The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to Portugal's colonial possessions, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and Goa, where it continued investigating and trying cases based on supposed breaches of orthodox Roman Catholicism until 1821. As a colony of Portugal, Brazil was affected by the nearly 300 years of repression of the Portuguese Inquisition, which began in 1536.[3]
In The Wealth of NationsAdam Smith attributed much of the development of Brazil's sugar industry and cultivation to the arrival of Portuguese Jews who were forced out of Portugal during the Inquisition.[4]
After the first Brazilian Constitution in 1824 that granted freedom of religion, Jews began to arrive gradually in Brazil. Many Moroccan Jews arrived in the 19th century, principally because of the rubber boom, settling in the Amazon basin, where many of their descendants continue to live. Waves of Jewish immigration occurred first by Russian and Polish Jews escaping pogroms and the Russian Revolution, and then German Jews in the 1930s during the rise of the Nazis in Europe. In the late 1950s, another wave of immigration brought thousands of North African Jews. By the 21st Century the Jewish communities were thriving in Brazil. Some anti-Semitic events and acts have occurred, mainly during the 2006 Lebanon War such as vandalism of Jewish cemeteries. But in the main, Brazil's Jewish population is highly educated, with 68% of the community holding university degrees, employed mainly in business, law, medicine, engineering, and the arts. Most own businesses or are self-employed. The IBGE Census shows that 70% of Brazil's Jews belong to the middle and upper classes. As a group, Jews in Brazil see themselves as a successful segment of society, and face relatively little antisemitism at the onset of the 21st Century.[5]
The Portuguese Jews, persecuted by the inquisition, stript of their fortunes, and banished to Brazil, introduced, by their example, some sort of order and industry among the transported felons and strumpets by whom that colony was originally peopled, and taught them the culture of the sugar-cane. Upon all these different occasions, it was not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice of the European governments, which peopled and cultivated America.[4]
There have been Jews in what is now Brazil since the first Portuguese arrived in the country in 1500, notably Mestre João and Gaspar da Gama who arrived in the first ships. A number of Sephardic Jews immigrated to Brazil during its early settlements. They were known as "New Christians" - Conversos (pt.) or Marranos (sp.) — Jews obliged to convert to Roman Catholicism by the Portuguese crown.
The Jews from Portugal avoided immigrating to Brazil, because they would also be persecuted by the Inquisition. Most of the Portuguese Conversos took refuge in Mediterranean countries such as in North Africa, Italy, Greece and the Middle East, and others emigrated to countries that tolerated Judaism, such as the Netherlands, England and Germany. Many Sephardic Jews from Holland and England worked with the maritime trade of the Dutch West India Company, especially with the sugar production in the northeast of Brazil.[7]
The first Jews who arrived in South America were Sephardic Jews who, after being expelled from Brazil by the Portuguese, settled in the northeast Dutch colony. Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue was the first synagogue in the Americas, established in Recife in 1636 and a community of about 1450 Sephardic Jews lived there. When the Portuguese retook Recife in 1654, 23 Jews from the community escaped to the Dutch North American colony of New Amsterdam, that in 1664 would become New York City.
In the final decades of the 18th century, some Conversos came to southeastern Brazil to work in the gold mines. Many were arrested, accused of Judaism. Brazilian families that descend from the Conversos are mainly concentrated in the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Pará and Bahia.[citation needed]
Most sources state that the first synagogue of Belém, Sha'ar haShamaim ("Gate of Heaven"), was founded in 1824. There are, however, controversies; Samuel Benchimol, author of Eretz Amazônia: Os Judeus na Amazônia, affirms that the first synagogue in Belém was Eshel Avraham ("Abraham's Tamarisk") and that it was established in 1823 or 1824, while Sha'ar haShamaim was founded in 1826 or 1828.
