India has three historic Jewish communities, each with its own origins: the Jews of Cochin on the Malabar coast of Kerala, among the oldest Jewish communities in Asia; the Bene Israel of the Konkan coast and Mumbai; and the Baghdadi Jews, merchants from Iraq and Syria who settled in Mumbai and Kolkata from the 18th century. Indian Jews rarely faced persecution from their neighbors. Most moved to Israel after 1948. Only part of one community, the Paradesi Jews of Cochin, had Sephardi roots. See also Iraqi Jews.
Cochin Jews
Cochin tradition holds that Jewish traders reached the Malabar coast in antiquity. Copper plates, still kept in the Paradesi Synagogue, record privileges granted by a local ruler to the Jewish leader Joseph Rabban; they are usually dated to around 1000 CE. Later arrivals included Sephardi Jews from Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, known as the Paradesi (“foreign”) Jews, who built the Paradesi Synagogue in Mattancherry, Kochi, in 1568. It is still standing. Only a handful of Jews remain in Kerala today.
Bene Israel
The Bene Israel trace their origins to survivors of a shipwreck on the Konkan coast south of Mumbai, many centuries ago. Living among Marathi-speaking villagers, they kept the Sabbath, circumcision and some festivals, and were known as Shanivar Teli, “Saturday oil-pressers,” because they did not work on Saturdays. From the 18th century, teachers from Cochin, among them Ezekiel Rahabi (1694–1771), helped them reconnect with rabbinic Judaism. The Bene Israel were the largest Indian Jewish community.
Baghdadi Jews
From the mid-18th century, Jews from Baghdad, Basra and Aleppo settled in Surat, then in Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata). Families such as the Sassoons built trading houses across Asia and endowed synagogues, schools and libraries; Mumbai’s David Sassoon Library is named for the family’s founder. Baghdadi Jews followed the Baghdadi Sephardi rite of their home communities, and Calcutta’s Magen David Synagogue was built in 1884.
The community today
About 20,000 Jews lived in India in the 1940s. After 1948 most emigrated to Israel, where more than 70,000 Jews of Indian origin now live. About 4,000 remain in India, most of them Bene Israel in Mumbai. The Bnei Menashe of northeast India, who claim descent from the tribe of Manasseh, have also immigrated to Israel in recent decades.
Notable people
- David Sassoon 1792–1864 · Baghdad Merchant and philanthropist; founded the Sassoon trading house in Bombay.
- Flora Sassoon c. 1856–1936 · Bombay Ran the Sassoon business in India after 1894; scholar and collector of Hebrew manuscripts.
- Nissim Ezekiel 1924–2004 · Bombay Bene Israel poet; Sahitya Akademi Award (1983) for Latter-Day Psalms.
Sources and further reading
- Nathan Katz, Who Are the Jews of India? (University of California Press, 2000).
- “History of the Jews in India” and “Paradesi Synagogue”, Wikipedia.
Revised October 2026 to correct errors in an earlier version of this page.
