SOURCE: Vieira, Nelson H. “Outsiders and Insiders: Brazilian Jews and the Discourse of Alterity.” In The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America: New Studies on History and Literature, edited by David Sheinin and Lois Baer Barr, pp. 101-16. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1996.

[In the following essay, Vieira uses the works of Samel Rawet to demonstrate the commonality of the theme of alienation in many Brazilian-Jewish writings.]

“[T]hey were talking about Jews during that Christmas supper. … [T]here was the whole universe, the others and he, experiencing the same clichés, and the same insoluble contradiction.”

[Samuel Rawet, “Christmas Without Christ,” Diálogo, 1963]

Alienation represents the estrangement that many Latin American Jews repeatedly experience when their ethnic and religious differences are compared to the culture of the larger Catholic population. Positioned dialectically as being in contradiction to the dominant society and culture, the Jews of Latin America consciously or unconsciously develop an enlightened perception of the dominant other, as well as themselves as others, that will be referred to here as “alterity.” If alterity evokes the perception of being other or different, then it relates to identity by communicating that which is not solely the subject. In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze views the other as “initially a structure of the perceptual field” (Deleuze, 59). This perspective reaches beyond the ego, thereby making perception more broad and encompassing. Since alienation surfaces as one of the overriding themes in fiction by Latin American Jewish writers, alterity frequently emerges as the optic used by many writers to express or dramatize their understanding of difference and contradiction.

This focus upon alterity relates to the role that difference plays in Latin America's ethos and cosmos because it illustrates how Latin American or, in this case, Brazilian identity, is constituted historically and socially by cultural conflict and contradiction. Fernando Aínsa points to Latin America's cultural make-up as one based upon antinomies, an interpretation pertinent to an understanding of how Jews in Latin America are positioned in society and literature. According to Aínsa: “The characteristics that make Latin American cultural identity single and diverse belong to a history of creativity that founds cultures that are new, different, in a state of permanent transformation, but above all marked by antinomies structured around two pairs of opposites: that of the center and the periphery [constructed in space], and that of tradition and modernity [elaborated in time]” (9).

Primarily applying the dialectic of center and periphery as it reflects the internal dynamics and differences within Brazil, this study will point to the manifestation of dichotomies in Judeo-Brazilian literature as exemplified in the fiction by Samuel Rawet (1929-84). For Latin American literature in general, this approach reflects Aínsa's view that these dialectics of space and time are “easily identifiable in the best pages of fiction” (9). However, if dichotomies and contradictions are so reflective of the Latin American experience, then it follows that Latin American nations respectively represent diverse cultural forms of conflictual multiplicity or hybrid interchange within their constitutive national ethos. On the other hand, in view of Latin America's hierarchical and nationalistic societies structured from patriarchal paradigms that historically have pivoted center against periphery in the struggle for maintaining an institutionalized nationalist discourse, it is evident that cultural hybridity does not constitute social pluralism. Ergo, the reason to consider the literary voices from the Jewish diaspora in Latin America as contributing to a discourse of alterity which aims to affirm difference by acknowledging the existence of a cultural periphery and the experience of others who too often have been expected to be silent. The selection of Samuel Rawet as the Brazilian example to express this discourse stems from not only his literary representation of alienation and alterity but also from his acute awareness of the cultural silence that Jews have intermittently practiced in Brazil. Ironically, the theme of silence dramatized in his fiction also reverberated in the critical silence that overshadowed most of his work, owing in part to his image as an immigrant Brazilian Jewish writer whose narratives appeared, to the larger Brazilian public, to be thematically inaccessible, disconcerting or strange.