The Jewish population in the capital of Grão-Pará had by 1842 an established necropolis.[8]
Agricultural settlements
Because of unfavorable conditions in Europe, European Jews began debating in the 1890s about establishing agricultural settlements in Brazil. At first, the plan did not work because of Brazilian political quarrels.[citation needed]
In 1904, the Jewish agricultural colonization, supported by the Jewish Colonization Association, began in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmoststate in Brazil. The main intention of the JCA in creating those colonies was to resettle Russian Jews during the mass immigration from the hostile Russian empire. The first colonies were Philippson (1904) and Quatro Irmãos (1912).[9] However, these colonization attempts all failed because of "inexperience, insufficient funds and poor planning" and also because of "administrative problems, lack of agricultural facilities and the lure of city jobs."
In 1920, the JCA began selling some of the land to non-Jewish settlers. Despite the failure, "The colonies aided Brazil and helped change the stereotypical image of the non-productive Jew, capable of working only in commerce and finance. The main benefit from these agricultural experiments was the removal of restrictions in Brazil on Jewish immigration from Europe during the 20th century."[9]
Congregação Israelita Paulista ("CIP," or "Israeli Congregation of São Paulo), the largest synagogue in Brazil, was founded in by Dr. Fritz Pinkus, who was born in Egeln, Germany.[10]
The Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in São Paulo was founded in 1955 and inaugurated in 1971. It has a medical and nursing school. It is considered one of the best medical centers in Latin America.[11]
The first recorded auto-da-fé was held in Paris in 1242. Auto-da-fés took place in France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Peru, the Ukraine, in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India and in Mexico where the last in the world was held in 1850. Nearly five hundred auto-da-fés were "celebrated" by the Roman Catholic Church over the course of three centuries, and thousands of Jews met their deaths this way usually after months of suffering in the Inquisition's prisons and torture chambers. This brutal and public ritual consisted of a Catholic Mass, a procession of heretics and apostates, many of them Marranos, or "secret Jews", and their torture and execution by burning at the stake. Last-minute penitents were garroted to spare the pain of death by burning.[12] Auto-da-fé victims were most frequently apostate former Jews and former Muslims, then Alumbrados (followers of a condemned mystical movement) and Protestants, and occasionally those who had been accused of such crimes against the Roman Catholic Church as bigamy and sorcery[13]
Historians note that the best-known action of the Inquisition against Crypto-Jews in Brazil were the Visitations of 1591–93 in Bahia; 1593–95 in Pernambuco; 1618 in Bahia; around 1627 in the Southeast; and in 1763 and 1769 in Grão-Pará, in the north of the country. In the 18th century, the Inquisition was also active in Paraíba, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais. Approximately 400 "judaizers" were prosecuted, most of them being condemned to imprisonment, and 18 New Christians were condemned to death in Lisbon.
One of the best-known Portuguese playwrights, António José da Silva (1705-1739), "the Jew," who lived part of his life in Portugal and part in Brazil was condemned to death by the Inquisition in 1739.[citation needed] His parents, João Mendes da Silva and Lourença Coutinho, were descended from Jews who had emigrated to the colony of Brazil to escape the Inquisition, but in 1702 that tribunal began to persecute the Marranos or anyone of Jewish descent in Rio, and in October 1712 Lourença Coutinho became a victim. Her husband and children accompanied her to Portugal when António was 7 years old,[14] where she figured among the "reconciled" in the auto-da-fé of July 9, 1713, after undergoing the torment only.[15] António produced his first play or opera in 1733, and the next year he married his cousin, D. Leonor Maria de Carvalho, whose parents had been burnt by the Inquisition, while she herself had gone through an auto-da-fé in Spain and been exiled on account of her religion. They had their first daughter in 1734, but the years of their marriage, and of Silva's dramatic career, were few, for on October 5, 1737 husband and wife were both imprisoned on the charge of "judaizing." A slave of theirs had denounced them to the Holy Office. Though the details of the accusation against them seemed trivial and contradictory, and some of his friends testified about his Catholic piety and observation, António was condemned to death. On October 18, like those who wanted to die in the Catholic faith, he was first strangled and after had his body burnt in an auto-da-fé.[15] His wife, who witnessed his death, did not long survive him.[citation needed]
Another notable person is Isaac de Castro Tartas (1623-1647) who emigrated to Brazil from France and Holland. In 1641 he arrived in Paraíba, Brazil, where he lived for several years. Against the wishes of his relatives there, he went later to Bahia de Todos os Santos (present day, Salvador), the colony's capital, where he was recognized as a Jew, arrested by the Portuguese Inquisition, and sent to Lisbon[16] where he died as a Jewish martyr.
