Sometime in the late 1980s an extraordinary event took place in northeastern Brazil. Several individuals of Sephardic descent were readmitted into the local Jewish community after having lived all their lives as “Marranos.” Marranos are Jews of Portuguese (Sephardic) descent, from the Marrano Diaspora of the 17th century, who outwardly professed Catholicism but secretly observed Jewish rites at home. They are also known as “Crypto-Jews” or Escondidos (Portuguese and Spanish for “hidden”). Fleeing anti-Semitism in Portugal, their ancestors had sought refuge in Brazil some three hundred years earlier. Subsequent generations lived in what some historians have referred to as a “religious and cultural limbo.” In order to escape persecution, they professed allegiance to Christianity (Catholicism) and Portuguese culture, yet tried to maintain at home as best they could their Jewish faith and heritage. Recently some of these communities, aided by concerned individuals from Recife, Pernambuco, have been undergoing a spiritual and cultural rebirth. Several of its members have returned to Judaism and more intend to follow suit.

      Although students of Brazilian Judaica such as Arnold Wiznitzer¹ have written extensively on the Sephardim of Recife, especially during the Dutch dominion (1630-1654), as a general rule not much is known about this community after the second half of the 17th century. With the present essay, I would like to open up a dialogue on an important aspect of Jewish life in Latin America that in the past has received little scholarly attention. It is my hope that other students of Brazilian and Sephardic Jewry will join me in this endeavor as we seek to better understand the delicate balancing act of Recife’s Sephardim as they straddled their Jewish and gentile worlds. To this end, at this time I would like to contribute an overview of the history of the Sephardim in northeastern Brazil from colonial times to the present.

      When the Portuguese admiral Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in what is now Brazil in 1500, he was accompanied by at least one person of Jewish birth, Gaspar da Gama, a Sephardic Jew who had been kidnapped and forcibly baptized by the Portuguese in India three years before. In 1502, a consortium of Marranos headed by Fernando de Noronha obtained from King Manuel I of Portugal a concession to colonize and exploit the newly discovered land. The main business of the group was to export brazilwood (from which the name of the country was eventually derived) to Europe for the purpose of dyeing textiles. There is good reason to believe that Marranos transplanted sugar cane from Madeira to Brazil in the early 16th century. Marrano foremen and workers are said to have been brought over from Madeira and São Tomé when the first plantations and mills were established in northeastern Brazil around 1542. One of the first five engenhos (Portuguese for “sugar plantation and mill”) was owned in 1550 by a Marrano, Diego Dias Fernandes. A large number of the 120 engenhos that existed in the year 1600 belonged to Marranos, many of whom were also administrators. Some of these Sephardim professed Catholicism, but the majority secretly observed Jewish rites and customs and were in fact Crypto-Jews.

      By the time Recife (city in northeastern Brazil, capital of the state of Pernambuco) became a prosperous center of sugar production in the 16th and 17th centuries, Portuguese settlers of Jewish descent and Marranos were already living in the city and its environs. They gave impetus to sugar production and commerce. The large number of Marranos in Recife – including the first historian of Brazilian economic life, Ambrósio Brandão – took part in a variety of activities, and bound themselves through intermarriage to prestigious Old Christian families.

      The Inquisition was never formally introduced in Brazil. However, from 1580 on, after Portugal was united with Spain, the colony’s bishop received investigation powers from Lisbon, and after 1591 the Holy Office of Portugal sent Inquisitional Commissaries to Brazil at regular intervals. The investigators of the Inquisition held hearings based on denunciations, and the accused were arrested and often sent to Lisbon for trial. Denunciations on the part of the inquisitional officers and of “friends of the Holy Office” acquainted the inquisitors with a large number of Marranos who did not conform to the fixed patterns of behavior imposed by the church. Once a formal charge was made, the inquisitional process went something like this: the central office in Portugal would dispatch an official inspector (visitador) for the purpose of seizing the suspect’s possessions, and subsequently an inquisitional commission was established to look into the accusations. If the suspect was found guilty, which was often the case, he was taken to Lisbon and handed over to the inquisitional tribunal. After the inspector had left, surveillance of Marranos was continued by the bishop with the assistance of the local clergy and Jesuits.

      Pernambuco had about 3,000 European inhabitants in 1642, a high percentage of whom were Marranos. They were owners of engenhos, businessmen, importers and exporters, teachers, writers, poets, even priests. Two of Brazil’s earliest writers, Bento Teixeira Pinto (Prosopopéia, the first poem written in Brazil, 1601) and Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão (Diálogo das Grandezas do Brasil) were both Marranos.

