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.
“Almost all the provinces were left without Jews,” Abramovitz said of that era. “It was then that the [Iquitos] community slept for some time.”
Then, in the early 2000s came a renaissance.
With the guidance of rabbis from South America and overseas, the city’s remaining Jewish families – many of whom had converted to Roman Catholicism – began to revive the faith of their forefathers in the back room of Abramovitz’s shop.
“All across the rainforest, you will find Jewish descendants,” said Rivka Abramovitz, Jorge’s wife. “But in many cases, they do not know their origins.”
According to Jorge, the backroom synagogue became standing-room only on high holidays as the city’s Jewish population began to “wake up”.
Since then, however, the same spiritual revival that drove the community’s resurgence is now threatening its future. Hundreds of the city’s Jews have now left this rundown Amazon city and made aliyah to Israel.
The Abramovitzes estimate that some 80% of the community has left Iquitos, robbing the group of its young adults, including the Abramovitzes’ own children and grandchildren.
Today, the congregation – which numbers around 50 people – is largely made up of the old and very young. Many are converts, such as Carlos Puglisi, who adopted his wife’s religion, and is one of the few Iquiteño Jews who has returned to Peru from Israel. “We need support to maintain things,” he said.
“We are happy here, my wife and I and our daughters,” said Alberto Pizango Arévalo, who helps lead services each week, when asked if he had ever thought about moving to Israel.
“We want the community to continue,” Jorge Abramovitz said. “Or at least to maintain. There has been a community for more than a century.”
In many ways, Iquitos’s Jewish story echoes that of the city itself. The rows of blue plastic chairs in the synagogue are now mostly empty. The rivers around Iquitos, once full of impressive barges and ships bound for the Atlantic, are empty too.
Boom, then bust.
At Shabbat services, the congregation clears the floor after taking bread and wine. They formed a circle – arms around each other’s shoulders – and sing Shalom Aleichem, a prayer traditionally sang after Friday night worship.
Then, handshakes and hugs. A kiss on the cheek. A squeeze of the arm. A whisper in the ear under the roar of the rain: “Shabbat Shalom.”
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