Janette Fishenfeld’s Os dispersos (The dispersed): Jewish tradition in review

Abstract

The Jewish culture is based in strong familiar traditions, most of them religious, which added to the gregarious character of their faith, as the always necessary minyan of ten men for the celebration and worship, it has succeeded keep united their groups in the middle of different cultures. All the needs of the Jewish worship and the wide power of the tradition have created certain cohesion of group, however, elements originated of the cultures in contact somewhat have influenced the Jewish minorities, adding new elements or changing some of their daily practices. The book Os dispersos, a collection of seven short stories, from the Brazilian writer Janette Fishenfeld, focuses these contacts and the conflicts created by them: a couple that understand that it is impossible to be together, separated by the tradition; the old Zeide, the grandpa, inmate of a home for old people, that remembers the past, in the moment that he goes to the brit-milah of his great-grandson, among his assimilated family – those and other situations in which the Jewish traditions crash against the new life possibilities in Brazil and among the Brazilian culture, and their needs of adaptation for survive. This article intends to present how this writer recreates in her text all this situations of acculturation, assimilation and the conflicts with the Jewish tradition.