Source: The Guardian
By Ryan Schuessler in Iquitos
The sudden barrage of a tropical downpour on a tin roof almost drowns out the small congregation, before they lift their voices and the sound of Hebrew prayers rises above the chorus of insects, the hum of electric fans – and the incessant rain.
On a humid Friday night, the last Jews of Iquitos gather in the back room of a mattress shop to worship in a language few of them even understand.
Iquitos – the world’s largest city that cannot be reached by road – is home to one of the last Jewish communities in the Amazon basin, but that may not be true for much longer: a modern exodus to Israel has seen the city’s Jewish population drop by more than 80% in the past decade.
“The community may die,” said Jorge Abramovitz, the owner of the shop that houses the city’s only synagogue. “Because the majority left Iquitos. And they are not returning.”
The city’s first Jews came to Peru from Morocco, part of a flow of immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia who followed the 19th century rubber boom in the hopes of making a fortune in the rainforest.
At the time, Iquitos’s economy was booming: the world’s voracious demand for rubber quickly transformed a remote village into an industrial boomtown filled with mansions adorned with hand-painted ceramic tiles from Portugal. Riverboats and barges were loaded in the city’s ports, and sent down the Amazon to the Atlantic and on to Europe.
The Jewish community saw another boost in the early 1900s, when growing antisemitism in eastern Europe drove Ashkenazi Jews to the New World. Among them was Abramovitz’s father, who emigrated from Poland.
But by the 1920s, plantations in Malaysia and Sri Lanka had undercut Amazon rubber producers, and the boom went bust.
Many immigrants left the city, and by the mid-20th century the capital city Lima became the centre of Peruvian Jewish life. Smaller communities across the country moved to the capital, where there were synagogues, rabbis and Jewish schools.
Iquitos was the only community outside of Lima that managed to hold on.
Categories: Americas, Jewish Faith, South America, The Muslim Times