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Photo: Still from the film “The Rock and the Star”
(Katia Mesel, 2004), showing a group of Brazilian
Jewish women embroidering designs based on paintings
by Franz Post, Echout, Rembrandt and others. Part
of the exhibit Pernambuco, Brazil; Gateway to New York.
Brazil:
The Hidden
“Jewish” State
by Monique Balbuena
The coupling of the terms “Jew” and “Latino”
often elicits surprise, especially in the US,
where Jews are often identified as Ashkenazi,
Yiddish-speaking, and Eastern European. However,
Jewish communities in Latin America
formed an essential part of their countries’ cultural
fabric, and, as evidenced by the Center for
Jewish History’s current exhibition on Recife,
Brazil and early settlement in New York (see
sidebar), have had an enormous influence on
American Jewry as well.
As we rediscover the stories of Jewish
Latin American communities, we often mirror
the process of contemporary Jewish Latino
authors and writers themselves. In the words of
Professor Edward H. Friedman, “a common
motif of Latin American narrative is the rewriting
of history, that is, the emendatory encoding
of the Jewish subject into history.”
Brazil, colonized by the Portugese, is a
unique case in point. In the 16th century, the
Portuguese were heavily identified as “gente da
nação” (“people of the nation”), a euphemism
for Jews. Erasmo, for example, wrote in 1530
that the Portuguese were “a race of Jews.” In
1674, Gaspar de Freitas Abreu complained that,
“Only us, the Portuguese, among all the
nations, are stigmatized as Jews or Marranos,
and it’s a shame.” Portuguese diplomat Dom
Luís da Cunha wrote in 1736 that “‘Portuguese’
was synonymous with ‘Jew’ in foreign countries.”
Indeed, although in 1496 Jews were
forcefully baptized with holy water at the docks
in Lisbon, the number of mixed marriages
between Old Christians and New Christians —
the baptized Jews — was so high by the 16th
century that, scholar C.R. Boxer estimates,
between one third and one half of the population
in Portugal had some Jewish blood.
The Portuguese were leaders of 16th century
maritime expeditions, and in their pre-capitalist,
expansionist and mercantilist endeavors.
The colonial beginnings of Brazil are marked by
the presence of New Christians and Crypto-Jews,
who had a constant presence in the new territory
as merchants, sugar plantation owners, slaveowners
and traders, educators, writers and even
priests. In his essay on the Sephardic experience
in colonial Latin America, titled “These of the
Hebrew Nation” (included in Martin A. Cohen
and Abraham J. Peck’s anthology, Sephardim in
the Americas), Allan Metz writes that “the Jewish
history of colonial Latin America … is essentially
that of … New Christians who were
judaizers. ... Well represented in commercial,
professional, and political activities, the New
Christian presence greatly enhanced Latin
America’s development.” Brazilian Ambassador
Rubens Ricupero assesses the interweaving of
Jewish and Brazilian histories: “The origin of
the country and the fate of the Sephardic Jews
in the 15th and 16th centuries are inseparable
threads of the same fabric.”
This intimate association between
Sephardic Jews and the beginnings of what
would become the country of Brazil has had
important effects on Brazilian customs, sayings
and folk traditions. Not only were Crypto-Jews
among the first writers of the colony, thereby
leaving their mark in national literature, but
the Brazilian Jewish environment also bore its
imprint on Jewish literature. Recife, the capital
of Pernambuco, where openly Jewish life flourished
again under Dutch rule, has the oldest
synagogue and mikveh of the Americas. The
first Hebrew poem in the Americas was written
there by Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, and there too
were printed the first American Jewish books,
in 1636. Recife also saw the initial Latin American
contribution to Responsa literature, and
from there departed the twenty three Jews who
continued on page 18
Pernambuco,
Brazil: The Gateway
to New York
350 years ago, twentythree
Sephardic Jews
from Recife, Brazil were
forced to flee their
adopted homeland and
found themselves on the
shores of New York, then
named New Amsterdam.
Despite opposition
from Governor Peter
Stuyvesant, this small
Jewish community was
finally allowed entry into
the city and took root in
an American society far
away from the reach of
the Inquisition.
Two partner institutions
of the Center for Jewish
History, the Yeshiva
University Museum and
the American Sephardi
Federation, are cosponsoring
a special
exhibition, Pernambuco,
Brazil: Gateway to New
York, on view through
December 31, 2004. The
exhibition depicts the
historical and cultural life
of Portuguese Jews from
their first settlement in
the early 1500s in Recife,
Brazil until the historic
exodus in 1654 of
twenty-three members of
the community who landed
at New Amsterdam.
Organized by Dr. Tania
Kaufman, Director of the
Jewish Historical Archive
of Pernambuco in Recife,
the exhibition illustrates
the day-to-day lives of
Sephardic Jews in Recife.
For more information,
visit the Center for
Jewish History online
at www.cjh.org.
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