Jacob’s Road
Part 1Maps and Mattancherry
about Jacob Sapir: Born in 1822, he was raised in a traditional Ashkenazi community of Jerusalem. In 1858 this community sent him to India to raise money from the wealthy Jews of Bombay, Cochin, and Calcutta. After touring Egypt and visiting the Jews of Yemen, Sapir arrived in Bombay in November of 1859, departing a year and a half later from Calcutta, and in-between traveling by ship to Cochin, then by fishing barge through the Kerala backwaters down to Trivandrum, and by ox cart through the Tamil plains.
Sapir’s route (British map from 1865)blue line = travel by barge; brown line = travel by ox cart
dotted lines = possible routes in Tamil Nadu
Map of Peninsular India, 1863, Quartermaster General’s Office
Our route October 3 – 22, 2008
Ernakulum (1 night)Alappuzha/Alleppey (2) Thiruvananthapuram/Trivandrum (2) Kanyakumari and Kottar (3) Tirunelveli and Tuticorin (1) Madurai (4) Kodaikanal (4)(1 night on bus) Fort Cochin (1)
brown line = busblack line = traingreen lines = ferry andfishing boat
Bazar Road, on the way to Jew Town
Ernakulam, Fort Cochin,and Mattancherry
Clock Tower of the Pardesi synagogue in Mattancherry
Jacob Sapir wrote this about the clock tower: “Next to the synagogue, in the southern wall, rises a
tall tower the top of which holds an hour-display which is visible from its four sides over the whole city; and under the twelve Indian signs are written Hebrew-Ashuri signs: aleph, bet, gimmel, up to yud-bet (one, two, three, up to twelve).
And below on the panel is written: Our days are as a shadow passing by, we end our years as like a sigh.”
Another view of the clock tower, here abutting the old Mattancherry Rajah’s Palace
Note the Hebrew and Malayalam numeralson different sides of the tower