Palavras Espalhadas

David José Israel and Elias José David Israel (my great-grandfather and grandfather, respectively) founded the Jewish newspaper "Folha Israelita" in Manaus, northwestern Brazil. David was the paper's chief director, and Elias was its editor from 1948 to 1958. Their newspaper also featured poems they wrote about love, longing, the heat of the Amazon, and its exuberant nature, which contrasted with the European architecture that had taken over the state capital of Amazonas. My grandfather used to recite some of these poems to me when I was growing up, but they were never published or written on paper (or so I thought).
​
Between 2014 and 2017, I found many of those poems scattered between the pages of the newspaper. In 2017, I translated them into Hebrew and published them in a book called "Palavras Espalhadas," which translates to "Scattered Words" in English.