Home to one of India’s most important ports, the city of Cochin was also once home to a thriving Jewish community, of which but a handful of its members remain. Alyssa Pinsker writes:

In addition to the six remaining Pardesi Jews, there are reputedly 29 Malabar—once called “black”—Jews across the city and surrounding areas. In the 1950s . . . there were eight synagogues in all of Kerala, a region roughly a quarter of the size of Florida, serving 2,500 people. Now there is but one functioning synagogue, the Pardesi, which welcomes Jews of all castes. (The separation of Jews was parallel to, and based on, the Hindu caste system.)

[In lieu of rabbis], the community . . . is led by elders or ḥazanim (cantors) who come from Mumbai or Israel to oversee holidays or funerals. It is one that has enjoyed distinct customs: two bimahs [lecterns] at every synagogue, a tradition of public singing by women, donning special colors for each Jewish holiday, and a celebration of Simḥat Torah with grand lighting of towering candelabras—the decorations are called aalivelakku, named for a local ivy plant and are inspired by designs in Hindu temples and further embellished with stars of David. . . .

Those Jews who have not left Cochin for Israel, the U.S., or elsewhere are mostly old and infirm, and depend on friendly Muslim neighbors both for everyday assistance and for help preserving their community’s physical heritage:

So passionate is [Thaha Ibrahim, a local Muslim with close ties to a Jewish family] about the Jews, that in 2013, he and his friend Thoufeek Zakriya, twenty-six, produced Jews of Malabar, a documentary, and a complementary exhibition. . . . Like Ibrahim, [Zakriya is] a Muslim, a devout one. Yet at age sixteen he taught himself to read and write Hebrew. . . .

Hussein (who asked that his last name be withheld) . . . sells postcards near Sarah [Cohen’s] embroidery shop. For the past two years, he has also tended to the only operational Jewish cemetery in Cochin. There were a total of seven Jewish cemeteries; the other six are now mostly unrecognizable and overgrown. Hussein arrives each day around 6:00 in the morning . . . to prune the graveyard and assist the cemetery caretaker. He helps because the Jews asked him to. And because the Jews are his neighbors.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”