What do you think?
Rate this book
Brazilian Belonging: Jewish Politics in Cold War Latin America
298 pages, Hardcover
Published July 22, 2025
1 person is currently reading
14 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 2, 2026
I was really excited to read this book. Though the title says that it is about Jewish politics in Cold War Latin America, in reality it covers the past hundred years of Brazilian Jewish history as it evolved from the 1920s to the 2020s.
In the 1920s, as the first chapter shows, Jews were often vilified by political authorities as "unassimilable" and therefore undesirable within Brazil's "racial democracy." These immigration policies, like the ones in the U.S. at the time were shaped in large part by eugenics and racial fears. Jews were accused of "judeo-bolshevism," and the central conflict for Brazilian Jews in this book is the ideological clash between the transnational ideologies of communism and Zionism. Both faced significant pressure from the Brazilian government which consistently sought to limit Jewish autonomy. The second chapter is about how the Holocaust and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were understood differently by different members of the Brazilian Jewish community, and chapter 3 is about the contrast between antisemitism in the U.S., exemplified by the Rosenberg executions, and the antisemitism in the USSR, such as the Doctors' Plot. Additionally, the arrival in Brazil of a Latvian Nazi war criminal as well as thousands of Jews from Israel and the Middle East created additional for Jewish political mobilization in Brazil. After Kruschev's "Secret Speech," the Jewish Brazilian left was further fragmented, and the Cuban Revolution of 1959 inspired a generation of Jewish youth to embrace armed struggle against Brazil's dictatorship that began in 1964.
The heart of this book, chapters 4 and 5, focus on Jewish participation in armed movements and radical groups that fought against Brazil's anticommunist dictatorship, and conflict between Zionists and supporters of Palestine as the PLO sought international legitimacy in the form of an embassy in Brazil. The Brazilian regime needed oil from the Arab states after the Yom Kippur War and OPEC embargo in 1973, and moved closer to supporting Palestine while simultaneously classifying leftist groups as "terrorists." These were the most interesting chapters to me, showing how Brazilian Jews responded to the dictatorship in different ways, as some became radicalized and secular while others perceived Palestinian nationalism to be a threat and lobbied against recognition of the PLO. Many of the Jewish student radicals involved in anti-dictatorship underground movements were found, tortured, and murdered, and chapter 6 focuses on the efforts of their families to struggle for justice and public commemoration after the transition to democracy in 1985. The book ends with a discussion of Jewish support for Jair Bolsonaro and the divisions between progressive and reactionary Jewish politics in Brazil at present.
This book was impressively researched with documents from the U.S., Brazil, and Israel in Portuguese and Yiddish, including oral histories, newspapers, official documents, showing the contributions of Brazilian Jews in political activism for a wide variety of political causes. Conflicts within the Jewish community, in Brazil and around the world continue over the legacy of the Brazilian dictatorship and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Overall I strongly recommend this book.
In the 1920s, as the first chapter shows, Jews were often vilified by political authorities as "unassimilable" and therefore undesirable within Brazil's "racial democracy." These immigration policies, like the ones in the U.S. at the time were shaped in large part by eugenics and racial fears. Jews were accused of "judeo-bolshevism," and the central conflict for Brazilian Jews in this book is the ideological clash between the transnational ideologies of communism and Zionism. Both faced significant pressure from the Brazilian government which consistently sought to limit Jewish autonomy. The second chapter is about how the Holocaust and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were understood differently by different members of the Brazilian Jewish community, and chapter 3 is about the contrast between antisemitism in the U.S., exemplified by the Rosenberg executions, and the antisemitism in the USSR, such as the Doctors' Plot. Additionally, the arrival in Brazil of a Latvian Nazi war criminal as well as thousands of Jews from Israel and the Middle East created additional for Jewish political mobilization in Brazil. After Kruschev's "Secret Speech," the Jewish Brazilian left was further fragmented, and the Cuban Revolution of 1959 inspired a generation of Jewish youth to embrace armed struggle against Brazil's dictatorship that began in 1964.
The heart of this book, chapters 4 and 5, focus on Jewish participation in armed movements and radical groups that fought against Brazil's anticommunist dictatorship, and conflict between Zionists and supporters of Palestine as the PLO sought international legitimacy in the form of an embassy in Brazil. The Brazilian regime needed oil from the Arab states after the Yom Kippur War and OPEC embargo in 1973, and moved closer to supporting Palestine while simultaneously classifying leftist groups as "terrorists." These were the most interesting chapters to me, showing how Brazilian Jews responded to the dictatorship in different ways, as some became radicalized and secular while others perceived Palestinian nationalism to be a threat and lobbied against recognition of the PLO. Many of the Jewish student radicals involved in anti-dictatorship underground movements were found, tortured, and murdered, and chapter 6 focuses on the efforts of their families to struggle for justice and public commemoration after the transition to democracy in 1985. The book ends with a discussion of Jewish support for Jair Bolsonaro and the divisions between progressive and reactionary Jewish politics in Brazil at present.
This book was impressively researched with documents from the U.S., Brazil, and Israel in Portuguese and Yiddish, including oral histories, newspapers, official documents, showing the contributions of Brazilian Jews in political activism for a wide variety of political causes. Conflicts within the Jewish community, in Brazil and around the world continue over the legacy of the Brazilian dictatorship and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Overall I strongly recommend this book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review