THE FACE OF ISLAM:

Sarah Cohen, 93, walked down Synagogue Lane in Jew Town at dusk in early October. She teetered with fragility and palpable excitement as she made her way through this neighborhood in the city of Cochin in the region of Kerala, on the southwestern coast of India. There was rumored to be a minyan for Simchat Torah. That--a minyan--is a rarity in this dying Jewish community of six, whose average age is 72. She wore a magenta-and-olive "Kerala nightie"--what we might call a muumuu--that her aides Jasmine and Seli dressed her in, and a shimmering pink headscarf. It's a nod to the Jewish Cochin tradition to wear all red on this holiday. On her right was Thaha Ibrahim, age 45, who gripped her arm proudly and smiled. On her left was Ibrahim's wife Jasmine, 43, who held Sarah up to help her walk to Pardesi Synagogue, the 450-year-old house of worship that historically catered to the Pardesi--or "white"--Jews, a term coined by the Portuguese settlers in India in the 16th century.

Thaha Ibrahim is Muslim, and in Cochin such friendships between Jews and Muslims are what keep the tiny Jewish community afloat. [...]

Though the region has been largely free of anti-Semitism, in recent decades Indian Jews have dispersed moving to Israel, Canada, Australia, and the United States. And as they've left, Muslims like Ibrahim have stepped in to make sure the community continues to shuffle along. He and his wife are among a handful of Muslims in Kerala passionate about preserving this unique heritage.

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Ibrahim grew up watching his father, a tailor, interact with Sarah and her late husband, Jacob Cohen, a lawyer. His father helped stitch dresses for Sarah, whose primary hobby was embroidery (she opened an embroidery shop in 1986). Sarah made wedding dresses for the community and kippahs to give to visiting Jewish dignitaries. When he got older, Ibrahim started his own business selling postcards and other memorabilia, and Jacob, who had become a friend and mentor to Ibrahim, made space in the Cohen household for Ibrahim's goods.

"Years later on his death bed, Jacob Uncle said, 'My Sarah is alone and she doesn't have any children, you have to take care of her like her son,' " Ibrahim explained. "I replied yes, I still keep my word and take care of her like my own mother. She is more than a mother to me even though I address her [as] 'Sarah Auntie' and I spend more of my time with Sarah Auntie than even my own family." According to others in the community Sarah would no longer be alive were it not for the support of Ibrahim and Jasmine, who now run her shop for her.

I teasingly asked Ibrahim why he is so nice. "Because I am a Muslim, my religion taught me so," he said.

So passionate is he about the Jews, that in 2013, he and his friend Thoufeek Zakriya, 26, produced Jews of Malabar, a documentary and a complementary exhibition that was shown in Jew Town in 2013. Zakriya is a prominent historian and calligrapher--self-taught and amateur--on the Jews of the region. He spends his time now mostly in Dubai, where he works as a chef. Like Ibrahim, he's a Muslim, a devout one. Yet at age 16 he taught himself to read and write Hebrew. When he was a child, he asked his father to take him to Jew Town where a member of the Pardesi synagogue invited him inside. Still intrigued, he bought a book from a local book seller with a year's worth of savings, not knowing it was a siddur until years later. Later Sarah Auntie gave Thoufeek a 140-year-old Hebrew Bible.

"We are brothers," Zakriya told me, explaining his commitment to the Jewish community. 

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