By Marina Pinto Kaufman
I decided to write some of the experiences that I had in Iquitos Peru for my children, grand children, my family, my extended family and friends.
They earned their living by going up the Amazon in a small canoe selling trinkets to the Natives in exchange for rubber.Soon they paid back their uncle and started making money.
They were very successful until the rubber market crashed around 1906.
As some of you know my grand father Moses Pinto and his brother Abraham Pinto, respectively father and uncle of my father Momo Pinto (Salomon M.Pinto) went to Brazil and Peru in the 1870’s to make a living and help their families. Their father was a humble tailor and had many mouths to feed. Thanks to the generosity of an uncle who was then living in Manaos, Brazil and who lent them money they were able to go to Brazil. They arrived in Manaos after a very long and exhausting journey where their uncle set them up to work.
We have a detailed description of their trips and stay in Peru and I would be happy to lend it to anyone who wants to read it.
Like my grandfather and great uncle, there were many other Jewish men from Tangiers and its surrounding towns who also went to Brazil and Peru trying to improve the life of their families in Tangiers.
They were all very young and single and often lived with native women .They gave their surname to their children and the “native companions”. Once they left Peru, most of them went back home to Morocco leaving their Peruvian family behind. Others stayed in Iquitos and we know of one man who brought back to Tangiers his “Peruvian” family and so he was called “el Indio”…. The children and mothers kept the surname of the fathers!
There was no synagogue in Iquitos but there was a Jewish cemetery which still exists.
After the men left, the women continue to practice some of the Jewish rituals: Friday night, a white table cloth, lighting candles, celebrating Passover, not eating Pork etc…
The children, grand children and great grand children knew there was something different about them, there had traditions that other people didn’t have…
A few years ago there was a movement among these descendants who decided they wanted to know more about their past and this religion?
Some had always known that they were partly Jewish. A man in Iquitos, who was actually of eastern European descent therefore an Ashkenazi, wrote to a Rabbi in Lima, Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein to help them recapture their Judaism. As it happens this rabbi is the brother of one of my rabbis in NY Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein.
This small community of about 100 people, descendants of Jews, wanted to convert to Judaism. The rabbis gave them books and material, they promised them that they would do this conversion. There was a “Beit Din” (a Jewish tribunal of 5 rabbis) who tested them and then took them through the ritual of the Mikveh (ritual bath) in the Amazon.
Marcelo was extremely moved by the ceremony and knowing how this was in some way part of my past he suggested I go to Peru with the American World Services as they would be going to Iquitos.
Nothing prepared me for what I was going to experience that day in Iquitos.
Marcelo took our group to meet with the head of the Jewish Community. We arrived at their community center, where we heard a group of about 50 persons singing in Hebrew. There were women and men, some very young and some older. Everyone there had taken the morning off from work so that they could meet us. They were overjoyed to see Marcelo their Rabbi! Marcelo introduced us and explained what the WAJWS did and asked them to introduce themselves.
They each told us their names and it was absolutely incredible: Toledano, Azoulay, Bendayan, Benamu, Benzaquen, Nahon, Abensur, Benchimol . This was an unforgettable moment for me when I heard their names I looked at their faces and I found myself replacing them with the faces of relatives and friends from Tangiers who bore the same names. I was finding my community here in Iquitos, near the jungle and on the Amazon. As my tears went down theirs did too. I introduced myself and told them my name (there was no Pinto in the group…which was disappointing as I had this hope that I would find a long lost relative!)We sung together, we shared a drink and food. We then went to the cemetery. Here too, all the names were so much part of me, my past, my family and my ancestors.
On the way to the cemetery I made friends with a very beautiful young woman, who had always known her grandmother or great grandmother did things differently, and when she died, Jasmine started investigating what it was all about .Jasmine had just joined the community and this experience had given her great joy and a sense of herself. Many of the young people are hoping to go to Israel.
Marcelo asked each of us to put a stone on each tombstone we then said Kaddish (the prayer for the dead) and left the cemetery in silence.
Paquita Abramovitz the wife of the President of the community and I talked about Judaism what it meant and how the experience of learning was always exciting. I told her about my own Journey about learning to understand what it meant to be Jewish e.g. “Healing the world” “Tikun Olam”and doing my bat torah at 60!
I will never forget that morning in Iquitos. To some it was the extraordinary fact that these people were descendants of Jews who had lived there 100 years ago. For Paquita Abramowitz, it was her conviction that wherever she went there would be a Jewish soul.
For me it was where my family had been, knowing that the fact that my grandfather Moses Pinto and his brother Tio Abram, had gone to Peru, had opened a new world to their descendants.
It was also the joy of meeting the descendants of a Jewish community who was closely related to my own community in Tangiers.
With the descendants I did a lot of crying, happy crying and laughed wholeheartedly with many of them. Sadly I would not be able to tell my father about my experience.
Fortunately I am able to share this experience with my husband Steve and my children who in turn will be able to tell it to their children.
I hope that you will smile when reading this, imagining this extraordinary group of people, who were so proud to learn about their history…
New York, September 2007