The Jewish Publication Society did a disservice to this book and to its potential readership by releasing it under the title given above. The book is not about Jews exiled to the Amazon, but about a mestizo population living in the city of Iquitos, well integrated into local society and culture, who are the accidental descendants of Jewish traders and tappers who arrived in the region during the rubber boom of the 1880s. As the offspring of non-Jewish mothers and grandmothers, they are not Jews under Jewish law. Israel does not automatically grant them immigration rights under the Law of Return, and Limeño Jews keep them at an emotional distance, possibly because of their “alien” phenotype. (Who are the exiles here?) The author, quite appropriately, surrounds his use of the term “Jew” with quotation marks throughout the text, or refers to them as Jewish mestizos or descendants of Jews.
What...
