Abstract
Recife is the location of the first synagogue and the first Jewish community in the New World. The original Jewish community was formed during the period of the Dutch occupation and was mostly Sephardic. It wasn't until the second decade of the twentieth century that Jewish life in Recife was rekindled, this time mostly Ashkenazi. Even though the two periods of Jewish life are distinct, they both show signs of a similar underlying vitality.
Highlights
More than five hundred years have passed since the first Jews set foot in the New World, not in New Amsterdam, but on the northeastern coast of South America
Only in 1630, when the Dutch West India Company conquered Recife, Pernambuco, and Olinda, that the opportunity arose for Jews to practice their religion openly
Of the Jews who left, in Elkin’s words: “One hundred fifty families returned to Amsterdam; others went elsewhere in the Caribbean; and twenty-three stragglers wound up in the port of New Amsterdam, where Governor Peter Stuyvesant reluctantly admitted them on orders from his stockholders back home
Summary
More than five hundred years have passed since the first Jews set foot in the New World, not in New Amsterdam, but on the northeastern coast of South America. Recife is the capital of the northern state of Pernambuco, about 1500 miles from Rio and slightly more from São Paulo, where the largest Jewish community lives It is a bustling city of 1.5 million residents with a large metropolitan area of almost 4 million. In this note I would like to do two things: one, present a brief history of Recife from early times to the present; and two, describe modern Recife from a personal point of view, based on a recent visit and conversations with Recife natives, as well as research in secondary sources. Though this kind of history has hoary antecedents, harking back to Herodotus, it has lost its appeal among. On the other side of Brasília Teimosa is a curious neighborhood called Pina, said to be named after a tightfisted Jew, André Gomes Pina, and the Pina neighborhood was called at one time, Ilha do Cheira Dinheiro (Money-Sniffer Island).
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