Tamarica

Tamarica (other possible spellings: Tamarca or Tamarike), a city in Brazil, is renown for having one of the first, if not the first, Jewish community in the Americas. In the Yosef Goldman Collection, there is a book titled "Sefer Shefa Tal", a kabbalistic volume that was printed in Hanau, Germany, in 1612. It contains a handwritten statement of ownership by a Rabbi Jacob Lugarto of a congregation in Tamarica, Brazil. Rabbi Lugarto came to Brazil as a young man and was the author of a volume of aphorisms (copies of which, evidently, no longer exist). The book is the only known physical link to this Jewish community, since there are no other known artifacts from it.

References

[http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/20061/Hooked_On_American_Jewish_History.html The Jewish Press, "Glimpses Into American Jewish History", December 6, 2006]

[http://books.google.com/books?id=jJEvn6AoYa8C&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=tamarica+brazil&source=web&ots=hei5iS_tHm&sig=w8rzVMYs1p0szVbkSsHWzSiG0-w"The Early History of the Jews in New York", Samuel Oppenheim]