<BRAZIL, South American republic.
Colonial Period.
[Portuguese Brazil and New
Christians]
When the Portuguese admiral Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in
what is now Brazil in 1500, he was accompanied by at least
one person of Jewish birth, Gaspar da *Gama, who had been
kidnapped and forcibly baptized by the Portuguese in India
three years before. In 1502 a consortium of *New Christians
headed by Fernando de *Noronha obtained from King Manuel I
of Portugal a concession to colonize and exploit the newly
discovered land. The man business of the group was to export
Brazil wood (from which the name of the new land was
derived) to Portugal for the purpose of dyeing textiles.
There is good reason to believe that New Christians
transplanted sugar cane from Madeira to Brazil in the early
16th century. New Christian foremen and workers are said to
have been brought over from Madeira and São Tomé when the
first sugar plantations and mills were established in Brazil
around 1542.
[Sugar business -
Inquisition - Jews sent to Lisbon to trial]
One of the first five engenhos
(sugar plantation and mill) was owned in 1550 by a New
Christian, Diego Dias Fernandes. A large number of the 120 engenhos that existed
in Brazil in the year 1600 belonged to New Christians, many
of whom were also administrators. some of the New Christians
were staunch Catholics, but the majority secretly observed
Jewish rites and customs and were in fact *Crypto-Jews
called *Marranos by the Catholics.
The Inquisition was never formally introduced in
[[Portuguese]] Brazil. From 1580 on (after Portugal was
united with Spain), the bishop of Bahia received
investigation powers from Lisbon, and after 1591 the Holy
Office in Portugal sent inquisitional Commissaries to Brazil
at intervals. The first commission worked from 1591 to 1593
in *Bahia and afterward until 1595 in *Pernambuco; in 1618 a
commission again visited Bahia. The investigators of the
Inquisition held hearing based on denunciations, and the
suspected were arrested and sent to Lisbon to trial.
Brazil had about 50,000 European inhabitants in 1624, a high
percentage of whom were New Christians. They were owners of
engenhos,
businessmen, importers and exporters, teachers, writers,
poets, even priests. Bento Teixeira (also known as Bento
Teixeira Pinto), the author of the Prosopopéia (Lisbon, 1601) - the first
poem written in Brazil - and Ambrósio Fernandes *Brandão,
author of Diálogos das
Grandezas do Brasil - one of the greatest books
ever written about that country- were both New Christians.
[[The natives are hardly mentioned in this article]].
[Jews in the West India
Company colonial war business]
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 - were its allies. IN May
1624 two important forts of Bahia were captured by the
Dutch; but a large Portuguese and Spanish expeditionary
force arrived shortly after and after two months the Dutch
had to surrender (May 1625). All Dutch (col. 1322)
troops, including some Jews from the Netherlands, could
leave Bahia, but five New Christians who had returned to the
practice of Judaism during the Dutch occupation were hanged
for treason.
The West India Company soon prepared another expedition,
this time to Pernambuco. The States General 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.
Johan Maurits van Nassau, who was appointed governor-general
of Brazil in 1637, gave the inhabitants of Dutch Brazil a
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 and a
rudimentary congregation in Paraiba. Jews from Recife
addressed an inquiry regarding the proper season to recite
the prayers for rain to Rabbi Hayyim (Ḥayyim) Shabbetai in
Salonika, the earliest American contribution to the
*responsa literature.
[Jewish sugar industries -
Jewish tax farming - Jewish slave trade - Jews in export
import business]
By 1939 Dutch Brazil had a flourishing sugar industry with
166 engenhos, six
of which were owned by Jews. Jews also became leaders in tax
farming (about 63% of it was in their hands) and were
largely engaged in the slave trade. The import of Negro
slaves from Africa was a monopoly of the West India Company,
which sold them at public auctions for cash. Jews purchased
the slaves and resold them with great profit (on credit,
payable at the next sugar harvest) to the owners of the
plantations.
[[The dreadful conditions for the blacks from Africa are not
mentioned in this article]].
Negro slaves generally preferred to work for Jews because
under Jewish masters they did not have to work on either
Saturdays or Sundays, while the Portuguese allowed them to
rest only on Sundays and the Dutch, especially in the
hinterlands, required that slaves work seven days a week.
Jews were also very active in the export and import
business, and all these opportunities attracted many Jews to
Dutch Brazil.
[Jewish cultural life in
Brazil in 17th century]
In 1638 a group of 200 Jews, led by Manoel Mendes de Castro,
arrived on two ships. Soon after, the Jews of Recife needed
(col. 1323)
rabbis, Hebrew teachers and hazzanim (ḥazzanim) [[cantors]] and thus
invited the famous 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,
Zur Israel in Recife and Magen Abraham in Mauricia, already
existed.