A Polish Jew who immigrated to Brazil at the age of seven, Samuel Rawet resided in Rio de Janeiro until he was invited in 1957 to join the NOVACAP project that was to build Brazil's futuristic capital, Brasília. With an engineering degree and a talent for making the calculations needed to produce reinforced concrete, Rawet moved to Brasília where, living mostly in solitude, he was to spend most of his life, except for occasional stays in Rio and one trip of several months to Europe and Israel. Recognized today as the writer who launched Judeo-Brazilian expression with his 1956 collection of stories, Contos do imigrante [Tales of the Immigrant], Rawet primarily wrote short fiction that centered upon the conflictual experience of Jews in modern postwar Brazil. In a dense style evoking conflict and collision, his stories dramatize the difficulty of overcoming ethnic prejudice when its manifestation is insidious and oblique. The epigraph for this study is taken from his provocative story “Natal Sem Cristo” [Christmas Without Christ] which first appeared in 1963 in his second collection of stories ironically entitled Diálogo [Dialogue], a volume depicting man's dialogue with himself (his silence) rather than his actual dialogue with others. The story conveys the silent perspective of a Brazilian Jewish insider who is treated as a Jewish outsider. This story is thus an appropriate starting point for discussing the perception of otherness or alterity implicit in the oxymoronic “outsider/insider,” a theme and position repeatedly voiced in fiction by Brazilian Jewish writers who, interestingly, also address the perception of “otherness” often beyond the scope of Jewish ethnicity. Whether motivated by sentiments emanating from immigrant alienation, racial discrimination, or psychological estrangement, the experience of alterity surfaces powerfully in Brazilian Jewish narratives where the stance of the “other” invariably emerges within and/or outside the self.

In addition to Rawet's stories, obvious examples of dramatized alterity by Brazilian-Jewish authors appear in the works of Moacyr Scliar, particularly, Os deuses de Raquel (1975) [The Gods of Raquel (1986)], O centauro no jardim (1980) [The Centaur in the Garden (1985)], and A estranha nação de Rafael Mendes (1983) [The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes (1987)]; in narratives by Clarice Lispector such as Laços de família (1960) [Family Ties (1972)], A legião estrangeira (1964) [The Foreign Legion (1986)], Onde estivestes de noite (1974), and No exílio (1948) [In Exile]; as well as in the fiction of lesser-known Jewish writers such as Eliezer Levin, Carlos Stein, Fischel Báril, Paulo Wainberg, and Francisco Dzialovsky. An interesting political variation on the theme of alterity, from the viewpoint of a Brazilian Jewish protagonist, is treated by Carlos Heitor Cony in his 1967 novel Pessach: a travessia [Pessach: The Crossing] which links the hero's repression of his Jewish identity with the self-repression of his political radicalism. In this novel's treatment of alterity, the reader also sees otherness in the context of the society's deep-rooted authoritarianism.

With the above introduction, this study proposes to examine alterity via the diasporist outsider/insider perspective in Brazilian Jewish fiction via Samuel Rawet's story “Christmas Without Christ.” Dealing with Jewish alienation within the Jewish diaspora of Brazil, this story underlines the theme of difference in a them-versus-us frame between Gentiles and Jews. In its exposure of ethnic and social differences within Brazilian society, this story questions the monolithic view of seeing Brazil as one cohesive culture, and by extension, Latin (South) America as one coherent continent. The literature expressed by the Latin American Jewish diaspora thus becomes a fertile terrain for uncovering and affirming the cultural dichotomies and multiplicities rampant within and across Latin American nations. As an aesthetic, diasporism furnishes the writer with a life experience that affords multiple views. For example, Diasporism becomes an artistic mode of creation for the North American Jewish painter, R. B. Kitaj, who translated his diasporist life experience into a diasporist art in First Diasporist Manifesto. Here, Kitaj transposes his exile insights, gleaned from his own diasporist experience of an American residing in England, into a diasporist aesthetics for painting. This manifesto underscores issues and themes that frequently emerge in the writings of Latin American Jewish writers. In describing Diasporist painting, Kitaj indirectly evokes the plight of the Latin American Jewish writer: “Diasporist painting, which I just made up, is enacted under peculiar historical and personal freedoms, stresses, dislocation, rupture and momentum. The Diasporist lives and paints in two or more societies at once” (19). The simultaneous bi- or multiculturality alluded to here stems from additions and fractures involving some form of exile—geographic, social or psychological—a position voiced by Kitaj in a provocative manner that communicates uncannily with Rawet's fiction and experience: “A Diasporist picture is marked by Exile and its discontents as subtly and unclearly as pictures painted by women or homosexuals are marked by their inner exilic discontents” (96-97).

