Origins
Their origins trace to Moroccan Jewish traders and tappers who arrived in the Brazilian, and later Peruvian, Amazon basin during the rubber boom of the nineteenth century.
The earliest Moroccans Jews came in 1810 from Fez, Tanger, Tetuan, Casablanca, Salé, Rabat and Marrakesh. In 1824 the first synagogue, Essel Avraham, was organized in Belém. The peak of the rubber boom between 1880 and 1910 coincided with height of Jewish immigration and communities sprung up along the Amazon River, in Santarém, Manaus, and ventured as far as Iquitos. Many families lived in isolated ribeirinhos settlements. A rabbi, rabino Shalom Imanu El-Muyal was considered a holy man and admired even by non-Jews, as a healer and folk saint, and he is referred as "santo Moisézinho" (Saint Little Moses).
Read more about this topic: Amazonian Jews
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