20th century antisemitism
Heightened antisemitism in Brazil in the 1900s reached its peak during 1933–1945 with the ascent of Nazism in Germany. Brazil blocked its doors to an influx of Jewish refugees from Europe during the Holocaust.[17] Research by Brazil's Virtual Archives on Holocaust and Antisemitism Institute (Arqshoah) has uncovered that between 1937 and 1950 more than 16,000 visas to European Jews attempting to escape the Nazis were denied by the governments of presidents Getulio Vargas and Eurico Gaspar Dutra.[18]
Attitude towards antisemitism
Brazil strictly condemns antisemitism, and such an act is an explicit violation of the law. According to the Brazilian penal code, it is illegal to write, edit, publish, or sell literature that promotes anti-Semitism or racism.[19] The law provides penalties of up to five years in prison for crimes of racism or religious intolerance and enables courts to fine or imprison for two to five years anyone who displays, distributes, or broadcasts antisemitic or racist material.[20]
In 1989, the Brazilian Congress passed a law prohibiting the manufacture, trade and distribution of swastikas for the purpose of disseminating Nazism. Anyone who violates this law is liable to serve a prison term from between two and five years.[21] (Law no. 7716 of 5 January 1989)
In 2022, a Pentecostal pastor who prayed in front of his congregation for a second Holocaust was sentenced to 18 years and 6 months in prison, the longest sentence for antisemitism to date. [22]
According to a U.S. Department of State report, antisemitism in Brazil remains rare.[20] The results of a global survey on anti-Semitic sentiments, released by the Anti-Defamation League, ranked Brazil among the least anti-Semitic countries in the world. According to this global survey conducted between July 2013 and February 2014, Brazil has the lowest "Anti-Semitic Index" (16%) in Latin America and the third lowest in all Americas, only behind Canada (14%) and the United States (9%).[23][24]
Brazilian Jews play an active role in politics, sports, academia, trade and industry, and are overall well integrated in all spheres of Brazilian life. Jews lead an open religious life in Brazil and there are rarely any reported cases of antisemitism in the country. In the main urban centers there are schools, associations and synagogues where Brazilian Jews can practice and pass on Jewish culture and traditions. Some Jewish scholars say that the only threat facing Judaism in Brazil is the relatively high frequency of intermarriage, which in 2002 was estimated at 60%. Intermarriage is especially high among the country's Jews and Arabs.[27][28] As of 2006, no more than 20% of Brazilian Jews kept kosher.[29] Brazilian Jews exist across a wide religious spectrum, including Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and secular Jews. Most Brazilian Jews are non-Orthodox and the majority of Brazilian synagogues are affiliated with the Conservative and Reform movements. Historically, until the 1930s, Orthodox Judaism was the main form of Judaism due to immigration of Eastern European Jews, but Central European Jewish immigrants later introduced Reform Judaism. The majority of the Brazilian Jewish community identifies as secular and Zionist. Chabad has a growing influence in Brazil. The majority of Brazilian Jews are Ashkenazi, often of Polish or German descent, while there is a significant Sephardic and Mizrahi minority of mostly Lebanese, Syrian, Moroccan, and Egyptian descent.[30][31]
There has been a steady stream of aliyah (immigration to Israel) since the nation's foundation in 1948. Between 1948 and 2021, more than 16,000 Brazilians immigrated to Israel.[32]
Size of Jewish communities in Brazil
All states, the Federal District, and municipalities with more than 100 Jews are listed below. The numbers are from the 2010 census.[25]
Sephardic or SephardiJews, also Sephardim or PeninsularJews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. The term, which is derived from the Hebrew Sepharad, can also refer to the Mizrahi Jews of Western Asia and North Africa, who were also influenced by Sephardic law and customs. Many Iberian Jewish exiles also later sought refuge in Mizrahi Jewish communities, resulting in integration with those communities.