In addition to employing the critical approach manifested in alterity and Diasporism, this study also proposes to examine the outsider/insider perspective in Jewish-Brazilian fiction in the context of Brazil's non-exclusionist image of “racial democracy,” a national myth actively promoted by one national ideology that fosters the notion of spontaneous conviviality and sincere equality among all peoples, groups, and races residing in Brazil. The myth of racial democracy has long been contested by many Brazilian scholars and Brazilianists, particularly since the landmark research and writings of the Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes. This Brazilian myth, based upon Brazil's history of racial mixture and promoted in the 1930s by the famous sociologist Gilberto Freyre with his Luso-Tropicalist theory, lost some credibility when black activists such as Abdias do Nascimento challenged its application to the Brazilian reality. In the same vein, another aspect of Brazil's national character, the “cordial man,” complicates the above myth even more by contributing a specious notion of liberal humanism, often exemplified by the Brazilian assimilatory and envolving proclivity to be with others, implying an inherent sense of community along with a unique ethos of non-discrimination.

The concept of the Brazilian “cordial man” is developed in Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda, Raízes do Brasil. Hollanda attributes the term to Ribeiro Couto, the writer and diplomat who was one of the active participants in Brazil's modernist movement. Recognizing that cordiality can be used in a negative as well as positive context, Hollanda strives to clarify Couto's definition by underscoring the Brazilian tendency to flee solitude and to gravitate toward others, toward intimacy:

In the “cordial man,” life in society is in a certain way a true liberation from the fear that he feels in living with himself, in supporting himself in all of life's circumstances. His manner of expansion toward others reduces the individual more and more to the social peripheral fragment which for the Brazilian—like any good American—tends to be what is more important. This way of being is above all else a living in others.

(108)

It is interesting to compare this definition with alterity as an expanded field of perception (106-112).

Not to be seen as veneer, but rather as a personal expression of emotion, sincerity, and intimacy toward others, Brazilian cordiality, however, should not be interpreted as an example of social or racial democracy. While this seemingly liberal and communal behavior may be evident in the everyday social comportment of Brazilians, it is important to ask—behavior, cordiality or, rather, equality toward whom? For Brazilians, it is clear that there does exist a personable and expansive manner in the daily treatment of ethnic and racial others but just how selective is this treatment and to what degree is it practiced? Moreover, from the viewpoint of a literary dramatization of racial and social differences, this personable manner is seen as contributing to the familiar Brazilian practice of non-confrontation and little overt discrimination. In reality, this behavior places one in the elusive and subtle shadowland of attitudes that, if negative, may be readily denied and therefore difficult to challenge, let alone prove.

Considering Brazilian Jews as outsiders and insiders in relation to Brazil's ideological approach to racial democracy and cordial man, Samuel Rawet's story “Christmas Without Christ” serves as a compelling resource because, though “cordially” invited inside a Christian home for Christmas supper, the protagonist Nehemiah Goldenberg is nonetheless insidiously degraded throughout this repast for being the Jewish “intruso” (Rawet 1956, 56), intruder or outsider. This intensely introspective story employs interior monologue in a third-person narration that occasionally slips into a first-person voice or point of view, especially during moments of mounting rage, thereby opening up the perceptual field. Beginning with an initial paragraph that lasts for three pages, the story is framed by the protagonist's pent-up tension of a “stigmatized” man overtly conscious of his perceived role as an interloper. This “stigmatized” outsider possesses an “undesired differentness,” sociological terms which Erving Goffman deftly dissects in his study Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Goffman, 3-5).

Interspersed with a series of conversational statements that are more subtle jibes and accusations than cordial dialogue, the body of the story reflects the protagonist's introspective replay and retrospective (silent) reaction to the biting sarcasm emanating from the various members of the host's Christian family. As the interior monologue progresses, Nehemiah silently acknowledges with increasing intensity his experience and perception of alterity, of being seen and treated as the other. This perception leads him to adopt a behavior of guarded silence, a stance not unfamiliar to many Jews in Brazil and throughout the Latin American Diaspora. [This silence is evocative of the silence that many New Christians maintained as they simulated being Christians while practicing their Judaism in secret.]

