Amazonian Jews

Amazonian Jews
Total population
Unknown
Regions with significant populations
 Brazil 7,000 (2004)
 Peru Unknown
 Israel 6,000
Languages
Modern: Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Peru), Hebrew (Israel)
Liturgical: Sephardic Hebrew
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
•Jews
Moroccan Jews, Sephardi Jews, Berber Jews, Other Jewish groups
•Brazilians and Peruvians
mestizos, caboclos, others

Amazonian Jews (Hebrew: יהודי אמזונאס, "Yehudim Amazonas"; Spanish: judíos amazónicos; Portuguese: judeus amazônicos) is the name for the mixed-race people of Jewish Moroccan and indigenous descent who live in the Amazon basin cities and river villages of Brazil and Peru, including Belém, Santarém, Alenquer, Óbidos, and Manaus, Brazil; and Iquitos in Peru. They married indigenous women and their descendants are of mixed race (mestizo). In the 21st century, Belém has about 1000 Jewish families and Manaus about 140 such families, most descended from these 19th-century Moroccans.[1]

A small Jewish community was established in Iquitos by immigrants from Morocco during the rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other than Lima, with a larger, mostly Ashkenazi Jewish community, Iquitos has the only organized Jewish community in Peru.[2] Since the late 20th century, some of these Sephardic descendants have studied Judaism and formally converted in order to be accepted by Israel as Jews. Hundreds from Iquitos have emigrated to Israel since then, including about 150 from 2013 to 2014.[3]

Origins

This ethnic group is descended from Moroccan Jewish traders who worked in the Brazilian, and later Peruvian, Amazon basin. They spoke Ladino, Hebrew, and Haketia. The earliest Moroccan Jews came in 1810 from Fez, Tanger, Tetuan, Casablanca, Salé, Rabat, and Marrakesh. In 1824 they organized the first synagogue, Essel Avraham, in Belém, Brazil, at the mouth of the Amazon River. With the rubber boom of the late nineteenth and early 20th century, thousands more Moroccan Jews entered the Amazon towns. Those who stayed married indigenous Native American women, and their children have grown up in a culture of Jewish and Christian, and Moroccan and Amazonian influences.

The peak of the rubber boom between 1880 and 1910 attracted so many merchants and other workers that it was the height of Jewish immigration to the Amazonian Basin; they established new communities along the interior of the Amazon River, in Santarém and Manaus, Brazil, and ventured as far as Iquitos, Peru, on the east side of the Andes. This was a major center on the Amazon for rubber export and related businesses. It was the headquarters of the Peruvian-owned Peruvian Amazon Company (PAC). The rubber boom also attracted Jewish adventurers from England, Alsace-Lorraine and France, and other Europeans, who helped found new Jewish and European institutions in Iquitos, including an opera house.[2]

Some of the Jewish immigrants settled in Iquitos, marrying native women and establishing a Jewish cemetery and synagogue. Even after the rubber boom, some Moroccan Jews remained in Iquitos and other cities of the Amazon. Many of their mestizo descendants were reared Catholic in their mothers' faith, also absorbing Amazonian culture, and the remnants of the Jewish community gradually gave up much of their practice.[2]

Other Moroccan Jews lived in isolated ribeirinhos settlements in Brazil. Rabino Shalom Imanu El-Muyal, a rabbi, was considered a holy man, healer and folk saint, and admired even by non-Jews in Brazil. He is referred as "Santo Moisézinho" (Saint Little Moses).[4]

Relationship with other Jewish communities

For the Peruvian communities, an enduring casta system stemming from the colonial period resulted in virtually no interaction between these Jewish-Peruvian descendants living on the east side of the Andes and religious leaders of the small, mostly ethnic European, Ashkenazi population concentrated in Lima. The latter did not consider the Amazonian Jews to be Jewish, according to the halakha, because their mothers were not Jews. Some suspected that the Peruvians wanted to emigrate to Israel for economic reasons.[5]

But in the late 20th century, a small group in Iquitos began independently to explore their Jewish heritage and study Judaism. They reached out to Marcelo Bronstein, a sympathetic rabbi of Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in from Brooklyn, New York to follow a formal conversion process in 2002 and 2004 in order to be eligible for aliyah to Israel.[2][5] After completing their conversions, a few hundred Amazonian Jews from the Iquitos area made aliyah to Israel in the early 21st century. Another conversion of numerous Peruvians was completed in 2011, following their five years of study; and more emigrated to Israel, including about 150 from in 2013–2014. They have mostly been settled in Ramle.[3]

Documentaries

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jeff Malka,"Indiana Jones meets Tangier Moshe", Sephardic Genealogy Resources,
  2. 1 2 3 4 Ariel Segal Freilich, Jews of the Amazon: Self-exile in Earthly Paradise, Jewish Publication Society, 1999, pp. 1-5
  3. 1 2 Judy Maltz, "For the Jews of the Amazon, Israel Is a Whole Different Kind of Jungle", Haaretz, 11 June 2013, accessed 25 August 2015
  4. ↑ Veltman, Henrique. Os Hebraicos da Amazônia
  5. 1 2 3 Michael Fox, "Film Uncovers Amazonian Jews Who Want to Make Aliyah", JWeekly, 14 November 2008
  6. ↑ YouTube links to documentary online
  7. ↑ Nathan Southern, Overview: The Longing: The Forgotten Jews of South America (2006), New York Times
  8. ↑ The Fire Within: Jews in the Amazonian Rainforest (2008), Ruth Diskin Films
  9. ↑ The Fire Within: Jews in the Amazonian Rainforest (2008), Jewish Film Festivals

External links

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