Tel Aviv Celebrating 200th Birthday of Brazil with Weeklong Party
This week, Brazilians in Israel have decided to celebrate their 200th anniversary of independence by throwing a memorable party. Plus, they also want to celebrate the strong cultural ties between Brazil and Israel.
Casa Brasil
The event will kick off on Sunday and has been named Casa Brasil and it will continue till Friday. A food festival, a fashion show, cultural presentations and features lectures and more will be included.
The event will be held at Tel Aviv’s port large event venue at Hangar 11 and it has been decked out in the colors of the Brazilian flag i.e. yellow and green.
On Wednesday, Gerson Menandro, the ambassador to Israel from Brazil, spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency while attending a gala event.
The other attendees included military and government officials from different countries.
The British Mandate of Palestine had been partitioned into two states, namely Arab and Jewish, when a United Nations Assembly voted in favor of it.
Oswaldo Aranha, a Brazilian diplomat, had presided over it. He had been lobbying in favor of the partition for a while and in 1948, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Silvia Lerner, a historian born in Rio who moved last year to Israel, this was just the beginning. Her parents were Holocaust survivors who fled to Rio from Berlin in the 1930s.
She said that Israelis love Brazil and they welcome Brazilians with open arms.
Embracing Brazil
Over the decades, Israel has proven to be very welcoming of Brazilians as well as their culture. A kibbutz close to Sderot called Bror Hayil had begun to receive a number of immigrants from Brazil in the 1950s.
It is now referred to as the Brazilian kibbutz. In the late 1960s, Brazilian music also gained a lot of popularity in Israel.
This was particularly when local singers began translating some of the Portuguese lyrics into Hebrew.
The song ‘Eretz Tropit Yafa’, which is known in Portuguese as ‘Pais Tropical’ was recorded by top Israeli singers Yehudit Ravitz and Matti Caspi in 1978 and had gained a lot of popularity in the Jewish state.
The celebration
Raquel Yehezkel, the director of the Brazilian Cultural Center, said that Brazilians and Israelis are communicative, informal and warm, which brings the two cultures together.
On Thursday, a Brazilian-themed program will be performed by the Jerusalem Symphony, and there will be a capoeira dancing show on Friday.
The bicentennial celebration drew the attention of almost 15,000 Brazilians living in Israel as it made headlines.
The Brazilian embassy had had its first open even last year in April in Raanana. The largest number of Brazilians can be found in this high-end town of Israel, as there are almost 300 families living there.
Raanana and Rio became sister cities last year. The Jewish Agency revealed that about 550 Brazilians had immigrated to Israel in 2021.
This year, the number is once more back to the levels it was at before the coronavirus i.e. around 650 a year.
