built into the wall, which was not strange, but more typical, he said, "This synagogue was built in 1568," and, "This is the oldest synagogue in the British Commonwealth." And then, since he was not Jewish and so un-observant of Jewish rituals, he swung open the doors of the ark, which is not done typically, unless and until it is time to remove a Torah in order to chant from it.

Five Torah scrolls, each encased in a big, round, silver cylinder, which my mother tells me is the Sephardic style of Torah cover, appeared inside the ark. Again, since he was not Jewish, he opened one of them and said, "Touch it if you like. You can kiss it."

It's true that there's a procession, where people carry a Torah(s/ot) around the synagogue during the Torah-reading service, at which point congregants are free to kiss the Torah, either by touching a fringe of their prayer shawl to it, or by touching a corner of their prayer-book to it, and then kissing the fringe or book. It's never OK to touch it with our bare hands...and yet, when he invited me to do so, I put the first two fingers of my right hand against the parchment, near the Hebrew text and kissed my fingers afterwards.

"Pat, do you want to? Go ahead," I suggested.

"No, let me just touch your fingers," she said, not wishing to compound the transgression, and she did, and then kissed her own fingers. Afterwards, she told me she was highly surprised that I went ahead and touched it. "He didn't know better, but you...."

"I couldn't resist." And then we talked about how if it had been during a genuine service, Pat and I likely would never have gotten to walk on the main floor of the sanctuary, since during services, women must sit upstairs, apart from the men.

Just as we were about to leave, one of the cleaners came down from upstairs, holding two giant, jewel-bedecked, bright, bright gold Torah crowns that he had just polished apparently. The guide said, "They were a gift of the Maharajah...."

The synagogue we belong to, as well as the one where I grew up had Torah crowns, too, but they were pale, sterling silver -- nothing as grand as what we witnessed in the Kochi synagogue.

Just then, as we were remarking on the amazing preciousness of the crowns, the Hindu man said, "Chag samayach" / "Happy holiday," and Pat and I nearly cried with gratitude. We loved that he knew the expression that Jews use with each other on every holiday, and that we got to hear it and say it very near to ours.

The whole tour really did require not much more than two minutes, and Pat and I left there ecstatic. I was struck by how meaningful the two minutes in the synagogue felt to me compared with the 20 or more minutes we spent in the Ganesh and Bull temples last weekend.

I had no frame of reference for the Hindu houses of worship and a deep one for the synagogue. When we left, the guide said, "Shalom," (Hebrew for "Peace," and a greeting of either hello or goodbye). We loved him then.

When we exited the synagogue, I looked for the Catholic man who had helped us and didn't see him at first. Then he appeared and I wanted to give him some money for his help. "Oh, no, please. Instead, come see my shop," he said. It was huge and filled with large, unportable antiques, including Christian Madonna figures.

Pat asked, "Do you sell rosaries? A woman was very kind to my mother when she was in the hospital recently and when my mother wanted to give her a gift, the woman asked that her daughter bring her a rosary from India."

He didn't and advised us that next to churches, we could likely find small shops that would sell rosaries. I told him, "Thank you so much for helping us have a meaningful holiday."

At the post office, a wheat-toast-complexioned, white-haired man with a white, knitted kippah/skull-cap with red and blue Stars of David bordering it hurried past me to post a letter, and I felt emboldened by the synagogue visit and said, "Chag samayach."

"Chag samayach," he answered softly as he nearly ran past me.

Next to the synagogue was the Incy Bella bookshop, where I found a book on Jewish identity and India; a comparison of Hinduism and Judaism, which described how both are all about orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy, which made sense to me; and two on the Jewish community of Kochi, of which I learned in the book there were just 20 members (as of 2005) -- one of our guidebooks had specified that only seven Jewish families remained in Jew Town, which is what the area is called.

How We Spent Erev Rosh Hashanah

Satisfied that we made the connection we hoped to make with South-Indian Jewish life, or mostly with South-Indian Jewish history at least, we took the ferry back to our hotel, where we ate a delicious lunch of our first Middle Eastern food in India; swam in the infinity pool; went on a sunset cruise around Fort Cochin; saw a demo of Kathakali dance; and ate grilled fish, Kerala style, outside by the sea, listening to Muslim prayers over loudspeakers that faced us from across the water, at the next island. The dance included an enactment of Baby Krishna, sucking the life out of an evil wet-nurse.

Typically, Pat and I would be at synagogue, singing the traditional "Avinu Malkeinu" in community, rather than watching a tale from the Mahabharata. In fact, that's likely what the rest of my family's doing right now, in their synagogues in Jamaica Estates, New York and Brooklyn.

Paradoxically, It's Not At All Paradoxical

Here's the paradox....I hope it doesn't seem paradoxical, actually, but rather understandable: I've never felt more Jewish, even as I've never been less observant ritually. I grew up, not being particularly encouraged to do cross-religious exploration and I've been doing more in India -- even with the little bit of temple visits and reading I've done -- than I've done since earning my World Religions badge in Girl Scouts at 12.

It's as though seeing others' religions only strengthens my affection for my own. What has impressed me is how people can be enthusiastic about religious traditions that I do not relate to at all, and I've become more directly appreciative that the world has any number of ways to get at similar truths.

God is everywhere, no matter how remote I am from the familiar; I see God's work and feel God's presence whenever I'm open to it. Right now, it's pretty late at night, after 11 pm (India time), and I can hear the rain beating outside, and the ceiling-fan whooshing over my head, and I'm alone in this room, and yet, I'm not at all.