H eadlines
Brazilian Becomes Lone Soldier in Israel,
Then Loses Both Parents to COVID-19
I SR AEL
MARCUS M. GILBAN | JTA.ORG
RAANANA, ISRAEL —
When Thiago Benzecry left
his home in Brazil’s Amazon
region to join the Israeli navy,
he knew he was putting signif-
icant distance between himself
and his family, in more ways
than one.

He didn’t know it would be
the last time he would see his
parents in person.

Benzecry landed at Israel’s Ben
Gurion Airport in July 2019 with
plans to study Hebrew and then
volunteer in the Israel Defense
Forces. It was a path he could
hardly have imagined as a child
in Manaus, where his father was
a renowned Pentecostal church
pastor and his mother was a
party planner who supported her
husband’s work.

“I have never been afraid of
my children’s future. Instead of
giving a car when they turned
18, I always gave backpacks,” his
father, Stanley Braga, wrote on
social media to mark his son’s very
first day in the Israeli military.

Just months later, Braga was
14 MAY 13, 2021
dead, and so was Benzecry’s
mother, Vladya
Rachel Benzecry, both victims of the
COVID-19 pandemic, during
which Manaus became known
to the world as a grim early hot
spot in the Amazon rainforest.

Braga was 49 when he died,
his wife just 48. They had been
married for 30 years.

In Israel, Thiago Benzecry
mourned without any family
nearby to support him. Shortly
after his parents’ deaths, he
would be vaccinated against
COVID-19 as part of Israel’s
pace-setting inoculation drive.

“I, the only one in my family
not to contract the virus, am
the first to receive the vaccine.

What if they had had the
same opportunity and the
same conditions in Manaus? I
felt a mix of relief and pain,”
Benzecry told the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency.

Benzecry’s story has captured
the hearts of supporters in both
Israel and Brazil. In April, he
was featured on the cover page
of a major Israeli newspaper.

A video testimonial posted the
next day on the Israeli Defense
Force’s Facebook page garnered
“ My main goal is to honor my parents,” Thiago
Thiago Benzecry, left, with his late parents and two
Benzecry said.
Courtesy of Thiago Benzcry brothers.
Courtesy of Thiago Benzecry
nearly 100,000 views, “likes”
and supporting messages.

“My main goal is to honor
my parents,” Benzecry said
in an immigrant absorption
center in Raanana, the upscale
Tel Aviv suburb known as
Israel’s “Brazilian capital.”
Much sought-after by English-
and French-speaking new
immigrants, Raanana is home to
some 300 Brazilian families and
was recently declared a sister city
with Rio de Janeiro.

The 23-year-old Benzecry
is not so different from his
new neighbors, whose families
found refuge in Brazil for
only a few generations before
JEWISH EXPONENT
making it to the Holy Land.

Benzecry’s great-great-
grandfather Jacob arrived in
Brazil from Tetouan, Morocco,
in the 1800s, as part of a
wave of North African Jewish
immigration. There he became
the patriarch of a Sephardic
dynasty in the Amazon.

“The Benzecrys are among
the most traditional Jewish
families in the whole Amazon
region, playing a pivotal role in
the local economy, including
trade, industry, engineering,
medicine,and education,”
said David Vidal Israel, presi-
dent of the Amazon Israelite
Committee, or CIAM, the equiv-
alent of a local Jewish federation.

“After a century, some 1,000
families had settled in the
Amazon, lured by the rubber
boom and by the quest for a
land free of persecutions,” added
CIAM director Anne Benchimol,
who is also a descendant of Jacob
Benzecry. “They soon created
their own small communities as
a way of securing their culture
and tradition.”
Thiago Benzecry’s maternal
grandfather married someone
who was not Jewish. So did
his mother, who maintained
ties to the Jewish community
even as she devoted herself
to supporting her husband’s
Christian ministry.

“They were both very dear
to everyone here. I first met
Vladya when I was a teacher at
our elementary Jewish school
and madrich [instructor] at
the Jewish youth movement.

She would also practice Israeli
folk dance. Later, she started to
organize many Jewish events,”
Vidal Israel recalled.

As a child, Benzecry said he
considered himself Christian.

“I experienced a dual
religious identity and that’s
where my education comes
from,” he said.

