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Book <strong>Review</strong>s 253<br />
their days in poverty, they were able to put their descendants on<br />
the way to a better life in this New World.<br />
If seen this way, this whole historic chapter gets a very different<br />
evaluation. However, we still know little about these women. Baile<br />
de Mascaras includes long lists of all the members of the different<br />
boards that took care of the affairs in the thee major Brazilian cities<br />
surveyed in the book. Their names have been now made public, yet<br />
Kushnir didn't have access to many primary sources. There are the<br />
incomplete protocols of the meetings, police forms filled out about<br />
many of the women involved in prostitution, and some (very few)<br />
personal testimonies. Somehow one can feel the author's anguish<br />
about this shortage of information.<br />
Be that as it may, she has been able to put the story of <strong>Jewish</strong><br />
prostitution in Brazil in a certain perspective, shedding more light<br />
on the subject than previously existed. However, a fuller account of<br />
who these women were remains, maybe forever, in the dark, the<br />
same darkness in which they worked. This probably should put<br />
present-day members of the Latin <strong>American</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> community at<br />
ease. Not much else besides a name will be there to connect these<br />
people to them. It's true that prostitutes are mentioned in the Bible.<br />
But after all, those were somebody else's distant relatives.<br />
- Alejandro Lilienthal<br />
Rabbi Alejandro Lilienthal is a native of Montevideo, Uruguay, and before his re-<br />
cent move to Waco, Texas, served congregations in Brazil for nearly ten years.
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