A hypothesis even proposes that the town's name Mala may have originated from the Hebrew word "Mal-Aha", which means "Center of Refugee".

According to Prem Doss Swami Doss Yehudi, a Dravidian Judaist and historian, an ancient Jewish Malayalam folk song mentions that the synagogue was built in the 11th century using the wood donated to Joseph Rabban in 1000 CE by the king of the erstwhile Kodungallur Kingdom.

[citation needed] This reconstructed 14th-century synagogue was renovated almost four centuries later, in 1792, most likely to repair the damages suffered during the Mysorean invasion of Kerala by Tipu Sultan during the Second Anglo-Mysore War of early 1780s.

During his site visits, he found that even though almost three decades had passed since Tipu Sultan's surrender of Malabar to the British in 1792, the synagogue building still remained in ruins.

[2][4][5][6][7] All the eight synagogues in Kerala built during the recent centuries — located at Chendamangalam, Paravoor, Mala, Kochi and Ernakulam — have similar traditional architectural features: Media related to Mala Synagogue at Wikimedia Commons Kodungallur Kovilakam