Cochin in Sethu’s Aliyah: provincializing Jewish identity

Abstract

ABSTRACTAn interest in Jewish topographies involves looking at Jewish presence in locations that help relocalize Jewish space. In this article, we argue that the task of reading Jewish identity as a diaspora community calls for a location and geography specific response, especially in aesthetic discourses that unfold Jewish identity situated outside the Eurocentric contexts. Such location-specific readings can enable a “provincializing” of the West-centric construct of Jewish identity. We argue that Malayalam author Sethu's novel Aliyah: The Last Jew of the Village is an interesting case in point. Set in the middle of the twentieth century, the novel deals with the ways in which the Jews living near Cochin, an island-city in the southern province of Kerala in India, respond to the call for a “return” to Israel. As the Jews and other communities respond to the developments around a possible return, the Jewish and non-Jewish characters in the novel all unpack a different discourse about how Jews belong to Cochin, a phenomenon that can be appreciated once one begins to understand that Jews, as a quintessential diaspora community, have had multiple histories of inhabiting geographies. Foregrounding these locations, through provincializing, might offer possibilities of challenging stereotypes in literary critiques.KEYWORDS: SethuCochinMuzirisidentityprovincializing Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Dasgupta and Egorova, “Introduction,” 12 Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self,” 316.3 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.4 Singh, “Are you Jewish?,” 2.5 Ibid, 3.6 Benayoun, “Contemporary Diasporas, Nationalism, and Transnationalism Politics”.7 Singh, “Are you Jewish?,” 3.8 Boum, Memories of Absence.9 Lyotard, Heidegger and “the jews”.10 See Boyarin and Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora, 16–17 for the discussion on Indian diaspora.11 See Lyotard, Heidegger and “the jews”; see Carroll, “Introduction,” in Heidegger and “the jews”; See also Nancy, The Inoperative Community.12 Balibar, “Is there a Neo- Racism”.13 Boyarin and Boyarin, “Diaspora,” 70814 Ibid, 69715 Train, “Well, How Can You be Jewish and European?”.16 Hammerschlag, The Figural Jew, 267.17 There is a huge body of work around the study of Jews in Europe. See, “Preface” in The Origins of the Modern Jew, 1967 as an example of a study focusing on German Jewry in the context of Enlightenment and the nineteenth century; Fudeman, Vernacular Voices; Ari, Contemporary Jewish Communities in Three European Cities; Hess, Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity.18 Ginsburg, Land, and Boyarin, eds. Jews and the Ends of Theory.19 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 4.20 Ibid., 4.21 Ibid.22 Ibid. (italics original)23 Ibid., 3.24 Ibid., 5.25 Sofer, “To Which Race Did Jesus Belong?”, 210–7; also see chapters from the mentioned book, Goldstein, “The Jewish Racial Problem,” 254–9; Weissenberg, “The Jewish Racial Problem,” 76–81; see Auerbach, “The Jewish Racial Question,” 159–70; Wassermann, “Is the Criminality of the Jews Racial Criminality?,” 145–50.26 Gosetti, Walsh, and Finch-Race, “Reclaiming Provincialism”.27 Smith, “The Provincialism Problem”; see also, Smith, “The Provincialism Problem”.28 See Alias and Wadhwa, “Kochi”.29 Jew Street, located in Jew Town, is a vibrant street in Mattancherry town of Kochi. The street’s history dates back to the 14th century when the king of Kochi kingdom allotted a space for the Jewish merchants to settle and trade.30 Guttman, Writing Indians and Jews. See also, Brauch, Lipphardt and Nocke, Jewish Topographies. Wettstein, Diasporas and Exiles.31 For a historical account of Jewish presence in Cochin, see Goldstein, “The Sorkin and Golab Theses and their Applicability to South, Southeast, and East Asian Port Jewry” and Gamliel, “Back from Shingly”, apart from the other references mentioned above.For an ethnographic perspective see Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self”.32 Brauch, Lipphardt and Nocke, Jewish Topographies.33 Justin, “The singing Jewish women of Kerala”.34 Weil, “The Place of Alwaye in modern Cochin Jewish history”.35 Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self”.36 See Boyarin and Boyarin, Powers