Marranos were Spanish and Portuguese Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted or were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages, but continued to practice Judaism in secrecy.
A converso, "convert", was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of his or her descendants.
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
New Christian was a socio-religious designation and legal distinction in the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire. The term was used from the 15th century onwards primarily to describe the descendants of the Sephardic Jews and Moors baptised into the Catholic Church following the Alhambra Decree. The Alhambra Decree of 1492, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, was an anti-Jewish law made by the Catholic Monarchs upon the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula. It required Jews to convert to Catholicism or be expelled from Spain. Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos while the Muslim converts were known as Moriscos.
The history of the Jews in Latin America began with conversos who joined the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the continents. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 led to the mass conversion of Spain's Jews to Catholicism and the expulsion of those who refused to do so. However, the vast majority of Conversos never made it to the New World and remained in Spain slowly assimilating to the dominant Catholic culture. This was due to the requirement by Spain's Blood Statutes to provide written documentation of Old Christian lineage to travel to the New World. However, the first Jews came with the first expedition of Christopher Columbus, including Rodrigo de Triana and Luis De Torres.
The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of practising Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year. The primary purpose was to eliminate the influence of practising Jews on Spain's large formerly-Jewish converso New Christian population, to ensure the latter and their descendants did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted as a result of the religious persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. A further number of those remaining chose to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion, of Spain's estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Catholicism to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.:17
The Portuguese Inquisition, officially known as the General Council of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Portugal, was formally established in Portugal in 1536 at the request of its king, John III. Although Manuel I had asked for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 to fulfill the commitment of his marriage with Maria of Aragon, it was only after his death that Pope Paul III acquiesced. In the period after the Medieval Inquisition, it was one of three different manifestations of the wider Christian Inquisition, along with the Spanish Inquisition and Roman Inquisition. The Goa Inquisition was an extension of the Portuguese Inquisition in colonial-era Portuguese India.
The history of the Jewish Community in Belmonte, Portugal dates back to the 12th century and consists of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who kept their faith alive through the practice of Crypto-Judaism. The Sephardic tradition of Crypto-Judaism is unique and represented a hub of resistance against European Anti-Semitism.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula.
As a result of the expulsions from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1496, as well as the religious persecution by the Inquisition that followed, many Sephardim left the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some migrated to the newly independent Dutch provinces which welcomed the Sephardic Jews. Many of the Jews who left for the Dutch provinces were crypto-Jews, persons who had converted to Catholicism but continued to practice Judaism in secret. After they had settled in the safety of the Netherlands, many of them 'returned' fully to practice of the Jewish religion.
Isaac Aboab da Fonseca was a rabbi, scholar, kabbalist and writer. In 1656, he was one of several elders within the Portuguese-Israelite community in the Netherlands who excommunicated Baruch Spinoza.
The Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, is a late 17th-century Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam, completed in 1675. Esnoga is the word for synagogue in Judaeo-Spanish, the traditional Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardi Jews.
The history of the Jews in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of Conversos, often called Marranos or "Crypto-Jews", referring to those Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism and that then became subject to the Spanish Inquisition.
Jewish Nicaraguans or Nicaraguan Jews are Nicaraguans of Jewish ancestry who were born in or have immigrated to Nicaragua. They are part of the ethnic Jewish diaspora.
Amazonian Jews are the Jews of the Amazon basin, mainly descendants of Moroccan Jews who migrated to northern Brazil and Peru in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The migrants were attracted to the growing trade in the Amazon region, especially during the rubber boom, as well as to the newly established religious tolerance. They settled in localities along the Amazon River, such as Belém, Cametá, Santarém, Óbidos, Parintins, Itacoatiara and Manaus in Brazil, some venturing as far as Iquitos in Peru.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom and some of them also Arabic.
