Talk: Jewish São Paulo
São Paulo, Portuguese for ‘Saint Paul’, is a cosmopolitan, melting pot city that is home to the largest Arab, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese diasporas, with examples including ethnic neighborhoods of Bixiga, Bom Retiro, and Liberdade. São Paulo is also home to the largest Jewish population in Brazil, with about 50,000 Jews (about half of Brazil’s Jewish population and 1.1% of the overall population of the city). Jews 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 ancestors of the present Jewish population came to Sao Paulo in successive waves of immigration. Before WWI, after WWI, during and after WWII, during the 1950s and finally in the 70s and 80s. These waves of immigration brought Jews from all around the world.
Join us for a conversation between Rabbi Elie Spitz and Rabbi Adrian Gottfried about the joys and challenges of living a Jewish life in the most populous city in the Southern Hemisphere.
This event is at 3 PM ET and 12 PM PT.
The event listed here is hosted by a third party. My Jewish Learning/70 Faces Media is not responsible for its content or for errors in the listing.
