B"H

Jewish Tours

Buenos Aires, Argentina

BRAZIL

EDUCATION AND CULTURE

Jewish communities all around Brazil maintained schools in the most important cities where they settled. In 1929, there were 25 schools in the country, with about 1,600 students. In São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Salvador there was an ideological plurality of schools dividing Zionists, who taught Hebrew, and Yiddishists, who taught Yiddish. In São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife there was a Jewish theater.

The Dr. Weizmann school was established in Belém, Pará State, in 1919. The Maguen David School was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1920, later renamed the Colégio Hebreu-Brasileiro. In São Paulo, a small talmud torah, a "ḥeder," opened in 1916. The first school in São Paulo was the Ginásio Hebraico-Brasileiro Renascença (1924). Renascença and talmud torah (1932) schools started to incorporate Jewish teaching with the Brazilian official curriculum, resulting in an important form of social integration for the children and young people. In São Paulo, a small school linked to the Bund existed in the 1930s and leftist sectors founded the Yiddishist Scholem Aleichem school in the 1940s. Other schools were C.N. Bialik and I.L. Peretz and the religious Beit Chinuch.

The Escola Israelita Jacob Dinezon of leftist and Yiddishist orientation was founded in Salvador in 1924. During the 1930s, a second school was founded – Ber Borochov, of Zionist orientation. Jewish schools were founded in Belo Horizonte (1928) and in Curitiba (1935). There were also schools in Nilópolis, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro State, and in Santos, interior of São Paulo.

The Jewish press in Yiddish was very active until the 1960s and there was an active Jewish press in Portuguese until the 1990s, when the remaining newspapers and magazines were confined to a limited Jewish public.

The first Jewish newspaper in Yiddish in Brazil was Di Menscheit, published in 1915 in Porto Alegre. The press reflected the ideological diversity, embracing left-wing and Zionist newspapers. Later came Kol Yisrael (1919) and Dos Idishe Vochenblat (1923), later to be called Brazilianer Yiddishe Presse (1927). Other Yiddish newspapers were Di Yidishe Folkstsaytung, Yidishe Tsaytung and Der Nayer Moment.

The first Jewish newspaper published in Portuguese was A Columna, in 1916. In 1933–39 São Paulo also had a Portuguese-language newspaper, A Civilização. Newspaper and magazines edited in Portuguese were Crônica Israelita, Semana Judaica (both linked to CIP in São Paulo), Aonde Vamos?, Shalom, O Reflexo, Revista Brasil-Israel, Encontro, and Boletim da Associação Sholem Aleichem in Rio de Janeiro. Many institutions had their own publication or newsletter.

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