Albeit reminiscent of the proverbial immigrant experience of alienation which is enacted in Rawet's story “The Prophet,” the sense of alterity conveyed by the protagonist Nehemiah in this un-Christian Christmas story, underlines the special circumstances related to being Jewish (whether immigrant or native) in a nation dominated by Christian people, culture, ideology, and doctrine. On the other hand, the stories in the collection Diálogo, presenting a Brazilian gallery of monological characters and immigrants who are often monological Jews carrying on interior monologues of angst and alienation, do not suggest that alterity is relegated solely to the Jewish experience. The unspecified ethnic, marginal, or immigrant status of protagonists in other stories implies a broader depiction of alterity beyond the scope of Jewish ethnicity. Nonetheless, as a collection dramatizing other social marginals in general, Rawet's Diálogo does at the same time call attention to the Jewish condition in Brazil because in these stories about ethnics, marginals, or immigrants, the only ones named ethnically are the Jews. The Jews thus serve as a provocative example and reminder of the targeted outsider who is, to a certain degree, the unacknowledged insider. Moreover, since the Jews of Brazil comprise less than one percent of the nation's total population and represent a highly mobile group on the socio-economic scale, the “low-profile” socio-political strategies practiced by many contemporary Brazilian Jews call to mind the experiences of the past in Jewish history when Jews became scapegoats in lands where they had been vulnerable minorities. Also, in light of contemporary Brazil's series of economic crises, the low-profile strategy gains particular relevance when one considers the high percentage of kidnappings attempted upon wealthy Brazilians, many of whom happen to be from affluent Jewish families. Prior to using Rawet's story for furthering our exposition on the outsider/insider phenomenon, other Brazilian cultural references and theoretical considerations warrant discussion.

In Brazil, given the presence of an elitist and nationalist ideology with a proclivity toward sameness, as expressed by Roberto Schwarz in his deconstruction of the myth of national authenticity in his essay, “Brazilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination,” it is not surprising to find the Jews of Brazil proceeding with caution as they deal with non-Jews. Schwarz analyzes the illusory tendency, especially on the part of Brazilian elites (the traditional oligarchy), to search for and to define an authentically national Brazil by eliminating or subtracting Brazil's supposedly alien or “outsider” elements. According to Schwarz, this nationalist mindset fails to recognize that, given the veritable mobility and advancements of today's modern and postmodern cultures, it would be virtually impossible to ever have a totally “harmonious and auto-centered national culture” (85). Schwarz also calls attention to the elite's historical and consistent disregard of social inequities along with its low regard for diversity among the populace but, paradoxically, its simultaneous “high” regard and need for advocating selective and, what it considers to be, prestigious foreign (European) attributes. Invariably these are regarded as progressive socio-political ideals, even though these may be incompatible with the country's social reality. Schwarz interprets this behavior as originating historically from a “malaise of the dominant class, bound up with the difficulty of morally reconciling the advantages of progress with those of slavery or its surrogates” (89). In other words, in a culture of rigid social stratification, the drive for cultural homogeneity stems primarily from a powerful ruling or dominant economic class which looked to imitation and cohesion as a bourgeois ideal. Using a hierarchical scale to indicate what was presumed to be an “authentic” part of the national culture, this position of homogeneity was adopted irrespective of aliens, marginals, or “low.” In short, these elites developed cultural blind spots by becoming insensitive to the human panorama of social differences representative of the country's complex diversity.

It is within this paradoxical arena of Brazilian cultural politics where one may witness, in literature, the emerging role of the other, the marginal or the low via the expression of alterity, contradiction, inversion, fantasy, parody, and hyperbole. The most popular contemporary Brazilian Jewish writer, Moacyr Scliar, employs hyperbole through images of excess in his novel, O centauro no jardim. In this novel, the images of bodily excess and mythical fantasy are dramatized as a means of expressing forms of social transgression that override a national concept of an idealized sameness or a standardized normality. In several of his other narratives, especially O terreno de uma polegada quadrada (1969) [The Land of One Square Inch], Samuel Rawet draws upon such transgressive issues as sexual deviance as well as obsessive and excessive behavior to create moments of defiance and disorder with the aim of challenging conventional views of social norms. Nevertheless, sporadic outbursts of defiance are usually confined to literature and not to the everyday life of a socio-political scene which invites serious caution and guarded behavior.

