Marxism and Judaism in Brazil: Remembering Jacob Gorender
Jacob Gorender: Brazilian Jewish and Marxist thinker Jacob Gorender (1923-2013) was born in Salvador, Brazil, the oldest of five children of poor Jewish immigrants. His father, Nathan, came from Ukraine and his mother, Anna, from Bessarabia. At the age of 17, he was already working as an archivist at O Imparcial , a newspaper in Salvador, where he went on to serve as a reporter and then editor. This was the first of the many papers for which he wrote, a good number of which had ties to the PCB. In 1941 he began studying at the Salvador School of Law, and the following year his friend Mário Alves recruited him to the communist party. At 20, he enlisted to fight in World War II and saw seven months of combat in the Apennines and Monte Castelo, Italy. When he returned to Brazil, he threw himself into the life of a militant. He dropped out of college, moved to Rio de Janeiro, and became a “professional revolutionary,” as he used to say, devoted to party activities. He was in ...