     From the end of the 16th century Amsterdam became an important Jewish religious, cultural, and economic center. When the West India Company, aided by the Dutch government, equipped an expedition to Brazil, Dutch Jews, mainly fugitives from the Inquisition, joined in as allies. In May 1624 two important forts in Bahia were captured by the Dutch, but a large Portuguese and Spanish expeditionary force arrived shortly thereafter and two months later the Dutch had to surrender (July 1624). The West India Company soon prepared another expedition, this time to Pernambuco. The Dutch administrators at the Hague proclaimed that the liberty of Spaniards, Portuguese, and natives, whether Roman Catholics or Jews, would be respected. Jewish soldiers, traders, and adventurers joined the expedition that successfully landed at the ports of Olinda and Recife in the middle of May 1630. After the arrival of the Dutch, many Marranos who had lived in the northeastern part of Brazil, happy to be able to give up their double life, were circumcised and became professing Jews. Pernambuco remained in the hands of the Dutch for 24 years, from 1630 until 1654. This was an important period in Jewish history in Brazil and Latin America, as Brazil was the only region during colonial times where Jews were allowed to practice their religion openly and establish an organized community. Its members were mainly Jews from Holland, joined by Marranos already living in the colony.

      The Jewish community in Dutch Recife was of two kinds. There were practicing Jews who had emigrated from Amsterdam, and there were the local Crypto-Jews, or Marranos, who were already in Pernambuco in considerable numbers under Portuguese rule. Under Dutch rule, many in this last category renounced their erstwhile Catholic façade and openly embraced the Jewish faith. However, a number of Marranos continued to conform at least outwardly to Catholicism, since they doubted whether Dutch dominion would last.

      Early students of Brazilian history (Quelen, 1640) claim that the Jews of Recife were nearly twice as numerous as their Christian neighbors. However, recent studies, especially those conducted by Arnold Wiznitzer in the last twenty years, have conclusively shown that the number of Jews in Dutch Brazil (Pernambuco and vicinity) reached its highest point with a total of about 1,500 persons in 1645, out of a total European population of approximately 3,000. The bulk of these Jews were Sephardim, although the community in Recife also included a few Ashkenazim. Contrary to what prevailed in the Jewish communities in Amsterdam and elsewhere, the statutes drawn up for the regulation of the Jewish community in Recife made no discrimination whatever against non-Sephardic Jews, a significant innovation for this period, as Arnold Wiznitzer points out.

      Portuguese and Dutch writers of the time explained that the Sephardim of Recife succeeded in monopolizing much of the retail trade and many other branches of business because of their knowledge of foreign languages. Besides ladino and Hebrew, which they used among themselves, they knew both Dutch and Portuguese, and so they became indispensable middlemen in trade and commerce. Relatively few of the Dutch ever learned Portuguese fluently – it is said that Johan Maurits became tongue-tied when he tried to speak it – and there is no recorded instance of any Old Christian Portuguese in Brazil ever having bothered to learn Dutch. Thus, on account of the mutual ignorance and unwillingness to learn each other’s language on the part of the Dutch and the Portuguese, the Sephardim of Recife managed to fill in a void and found a valuable niche in the colonial economy of northeastern Brazil. It should be added that the Jews of Recife were not all wealthy financiers and merchants, as one might easily be led to believe from reading the anti-Semitic propaganda of their Catholic and Calvinist critics. While a few Jews arrived in Brazil with little capital and quickly made their fortunes, many others achieved only a modest competence at best while some others remained in abject poverty.

      Johan Maurits van Nassau, who was appointed governor-general of Brazil in 1637, gave the inhabitants of Dutch Brazil a very real sense of security. Jews were enrolled in the militia – one of the four companies was composed entirely of Jews and was exempt from guard duty on Saturday. On the other hand, Johan Maurits and Calvinist preachers tried unsuccessfully to convert Jews and Catholics to Calvinism. In 1636, a synagogue already existed in Recife as well as a rudimentary congregation in Paraíba.

      The Jews of Recife were known as financiers, brokers, sugar exporters, and suppliers of African slaves. By 1639 Dutch Brazil had a flourishing sugar industry with 166 engenhos, many of which were owned by Jews. Jews also became leaders in farming, about 60% of it was in their hands, and were actively engaged in the slave trade. Jews were also very active in the import and export business. All these opportunities helped to attract many Jews to Dutch Brazil. In 1638 a group of 200 Jews, led by Manoel Mendes de Castro, arrived on two ships. Soon after, the Jews of Recife needed rabbis, Hebrew teachers, and hazanim, and thus invited the renowned rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, one of the four rabbis of the congregation Talmud Torah in Amsterdam, and the scholar Moses Raphael d’Aguilar to come to Brazil as their spiritual leaders. They arrived in Recife at the beginning of the year 1642, by which time two congregations, Tsur Israel in Recife and Magen Abraham in Mauritsstad (Maurícia), already existed.