The myths and prejudices against Jews in relation to the socio-economic situation in Latin America are another issue that this Jewish diaspora confronts regularly in its interaction with the larger non-Jewish population. Other issues and problems are directly tied to unjust stereotyping or imagined stigma based upon religious, socio-political, and cultural grounds that may eventually result in what Erving Goffman calls a “spoiled identity,” a view entertained by the dominant group. For example, the Brazilian folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo offers an intriguing observation about the popular attitude that many Brazilians manifest toward Jews: “O povo ainda vê o judeu pelos olhos quinhentistas” [The populace still sees the Jew with sixteenth century eyes] (93). Here, one sees the need and yet the pitfalls for distinguishing between attitude and behavior or prejudice and discrimination toward Jews and others. For Brazil, since attitudes and prejudices are not viable evidence for initiating formal or legal defense, discrimination is often not addressed. Although hardly identical, there exist parallels between Brazil's attitude toward Jews and its prejudice toward Afro-Brazilians where, for the sake of social appearances, behavior toward blacks “appears” to be the same as toward many whites and others. Regarding the Jews of modern Brazil, there seems to be no overt discrimination. However, perceived differentness usually takes the form of articulating some “discrediting” attribute, such as with Rawet's protagonist Nehemiah Goldenberg who at one point in the story is treated as a heretic linked to the crucifixion of Christ. Therefore, lurking beneath the surface of social appearances, conventions, and amenities, Brazilian Christians may harbor attitudes of apprehension, hesitation, suspicion, distance, even discrimination, commonly based upon popular cultural myths that posit Jews as the non-Catholic “different.” Rawet's story suggests that for the most part these attitudes are usually expressed in a covert manner. Ergo, the reason to practice or cultivate a guarded or low profile.

Even though this study does not debate the existence or non-existence of anti-Semitism in Brazil, it does demonstrate how the literary voice of Jewish alterity can be revelatory of the insidious ambiguity of Brazil's approach toward the Other. Here, the focus on Jewish alterity rests with socio-cultural and historical circumstances of difference emerging in Brazilian Jewish narratives which depict the modern social reality of the Brazilian Jewish diaspora. In this arena, degrees of otherness are painfully perceived, even to the point where they do not appear to exist. Despite all claims to there being “no Jewish problem in Brazil,” one must remain mindful of the elusive nature of ambiguous attitudes and “soft” despotic or prejudicial positions toward the other which are deeply rooted in the social psyche. Drawing upon Guillermo O'Donnell's term “socially rooted authoritarianism,” Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro attributes the continual existence of a microdespotic, hegemonic, and authoritarian mentality in Brazil to systems of hierarchical domination implanted by the dominant classes. According to Pinheiro, systems of hegemony have repercussions for socially peripheral others in Brazil because such systems are constant since they exist prior to, during, and even after military dictatorships. Thus these systems are regularly reproduced with the assistance of forces of oppression, criminalization, and political opposition along with mechanisms of ideological control exerted over the majority of the population. Since racism and prejudice can be seen as institutions of force maintained by such ideological control, Pinheiro considers this phenomenon to be a form of “violence douce” (45). And it is this climate of “soft” repression—not overt ostracism, segregation, or discrimination—which Samuel Rawet re-creates in order to enable his discerning protagonist Nehemiah Goldenberg to perceive the subtly “soft” but undeniable violence directed at his culturally Jewish sense of self.

Owing to the realities of assimilation or acculturation, many Brazilian Jews may have affirmed their heritage and felt Jewish more as a fact of birth and culture than of religious conviction. Yet, on different occasions, these same Jews, even if for a mere moment, have felt obliged to hold back their Jewish identity as a socio-cultural forethought or precaution, as if their social identity would somehow appear to be “spoiled” in relation to a preconceived homogeneous national identity or what Erving Goffman refers to as “normative expectations” (2). Related to this thinking is Jean Starobinski's cogent essay, “The Inside and the Outside,” where he signals the importance of understanding the ever-changing relationship with the concept of the Other which in many instances calls for self-control, a behavior Rawet's Nehemiah Goldenberg displays despite his feelings of humiliation. This self-control is crucial to one who comes into contact with the outside culture (which in this case is the dominant one) and its possible aggression and threat toward one's well-being or survival. Starobinski argues for recognizing humankind's ability and need to devise codes, language, and techniques in order to accommodate to the various situations that dictate one's mutable and constantly shifting reference points: “between himself and the malignant outside, he must wedge his own activity, his technique” (344).

In Rawet's story, Nehemiah not only illustrates self-control but also the ability to carry on a silent monologue of rage while behaving with appropriate decorum. Such behavior is justified if one entertains the following commentary by Starobinski: “because man has come to acquire technique, he can brave the most inclement environments and colonize the outside. Thus, for having had to endure the condition of an outcast, man has won powers that make him the supreme invader” (344).

