History of the Jews in Brazil

Brazilian Jews

Judeus brasileiros יְהוּדִים ברזילאים‎
The Location of Brazil in South America
Total population
107,329[1]–120,000[2] Jewish Brazilians
Regions with significant populations
Brazil: Mainly in the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre.
Languages
Brazilian Portuguese  · Hebrew  · Yiddish · Ladino
Religion
Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Brazilian people, Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews

The history of the Jews in Brazil begins during the settlement of Europeans in the new world. 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, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, 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.

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 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.^[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]

Brazil has the ninth largest Jewish community in the world, about 107,329 by 2010, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) Census,^[1] and has the second largest Jewish population in Latin America after Argentina.^[6] The Jewish Confederation of Brazil (CONIB) estimates that there are more than 120,000 Jews in Brazil.^[2]