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3 Kosher Feijoada Drawing on its collective pasts, the Jewish community constitutes itself in ways that are particularly Brazilian. As James Holston says, “The past always leaks through the present” (2008:34). Jewish Brazilian identities are not made in the past but are continually in process, responding to the conditions offered at particular historical junctures, plucking meaning from the past to justify the present, and ultimately using the present to imagine and enact a different future, one in which Jewish belonging is not contingent upon sacrificing their meaningful pasts. Rather than being acted upon by a hostile history, these Jews are appropriating local and national ideologies, regardless of whether these are “mythic,” and insisting on proceeding as if they are real. Even if these ideologies are utopic, they may still be the hopeful “beacon” that Brazil continues to offer (Sheriff 2001:224). Jewish Brazilian identity poses a series of contradictions stemming from the paradox of being non-Christian in a Christian nation, even though sometimes the dominant expressions of Christianity are more cultural than religious. Other contradictions are internal to the Jewish 70 ◆ Kosher Feijoada community itself, rooted in what are often profound cultural and religious differences. Many paulistano Jews are willing to overlook differences of origin, religiosity, and even social class in the name of Jewish continuity , that is, making sure that young Jews marry other Jews. However, the emphasis on continuity is not sufficient to explain their flexibility. They locate the reasons for the acceptance of the sorts of differences that divide Jewish communities in other places in their Brazilianness, framing it in terms of Brazilian ideologies of race and tolerance. They even extend that explanation to a flexibility in religious practices, however much that might be part of the modern condition, and place great value on bridging difference as an expression of their national identity. However, there are contradictions in community practices, as for example when some Orthodox families distance themselves from the nonOrthodox families who live in their same apartment building. The contrast with the celebrated tolerance in the context of shared institutions such as the Hebraica is just one of the ways that ethnic identity is exposed as a process rather than a fixed identity. Jewish Continuity “Where else could you see girls in ‘dental floss’ bikinis and Orthodox families side by side?” asked the maestro, with a mix of incredulity and admiration. (A professional conductor, formerly with the state symphony of Rio, and now responsible for the choruses at the Hebraica, he was frequently addressed by his title as a sign of respect.)1 Although he claimed that the much smaller Jewish community in his native Uruguay integrated many kinds of Jews, Maestro León Halegua was nevertheless impressed by the unique synthesis of the São Paulo community that was in evidence that day at the Hebraica. Indeed, weekends at the Hebraica club provide sometimes astonishing juxtapositions of the most apparently irreconcilable differences to be found within a Jewish community. Bands of bikini-clad adolescents sun themselves poolside while Orthodox women with long skirts and covered heads push strollers along nearby paths with a gradated set of children in tow. Hasidic men with their black garb, broad-brimmed hats, and full beards apprehend gangly boys sporting corporate logos on their oversized shorts and sneakers in order to remind them of their responsibility to pray; a few boys even accept help tying on the tefillin (phylacteries) right Kosher Feijoada ◆ 71 there in the club,2 holding out their left arm to get wrapped by the leather strap while they balance a basketball with their right. That all these Jews with different agendas and different relationships to Judaism and Jewishness frequent the same social institution presents more than intriguing visual contrasts. That they share the same social space speaks directly to the inherent contradictions as well as the possibilities offered by an institution that defines itself, through its membership and activities, according to something as variable as Jewishness. That neither the membership nor the activities are exclusively “Jewish” is just one of the many contradictions that make the Hebraica such a compelling space for understanding what it means to be Jewish in São Paulo. The club provides infrastructure and activities for all ages, from a fullday preschool to weekly activities for elderly members of the community, from dance and martial arts classes to sports teams, and from lectures by prominent authors for young professionals to thematic evening parties for mature couples. However, the club...

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