In his situational exile during that Christmas supper, Nehemiah's self-control becomes his heroic image of restraint, tact, and wisdom in which he demonstrates the ability to dissect the prejudicial subtleties and hypocritical commentaries articulated by his host's guests who become his verbal persecutors as the following statements demonstrate: “Jews are very charming, very charming. … Great financiers and entrepreneurs!. … But weren't the Jews the ones who killed Christ, papa?” (58) and “Mister Nehemiah, you don't seem Jewish. You enjoyed the roast pork so much” (59). Since Nehemiah decides to hold his rage within, he makes a conscious decision which he believes is appropriate for the situation. Starobinski describes this type of behavior as wise: “He is fully human who can avail himself of the means best suited to the circumstance, whether it be violent action, speech, or silence. In every case, wisdom consists in stifling the irrational impulse, in not letting loose the word or gesture that would spell disaster by giving one's external enemy the upper hand” (345). Starobinski interprets hysteria and neurosis as the parody of this restraint and suggests that neurotic behavior indicates the inability to confront the outside. Here, Nehemiah manifests his skill in confronting the outside by becoming a silent insider dealing with the outside reality of Brazil's dominant cultural ideology. Jewish history and civilization have continually shown the Jews as being situated on the outside as well as on the inside where they have developed the wisdom of restraint. Starobinski's premise and examples illustrate the relevancy of the insider/outsider position and its application to the Brazilian Jewish experience when he describes the perennial situation of the outsider's active cultural struggle with his milieu. In so doing, Starobinski underscores one of Judaism's overall contributions to the human condition: “all reflect the importance of Judaism, by selective inhibition what passes from the outside in, and the from the inside out” (345). In other words, the Jewish experience of “selective inhibition” may be considered synonymous with the concept of “selective ethnicity,” where one chooses to foreground, or not, one's ethnic origin. Above all, “selective inhibition” is in communion with the phenomenon of “process” itself, affording one a sense of interiority and alterity as well as a sense of self via a capacity to deal with the external by internalizing it.

“Christmas Without Christ” is a narrative which dramatizes the distinction between prejudice and discrimination from the viewpoint of a specific Brazilian cultural context. If prejudice or attitude is understood as some form of predisposition toward an individual or group considered to be different, then discrimination becomes the overt action or behavior taken against the “different” one. Rawet's story illustrates the fine line of distinction between these two and, furthermore, points to how verbal prejudices function to reveal deeply-rooted feelings of discrimination. Attention to this distinction in Brazil surfaced during the congressional debate surrounding the Afonso Arinos Law of 1951 (Dzidzenyo, 23-42) which, according to Anani Dzidzienyo: “appears to be more concerned with prejudice than with discrimination” (34). As a result, this law has been criticized because it lacks substantial legal application since it becomes more difficult to prosecute on attitudinal grounds of prejudice than on concrete or physical manifestations of discrimination. Besides, how can a Brazilian be accused of discrimination if s/he openly socializes with lacks, Asians, or Jews? The answer lies partly in Samuel Rawet's story.

Nehemiah Goldenberg, a history teacher, is invited by a Christian colleague to his family's home for Christmas supper. This home belongs to Ana Castanheira de Miranda Campos, known as Nani, an aging matriarch who, amid the other members of her family, takes the place of honor at the Christmas table. As his biblical namesake, Nehemiah, the religious reformer who preserved the identity and continuity of the Jewish people, Nehemiah becomes an ironic evocation of this figure since he manages to preserve his identity, albeit silently, via his unvoiced perceptions of the others. His interior monologue becomes a discourse of alterity wherein perception becomes crucial to an accurate assessment of his insider/outsider situation. The story's exceptionally long first sentence of more than 160 words captures this guest's angst-ridden reaction to the not-so-subtle prejudicial comments being made about his Jewish origins. The interior monologue narrative represents a rethinking or replay—an immediate flashback—of the impact of these comments upon Nehemiah. This replay also reviews his observations of the matriarchal hostess and her family, all of whom represent examples of the Establishment in the form of a traditional and wealthy family of the Brazilian oligarchy, exuding authority, convention, and self-assurance.

Interestingly, R. B. Kitaj describes his sentiments as being a diasporist painter in a manner that approximates Nehemiah's own emotions at that Christmas table:

The Diasporist in me is impatient with host-art. I feel like a guest in the house of art, guilty if I don't perform up to snuff, anxious to leave the table (and table talk) as early and politely as I can. That's how I make my pictures, diasporist pictures—feigned politesse, anxious resolve barely revealed. The older I get, closer to the end, I look to more candid, x-rated designs upon painting.”

