Ezekiel Rahabi

Origins and early life

Ezekiel Rahabi was born in Cochin in 1694 into the Paradesi community, the 'foreign' Jews of the Malabar coast, his family having come from Aleppo in Syria in the previous century; he was a Jew of Cochin by birth, faith and office, and the leader of his community for half a century.

Work and career

From 1726 until his death he was the principal merchant and agent of the Dutch East India Company at Cochin — the 'Jewish merchant', as the Company's records call him — holding its monopoly of the pepper trade, owning ships that sailed to Surat, Mocha and Basra, and negotiating on the Company's behalf with the rajas of Cochin and Travancore and with the Zamorin of Calicut, so that for nearly fifty years Dutch policy on the coast of Kerala passed through his hands.

He used his wealth for his people: he restored and embellished the Paradesi synagogue of Cochin, whose famous clock tower he built, raised a synagogue for the Malabari Jews near Cranganore in 1756, brought Hebrew books from Amsterdam and sent young men to study there, and he had the copper plates of the ancient charter of the Jews of Cranganore examined and translated. His letter of 1768 to Tobias Boas of The Hague, answering questions on the origins, customs and numbers of the Jews of Cochin, is the first history of the community written by one of its own and remains a primary source for scholars. He died in 1771; his son David Rahabi, who has his own fiche, composed the calendar of the Cochin Jews.