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, "Yehudei 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.
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. 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.
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.
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