The Cochin Jewry Heritage Center

The story

The Cochin Jewry Heritage Center is located in the moshav Nevatim, east of Beersheba, and it is dedicated to the history, the culture and the heritage of Cochin Jewry — and within that the communities of the Jewry of India, Bnei Menashe and Bene Israel. The center stands in the heart of the moshav to which the immigrants from Cochin came at the end of May 1954, sixty families who gathered at Sha'ar HaAliyah and came to live in it, and within it is the central synagogue of the moshav, in which they pray in the prayer rite of the Jewry of Cochin and India; the synagogue, of the community of the priests, is designed in the Cochin style. At the center conferences, classes and seminars are held, and an institute for cantorial art and liturgical poetry operates in it. Permanent and changing exhibitions are displayed in it, and beside them a library with original writings, studies and reference books, an audio-visual database and an archive. It also has a room of traditional costumes of the communities and a kitchen for the communal food — that is, the heritage is kept here not only in writing and in display, but also in sound, in dress and in food.

• Communities
• Museums