Samuel Rawet's Christless Jews

Abstract

The recent publication of 3 books, Samuel Rawet: Contos e novelas reunidos (Civilização Brasileira, 2004), Samuel Rawet: fortuna crítica em jornais e revistas (Caetés, 2008) and Samuel Rawet: ensaios reunidos (Civilização Brasileira, 2008), allowed a qualitative leap for the researchers which have Rawet’s work in their horizon, inasmuch as those books offered a comprehensive overview that puts in evidence some characteristics which pervade his work. This article focuses on the ambiguous relationship between the Jew and Christian world, which recurs in Rawet’s fictional work. Even the Jew born in Brazil, perfectly acculturated and integrated, feels threatened in his Jewish particularity, compelled to abandon the last traces which link him to his people’s culture and traditions, and, at the same time, fascinated and attracted to Christianity. In Rawet’s world view, Christianity provokes in the Jew a strong repulsion, simultaneously with a strong attraction