Jews in Brazil
| Judeus brasileiros יְהוּדִי ברזילאי |
|
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| (107,329–120,000 Jewish Brazilians) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Mainly in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro | |
| Languages | |
| Brazilian Portuguese · Hebrew. Other languages are also spoken such as Yiddish · Polish · Ladino, etc. | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Brazilian people, Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews |
The history of the Jews in Brazil is a rather long and complex one, as it stretches from the very beginning of the European settlement in the new continent. Although only baptized Christians were subject to the Inquisition, Jews started settling in Brazil when the Inquisition reached Portugal, in the 16th century. They arrived in Brazil during the period of Dutch rule, setting up in Recife the first synagogue in the Americas, as early as 1636. Most of those Jews were Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands. In his The Wealth of Nations, Adam 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. (See History of Pernambuco#Jews in Pernambuco).
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 on the Amazon, where their mixed-race descendants continue to live. Waves of Jewish immigration occurred first by Russian and Polish Jews escaping pogroms and the Russian Revolution, and then during the 1930s during the rise of Nazis in Europe. In the late 1950s, another wave of immigration brought thousands of North African Jews. Nowadays, the Jewish communities thrive in Brazil. Some anti-Semitic events and acts have occurred, mainly during the 2006 Lebanon War such as vandalism of Jewish cemeteries.
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