CRUISE SHIP SHORE EXCURSION CHAI LIGHTS

AMAZON ADVENURE: MENAUS, BRAZIL

MANAUS JOURNAL; IN THE AMAZON, AMAZING DOINGS AT RABBI'S TOMB

By MARLISE SIMONS, Special to the New York Times

Published: June 12, 1987

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Even on a day more sultry than usual, some visitors filed past the rabbi's grave at the Manaus general cemetery, crossed themselves and added more mementos to the candles, pebbles, beads and coins covering his tomb.  MANAUS, Brazil— Rabbi Salom Moyal of Jerusalem never intended to stay along the Amazon and perform miracles, but that is what people in this jungle city insist he has been doing for many years.

''He is a saint,'' said Maria Gomez, dowager of the cemetery workers, who has weeded and swept gravesites near that of the rabbi for many of her 79 years. ''He does miracles for people who come to him with faith.'' To dismiss any doubts, she pointed to the marble plaques along the tomb, all of them engraved with messages of gratitude.

The rabbi's unusual status as a miracle worker amid the Roman Catholic crosses is not a matter of concern for the 700 or so Jewish inhabitants of Manaus. They seemed to take in stride that in the heart of the great Amazonian rain forest, the magical and the miraculous soar easily while orthodoxy and convention have a way of getting blurred.

''It is a bit strange but no one really minds,'' said Inacio Obadia, who teaches and officiates at the local synagogue. ''It is a question of popular belief, nothing institutional.'' Among Early Settlers

If anything, the ''shrine'' of Rabbi Moyal, who died here in 1910, is seen as a curious reminder from an era when many Jews were among the early foreign settlers of the villages and towns that sprang up along the banks of the Amazon. Most had left the poor ghettos of Tangier and Tetuan in Morocco, steamed up Brazil's equatorial grid of rivers and helped establish a trade route reaching deep into the hinterland.

Their descendants here, in true immigrant tradition, still like to talk of that time - the mid-19th century -when the Amazon basin provided the world with rubber, cacao and hardwood and Jewish families ran prosperous trading companies near the Amazon estuary at Belem. These families hired the new immigrants for their warehouses and steamers and sent them out to create a chain of new posts far upstream.

''Soon every little town had a Jewish representative of the Belem houses,'' Mr. Obadia said. ''He would set up a general store.''

The boats from Belem took the goods to the storekeepers upriver and on the way back they picked up their bartered products like rubber, nuts and skins. Drawn by Rubber Boom

As the story is told here, Rabbi Moyal traveled up the Amazon during the great rubber boom to visit these settlers and to collect contributions for his theological school at home, in Jerusalem. But he fell victim to disease and died.

Since then, family members have at times tried to take the rabbi's remains back to Jerusalem, said Samuel Benchimol, who served for 20 years as president of the Amazonian Jewish Committee. ''But we have not permitted that,'' he said. ''For the good relations with the Catholic community it is better to leave him here in peace, doing miracles.''

It seemed a typically conciliatory gesture from immigrants who have now blended into this region in so many ways. A Jewish joke here is that the ''other half of the businesses in Manaus are in the hands of our Arab friends.''

Some people here worry that there has been too much integration and intermarriage, eroding religious and cultural practices. Today, about 2,000 of Brazil's 120,000 Jews live in river towns of the Amazon region. But many more of their descendants, while still bearing non-Brazilian names like Isaac and Moises, have given up the traditions of Judaism. Others have chosen academic careers and moved south, to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

''Above all we suffer from an absence of leadership,'' said Mr. Benchimol, whose family of large-store owners is widely credited with sponsoring community activities. ''We are short of rabbis and short of schools.''

Actually, there are signs that the third- and fourth-generation immigrants are now starting to attach new importance to their roots. The first full-time Jewish school for children age 4 to 11 is opening this year in Belem.

In Manaus, adherents are proud of their somewhat musty but well-appointed synagogue, even though there is no rabbi in residence.

These days, more young people attend events and classes at the community hall. As the question of the myths surrounding Rabbi Moyal was raised here on a recent morning, a group of young men burst into near-Talmudic debate. How It All Began

The genesis, one young man held, was that in the early days visitors placed pebbles on the rabbi's tomb, following Jewish tradition. People of Manaus, not used to pebbles, took these to be a token of the powers of the deceased rabbi. Candles, rosaries and stories of miracles followed.

''No good Jew would do any of this,'' said another young man with vehemence. ''That is pagan, that is Catholic.''

''You cannot say that categorically,'' Mr. Obadia snapped. ''Sephardic Jews could supplicate for things. People have forever taken from each other's cultures. We do not know what they would do or would not.''

Jose Bonifacio, owner of a downtown trading company and longtime member of the synagogue, had drawn his own conclusions. ''We may not know how it all began,'' he said. ''But I myself have gone to the tomb to ask for certain things. And it worked.''

Beit Yaacov Synagogue Rebi Meyr - Jewish Community of Amazonas

Amazonas, Brazil

Description

Address: Avenida Leonardo Malcher, 630 - Centro

Phone number: +55 92 3234-9558

Link: www.comiteisraelita.com.br

Mail: ciam@argo.com.br

Sephardic community in Manaus today: 

After more than 200 years since the beginning of Jewish immigration to the North, the Kehilla of Manaus is composed of about 200 families and has a rich and diverse Jewish life. 

CIAM - ( Israeli Committee Par mater ) is the body of the community, which also includes the following institutions: 

* Synagogue - Beit Yaakov - Rebi Meyr 

* Hebraica - Head Office 

* Female Group - Meretz da melhor idade 

* Youth Group - Habonim Dror 

* Complementary Judaica School - Jacob Azulay 

A little of history ... 

In 1810, shortly after the Brazilian emperor D. Joao VI signed the Royal Charter to Open Ports of Friends, begins the immigration of Jews from North Africa to Brazil. They came mostly from Morocco. Some 1,000 families arrived in the Amazon between 1810 and 1910 and extended along the entire length of the Amazon from Belem to Iquitos. 

Benefited from a positive economic and political scenario in Brazil, in contrast to the social, political and economic unfavorable circumstances in Morocco, entire families came to the Amazon region as the rubber boom and the search of a land free from persecution and fears where they could prosper economically and raise their children in the Jewish faith maintain their cultural traditions. Soon their own small communities as a way of ensuring the continuance of their culture and tradition were created. 

The initial settlement took place in Belem (capital of the state of Para in northern Brazil ) and soon moved west into the country settled in several small villages along the Amazon River, reaching inland to Iquitos in Peru is 3000 km of Atlantic coastline. 

Today, there are 16 Jewish cemeteries dating from 1848. 

These are the best historical evidence of the presence of Jewish communities in the Amazon in the nineteenth century. 

The Jewish community in Manaus established its first synagogue in 1925 called Beth Yaacov Rebi Meyr . 

In 1967, a new wave of immigration mainly formed by Jewish businessmen in southern Brazil and Jewish communities in Latin America moved to Manaus. 

Currently there are about 850 Jews in Manaus. This number is the result of a community census taken in 2006.

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