(65)

Kitaj's expressed anxiety and feigned politeness find a common bond with Nehemiah as a Brazilian and Latin American Jewish Diasporist.

The story's first sentence distills Nehemiah's visceral anguish by revealing his feelings of rage about being stigmatized. Also, his ironic stance suggests how traditionally the Jews have been mistreated by powerful groups: “and from the ashes of his bones consumed in wicked holocaust, let there be no vestiges, neither in the air, nor in the earth, nor in the water, nor in the fire which precipitated them, nor in the remembrance of who made these ashes from his bones” (55).

In assessing the tension at the table by developing a conscious strategy, Nehemiah opts to control the scene with his silence and his review of what has just transpired. In so doing, as the outsider who has become the perceptive “invader,” he maintains a better grasp of the underlying motives behind the prejudice articulated at that supper table. Instead of attacking his “enemy” which he imagines as a powerful current rushing downstream, Nehemiah philosophically ponders over his strategic behavior of silence: “Never to swim against the current, but to contain its impetus, to subdue it, and to turn its course upstream” (56). Nehemiah's interior monologue, which enables the narration to entertain more than one perspective, becomes a means for the outcast/invader to understand, survive, and bear witness to the callous attitudes and behavior of “his” others. With eyes transfixed on the old matriarch Nani and her obvious indifference to what was being said by the other members of the family, Nehemiah focuses upon her insensitivity, her lack of cordiality, her hidden hatred, and her authoritative and regal demeanor in demanding more wine but, above all, her sense of utter absoluteness. Interestingly, Nani's posture for demanding more wine also evokes, somewhat ironically and indirectly, the biblical Nehemiah's early role as cup bearer to the King of Persia, prior to his becoming a religious reformer.

Pitted against this spectrum of members from the Brazilian Establishment, Nehemiah pictures this scene as a microcosm of the world and sees himself as being treated as “other,” a perception of his alterity which mounts as the narrative develops his more acute awareness of being an other. As the intolerant head of this traditional family, Nani is portrayed as a cold authoritarian figure, inflexible in her cultural hegemony. Although the description of Nani centers upon her character and behavior, the scene's effect aims to synthesize and deconstruct social indifference, a stance practiced by an elite, perceived as socially tyrannical and unaware of the cultural blind spots they incur as they exercise their authoritarian chauvinism. Nani's character becomes a springboard for denouncing a homogenized view of the world which allows no room for divergence or differentness:

He sees in her that historical continuity which does not concede a willingness to accommodate others, that already-formed conscience, inflexible, not allowing for revision or doubts, insensitive to the most concrete signal of its omission, because she possesses the absolute truth. There exist in her fingers reminiscences of medieval intolerance as well as the determination of the most rigid contemporary politics, and in her thumb the impulse of tetrarchs facing the vanquished in the arena. Nehemiah knows that words will mean nothing when she lowers her thumb. And Nani continues to sip her wine.

(60)

Seen as the autocratic ruler condemning her victims to slaughter in the arena, Nani's behavior reminds one of the martyr's violent fate under a despotic ruler. Thus it is not surprising when Nehemiah turns to the crucifix on the wall and wonders if the answer or end to all of this oppression will come from this biblical figure who was a Jew.

Comparing the circumstances of the Jews and the Christians at the time of Christ's persecution and crucifixion, Nehemiah addresses Christ directly (via the crucifix on the wall) and emphasizes the eternal symbiosis of Christ's fate and that of the persecution of the Jews: “You and I live perpetual death and resurrection throughout the centuries” (61). Nehemiah also notes that the more zealous the Christians become in their faith, the more the Jews suffer—an indirect allusion to the religious and cultural impact of the Judas figure in the popular Christian mindset. However, even when there are less seemingly prejudiced Christians who receive Jews with comparable good will (an implication of modern Brazil's generally accommodating reception to Jews?), Jews still undergo a form of cultural ostracism as other: “When others more gentle, their tenderness not veering from the hyena's or the ruffian's, receive us benevolently: we live marginally, hated and feared, even though in our hand the only arms we bear is the last coin from a booty stamped with approval by someone who offered it in your name” (61). Here, Nehemiah captures the sense of Jewish alterity by underscoring how he and his ethnic brethren are seen and treated as marginals and stereotypes by the unstigmatized or the “normals,” to use another of Erving Goffman's terms.

