Identity Dilemmas: Nation, Religion and Race Among the Portuguese Jews from Holland to Colonial Brazil

Ronaldo Vainfas

doi:10.11648/j.history.20210901.13

Abstract

This article discusses the identity dilemmas of the Sephardic community settled first in Amsterdam, after in the Colonial Brazil during the 17th century. It reviews the the classical historians dedicated to research on the Sephardic Diaspora in Early Modern History, like Arnold Wiznitzer, Daniel Swetschinsky, Jonathan Israel, Mirian Bodian and, mainly Yosef Kaplan, who proposed the concept of new to designate the New Christians who returned to their ancestors Judaism in Amsterdam and Brazil. It is based on sources from the Kahal Kadosh Zur Israel, the Jewish congregation founded in the city of Recife under the Dutch rule during the 1630s, particularly the records and also the regulation of 1648. It analyses, mainly, several Holy office's charges against Jews who, during the Dutch rule in Brazil, converted themselves to Judaism, comiting the crime of apostasy from Catholicism. Many of them tried to scape from Pernambuco after the Dutch defeat, in 1654, but were catched by the Portuguese Inquisition during the 1650's and the 1660's. The focus of the discussion lies on the relationship between the concept of Men of the Nation (Gente da Nacao in Portuguese) and religious and race identities adopted by this diasporic community. A community persecuted in for religious and racial reasons in the Iberian world, but that also owned his proper prejudices against some minorities, like the mulattos and the Ashkenazi Jews, whether in Holland, whether in Colonial Brazil.

Highlights

In his Dictionary of Concepts in History [15], Harry Ritter stated that the concept of Nation derives from the Latin verb nascere, indicating the place of birth or even the people bourn in certain place
Several individual cases recorded in the inquisitorial processes6 [23] allow to affirm that the New Jews, those of Sephardic origin, whether in Holland or in Dutch Brazil, lived a drama of conscience, an identity dilemma, a doubt about which law could guarantee the spiritual salvation of each one, as Schwartz’s book show us
- the Sephardic rehabilitated the concept of Men of the Nation

Summary

Introduction

In his Dictionary of Concepts in History [15], Harry Ritter stated that the concept of Nation derives from the Latin verb nascere, indicating the place of birth or even the people bourn in certain place. Vocabulary, published in 1728, followed literally by Antônio de Morais e Silva, in the Portuguese Language Dictionary, dated 1789 He defined nation as the people of a country or region with “self language and own laws and government own”, exemplifying with the French, Spanish and Portuguese nations. He recorded the variant Men of the Nation as a synonymous the Jewish descendants, the so called New Christians. John V that the persecution of the Portuguese New Christians by the

22 Ronaldo Vainfas: Identity Dilemmas

Men of the Nation

Identity Dillemmas Among the New Jews

The Sephardic Exclusivism in Amsterdam and Dutch Brazil

Conclusion