HeritageandHistory Zurich

Themes from our think tank.

Integrity and integration: Jews in Brazilian society

Significant, although imprecise, are the years of Jewish presence in Brazil. They can vary according to the chosen count: whether since the period of the Great Navigations, or because of the Inquisition in the Iberian Peninsula, or Moroccan immigration, or because of the tsarist, Nazi, communist persecutions… or when they left in search of a prosperous and secure future for themselves and their descendants. Jews, who always moved through the Old World, also found their way to the New World. The presence of Jews in Brazil was often undesired and, in a way, invalidated, for reasons beyond the way in which they pragmatically related to the country: raising their children, learning the language, incorporating habits, founding institutions for the common good and companies, enabling the present and sowing the future. From the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig (Vienna, 1881 – Petrópolis, 1942) is the expression “Brazil, Country of the future”....

The night of broken hearts and scattered glass

Only from the 19th century onwards did Jews begin to enjoy civil rights in some duchies and counties and principalities that constituted the Union of German Nations. At the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte brought to the territories he conquered in this conglomerate of states a set of equal rights for all, which were maintained with German unification in 1871 and ratified with the Weimar Republic in 1918. To understand the mindset, the mentality of many of the Jews who lived in Germany, and the process that culminated in the Night of Broken Glass (or Night of Shards), Kristallnacht, it is important to elucidate some concepts about the way of life in Germany, and recap events of the ARI community and its members, relating them to historical events. The advantages of belonging to a nation were many for those Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The...

The Kiddush Cup

The presence of the cup among the objects of Judaica is due solely to the fact that it is the container in which wine is located. Wine was first mentioned in the Talmud in a lengthy discussion about the order of blessing over the fruits of the vine, and from that time the custom of drinking it after prayers remained. It was only under the influence of Hellenism that wine was used in religious services in the Temple of Jerusalem. Until then it was only poured onto the altars of the sanctuary as a libation ritual.  The fact that the (Kiddush) cup contained one of the most famous and popular drinks made it necessary to pay special attention to it. From the simplest to the most sophisticated materials and techniques were used, from the Far East to Western countries. The ceremonial cup is always on the Jewish table and ritual:...

When horror turns to terror

The Reichspogromnacht, also naively called Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass – marks for German Jews the transformation of horror into terror and the beginning of overt and systematic physical violence. Until then, the persecution of Jews generally took the form of coercion and exclusion through racist and segregationist laws. From then on, the physical integrity of the Jewish population was officially threatened, and both the desire and the need for emigration reached a level of desperation: the race out of Germany became an urgent question of survival. This night symbolizes the end of German Judaism as it was known until then – synagogues are burned, thousands of Jewish men are arrested and taken to concentration camps, their resources for survival are extinguished, their social environment is suppressed. Those who can, due to knowledge or financial possibilities, take refuge in nearby or distant countries, such as Brazil. Those who...