      Within a few years, the Jews of Recife numbered well over a thousand. Nieuhoff, the traveler, writing in 1640, says: “Among the free inhabitants of Brazil, the Jews are the most considerable in number; they have a vast traffic, beyond all the rest; they purchased sugar mills and bought stately houses in Recife.” With the migration of several hundred Jews from Amsterdam to Pernambuco, Recife soon became favorably known throughout Europe, both in Jewish and gentile circles. In fact, the city’s reputation as a center of Jewish learning and commercial activity was such that it caused Joam Fernandes Vieyra in 1645 to issue an impassioned plea to the Portuguese to reconquer Brazil. One of Vieyra’s arguments was that Recife “was chiefly inhabited by Jews, most of whom were originally fugitives from [the Inquisition].” He was horrified that the city’s Jewish population “have their open synagogues there, to the scandal of Christianity.” As a result, “for the honor of the faith,” he exhorts the Portuguese “to risk their lives and property in putting down such an abomination.”

      Tragically for the young and vibrant Jewish community of Recife, Vieyra’s wishes eventually came to pass. As early as 1642, the Portuguese, in collaboration with Brazilian sympathizers, began preparations for the liberation of northeastern Brazil. In 1645 they started a guerilla war that lasted nine years. Jews joined the Dutch ranks, and some were killed in action. Scores of persons died of malnutrition. The war ended with the defeat and capitulation of the Dutch in January 1654. The Jewish population of Dutch Brazil had reached its peak in 1645, when about 50% (1,500) of the European civilian population was Jewish. Even though during the war many Jews died and many returned to Holland, in 1650 there were still about 650 Jews in Recife and Mauritsstad (Maurícia).

      The minute books of the congregations Tsur Israel and Magen Abraham, which were brought back to Holland and subsequently published, show that the Jewish community was well organized, along the same lines as the parent body in Amsterdam. All Jewish residents were members of the community and were subject to its regulations, taxes, and assessments. The executive committee (mahamad) consisted of five members who were nominated by their predecessors. There was a talmud torah and an Etz Haim yeshivah. The mahamad exercised strict control over the legal aspects of community life, disputes, and civil or commercial suits between members of the community. It also had almost dictatorial powers over law enforcement. The Jewish cemetery was located in the hinterland, separated from Recife and Mauritsstad (Maurícia) by the Capibaribe River. The dead, therefore, had to be transported to the cemetery on boats until 1644, when bridges from Recife to Mauritsstad (Maurícia) and then to the hinterland were completed.

      Other parts of Brazil, which were not occupied by the Dutch, such as Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo also had Marranos among the population, but not in the same large numbers as Recife. It was stipulated in the capitulation protocol of January 26, 1654 that all Jews, like the Dutch, were to leave Brazil within three months, and were allowed to liquidate their assets and take their movable property with them. Many of Recife’s Sephardim left for Amsterdam, but some sailed north to the Caribbean (Barbados, Curaçao, the Virgin Islands, and Jamaica) where they are believed to have introduced the sugar plant and established the sugar industry. In September 1654, a group of 23 Brazilian Jews from Recife arrived in New Amsterdam (later to be known as New York), which was then under Dutch rule. They were the founding fathers and mothers of the very first Jewish community in the United States, New York’s Shearith Israel, which exists to this day.

      Marranos continued to live in Recife, some as Crypto-Jews. Two decades after the departure of the Dutch, the Inquisition was acquainted with and persecuted the Marranos who had reverted to Judaism during the Dutch occupation and had remained in Pernambuco. Many reports reached the Lisbon inquisitional office in the second half of the 17th century and during the 18th century regarding their clandestine observance of Jewish rituals. Many of the Jews who remained in Brazil felt compelled to flee into the hinterland in order to escape Portuguese retaliation and persecution. The communities which these Sephardim eventually established were a far cry from what they had enjoyed in Recife and Amsterdam, but they tried to preserve as best they could their beliefs and traditions. To this day one can still find villages and small towns in the northeastern part of Brazil whose inhabitants have maintained customs and beliefs that point clearly to a Jewish origin.

      The present-day Jewish community in Recife was established by Ashkenazi immigrants from Eastern Europe, particularly Russia, Rumania, and Poland, who settled there in the 1920s. They number 350 families (approximately 1,800 individuals) and maintain a Centro Israelita (Jewish Center), a high school, a synagogue, and various other Jewish organizations.

 

Notes

 

      ¹ Arnold Wiznitzer, Jews in Colonial Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960). On the history of the Sephardim in Brazil, see also:
      Kurt Loewenstamm, Vultos judaicos no Brasil: Uma contribuição à história dos judeus no Brasil. Trans. Georges D. Landau (Rio de Janeiro: Editora A Noite, 1956)
      Salomão Serebrenick and Elias Lipiner, Breve história dos judeus no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Edições Biblios, 1962).
      Nelson Megna, Diabolização dos judeus: Martírio e presença dos sefardins no Brasil colonial (Rio de Janeiro, Distribuidora Record, 1969).
      José Gonçalves Salvador, Os cristãos-novos: Povoamento e conquista do solo brasileiro. (São Paulo: Livraria Pioneira Editora / Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1976).

Voltar         23/02/2005