Brazilian Belonging - (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture) by Michael ROM (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Brazilian Belonging examines a century of Brazilian Jewish political activism, from the onset of Jewish mass migration to Brazil in the early 1920s to the present. The home of the largest Jewish community living in a nonwhite-majority country in the world, and a country that has witnessed extended periods of democratic and dictatorial rule, Brazil offers an important window for rethinking Jewish ideas about race and nation, democracy and dictatorship, and local and global forms of state violence.

In this book, Michael Rom highlights the important roles Brazilian Jews played in prominent social movements--movements that contested the meaning of the discourse of racial democracy, fought against the military dictatorship, and sought out new political possibilities following the return of democratic rule. He draws on extensive research--including previously unexamined secret police and intelligence records, the Brazilian Yiddish press, and oral history interviews--to illuminate decades of Brazilian Jewish activism under both democratic and dictatorial regimes. Offering the first study of modern Jewish politics and Latin American ethnic belonging throughout the Cold War, this book situates Brazilian Jewish activism within the transnational contexts of the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, Cold War superpower rivalries, Latin American revolutionary insurgencies, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Review Quotes

"Brazilian Belonging is an exemplar of masterful research, storytelling, and integrative analysis. Michael Rom reveals the history of Jews in Brazil in multiple layers--as a Brazilian story, as a Jewish story, and as a global story, all set against the backdrop of the Cold War." --Lior B. Sternfeld, Penn State University

"This is the first comprehensive study of Jews in post-World War II Brazil that positions Latin America's second largest community within the framework of the Cold War. Beautifully written and relying on previously unused Portuguese and Yiddish sources, secret police and intelligence records, and over two dozen oral histories, Brazilian Belonging artfully weaves the history of Brazilian Jews into the complex fabric of South America's largest nation." --James N. Green, Brown University

About the Author

Michael Rom is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish History and Culture at Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles.