Frans Post, c. 1650
museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
"New Holland", Dutch Brazil
The Recife, a small fortified town in Portuguese Brazil, was captured by the Dutch Admiral Lonck in 1630 and became the centre of a short Dutch colonization. The Dutch governor Johan Maurits van Nassau (1636-1644) further protected the colony against Portugese guerrilla attacks, and under his leadership the colony began to expand and prosper. He even succeeded in building a luxurious new capital "Mauritsstad" on a small island in front of Recife. In its heyday, the colony covered 2000 kilometres of coastline protected by strong fortresses. However, after Johan Maurits' departure the military situation quickly deteriorated and in 1653 the Portuguese recaptured the Dutch colony. In 1644 Recife counted 1450 Jewish inhabitants; other sources even mention 5000. Dutch Brazil was by far the largest Jewish community of the New World. As the Dutch had granted absolute freedom of religion, the Jews were free to found their own congregation. In 1644 Isaac Aboab da Fonseca from Amsterdam became the first rabbi of Brazil - and of the new world. The Jews in Recife consisted of two groups: Marranos ("converted" Jews), who had arrived during Portuguese rule, and a group of Amsterdam Sephardic Jews, who had arrived later with the Dutch. Many Portuguese settlers had abandoned their sugar-estates during Dutch conquest, and the Jews were given the opportunity to buy a number of these. Within a short time they accumulated great wealth. Others became successful traders. At the departure of Johan Maurits, the Jewish community offered to buy the governor's palace "Vrijburg" for a sum of no less than 600.000 guilders for use as a synagogue. The offer was refused. Indeed, Dutch Brazil could prosper easily. It was not a new colony yet to be cleared. It already possessed large cultivated estates ready to harvest, and probably no less important were the Dutch privateer activities against Portuguese vessels. These two activities combined must have led to a great volume of trade. Probably most Jews were involved in trade, or financing of privateer expeditions. The system of sugar production was called the "share-cropping" system. The land was owned by large landowners (Senhores de engenha), who set up sugar-mills (engenhos). They would rent their land to several "Lavradores", who worked the fields with slave labour. Many of the "marrano"-jews were such Lavradores. Normally, a Lavrador would work 60 hectares with the help of 20 slaves. Sometimes they owned their own sugar-mill, or else they would process their cane at the mill of the Senhor. As payment, the Senhor would receive 30 to 40 percent of all sugar produced by the Lavrador. A 60-hectare-unit could produce 160 tons of sugar per annum. At its peak, the colony produced 25.000 tons per annum. The sephardic Jews rationalized the complete production and trade system. They set up an efficient trade system for importing slaves and exporting sugar products. Further, they innovated the 2-roll sugar-mill into the much more productive 3-roll mill. When the colony was recaptured by the Portuguese, many Jews chose to leave and settle elsewhere. 600 Jews, under the leadership of Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, returned to Amsterdam. Other groups spread throughout the Caribbean and North America. They went to Suriname, Curacao, Barbados, St. Thomas on the Virgin Islands, and New-Amsterdam in Dutch North America. Three ships with refugees went to Guadeloupe, but were expelled again in 1685. A minority stayed in Brazil, and entered a long period of terror and suppression. It seems logical that Jewish traders from Recife chose another mercantile centre to settle, while Jewish estate-owners sought more remote territories with large uncultivated lands to set up new estates. They went to places like French-Guyana, Guadeloupe, and Suriname. Very recently, excavations have begun to search for the Sephardic synagogue in Recife. The remains were discovered in May 2000. The RECIFE JOURNAL reports as follows: RECIFE, Brazil, May 14 -- The Street of the Benevolent Jesus traverses an area of restaurants and nightclubs just off the docks of this port city of 1.5 million people. And right in the middle of the busiest block, one of the most unusual archaeological projects ever undertaken in Brazil is under way: the excavation and reconstruction of the first synagogue built in the New World. The synagogue, Kahal Zur Israel, or Rock of Israel, flourished in the mid-1600's when the Dutch briefly controlled this part of northeastern Brazil and the sugar and tobacco plantations that made it rich. With the return of the Portuguese, though, Recife's Jews made their way to Manhattan, where they founded New York City's Jewish community. Excavation began last September under the direction of Marcos Albuquerque, an archaeologist from the Federal University of Pernambuco who previously uncovered forts, churches, battlefields and sugar mills from the Dutch period. Maps and property records offered a general idea of the location of the temple, but because the Inquisition had done everything possible to obliterate all signs of the Jewish