“The highest priority for Jews must be to reach out to Jews of different beliefs,” Rabbi Henry Sobel of Sao Paulo, Brazil, told delegates at the World Union for Progressive Judaism International Conference in Toronto last week.
Calling for a dialogue with the “moderate Orthodox,” Sobel admitted there are “non-negotiable” differences. “But that should not prevent us from looking for areas of cooperation and trust,” he said. “Support of Israel is one example. The struggle for Soviet Jewry is another.”
“Our position as Progressive Jews must strike a good balance, manifesting strong opposition to the Orthodox establishment’s use of political power to suppress Progressive Judaism, while at the same time calling for dialogue with the Orthodox moderates,” Sobel said. “There is a need for an ongoing dialogue between Liberal and Orthodox Jews on every level, not only among rabbis and lay leaders, but especially among amcha, the people,” he said.
THE REFORM MOVEMENT IN ISRAEL
With regard to the Reform movement in Israel, Sobel said, “We must continue our unrelenting struggle for the recognition of Progressive Judaism.” Pointing out that a December 1985 poll showed that 66.8 percent of Israelis interviewed felt that the Reform and Conservative movements should be recognized and should receive the same rights now held by the Orthodox, he asked:
“If we have popular support in a democratic society, why must we subject ourselves to Orthodox domination?” He suggested that encouraging aliya of non-Orthodox Jews would be an important step in “legitimizing” the Reform movement in Israel.
Sobel’s Sao Paulo synagogue, Congregacao Israelite Paulista, has a membership of 2,000 families and is the largest in Latin America. Some 250,000 Jews live in Brazil today, 90,000 in Sao Paulo and 35,000 in Rio. Sao Paulo, the fifth largest city in the world, is the seat of the Confederacao Israelite do Brasil, the umbrella organization of the Jewish community (affiliated with the World Jewish Congress).
LIBERAL JEWS IN LEADERSHIP ROLE
Although the Jewish community is only a small fraction of Brazil’s population of 130 million, 95 percent of whom are Catholic, Sobel told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Liberal Jewish leadership plays an important role in the country. The Jewish community is part of the small economic and social elite in Brazil, the five percent of the population that owns most of the big business and land.
In the 1970’s the Liberal Jewish movement made an alliance on national social action concerns with the Nation Conference of Brazilian Bishops, Sobel said. Describing Brazil’s Roman Catholic Bishops as the most liberal in the world, Sobel said they consider it their mission to build a just society in Brazil. (Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world, with one-tenth of the world’s bishops.)
The Roman Catholic Church in Latin America has been increasingly assuming a role in pointing out injustices in society, not unlike the ancient Hebrew prophets,” he told the JTA.
THE JEWISH-CATHOLIC COMMISSION IN BRAZIL
Under the sponsorship of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops, Sobel coordinates a National Commission of Jews and Catholics, comprised of four Liberal rabbis, one Liberal lay leader, one Bishop, three Catholic spokesmen for social reform, and one Catholic specialist on Catholic-Jewish relations. Meeting on a monthly basis, the group takes positions on issues of national and international concern. The Confederacao Israelite do Brasil is consulted on an informal basis.
The Catholic-Jewish group this month published a 150-page guidebook entitled “Israel: People, Land and Faith,” which will be distributed in all of the country’s Catholic schools. Sobel said that most Catholic children attend parochial schools, and that the six Jewish schools in Sao Paulo and two in Rio serve most of the Jewish students in the country. At least a third of Brazil’s population is at a bare subsistence level, and has been left out of the country’s “development.”
In November 1985, Sao Paulo was the site of the first Pan-American Conference on Catholic-Jewish Relations. Sobel said that the Orthodox Jewish community tried to “sabotage” the conference, because Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris and a former Jew, was keynote speaker.
The conference was, nevertheless, a success, Sobel said. One significant result was the marking of the 10th anniversary of the infamous United Nations “Zionism is racism” resolution with an official resolution signed by all of Brazil’s bishops stating that “Zionism is not racism.”
ANTI-SEMITISM IN BRAZIL
Asked about anti-Semitism in Brazil, Sobel said that “overt manifestations are only sporadic, and the few that occur are fed by a ‘pragmatic’ anti-Israel government policy.” One reason for this policy is Brazil’s mounting international debt of $110 billion, and the country’s need for Arab oil and petrodollars, Sobel said. But he emphasized that “our most urgent task in Latin America today is not to obliterate anti-Semitic trends, but to rediscover and redefine what it means to be a Jew.”
Sobel’s congregation was founded by German immigrants in 1936 and still follows the German Liberal traditions of separate seating for men and women, with an organ and mixed choir. Sobel has headed the congregation since his ordination from Hebrew Union College 17 year ago.
In a sense, Sobel’s decision to live in Brazil is a return to his “roots.” The son of Belgian Jews who fled the Nazis in 1939, Sobel was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1944. Portuguese could thus be considered his “native” tongue. But his family immigrated to the United States from Lisbon when he was yet too young to talk.
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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.