Sephardic Bnei Anusim is a modern term which is used to define the contemporary Christian descendants of an estimated quarter of a million 15th-century Sephardic Jews who were coerced or forced to convert to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th century in Spain and Portugal. The vast majority of conversos remained in Spain and Portugal, and their descendants, who number in the millions, live in both of these countries. The small minority of conversos who did emigrate normally chose to emigrate to destinations where Sephardic communities already existed, particularly to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, but also to more tolerant cities in Europe, where many of them immediately reverted to Judaism. In theory, very few of them would have traveled to Latin America with colonial expeditions, as only those Spaniards who could certify that they had no recent Muslim or Jewish ancestry were supposed to be allowed to travel to the New World. Recent genetic studies suggest that the Sephardic ancestry present in Latin American populations arrived at the same time as the initial colonization, which suggests that significant numbers of recent converts were able to travel to the new world and contibute to the gene pool of modern Latin American populations despite an official prohibition on them doing so. In addition, later arriving Spanish immigrats would have themselves contributed additional converso ancestry in some parts of Latin America.
The history of the Jews in Peru begins with the arrival of migration flows from Europe, Near East and Northern Africa.
References
1 2 3 "Censo demográfico: 2010: características gerais da população, religião e pessoas com deficiência"[Census 2010: General characteristics of the population, religion and people with disabilities](PDF). Censo Demográfico (in Portuguese). Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] (IGBE). Tabela 1.4.1 - População residente, por situação do domicílio e sexo, segundo os grupos de religião [Table 1.4.1 - Resident population, by household situation and sex, the religious groups]. ISSN0104-3145. Archived(PDF) from the original on 16 September 2016. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
↑ Information and text generously provided by Conib – Confederação Israelita do Brasil. "The Jewish Community in Brazil". bh.org.il. Beit Hatfutsot. Archived from the original on 9 July 2019. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
1 2 Nachman, Falbel (16 August 2007). "Jewish agricultural settlement in Brazil". Jewish History. Springer Netherlands. 21 (3–4): 325–340. doi:10.1007/s10835-007-9043-6. OCLC46840526. S2CID73630235. Jewish agricultural colonization in Brazil began in 1904 in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, supported by the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA). The JCA created the first colonies – Philippson (1904) and Quatro Irmãos (1912) – with the intention of resettling Russian Jews during the decisive years of mass immigration from the Russian empire. No page; quote taken from abstract.
1 2 Rosman, Kitty (October 2012). "The German roots of Brazil's largest synagogues". Jewish Renaissance. 12 (1): 16.
↑ Bush, Lawrence. "Auto-da-fé". jewishcurrents.org. Jewish Currents. Archived from the original on 3 July 2019. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
↑ ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. "Auto-da-fé". www.britannica.com. Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 15 November 2019. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
↑ António José Saraiva: The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536-1765, p. 95
↑ The encyclopedia of Jewish knowledgeJacob de Haas 1946 "CASTRO TARTAS, ISAAC De: Martyr; b. Tartas, Gascony, c.1623: d. Lisbon, 1647. He was arrested by the Inquisition in Bahia dos Santos and sent to Lisbon.
↑ "Brazil", International Religious Freedom Report 2010, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, US Department of State, 17 November 2010, archived from the original on 20 February 2020, retrieved 7 September 2016
1 2 "Tabela 137 – População residente, por religião"[Table 137 – Resident population, by religion] (in Portuguese). Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. 2010. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2022.
↑ Weingarten, Sherwood L. (4 January 2002). "Brazil's Jews face 60% intermarriage rate". JWeekly.com; J. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California. San Francisco Jewish Community Publications Inc. Archived from the original on 1 December 2016. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
Lesser, Jeffrey (1995). Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN0-520-08413-6.
Pieroni, Geraldo. "Outcasts from the Kingdom: The Inquisition and the Banishment of New Christians to Brazil," in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering, eds. The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800. New York: Berghahn Books 2001, 242–54.
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