Documents of Jewish communities, organizations and schools in Brazil

The history of the Jews in Brazil is quite long and somewhat complex, since it extends from the very beginning of European colonization in the new continent . Jews began to settle in Brazil since the Inquisition arrived in Portugal in the sixteenth century .They arrived in Brazil during the period under Dutch rule, settling in Recife, where the first American synagogue was built in early 1636. Most of these Jews were Sephardim who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal towards the religious freedom of the Netherlands. Adam Smith attributed much of the development of Brazil's sugar industry and cultivation to the arrival of Portuguese Jews who were expelled outside Portugal during the Inquisition. After the first Constitution of Brazil in 1824 that granted the freedom of religion, several Jews began to arrive little by little to Brazilian territory. Many Moroccan Jews arrived in the 19th century , mainly due to the rubber fever . Also, several waves of Jewish immigration occurred during the rise of Nazism in Europe. In the late 1950s , a new wave of immigration brought thousands of Jews from North Africa. Today, Jewish communities are developed in Brazil and there are several Jewish and Zionist groups, clubs, schools, etc. Some minor anti-Semitic events and events occurred mainly during the 2006 Lebanon War as vandalism of Jewish cemeteries.
Brazil has the ninth largest Jewish community in the world and the fourth in the continental level, counting around 107,329 people in 2010, according to the IBGE Census. The Brazilian Jewish Confederation (CONIB) estimates that there are more than 120,000 Jews in Brazil. By 2015 the Jewish population had declined to 94,500 members, mainly due to the low birth rates of the community, the aging of the Jewish population and the process of secularization of the young people who leave the ties with the community. [Source: Wikipedia]