Ezekiel Rahabi

Ezekiel Rahabi was a merchant and community leader in Cochin (Kochi), India. His business operations were closely connected with the Dutch East India Company (VOC), to which he served as chief merchant and agent.

Ezekiel was appointed by the Dutch East India Company as “chief merchant and agent,” in 1726, after the death of his father. In such capacity he was invested with a monopoly of the trade in pepper and other commodities in Malabar. Until the rest of his life he was connected with all the company’s major financial transactions in Malabar, and undertook for it diplomatic assignments to the king of Travancore (1734–42), to the zamorin of Calicut (1751), and to other native rulers. He was also the leading figure of the Jewish community, which he endowed generously. He imported Hebrew book from Holland; purchased land for the Black Jews near Cranganore and in 1756 built a synagogue there for ten Jewish families, supporting it until it was closed in 1761; and improved and embellished the Parathesi synagogue of the White Jews in Cochin.