Israel's Hanukkah silver series, issued annually from 1958 onward, was designed to document diaspora lamp traditions before those communities dissolved entirely into the Israeli state. The Cochin Jewish community — concentrated in Kerala for over a thousand years and numbering perhaps 2,500 at Israel's founding — had dwindled to a few hundred by 1990, most having emigrated in the decades following 1948. The lamp type featured here reflects a distinctly South Indian aesthetic absorbed over centuries of life among Hindu neighbors.
Struck at the Israel Government Coins and Medals Corporation, these issues were produced for collector sale rather than circulation.
Israel's Hanukkah silver series, issued annually from 1958 onward, was designed to document diaspora lamp traditions before those communities dissolved entirely into the Israeli state. The Cochin Jewish community — concentrated in Kerala for over a thousand years and numbering perhaps 2,500 at Israel's founding — had dwindled to a few hundred by 1990, most having emigrated in the decades following 1948. The lamp type featured here reflects a distinctly South Indian aesthetic absorbed over centuries of life among Hindu neighbors.
Struck at the Israel Government Coins and Medals Corporation, these issues were produced for collector sale rather than circulation.