He found himself drawn
to his Jewish heritage — and
especially to Israel — as a teen.

First, he attended a school
owned by his mother’s aunt
that was popular among Jewish
families in Manaus. Then, at
16, he went on a 10-day tour of
Israel operated by Birthright,
the nonprofit that runs free
trips to Israel for Jewish young
adults. And when he turned
18, he volunteered as a security
guard at the Beit Yaacov Rabi
Meyr, Manaus’ only synagogue.

Three years ago, at 20,
Benzecry decided to spend six
months in Israel on Masa, a
program that lets participants
choose from various study,
volunteer and professional
opportunities in the country. He
worked as a student intern at an
incubator for high-tech start-ups
in Tel Aviv.

“I was then able to know
what Israel really was, the social
and cultural nuances, the way
that Israelis communicate,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H EADLINES
and have a clear idea of what I
wanted,” Benzecry said. “When
I fi nally came on aliyah, it
was not a fi rst-time adventure
anymore, which took the weight
off my shoulders.”
In order to make aliyah,
or immigrate to Israel, Th iago
Benzecry submitted a certifi -
cate showing that his maternal
grandfather, Rubens, was Jewish.

Born to a non-Jewish mother,
Vladya’s own conversion was
apparently not accepted by the
Jewish Agency, which oversees
immigration applications. But
Benzecry was able to benefi t from
the Law of Return’s clause that
gives every grandchild of a Jew
the right to Israeli citizenship.

“As I grew up and got more
and more mature, I assumed
my Jewish heritage and identity.

Today, I’m Jewish,” Benzecry
said. He added, referring to his
Israeli ID card, “I am ready for
conversion as part of the army
because today my teudat zeut
says I have no religion.”
When Benzecry fi rst arrived
in Israel as an immigrant, he
moved to Maagan Michael
kibbutz, where he studied
Hebrew at an ulpan, the
government-subsidized Hebrew
language school for new
immigrants. Because he was
already 22, he was not required
to enlist in the military, but
he chose to anyway. He joined
Garin Tzabar, the program that
supports soldiers-to-be who do
not have a family in Israel.

“The biggest difficulty
of a lone soldier is undoubt-
edly being away from family
and friends from the country
of origin. Coming home for
the weekend and not having
anyone to talk to or hug is very
diffi cult,” said Navy Maj. Rafael
Rotman, who immigrated from
Brazil in 1997 when he was 17
years old.

Th at dynamic only deepened
over the last year, as the pandemic
set in and made international
travel unsafe and diffi cult. Israel
has not allowed people who are
not citizens to visit except in
narrow instances since very early
on in the crisis, in March 2020.

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As Manaus turned into a
hotspot, Benzecry watched
from afar as his father worked
to support the city’s many
impoverished families. Braga
announced an eff ort to deliver
10,000 food baskets to families
in crisis as part of his ministry.

He also used his radio show to
express support for Brazilian
President Jair Bolsanaro’s
decision to keep the economy
open despite the deepening
pandemic. When he tested positive
for COVID-19 last September,
Braga wrote to his son from his
hospital bed urging him not
to worry. Benzecry was totally
unprepared for the phone call a
short while later telling him his
father had died.

Just as the father’s funeral was
ending, Benzecry’s mother and
31-year-old brother collapsed
and were soon diagnosed with
the coronavirus. While his
brother recovered, his mother
died in late October, aft er six
weeks in intensive care.

Benzecry finished his
tugboat mechanics training
course before traveling to Brazil
in December to visit his two
brothers and 16-year-old sister.

Th e next month, a brutal second
COVID-19 wave overloaded
Manaus’ health care system,
again turning pictures of mass
graves in the city into front-
page news worldwide.

Now, as Benzecry begins to
consider what he will do aft er
his military service is complete,
he sees his future in Israel, not
South America.

“I’m proud to be Brazilian
and that’s what I tell everyone,
everywhere. Brazil is part of my
story, a place of communion.

It’s my family, my culture, a
place I can always visit, but it’s
not my target anymore. It’s just
a remembrance. Th e world is
too big,” he said.

“My parents were the greatest
supporters of my choices.

Th e educational and cultural
heritage I received from them is
the reason why I’m here today.

I feel like I’m also living their
dream.” ●
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