Ariel Segal, a Jewish anthropologist and novelist from Venezuela, spent two years living in Iquitos, Peru in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, studying a community of Jewish "mestizos", descendants of Jewish men who a century ago went into the Amazon seeking fortune and adventure, married native Amazonian women, and created a unique hybrid culture, combining elements of both groups, as well as features from the ever-present Catholic missionary culture. <P>The members of this community consider themselves Jews; many have immigrated to Israel. Segal documents their unique beliefs, practices, and culture, and shows the tensions between this peculiar jungle outpost and the mainstream Jewish community of Lima on the coast. The author presents himself as a "participant-observer", revealing his own responses to his subjects through a journal kept while he was in Iquitos.
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From Publishers Weekly
In this absorbing work, historian Segal narrows his focus to the tiny Jewish community of Iquitos, an isolated Peruvian town in the Amazon jungle. Segal weaves the town's microhistory with the larger history of Peru. Jewish men first came to Iquitos during the rubber boom in the late 19th century, married Amazonian women and created their own syncretic Jewish tradition, including elements of nominal Catholicism and indigenous religions. Segal categorizes the Iquitos Jews with the Marranos of Spain who secretly maintained their Jewish faith after ostensibly becoming Catholics. Recognizing their mixed ancestry, he calls them "Jewish Mestizos." Others have dubbed them "Jewish Incas." For comparative purposes, Segal provides background information about such other "exotic" Jewish communities as the B'nai Israel of India, Samaritans, Karaites and Beta Israel of Ethiopia. These and other lesser known Jewish communities have been lost as a result of war, exile and forced conversions. Born in Venezuela but educated in America, Segal began this project in 1995, as part of his doctoral program. He candidly documents his clouded role as a "sentimental scholar" who abandoned objectivity and adopted the cause of the people he studied. Segal became enamored with the 100 Jewish Mestizos of Iquitos, teaching them Jewish religion and prayer services, and intervening on their behalf to secure their eligibility for immigration to Israel. Describing these activities, he acknowledges that he "trespassed the boundaries" of traditional scholarship. The result is an unusual, refreshing and vividly researched cultural study. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Segal, who grew up in Venezuela and earned his doctorate in Latin American history at the University of Miami (and now works as a lecturer and as a radio analyst in Israel) brings us an unusual tale. Making use of the various strands of his background, he investigates a strange and little-known episode in Jewish history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during a rubber boom in the Peruvian Amazon, Jewish men from Europe and Morocco came to make their fortune and ended up settling in a remote and seemingly inhospitable town named Iquitos. Over the years, they married native Amazonian women. Now a later generation exists of people who are culturally part Jewish, part Christian, and part native AmazonianAand who participate in such a strange amalgam of cultures and rituals that Segal finds them hard to classify. Meticulous research (Segal lived in the Amazon for months) and his engrossing writing (at times, his account reads like a novel) combine with an ethnographic richness to make this a fascinating scholarly book. Recommended for libraries with larger holdings in Jewish or Latin American studies.APaul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating book, makes you wonder who you really are?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Jews of the Amazon: Self-Exile in Earthly Paradise (Hardcover)
It is a well written book, in which the author tell us how a group of people that live in a small town named Iquitos and located in the middle of the peruvian amazon, have a certain way of living, and share some common beliefs and customs that originally come from the integration of two types of ancestors with different cultures or religions or even races: the "mestizos" and the inmigrant jews. The result is an interesting population with particular characteristics. The author has to be congratulated on the smoothness with which he mixes hystorical features, actual facts and the "subjective" aspects of the life and thinking and feeling of these people. He also achieves to put all these observations into a hystorical and phylosophical perspective. Finally the book has a beautiful hardcover and excellent design and is complemented with good pictures. I strongly recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating book, makes you wonder who you really are?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Jews of the Amazon: Self-Exile in Earthly Paradise (Hardcover)
It is a well written book, in which the author tell us how a group of people that live in a small town named Iquitos and located in the middle of the peruvian amazon, have a certain way of living, and share some common beliefs and customs that originally come from the integration of two types of ancestors with different cultures or religions or even races: the "mestizos" and the inmigrant jews. The result is an interesting population with particular characteristics. The author has to be congratulated on the smoothness with which he mixes hystorical features, actual facts and the "subjective" aspects of the life and thinking and feeling of these people. He also achieves to put all these observations into a hystorical and phylosophical perspective. Finally the book has a beautiful hardcover and excellent design and is complemented with good pictures. I strongly recommend it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Jews of the Amazon,
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This review is from: Jews of the Amazon: Self-Exile in Earthly Paradise (Hardcover)
The content was excellent but the organization and writing was repetitive. It appeared to be more a series of articles that covered too much of the same ground or a PHD document that needed to be seriously edited.
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