Among the deputies present at the constitutional assembly which convened November 15 for drawing up a new constitution for Brazil was Dr. Horacio Lafer, first Jew to hold a deputyship since the beginnings of the Jewish colony of Brazil.
Dr. Lafer, it is true, was not elected to represent the Jews, nor by a Jewish vote. He was not elected by a political party, but by representatives of the industrialist class of Brazil, whose delegate he therefore is. Nevertheless Dr. Lafer is everywhere regarded as a representative of the Jews of Brazil, principally because he has always been active in the Jewish community and still defends the interests of his people whenever necessary.
Before Dr. Lafer left for the constitutional assembly, which met for the first time since 1930, when the revolutionaries overthrew the constitutional president and his government, the deputy talked with a representative of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the new constitution and its bearing upon matters affecting the Jewish residents of Brazil.
OPTIMISTIC ABOUT FUTURE
Dr. Lafer, who is himself a member of the younger Jewish generation to have grown up here, is very optimistic about the future of the Jews in Brazil. He cited the liberal tendencies of the projected constitution as proof of this, enumerating enthusiastically various points of the project, among them the separation of church and state; equality for all religions; freedom regarding religious instruction in the schools; freedom concerning religious marriage ceremonies.
These tendencies are an inherent part of the old traditions of Brazil, from which the Brazilian people will not depart. Dr. Lafer does not doubt that the projected constitution will shortly become the law of the land.
When questioned about the immigration of Jews to Brazil the Jewish deputy assured the interviewer that a new set of general immigration regulations will soon be released and will be very favorable to the Jews. In the present governmental circles there are many people clear-sighted enough to realize, Dr. Lafer said, that the Jews were instrumental in the progress of Brazil and still are. The governmental leaders will therefore probably not yield to any pressure tending to change their view concerning the Jews as useful citizens of the country.
LIVE IN THE TRADITION
Dr. Lafer is about forty years old. He was born in Brazil. On his mother’s side he is descended from the well-known Clabin family, one of the first Jewish families to settle in Brazil and today one of the wealthiest. Dr. Lafer is the present head of a number of Clabin industries. His parents, who came here from Lithuania, live in Sao Paulo. They are religious Jews and continue to live the traditional Jewish life. Dr. Lafer visits them often.
Dr. Lafer’s record is without blemish and he is much liked in all Brazilian circles. He completed his education in England, and he devotes most of his time to the problems which arose in the course of his introducing English industrial methods into Brazilian industry.
In 1929 Dr. Lafer was Brazil’s first delegate to the League of Nations and took an active part in a number of commissions of an economic and legal nature. For a number of years he has been associated with the National League, which carries on widespread campaigns for the perpetuation of the liberal traditions of the Brazilian people. He organized and was the president of various industrial and commercial organizations and was instrumental in the founding of the All-Brazilian Industrial Confederation, which plays a considerable part in the industrial world of Brazil.
Dr. Lafer is very active in Jewish circles. He headed the Hebrew high school “Hatechia”, and as a result of his efforts the law forbidding children under ten years of age to study foreign languages was modified, thus removing the threat of liquidation which hung over all the Jewish schools in the state of Sao Paulo. He took an active part in building the Jewish temple in Sao Paulo. Recently, when a number of anti-Jewish books and articles appeared, Dr. Lafer aided in the publication of a special collection of articles written by prominent Brazilians about Jews. The collection succeeded in silencing the worst of the Jew-haters, because taking a stand against Jews meant opposing the intellectual world of Brazil.
In the course of the interview Dr. Lafer mentioned the names of most of the deputies of the various Brazilian provinces and assured your correspondent that they were friendly towards the Jews.
Dr. Lafer hopes that as a result of his work in the constitutional assembly he will be of still greater service to the Jewish community of Brazil and thus prove that the Jews are a positive element in the growth of the country and as such to be given free entrance into the land.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
