Philadelphia: 'Jews of the Amazon' screening, Jan. 11

Do the stories of lost tribes and Jewish history grab your attention? You'll enjoy "The Fire Within: Jews in the Amazon Rainforest," to be screened at thGershman Y in Philadelphia, on Monday, January 11, at 7pm.

The documentary on the Jews of Iquitos in Peru was written, directed and produced by Lorry Salcedo Mitrani, a descendant of Peruvian Jews, while discovering his own grandfather's story. It has already been screened at many 2009 Jewish film festivals (more in 2010) and other venues, such as universities.

The booming community, populated by those who had made their fortunes in rubber, even had a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame.

The guest speaker will be Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein of B’Nai Jeshurun (New York City).

One of the best stories on this is from Tablet Magazine, written by Robin Cembalest.

Around a century ago, Abraham Edery Fimat, a Sephardic sailor from Morocco on leave in a Brazilian port, fell asleep in a bar. He soon learned his ship had sailed without him. As Victor Edery Jr., his grandson, recounts in Lorry Salcedo Mitrani’s affecting new documentary, The Fire Within, Abraham tried to follow his crew on another boat—only he went the wrong way. That’s how he ended up heading west, hundreds of miles down the Amazon, until he arrived in the remote Peruvian city of Iquitos.

To his amazement, Edery found other Jews there. They were merchants, traders, and adventurers, Sephardic as well as Ashkenazic, from Morocco and Europe, who came to make their fortunes in the rubber boom. As photos in the film show, many did. Parading in front of their tropical mansions in top hats and tuxedos, the newly rich aspired to bring a continental sophistication to the jungle outpost (though not with the intensity of the city’s most famous resident, the ill-fated opera lover in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo). Eventually, the rubber business moved on to Asia, and most of the Jews returned to their native lands. But the families they created with native women stayed behind.

An excellent story on the people of Iquitos was in the New York Times, by Simon Romero, which quotes several individuals, including Salcedo Mitrani:

“It was astounding to discover that in Iquitos there existed this group of people who were desperate to reconnect to their roots and re-establish ties to the broader Jewish world,” ...

The film demonstrates the the connection of their children and grandchildren to their heritage. Several hundred descendants of these men have rediscovered their identity, some have converted while others have made aliyah.

In the 19th century the Amazon was the center of a rubber boom. Many North African Sephardic men arrived to join in and make their fortunes, marrying local women and raising families. Some men died in the difficult conditions, others returned home after the industry's decline, still others stayed and kept a flame alive, lasting five generations in some cases.

Unknown to the established Lima Jewish community until the 1980s, the Orthodox rejected them, but the Conservative community taught them. Fifty years later, one man's efforts led to more than 500 converts and 300 who have made aliyah.

For more, see RuthFilms.com.

Colombia: Conversion dilemma in Latin America

Fear is an interesting emotion. It is even more interesting when it involves an established Jewish community and those who are considered "foreign," or, in some communities, those who have converted or wish to convert.

Perhaps it is an extension of an old joke. What's the first thing that two Jews on a desert island build? Three synagogues, so that there's always one they wouldn't be caught dead in.

It can range from the experience in Los Angeles when the large Iranian Jewish exodus began in the late 70s-early 80s. They began visiting major congregations in the city as they felt the need to worship as Jews as they had always done.

Persian synagogues in Iran were not joined via memberships, they were open to all. Being extremely family oriented, they ate elaborate Shabbat dinners at home and then went to services, arriving late, often just before the kiddush and its cookies.

In one prominent congregation, the mostly Ashkenazi congregation was infuriated. There were such silly comments as "they come only to eat our cookies," "they are always late to services," and on Shabbat morning, the entire family arrived, including babies in carriages, "it isn't dignified when the babies cry or the kids run around."

Day schools were full of Persian students, as Jewish education was important to these families. The American families didn't want their children in classes that had many Persian students enrolled.

Before asking questions and learning about this community, this congregation (and several others) had made up their minds. The idea that perhaps things were different elsewhere had never occurred to the congregation who were mainly two generations or more born in the US.

Today, of course, 30 years later, those new immigrant families are presidents of congregational boards, serve on boards of directors, are teachers in those schools, their children are USY presidents, and those same new families are now major financial contributors to the same congregation that accused them of only coming to Friday night services to eat their cookies.

Today, we can laugh at this, but at the time it was rather acrimonious.

In South America, the established Jewish communities don't know what to do with groups of Conversos or those who wish to convert and are coming out of the woodwork.

This JTA story discusses the Latin American Jewish dilemma with masses of converts.

Luis Alberto Prieto Vargas appears to be a Jew. He wears a kipah, he introduces himself as Jewish and two years ago Vargas, a Christian by birth, underwent a conversion ceremony to Judaism following several years of religious study.

It all began seven years ago when Vargas, now 51, became part of a movement in Bogota of religious seekers.

“As I did, most of the people involved came from Christian roots,” he said. “And we found in Judaism an answer to our inquiries.”

But Vargas’ conversion hit a key snag: Jews.

First, Orthodox Jews in Colombia refused to accept Vargas and 200 or so others as would-be Jews, vehemently disavowing association with them and refusing them access to the community’s mikvahs for conversion.

The group, which calls itself Maim Haim -- Hebrew for “living waters” -- turned to religious authorities in Israel for training and, they hoped, eventual conversion, but it was stymied when Colombia’s Orthodox Jewish leadership contacted rabbinic authorities in Israel and warned them against accepting the
would-be converts.