[A Jew from Brazil on stake
in Lisbon in 1647]
A young Jews by the name of Isaac de *Castro, who had come
to Bahia - then under Portuguese rule - from Amsterdam via
Dutch Brazil, was arrested for teaching Jewish rites and
customs to Marranos. He was extradited to Lisbon and was one
of the victims of the auto-da-fé on Dec. 15, 1647.
[Again Jews in Dutch war
business against Portugal - Dutch defeat]
As early as in 1642 the Portuguese, in collaboration with
Brazilian patriots, began preparations for the liberation of
northeastern Brazil.
[[The colonial powers are fighting each other on foreign
territory. The natives are not asked...]]
In 1645 they began a guerrilla war that lasted nine years.
Jews joined the Dutch ranks, and some were killed in action.
Scores of persons died of malnutrition. Famine had set in
and conditions were desperate when, on June 26, 1649, two
ships arrived from Holland with food. On that occasion, R.
Isaac Aboab wrote the first Hebrew poem on the America,
"Zekher Asiti le-Nifle'ot El" ("I Have Set a Memorial to
God's Miracles").
Soon afterward other ships arrived with 2,000 soldiers and
more supplies. The guerrilla war continued, and some Jews
taken prisoner by the enemy were sentenced and hanged as
traitors; other were sent to Lisbon for trial. The war ended
with the defeat and capitulation of the Dutch in January
1654.
[Figures about Dutch
Brazil]
The Jewish population of Dutch Brazil had reached its peak
in 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 Maurícia.
[Details about the Jewish
cultural life in Dutch Brazil]
The minute book of the congregations Zur Israel and Magen
Abraham, which was brought back to Holland and has been
published, shows that the Jewish community was very 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
[[school]] and an Etz Haim yeshivah [[religious Torah
school]]. The "sedaca" (charity) was the general fund of the
community.
The mahamad [[executive committee]] 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 Maurícia by the Capibaribe River. The dead,
therefore, had to be transported to the cemetery on boats
until 1644, when bridges from Recife to Mauricia and then to
the hinterland were completed.
[[The natives were driven away and never asked...]]
[Expulsion of Jews from
Portuguese Brazil in 1654 - flight to Amsterdam or
Caribbean Islands - sugar business - or flight to New
Amsterdam]
Other parts of Brazil, which were not occupied by the Dutch,
such as Bahia, *Rio de Janeiro, *São Paulo, São Vicente,
also had New Christians among the population. It was
stipulated in the capitulation protocol of Jan. 26, 1654,
that all Jews, like the Dutch, were to leave Brazil within
three months and had the right to liquidate their assets and
to take all their movable property with them. The majority
left for Amsterdam, but some sailed to Caribbean Islands
(Curaçao, Barbados, etc.), where they are believed to have
introduced the sugar plant and the sugar industry.
A group of 23 Brazilian Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (old
name of New York), then under Dutch rule, on the Saint Catherine at the
beginning of September 1654. They were the founding fathers
of the first Jewish community in *New York. (col. 1324)
[Further persecutions of
the Jews in Portuguese Brazil - standstill of sugar
business - death penalties]
After 1654 there were either few Marranos left in Brazil or
they were not discovered. About 25 of them were sent to
Lisbon for trial in the second half of the 17th century.
Persecutions and extraditions began again in the 18th
century. Several hundred Marranos from Brazil appeared at
autos-da-fé in Lisbon in 1709, 1711, and 1713. The
persecutions, arrests, and confiscation of property brought
the manufacture and export of sugar to a temporary
standstill and seriously disrupted trade between Brazil and
Portugal. The most famous Brazilian Marrano and
Inquisitional martyr in the 18th century was *Antonio José
da Silva, who achieved prominence as poet and playwright.
Altogether dossiers of 18 Brazilian Marranos who suffered
the death penalty [[normally this was the stake]] are found
in the Archivo da Tôrre do Tombo in Lisbon.
[Abolition of the
Inquisition in 1773 - assimilation with mixed marriages]
The Portuguese royal decree of May 25, 1773, which declared
all legislation discriminating against New Christians null
and void, applied also to Brazil. From then on the
Inquisition left the New Christians in peace. Mainly because
of the high incidence of mixed marriages, the Brazilian
Marranos became more and more assimilated and abandoned any
residual Jewish beliefs and practices, becoming henceforth
good Catholics. Jewish immigration began again only after
1822, when Brazil became independent from Portugal.
[A.A.W.]> (col. 1325)