Hallegua and her late husband were the caretakers of Kochi’s 450-year-old synagogue.

Queenie Hallegua was the warden and managing trustee of the Paradesi Synagogue, a 450-year-old landmark, from 2012 to 2018.

She and her late husband Sammy hosted Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, when they came to the Paradesi Synagogue in the Mattancherry neighborhood in October 1997.

The first Jews to arrive on the Malabar coast of India, on the Arabian Sea, came in the first century BCE as sailors — on King Solomon’s boats, as legend has it. Known as Malabari Jews, the families of traders moved south to present-day Kochi, previously known as Cochin, where they built the Kochangadi Synagogue, the area’s first Jewish house of worship.