presence, the dig began with some doubts. "We were pretty certain we were in the right place, but it wasn't until we found a well that we were sure," Dr. Albuquerque said. "In Brazil the well is always placed outside the house, never inside, and so we suspected that what we had come across was a mikvah," the ritual bath used by observant Jews, "and we were very pleased when a rabbinical tribunal confirmed that conclusion." With the support of the Brazilian government and several foundations, the small Jewish community here plans to turn the site into a museum and Cultural Center of the Jewish Presence in Brazil. Reconstruction of the building's interior is to begin at the end of May, with the goal of finishing by Rosh Hashana, the start of the Jewish new year, in September. "We cannot talk of restoring the synagogue because we have no evidence what it really looked like," said Boris Berenstein, a doctor who is president of the Israelite Federation of Pernambuco, the main Jewish group here. "But we can rescue the historical memory of this first community, and that is what we intend to do through documents, archives and exhibits." In addition, Kátia Mesel, a documentary filmmaker here, is working on a movie titled "The Rock and the Star" that will examine the early Jewish presence here. Like most of Recife's modern-day Jews, she is descended from immigrants who came from Eastern Europe over the last century with no awareness that others had preceded them. "We always were told that a synagogue had once existed here," Ms. Mesel said, "but the documentation was vague, and even when I went to New York to research the subject in 1997, very few people there had any idea what I was talking about." Brazil's Jewish population today, around 170,000, is barely one-tenth of 1 percent of the country's 170 million people. But as Henry Sobel, senior rabbi of the Congregação Israelita Paulista, the country's largest Jewish congregation, noted, "There is no doubt that Jews contributed greatly to the construction of Brazil," especially in the crucial early years of Portuguese colonial rule. The first Portuguese expedition to land in Brazil, 500 years ago last month, included a Polish-born Jew as its chief interpreter, as well as astronomers and mapmakers who are believed to have been of Jewish origin. Early settlers included many so-called marranos, Jews from the Iberian Peninsula who had converted to Christianity under duress but were eager to escape the clutches of the Inquisition to resume openly practicing their faith. By 1590, however, the Inquisition had installed itself in Brazil and begun persecuting these "new Christians." So when the Dutch seized the colony of Pernambuco in 1630 and announced a policy of religious tolerance, those who moved to Recife included not only a rabbi and cantor from Amsterdam but many Jewish families from territory under Portuguese control. "At the height of the Dutch period, Recife may have had a larger Jewish presence than Amsterdam itself," said Tania Kaufman, a history professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco. "The most reliable calculations indicate about 1,400 Jews, or more than one-tenth the total population of Recife and nearly half its population of free white civilians." But in 1654 the Portuguese drove out the Dutch, and fear of reprisals led to the dispersion of the Jews here. A group of 23 returning to Amsterdam were captured by Spanish pirates, but were rescued by a French vessel, which dropped them off at a fledgling Dutch colony called Nieuw Amsterdam. Their difficulties did not end when they reached what is today New York City. Peter Stuyvesant, governor of the settlement, sent a letter to the Dutch West Indies Company recommending "most seriously that this deceitful race, such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ, be not allowed further to infest and trouble this new colony." The response he received ordered that the newcomers be permitted "to live, trade and travel" freely and be given a burial ground of their own, which was established near what is today Chatham Square. It came to be known as the Brazilian Cemetery. But it was only after the English displaced the Dutch that the Jews from Recife were permitted to build a synagogue. The congregation, Shearith Israel, still exists, with its synagogue now at 70th Street and Central Park West. Some other families, though, were unable to book passage on ships leaving here. They fled to the remote hinterland where they were forced to resume the clandestine practice of their religion and eventually blended in with the local population. Even today, when Dr. Kaufman lectures in the interior, "I am often approached by people who tell me, 'I think I might be Jewish,' " she said. "When I ask them why, they produce a menorah or a tattered prayer book and tell me it was handed down to their grandparents by their grandparents before them, or they tell me of family customs that fit squarely within the Sephardic tradition." "The ability of elements of faith to persist for so long in such isolation is truly an amazing thing," she said. Sources: 1 - Hollandse pioniers in Brazilie, Harald S. van der Straaten, 1988 2 - Recife journal, May 2000
