Kerala saw its first Jewish wedding in 15 years on Sunday, May 22. Bride Rachel Binoy Malakhi and groom Richard Zachary Rowe exchanged their vows at a lakeside resort in Kumbalam, in a ceremony conducted by Ariel Tsion, an Israeli rabbi who officiated the wedding Occasion.

Rachel, a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, is a genome scientist working in the US. She is the daughter of former Superintendent of Police Binoy Malakhi and clinical psychologist Manjusha Maryam Emmanuel. On May 22, she married Richard, an aerospace engineer working at NASA. He was an American Jew born to Sandy Rowe and Richard Rowe.

A Jewish wedding requires a congregation of at least ten adult Jewish males. This includes the groom and his two witnesses. The ceremony was held under a traditional canopy that is a symbol of home, called ‘Huppah’. At Rachel and Richard’s wedding, they said their vows and exchanged rings. The function was attended by close family members including Anna Riya Malakhi, the bride’s sister and 20 members of the groom’s family.

The wedding could not be held at the famous Paradesi synagogue (a synagogue is a Jewish house of worship) in Kochiś Mattancherry, which is a sought after tourist location now, owing to the antiquity of the building. The heritage building could not house the 300 guests, nor hold the rituals conducted in connection with the wedding.

Kochi has a small Jewish population of 25 persons. The last time Kochi witnessed a Jewish wedding was in 2008, when Solomon Abraham married Susan Abraham. The 2008 wedding was held in the Thekkumbhagam synagogue in Mattancherry. Rachel and Richard’s is the fifth Jewish wedding to be held in Kochi in the last 70 years.

The Jews are believed to have come to the Kerala coast either to escape persecution or to establish trade relations. Historians say that Jews were seen on the Malabar Coast as early as 1167. The area with a considerable Jewish presence was Dutch Kochi. Apart from Kochi, a Jewish presence was also found in Paravur, Mala, Chendamangalam and Angamaly. With the formation of Israel in 1948, a large part of the state’s Jewish population left to build new lives in the ‘Promised Land’.