Behind the Headlines the Jews of Brazil

It is not “hard to be a Jew” if the place is the sensuous city of Rio de Janeiro. According to Adolpho Bloch, one of Brazil’s most influential men and a proud Jew, it is “harder to be a goy.”

Another legendary Jew of Rio, Hans Stem, the world-famed gem producer and owner of an enormous chain of jewelry boutiques in many lands, stated that “My country has been very good to me and I hope I’ve been good for my country.” The sentiments by Stem and Bloch are echoed by many of the 30,000 Jews who inhabit a city where ethnic strands of every variety coexist in mutual acceptance and harmony.

International attention was drawn to Brazil when Tancredo Neves was elected President on January 15, the first civilian to attain the Presidency in more than two decades. Neves, who assumes office on March 15, has strong credentials with the Jewish community; he is even reported to have informed some of his close associates that he would revoke, if he could, Brazil’s positive vote in 1975 for the United Nations General Assembly’s resolution equating Zionism with racism.

According to some Jewish leaders here, the country’s relations with Israel are “cordial but cool.” And should another anti-Israel resolution rear its head at the UN in the future, they feel that Brazil would abstain.

LITTLE OVERT ANTI-SEMITISM

There seems to be little overt anti-Semitism, especially since the diminishing of the oil crisis, but the PLO still has an office in Brasilia, the nation’s capital, headed by a permanent representative, without diplomatic status, and who is said to be most able in espousing the Arab cause, especially in university and labor union circles. Citizens of Christian Lebanese origin number four million, and many occupy high government positions, whereas there are very few Jews in high office.

“Observers here estimate the number of Jews in the country as approximately 120,000, with 30,000 in Rio, 60,000 in Sao Paulo and 30,000 in the remainder of this enormous land with a total population of 130 million. The prognosis for the future of Brazilian Jewry, in general, is a favorable one; the Jews of Rio and Sao Paulo are stable and vigorous.

But forecasts of the future of Jewry in the smaller communities are dismal. It appears likely that Jewish life in cities of northern Brazil, such as Bahia, Belem, Recife and Manaus will be extinct by the year 2000, with the remaining Jews moving to the large centers.

‘A COMFORTABLE SOCIAL AMBIENCE’

Rabbi Roberto Graetz, the young and influential head of A.R.I., Rio’s most impressive synagogue, with a membership of 1,000 families, voiced the opinion that Rio Jews were “not really Jewishly oriented or educated. The best that our six Jewish schools can do is to create a comfortable social ambience, rather than to explore Judaism intensively.”

Graetz continued: “Our young are content simply to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, rather than to study and re-examine the tenets of Judaism.” He asserted that the intermarriage rate is as high as 50 percent, and yet he pointed with pride to the fact that some 500 attend services at his “liberal” synagogue every Friday evening, and also that there are 73 Jewish institutions catering to the needs of the community.

CHARTING NEW DIRECTIONS

Ronaldo Gomlevsky, 36, is the newly-elected president of the Jewish Federation in Rio. A dynamic and enterprising leader, he has all kinds of plans to chart new directions for the Federation. This reporter witnessed one of them; the inaugural of a weekly, hour-long radio program on current and newsworthy Jewish affairs, with cantorial and other musical interludes.

The radio station, ironically, is owned by Brazilians of Lebanese origin. Gomlevsky plans to step up financial support for some thousands of “poor” Rio Jews, who are barely above the subsistence level. He estimates that there are about 150 Jews who inhabit the notorious “favelas,” or slums, of Rio, and who desperately need aid.

He is also arranging a program together with Vocation Travel Concepts, a large New York-based tour operator, of receptions for American Jewish members of the total of 2,000 tourists flying down to Rio via VTC weekly. There is a Jewish hospital, a home for the elderly, for children; several social and cultural clubs, journals in Yiddish and Portuguese, as well as “Shalom,” an impressive monthly.

JEWISH TENACITY PRAISED

In an interview with the head of the Brazilian Press Association, the highly-respected 87-year-old Barbosa Lima Sobrinho praised “Jewish tenacity and capacity for survival as an extraordinary and inspiring example for others.”

He declared that the “attitude of the general press toward the Jewish community was presently neutral, and he foresaw no deterioration in this regard, unless deepening economic woes exacerbate racial tensions. Indeed, the spiralling (more than 200 percent) annual inflation is seriously impairing Jewish contributions toward the support of the more needy and the elderly.

SYMBOLS OF SUCCESS AND CREATIVE RESPONSIBILITY

The aid of such tycoons as Stem and Bloch is all the more significant in these difficult times. Bloch, hale and hearty, at 78, came to Brazil in 1922 from Russia, worked as a printer, and his meteoric rise dates from 1952 when he published the first edition of Manchete, the nation’s most popular magazine.

Now also the owner of several television stations and huge graphics plants, he donates lavishly to all causes and all sectors of the populace. One of his current activities is the rebuilding, at primarily his own expense, of Rio’s former main synagogue in the downtown area. He can be found there every morning supervising every detail of construction and furnishing. He hopes to have it open for worship by this Passover.

Stem, gentle and warmly considerate of the thousands of Gentiles and Jews who work in his mines, factories, offices and shops, fled from Germany in 1939, and launched his unique enterprise in 1946. He visits Israel every year, where he has several outlets which, he says, bring him little profit, but much satisfaction in employing hundreds of Israelis.

Both Stern and Bloch, two of the wealthiest men in Brazil, have become symbols of success and creative responsibility for the entire nation, for Jew and non-Jew alike.