Word: malabar
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Last week, in the sleepy port city of Cochin (pop. 35,076) on India's Malabar coast, glittering strips of tinsel and Stars of David were strung over a narrow two-mile street known locally as "Jew Town." Nearly 200 religious scholars, archaeologists and historians from Asia, Europe and the U.S. were in town, along with a delegation of Indian leaders led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The guests had gathered to commemorate the 1900th anniversary of one of the smallest (100 people) but most resilient communities in the Dias pora: the Jews of Cochin...
According to legend, the Cochin Jews arrived on the Malabar coast around 70 A.D., fleeing from Roman persecution in the Holy Land. By the end of the 1st century there was a thriving Jewish community in Cranganore, 20 miles north of Cochin...
...Through the centuries, Cochin's Jews have adopted many Indian religious traditions. Mortar for the walls of their synagogue was mixed with coconut water, which Hindus use for sacred occasions. The ceremonial dress of a Cochin Jewish woman is a heavy gold brocade sarong and blouse, worn by Malabar Indian women at weddings. But the Cochin Jews have stoutly preserved their religious Orthodoxy, even though the community so far as it is known has never had a rabbi. (Many isolated Jewish colonies in India get along without rabbis...
...rewards for hustling are there for everyone to see in the ornate homes of the wealthy on Malabar and Cumballa hills. Bombay's sleek women, who set India's fashions, wear slacks by day as they whip about the city in sports cars, and are lovely by night in sheer, gold-encrusted saris. The new and old rich frequent the marble-floored Willingdon Sports Club, where vegetarian diners are discreetly noted by chalk marks on the backs of their chairs, and gather on Sundays for horse racing at the Western India Turf Club, where a sign...
Died. John Gale Alden, 78, ruddy Yankee yachtsman and sailboat designer who put ocean racing within reach of the only moderately rich with his Malabar class of small rugged schooners derived from Gloucester fishing smacks, proved the soundness of his designs by becoming the first man to win three Bermuda regattas, and set more of his hulls afloat than any other U.S. marine architect; of a stroke; near Orlando...