The history of the Jews in Brazil begins during the settlement of Europeans in the new world. Although only baptized Christians were subject to the Inquisition, Jews started settling in Brazil when the Inquisition reached Portugal, in the 16th century. They arrived in Brazil during the period of Dutch rule, setting up in Recife the first synagogue in the Americas, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, as early as 1636. Most of those Jews were Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands.
The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to Portugal's colonial possessions, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and Goa, where it continued investigating and trying cases based on supposed breaches of orthodox Roman Catholicism until 1821. As a colony of Portugal, Brazil was affected by the nearly 300 years of repression of the Portuguese Inquisition, which began in 1536.
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith attributed much of the development of Brazil's sugar industry and cultivation to the arrival of Portuguese Jews who were forced out of Portugal during the Inquisition.
After the first Brazilian Constitution in 1824 that granted freedom of religion, Jews began to arrive gradually in Brazil. Many Moroccan Jews arrived in the 19th century, principally because of the rubber boom, settling in the Amazon basin, where many of their descendants continue to live. Waves of Jewish immigration occurred first by Russian and Polish Jews escaping pogroms and the Russian Revolution, and then German Jews in the 1930s during the rise of the Nazis in Europe. In the late 1950s, another wave of immigration brought thousands of North African Jews. By the 21st Century the Jewish communities were thriving in Brazil. Some antisemitic events and acts have occurred, mainly during the 2006 Lebanon War such as vandalism of Jewish cemeteries. But in the main, Brazil's Jewish population is highly educated, with 68% of the community holding university degrees, employed mainly in business, law, medicine, engineering, and the arts. Most own businesses or are self-employed. The IBGE Census shows that 70% of Brazil's Jews belong to the middle and upper classes. As a group, Jews in Brazil see themselves as a successful segment of society, and face relatively little antisemitism at the onset of the 21st century.
Brazil has the tenth largest Jewish community in the world, about 107,329 by 2010, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) Census, and has the second largest Jewish population in Latin America, after Argentina. The Jewish Confederation of Brazil (CONIB) estimates that there are more than 120,000 Jews in Brazil.
First Jewish arrivals
There have been Jews in what is now Brazil since the first Portuguese arrived in the country in 1500, notably Mestre João and Gaspar da Gama who arrived in the first ships. A number of Sephardic Jews immigrated to Brazil during its early settlements. They were known as "New Christians" - Conversos (pt.) or Marranos (sp.) — Jews obliged to convert to Roman Catholicism by the Portuguese crown.
The Jews from Portugal avoided immigrating to Brazil, because they would also be persecuted by the Inquisition. Most of the Portuguese Conversos took refuge in Mediterranean countries such as in North Africa, Italy, Greece and the Middle East, and others emigrated to countries that tolerated Judaism, such as the Netherlands, England and Germany. Many Sephardic Jews from Holland and England worked with the maritime trade of the Dutch West India Company, especially with the sugar production in the northeast of Brazil.
The first Jews who arrived in South America were Sephardic Jews who, after being expelled from Brazil by the Portuguese, settled in the northeast Dutch colony. Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue was the first synagogue in the Americas, established in Recife in 1636 and a community of about 1450 Sephardic Jews lived there. When the Portuguese retook Recife in 1654, 23 Jews from the community escaped to the Dutch North American colony of New Amsterdam, that in 1664 would become New York City.
In the final decades of the 18th century, some Conversos came to southeastern Brazil to work in the gold mines. Many were arrested, accused of Judaism. Brazilian families that descend from the Conversos are mainly concentrated in the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Pará and Bahia.
Most sources state that the first synagogue of Belém, Sha'ar haShamaim ("Gate of Heaven"), was founded in 1824. There are, however, controversies; Samuel Benchimol, author of Eretz Amazônia: Os Judeus na Amazônia, affirms that the first synagogue in Belém was Eshel Avraham ("Abraham's Tamarisk") and that it was established in 1823 or 1824, while Sha'ar haShamaim was founded in 1826 or 1828.
The Jewish population in the capital of Grão-Pará had by 1842 an established necropolis.
Agricultural settlements Because of unfavorable conditions in Europe, European Jews began debating in the 1890s about establishing agricultural settlements in Brazil. At first, the plan did not work because of Brazilian political quarrels.
In 1904, the Jewish agricultural colonization, supported by the Jewish Colonization Association, began in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil. The main intention of the JCA in creating those colonies was to resettle Russian Jews during the mass immigration from the hostile Russian Empire. The first colonies were Philippson (1904) and Quatro Irmãos (1912). No page; quote taken from abstract. However, these colonization attempts all failed because of "inexperience, insufficient funds and poor planning" and also because of "administrative problems, lack of agricultural facilities and the lure of city jobs."
In 1920, the JCA began selling some of the land to non-Jewish settlers. Despite the failure, "The colonies aided Brazil and helped change the stereotypical image of the non-productive Jew, capable of working only in commerce and finance. The main benefit from these agricultural experiments was the removal of restrictions in Brazil on Jewish immigration from Europe during the 20th century."