The group found an Israeli willing to teach them. In 2007 the rabbi and two colleagues convened a bet din - Jewish religious court - and converted 104 people, including Vargas.

Many Jewish institutions in Colombia refuse to accept them as members. Their plight demonstrates the difficulty many converts and would-be converts have in Latin America.

Local Jewish communities are concerned about being overwhelmed by mass converts, and many have questions about whether the converts’ motivations are genuine. In Israel and in Colombia, the converts often are viewed skeptically - as emigres-in-waiting more interested in obtaining Israeli citizenship, which is available to all Jews, than Judaism itself.

Some 70 percent of the group's members have filed aliyah petitions, and are being delayed while Israel’s Chief Rabbinate tries to make a decision about their papers.

Colombia's chief rabbi Alfredo Goldschmidt believes there should be a filter, as there is an explosion of groups who want to convert.

In 1974, when he arrived in Bogota, Goldschmidt said he got about one call a month about conversion. In 1996, the rate had jumped to one a week. In 2002, there were two to three calls a week.

In December 2008, the country's nine Jewish communities discussed how to handle the mass conversions.

“Latin American Jewish communities are not prepared for the challenge of mass conversions,” said Marcos Peckel, president of the Colombian Jewish Community Confederation, the umbrella organization for Colombian Jewry.

There are cases now, he said, “in which people going through conversion processes are larger than the traditional Jewish community itself. This would significantly alter the community’s life.”

For the time being, Main Haim members have been keeping Jewish traditions -- acquiring a Torah scroll, holding bar mitzvah ceremonies and importing a mohel from Venezuela when there is a newborn to circumcise. Denied access to the mikvah in Bogota, the congregation uses a river outside of Bogota as its ritual bath.

Peckel says each Jewish institution must decide whether or not to accept Maim Haim congregants as members. He notes that the group’s members have not asked to join Colombia’s main Jewish institutions.

Nore the comment of Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein of Lima, Peru:

“We have to be humble,” Bronstein said. “Instead of judging the people wanting to be Jewish, we should put ourselves in their shoes.”

Read the complete article at the link above.

Peru: Aliya from the Amazon

The history of Jews in Iquitos, Peru dates from the late-19th-century rubber boom that created a city from an Amazon outpost. It featured imported Italian marble and a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel - of Eiffel Tower fame. But that has been nearly completely forgotten.

This story is told in the New York Times.

Dozens of Jews from Morocco, Gibraltar, Malta, England and France settled in the town and in the jungle. They opened trading houses in search of fortune.

When the rubber trade collapsed, the fortunes in various places vanished. Some Jewish immigrants died young of diseases. Some remained, married local women and raised families. Others returned home, leaving descendants who believed they were Jews.

Jewish oil field inspector Ronald Reátegui Levy, 52, has persuaded many Jews in the town to move to Israel. More than 400 of those with Jewish ancestry have converted and emigrated. Some 160 members of his own family have converted - nearly all live in Israel.

He says that they were isolated for decades living at the edge of the jungle in a Catholic society, no rabbis, synagogue. When he was a child, his mother told him, "You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.”

His dream, which he has vigorously pursued, is to persuade the descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in this remote corner of the Amazon basin more than a century ago to reaffirm their ties to Judaism and emigrate to Israel.

Scholars are comparing the Jews here with Hispanic conversos in the southwestern US and northern Mexico, the Lemba of southern Africa and the Bene Israel of India.

“It was astounding to discover that in Iquitos there existed this group of people who were desperate to reconnect to their roots and re-establish ties to the broader Jewish world,” said Lorry Salcedo Mitrani, the director of a new documentary, “The Fire Within,” about the Jews of the Peruvian Amazon.

Iquitos is only reachable by boat or plane and is four degrees south of the Equator. Isolation, intermarriage and assimilation nearly wiped out the remains of Judaism.

Storefronts chiseled with Jewish surnames like Foinquinos and Cohen, and a cemetery ravaged by vandals, served as some of the few reminders of the community that once thrived here.

Victor Edery brought some of the descendants, including Reátegui Levy, in the late 1990s, and held religious ceremonies in his own home.

Venezuelan-born Israeli historian Ariel Segal arrived in the 1990s to study the community was also a catalyst for the community to organize.

In early 2000, Jews were observing Shabbat each Friday and High Holy Days. When Edery died, they met at the home of Jorge Abramovitz, 60, whose Polish Jewish father moved there long after the rubber collapse.

Although there was no rabbi, they held services with Hebrew learned from tapes, cleaned the cemetery and buried their dead. And they kept up their campaign to be recognized as Jews and to emigrate.

Still, the existence of the Jews of Iquitos posed some philosophical challenges to some Jews elsewhere. Since nearly all the Jews who originally settled here were men, their descendants could not attest to having Jewish mothers, ruling them out as being Jewish according to strict interpretations of Jewish law.

Moreover, the Jewish community of about 3,000 people in Lima, the capital, largely preferred to ignore the Jews of Iquitos, some scholars say, in part because of the thorny issues that the Jews here posed about race and origins. This is, after all, a country where a small light-skinned elite still wields considerable economic and political power — and Lima’s Jews are often seen as an elite within that elite.

There's much more to this fascinating story at the link above.