Yehudei Amazonya: experiences, religious practices, and symbolic representations

Abstract

In the Brazilian social context, characterized by the enormous ethnic-racial, cultural, religious, and identity diversity, where occurs certain invisibility of the Jews in the national culture and especially in the Amazonian society, it is relevant to research the presence of Jews in Brazil. As in other parts of the country, Amazon was also marked by the arrival of this ethnic-religious community. To understand their historical trajectory, identity, symbolic representations, religious traditions, and practices requires a multidisciplinary approach involving the history, sociology, anthropology, theology, and religious studies. From a literature review, the objective of this paper is to understand the coexistence, the articulation with the local religiosity, and the strengthening of the cultural elements that permeate the Jewish identity and the meaning that the Amazonian populations attribute to the culture, symbols and religious rites of the Yehudei Amazonya.