Other 20th-century developments By the First World War, about 7,000 Jews were inhabiting Brazil. In 1910 in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul, a Jewish school was opened and a Yiddish newspaper, Di Menshhayt ("Humanity") was established in 1915. One year later, the Jewish community of Rio de Janeiro formed an aid committee for World War I victims.
Congregação Israelita Paulista ("CIP," or "Israeli Congregation of São Paulo), the largest synagogue in Brazil, was founded in by Dr. Fritz Pinkus, who was born in Egeln, Germany.
Associação Religiosa Israelita (the "Israeli Religious Association"), now a member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, was founded by Dr. Heinrich Lemle, who emigrated from Frankfurt to Rio de Janeiro in 1941.
The Albert Einstein Israelite Hospital in São Paulo was founded in 1955 and inaugurated in 1971. It has a medical and nursing school. It is considered one of the best medical centers in Latin America."Rankings de Clínicas y Hospitales de América Latina 2009"
Antisemitism
Auto-da-fé
The first recorded auto-da-fé was held in Paris in 1242. Auto-da-fés took place in France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Peru, Ukraine, in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India and in Mexico where the last in the world was held in 1850. Nearly five hundred auto-da-fés were "celebrated" by the Roman Catholic Church over the course of three centuries, and thousands of Jews met their deaths this way usually after months of suffering in the Inquisition's prisons and torture chambers. This brutal and public ritual consisted of a Catholic Mass, a procession of heretics and apostates, many of them Marranos, or "secret Jews", and their torture and execution by burning at the stake. Last-minute penitents were garroted to spare the pain of death by burning. Auto-da-fé victims were most frequently apostate former Jews and former Muslims, then Alumbrados (followers of a condemned mystical movement) and Protestants, and occasionally those who had been accused of such crimes against the Roman Catholic Church as bigamy and sorcery.
Historians note that the best-known action of the Inquisition against Crypto-Jews in Brazil were the Visitations of 1591–93 in Bahia; 1593–95 in Pernambuco; 1618 in Bahia; around 1627 in the Southeast; and in 1763 and 1769 in Grão-Pará, in the north of the country. In the 18th century, the Inquisition was also active in Paraíba, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais. Approximately 400 "judaizers" were prosecuted, most of them being condemned to imprisonment, and 18 New Christians were condemned to death in Lisbon.
One of the best-known Portuguese playwrights, António José da Silva (1705-1739), "the Jew," who lived part of his life in Portugal and part in Brazil was condemned to death by the Inquisition in 1739. His parents, João Mendes da Silva and Lourença Coutinho, were descended from Jews who had emigrated to the colony of Brazil to escape the Inquisition, but in 1702 that tribunal began to persecute the Marranos or anyone of Jewish descent in Rio, and in October 1712 Lourença Coutinho became a victim. Her husband and children accompanied her to Portugal when António was 7 years old,António José Saraiva: The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536-1765, p. 95 where she figured among the "reconciled" in the auto-da-fé of July 9, 1713, after undergoing the torment only. António produced his first play or opera in 1733, and the next year he married his cousin, D. Leonor Maria de Carvalho, whose parents had been burnt by the Inquisition, while she herself had gone through an auto-da-fé in Spain and been exiled on account of her religion. They had their first daughter in 1734, but the years of their marriage, and of Silva's dramatic career, were few, for on October 5, 1737 husband and wife were both imprisoned on the charge of "judaizing." A slave of theirs had denounced them to the Holy Office. Though the details of the accusation against them seemed trivial and contradictory, and some of his friends testified about his Catholic piety and observation, António was condemned to death. On October 18, like those who wanted to die in the Catholic faith, he was first strangled and after had his body burnt in an auto-da-fé. His wife, who witnessed his death, did not long survive him.
Another notable person is Isaac de Castro Tartas (1623-1647) who emigrated to Brazil from France and Holland. In 1641 he arrived in Paraíba, Brazil, where he lived for several years. Against the wishes of his relatives there, he went later to Bahia de Todos os Santos (present day, Salvador), the colony's capital, where he was recognized as a Jew, arrested by the Portuguese Inquisition, and sent to LisbonThe encyclopedia of Jewish knowledge Jacob de Haas 1946 "CASTRO TARTAS, ISAAC De: Martyr; b. Tartas, Gascony, c.1623: d. Lisbon, 1647. He was arrested by the Inquisition in Bahia dos Santos and sent to Lisbon. where he died as a Jewish martyr.
20th century antisemitism Heightened antisemitism in Brazil in the 1900s reached its peak during 1933–1945 with the ascent of Nazism in Germany. Brazil blocked its doors to an influx of Jewish refugees from Europe during the Holocaust. Research by Brazil's Virtual Archives on Holocaust and Antisemitism Institute (Arqshoah) has uncovered that between 1937 and 1950 more than 16,000 visas were issued to European Jews attempting to escape the Nazis were denied by the governments of presidents Getúlio Vargas and Eurico Gaspar Dutra.
In 2025, the CONIB recorded 989 antisemitic incidents in Brazil, a 149 % increase compared with 2022. Incidents include both in-person attacks and online antisemitism, with the highest number of incidents recorded in the state of São Paulo.