of Diaspora, 16–17 for the discussion on Indian diaspora.37 In Aomar Boum’s scholarly study, Memories of Absence (2013), the Morrocans’ narrative that Boum uncovers about the Jews is that of anti-Semitism.38 TNN, “Sethu’s ‘Aliyah’ Explicates a Diaspora Unexplored”.39 The transformation of Kochi into a significant port involved a deluge which altered the landscape and led to the decline and eventual burial of the ancient port of Muziris. The shift in the river flow resulted in the formation of Cochin as a natural harbour, attracting travellers and merchants from various parts of the world.40 See Fernandes, The Last Jews of Kerala.41 Thomas, “The Kochi Novel”.42 Ibid, n.p.43 Sethu, The Saga of Muziris.44 Ibid., 127.45 One figure in the characters’ memory is that of Salem Kocha, a Jew who was offered a government job in Delhi but declined to move.46 Sethu, Aliyah, 116–7.47 Ibid., 117. According to the local custom, the burning of the effigy of Bagris stands for the message of the victory of right over wrong and evil. See Thomas, “Kochi-Muziris”, 46, where he shares the custom in detail: “During the Hanukkah festival, the Jews in Kochi used to burn the effigy of the Syrian-Greek emperor Antiochus as a marker of protest against the seizure of the Temple in Jerusalem in 168 BCE and then the decision to make observance of Judaism an offence punishable by death”.48 See Sethu, Aliyah, 116 to see the characters remembering Joseph Rabban. Also see, Fernandes, “King of the Indian Jews,” 35, where she adds the poem on Joseph Rabban by Rabbi Nissim, a fourteenth century traveller, as an epigraph: I traveled from Spain.I heard of the city of Shingly.I longed to see an Israeli King.Him, I saw with my own eyes49 Sethu, Aliyah, 143. This Habban is a reference to the historical person Habban who was accompanied by St Thomas on his way to Cranganore, one of the mythical pasts of Cochin. Another reference to Habban can be seen in Weil, “Symmetry between Christians and Jews in India”, 182.50 Sethu, Aliyah, 14451 Ibid., 130–1. The moment in the novel is not entirely fictional. See, Hacohen, “Five must know Israel-India facts before India’s Independence Day,” 14 August 2017. Where the author shares the incident of Carlebach’s visit to India and the publication of the book called India: A Travel Journal recording his experiences of the journey.52 Katz, “The Historical Traditions of the Jews of Kochi”; see also Gamliel, “Back from Shingly,” 63.53 Sethu, Aliyah, 247.54 Ibid., 185.55 Ibid., 145.56 Ibid., 195.57 Ibid., 389.58 Ibid., 389.59 Ibid., 389.60 A word about the use of “land” in these terms. Ilan Zvi Baron in his study of Jewish identity argues that “Diasporas seemingly function in terms of nation-state politics. They have a homeland, a hostland, and their identity-politics are defined by the challenges of belonging to both a nation and a state that are not in the same place” (2014, 302). Even though the terms hostland and homeland are indeed less common, the discussion is in the context of Cochin as a specific geographical space rather than the entire country. Thus using the term “land” makes it more appropriate and immediate.61 Sethu, Aliyah, 394.62 Ibid., 195.63 See Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self”.64 Ibid., 298.65 Ibid., 325.66 Ibid.67 Katz, “The Historical Traditions of the Jews of Kochi,” 43.68 Sethu, Aliyah, 4769 Ibid., 15870 Ibid., 270.71 Ibid.72 Ibid., 271.73 Ibid., 272.74 Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self,” 32775 Sethu, Aliyah, 8676 Ibid., 90.77 Ibid., 19578 Ibid.79 Ibid., 249.80 See, Said, “Reflections on Exile”; Wettstein, “Introduction”; Ezrahi, Booking Passage.81 Indeed, Nandy’s interviewees confirm the same: one of them confesses that he regrets that he went to Israel. See Nandy, “Time Travel to a Possible Self,” 320; See, Daniel and Johnson, Ruby of Cochin, 119, where she mentions that the Cochin Jews lost a sense of community they so enjoyed when they were in Cochin.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJintu AliasJintu Alias is an Institute Fellow (PhD) in the Department of Literature and Languages at SRM University, Andhra Pradesh, India. Email: jintualias33@gmail.comSoni WadhwaSoni Wadhwa is Assistant Professor in the Department of Literature and Languages at SRM University, Andhra Pradesh, India. Email: wadhwa.soni@gmail.com