As he stares more intensely at the crucifix on the wall of that Christian household, Nehemiah reflects upon the overriding focus on Christ's agony and death as the symbolic basis for Christian faith. While thinking of this biblical moment, he draws upon the presence of Jews in that story and explains how Christ's perpetual death and persecution as a Jew are linked to the real and symbolic persecution of Jews throughout history. The symbiosis of these deaths and circumstances lies in the need for Christians to bolster their own faith and identity (at the expense of the Jews) as well as to assuage their guilt, since they believe that Jesus died for man's sins. And as Nehemiah notes, the Jews were always there to serve as a palliative. In other words, Nehemiah considers how the Christians understood their own guilt via the Jews whose presence could ultimately and conveniently serve to relieve them of that guilt. Furthermore, Nehemiah's use of “nós” [we] for humankind, Jews as well as Christians, compounds this symbiotic view.

Arguing another point, Nehemiah stresses the irrefutable historical presence of the Jews prior to Jesus's life on earth, as documented by the Prophets (in Deuteronomy, 2nd century BC). Nehemiah reinforces his observation by stating that the Prophet Jeremiah's lament antedates the Sermon on the Mount as the Prophet Amos's libel antecedes the answer to the rights of Caesar, thereby implying the obvious—that Judaism preceded Christianity and that Jesus was ethnically Jewish: “And why are we to blame if when they seek you out in your most authentic form, in your original clothes, they always see us?” (61).

By juxtaposing Christian logocentrism with Nani's authoritarianism, Rawet (via Nehemiah) also re-creates a modern rendition of the crucifixion scene, where at a Christmas table “without Christ,” that is, divested of humane or “Christian” spirit, another Jew is crucified, albeit socially and metaphorically. In this story, Rawet dramatically subverts the positive image of the personable Brazilian “cordial man” and his need for intimacy with others. Moreover, this narrative points to how the cordial man's supposed “living through others” can also be interpreted as his “living at the expense of others,” especially when these others are marginal to an idealized Brazilian ethos. Pertinent to the question of ethnic differences, the image of the cordial man is further discredited toward the end of Rawet's story when the strong presence of Nani's authoritarianism is reiterated and reinforced by figuratively showing the calamitous end-result of an absolutist posture, one behaving selectively in its disposition and treatment of others who are viewed as being outside a circumscribed zone of approval. Continuing his historical Judeo-Christian thesis and its relation to Christ's agony on the cross, Nehemiah makes the following commentary as he continues to address the figure of Christ on that crucifix: “and even those who no longer remember that agony, seeing us, remember that on account of it many times we die: and so they kill us. And from this misconception, procreated over a thousand years, when will we be released, you and I?” (61). By blaming the Jews to appease their own conscience, according to Nehemiah, Christians have created a prejudicial situation not only without solution, but one continually being reproduced in our day and age.

As an unequivocal observation on the ambiguous facade of Brazilian race and ethnic relations, in this story, Samuel Rawet deconstructs the shibboleth of “Brazilian racial democracy” by using his own cultural roots and ethnic resources, via a double perspective gleaned from the experience of alterity, to dismantle a practice that deceptively “accepts” yet insidiously “rejects” peoples marginal to the idealized national code. The third-person narrative accommodates this discourse of alterity because it enables the author to reveal the perspectives from the inside as well as the outside.

In conclusion, the outsider/insider perspective of Brazilian Jewish alterity, as dramatized in Samuel Rawet's story, demonstrates how the Brazilian cultural inside may be perceived vis-à-vis the Jew as an outsider and, in turn, how Brazil as the outside may appear to the Jew as an insider within Brazilian culture. In each case, a double perspective emanates, affording the insider/outsider more resources for understanding the attitudes and behavior of the dominant group. Certainly the manifestation of each perspective on the part of Brazilian Jews, such as Rawet's Nehemiah Goldenberg, suggests that as insiders and outsiders they are keenly attuned to the possibilities of being the censured representative of differentness and otherness. Thus, it is evident why diaspora Jews in Latin America are sometimes obliged to practice “selective inhibition” or the aforementioned “selective ethnicity”—to be or not to be silent about their Jewishness—that is, to respond accordingly when it is convenient or inconvenient to be Jewish. In this vein, it behooves us to consider the potential importance of literature in understanding the phenomenon of alterity and the elusive but perhaps not-so-ambiguous attitudes that nationals manifest toward the Other, particularly when these others are dramatized as dually perceptive outsiders and insiders.

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