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Jilly_in_VA

(13,709 posts)
Sun Dec 14, 2025, 12:58 PM 15 hrs ago

'I'm Muslim but I mark Shabbat': How an Indian man is keeping a Jewish legacy alive

Sarah Cohen's Home.

That's the sign welcoming anyone who walks into Thaha Ibrahim's shop in a narrow cobbled lane in the southern Indian city of Kochi.

The bustling street, where vendors sell everything from antiques to Persian carpets and spices, is called Jew Town - some decades ago, every house on this street had a Jewish family, and the place was known as the Jewish quarter.

Thaha now runs the last Jewish embroidery shop in Kochi.

When some American tourists walked into the shop on a humid afternoon, Thaha, 55, was stitching a kippah, the traditional Jewish skullcap. The tourists gathered around a photograph on the wall which showed the then Prince Charles meeting the residents of Jew Town in 2013.

"That's Sarah aunty," Thaha told them, pointing at a woman with short white hair in the photo.

"This was Sarah Cohen's home and embroidery shop."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g64e67n7eo

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