Kosher Feijoada and Other Paradoxes of Jewish Life in São Paulo

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Departures 1. This is the Portuguese spelling, carnaval, in contrast to the norm in English-language publications which have favored the translation “Carnival.” The Brazilian forms of this festival are culturally distinct and deserve to be linguistically marked as such. See also Hintzen (2001). 2. All names given here are fictitious, unless the individual was so well known and distinctive that it would be impossible or impractical to hide his or her identity, such as in cases where the person occupied a prominent or significant position vis-à-vis the community and spoke from that position. 3. B’nai B’rith translates as “Sons of the Covenant,” and the international organization of this name is the best known Jewish humanitarian and community service organization in the world. 4. Ashkenazi refers to Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, originally from France and the Rhineland; Ashkenazim is the plural form. 5. The literature on religion in Brazil is enormous and encompasses studies of Catholicism and new Christianity (Burdick 1993, 1998), African-based religions such as Candombl é and Umbanda (see, e.g., Bastide 1978[1960], Johnson 2002, Landes 2006[1947], Ortiz 1991[1978]); Japanese-based religions old and new, including Buddhism, Seichono -ie, and the Church of World Messianity (Matsuoka 2007); various forms of Protestantism ; and new syncretic religions such as Santo Daime. 6. In addition to Jews, other non-Christian groups include the many nonmissionized indigenous peoples throughout the country, as well as Muslims, who make up a small portion of the largely Christian Middle Eastern/Arab population (Karam 2007). 7. Myerhoff’s film of the same name was awarded the best short documentary by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1976, the only ethnographic film that has received this distinction to date. 8. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett suggests that this may have also been the unintended consequence of Boas’ approach to combating anti-Semitism through the repudiation of the concept of race; “if Jews did not exist as such, how could ethnographers describe their culture?” (1995:x). 9. According to Frank, Mandelbaum’s article “The Jewish Way of Life in Cochin” is “probably the first ethnographic account to appear in print about a Jewish community by an American anthropologist” (1997:736). A student of Herskovits, Mandelbaum had already established himself as a scholar of India, and his research on Cochin’s Jews is not among his best-known work. While anthropologists have subsequently studied other Jewish communities around the world, Mandelbaum’s work is still remarkable for its focus on one of the lesser-known communities, which by definition and by his interpretation , continues to challenge our understandings of Jews and Jewishness. 10. This research does not address the many Brazilians who are descended from the cristãos-novos, marranos, or other forced converts, or “crypto-Jews,” many of whom are not aware of their Jewish ancestry. See Ramagem (1994) for a discussion of the descendants of cristãos-novos, some of whom are now converting to Judaism in Brazil. 11. On the concept of double consciousness, see Du Bois 1990[1903]; see also Chandler 2000, Gilroy 1993. 12. The original dispersal refers to the galut, Hebrew for “exile,” beginning in the sixth century B.C.E., at the time of the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem. 13. In this, I depart from a precept of some forms of Zionism which posit that contemporary Israel does negate the original dispersal by bringing Jews from all corners of the world back to their homeland. 14. This concept is defined by Rosaldo as “the right to be different and to belong in a participatory democratic sense” (1994a:402). See also Ong 1996. 15. For a discussion of scientific racism in the significant period of 1870–1930, which saw the transition from slavery to immigrant labor, see Schwarcz 1993. 16. It is worth noting that Sorj is originally from Uruguay, part of the significant presence of Latin American Jewish scholars and professionals who immigrated to Brazil and became part of the transnational Jewish community. 17. An earlier generation of Brazilian scholars sought to understand contemporary Brazil through its past, most significantly in the seminal works of Gilberto Freyre (Casa grande e senzala, 1933, translated as The Masters and the Slaves, 1986a), Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, 1936 (Raízes do Brazil, 1995), and Caio Prado Jr. (Formação do Brasil contempor âneo, colônia, 1942, translated as The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, 1967). For a discussion of...