Yeshivá Colegial Machané Israel de Petrópolis: dos pergaminhos judaicos à primeira escola rabínica brasileira

Abstract

This study considers the contributions of the Yeshivá Colegial Machané Israel school of Petrópolis, to the spread and consolidation of the Orthodox Jewish religious community in Brazil. Based on the long path traveled by the holy scrolls of Judaism, the problem of this research is to investigate how the first rabbinical school in Brazilian lands was established. As its general goal, it intends to understand the particularities of an education that’s established as a divine mandate prescribed in the holy scriptures, a memory that is raised daily in the Petrópolis Yeshivá. As its specific goals, it seeks to reflect on the narrative trajectory that makes up the formation of the Jewish people, present in their written canons, and its importance for religious education; as well as to identify how Chassidism spread in Brazil a pietistic conception of the Torah’s writings, using the diligent efforts of the couple Chaim and Rivka Benjamini for perspective; and to interpret, from the periodicals edited by former students and from the official documents authorizing the educational institution, the contribution of the Yeshivá of Petrópolis in the development of the Brazilian Jewish community. The methodological procedures consist of an essentially bibliographical historical document research, which had as its main sources the public archives of the school and the memorial registries of its ex-students and community members. Regarding the theoretical framework, the study dialogues with authors who assist with understanding how the written constitution of the Jewish theological corpus supports a religion of continuity, such as Goody (2012), Yerushalmi (1992), and Sacks (2002). In what concerns the historiographical operation (Certeau, 1982), it relies on Benjamin (2012), for whom the words are articulated in such a way as to produce a sense of remembered past. Likewise, Buber (2008) confers the necessary approximation for a better understanding of the meaning of community life. In summary, it can be concluded that the Yeshivá Colegial Machané Israel of Petrópolis plays a relevant role in the Jewish community, making up a link in the chain that connects the past generations to future ones, uniting ancestral cosmovisions in time and space.