3) A tribe of Israel lost in Brazil?

Now, where was I? Ah yes, the SheRenTe, Sha-Ra-Na-Ta. For the record, - as the small story is never very far from the big one - I came across them while reading Claude Lévi-Strauss's masterful work. I'm talking about The Mythologiques, in which the anthropological giant studied the myths of dozens of cultures in South and North America, showing how one could move from one myth to another by means of elementary transformations.

But among all these cultures, the SheReNTe stand out a little - even if Claude Lévi-Strauss didn't see it. But then, many prophets and righteous men have wished to see what you see and have not seen it, to hear what you hear and have not heard it. For my part, I immediately saw in the traditions of the SheReNTe troubling similarities with Jewish tradition, both in their myths and in their rituals. This led me to study their culture in greater depth by reading the monograph dedicated to them by Curt Nimuendaju in 1942. This reading convinced me of the connection between SheReNTe and the people of Israel in the Bible.

Where to start? Well, first of all, Curt Nimuendaju teaches us that villages are organized into patrilineal exogamous moieties. Basically, villages are cut in half, and people always marry into the other half. Never their own. That's pretty common around the world. But that's not all. Each half is itself made up of 3 clans - so there are 6 in all. This 2x3 division is also quite common. In Le Cru et le Cuit, P49, Claude Lévi-Strauss drew this beautiful diagram of the organization of a Bororo village. 2 times 3, like the two interlocking triangles of the Star of David.

Six, as in half of the 12 tribes of Israel, who also « exchanged women ». Remember this passage from the book of Judges, 21-18, after the civil war, during which the tribe of Benjamin was massacred, and the rest of the people lamented the fact that they could no longer exchange wives with the tribe of Benjamin. You see, 12 is the perfect number for making combinations. You can cut it in half, in TRois (Three in French), in QuaTRe (Four in French) and in six - 4 divisors in all. No other number does better in terms of « ratio ». That's why 12 is so often found when it comes to cutting, as in the Roman Law of the 12 Tables. Remember, I already told you about this idea of cutting Tribes in two, three and four in my video about “TRanChing”.

Other similarities between Jewish and SheReNTe traditions include the commandment to kill witches and the great respect for elders already noted by Jean Baptiste Emmanuel Pohl in his “Voyage à l'intérieur du Brésil” published in 1832. There is also the role of masquerades, where a character covered in a disguise made of grass, frightens the village with his bells and rattles - somewhat like the Cohens under their Talit, their fringed shawls... But we'll come back to that in a moment.

4) Sex, Jewish Style

So far, there's nothing very specific to Jews, I’ll grant you that. But things start getting juicy when we look into matters involving sex. Because, as you'll see, sex among the Sherente is not all that different from sex « Jewish Style ».

And we begin, obviously, with menstruation , even if, here too, there's nothing really specific to Jews. If you've seen my previous videos, in particular S4 and S5, you already know that menstruation is probably one of those very rare anthropological universals. The Sherente are no exception to the « rule » (« règle » in French which also means menstruation in the plural form « règles »). And while the first menstrual period is not the object of any particular ceremony, any woman who menstruates is nevertheless considered impure: she and her husband must sleep apart and not touch each other.

In addition to these fairly standard menstrual prohibitions, bleeding after childbirth is also subject to similar « rules ». For example, a man must not touch his ax for 3 days after childbirth, and new Sherente parents eat nothing but manioc flat-cakes and only drink milky juices. This association between white-colored food and the post-natal period is similarly found in Leviticus, chapter 12, which specifies that to cleanse herself of blood after giving birth, a woman must bring a lamb as a burnt offering and a dove or turtledove as sacrifices - white animals, once again.

And to wrap-up this post-natal theme, it’s worth noting that at the age of 3, little SheReNTe boys are subjected to a tonsure, leaving the top of their skull bare. Just as Jewish boys wear a kiPPa, or skullcap, on their heads from an early age.

It's also interesting to note that the SheReNTe are also familiar with the practice of the Levirate, whereby a widow can demand to be remarried to the deceased's brother or cousin. However, the SheReNTe generally marry into their mother's side of the family - just as in the Bible. Finally, barrenness is not a cause for divorce among SheReNTe women, just as the Bible is full of examples of barren women who were never repudiated by their husbands, starting with Sarah and Rachel.

Now, again, there's nothing specifically Jewish about these customs, far from it. But where it gets interesting is that the SheReNTe have a specific “name bestowal” ceremony for girls, just like the Jews. But above all, it's the young males who are isolated in adolescence - not the girls, as in most indigenous cultures. This ritual of isolating boys lasts several months, during which trumpets - Shofar - are blown. The SheReNTe love blowing trumpets, using them in all their ceremonies, and even in warfare - like the Children of Israel in the Bible, but we'll come back to that later.

And to come back to this initiation ceremony for young boys, what's particularly juicy is how carefully the tribe ensures that there's no sex before marriage, which is, of course, arranged by the parents themselves. Ethnologists, including Curt Nimuendaju, have been astonished by this state of affairs. According to him, the SheReNTe are the only tribe that insists on the virginity of both boys and girls before marriage - even if girls, unlike boys, must walk around naked as long as they are virgins (which can be a source of conflict within families in the event of deviation...).

Well, of course, if you know anything about the closed world of ultra-Orthodox Jews, all this won't surprise you, unlike our 19th-century Pharisian ethnologists. You know that among Orthodox Jews, young boys are also « locked up » in boarding schools until their marriage. Marriage which is, again, arranged by their parents. Don't think, however, that the SheReNTe are paragons of marital virtue: adultery exists there, as it does everywhere else, and so does rape. They are common enough to have been noted by ethnologists, and are subject to formal sanctions.

But then, the same SheReNTe obsessed with sexual purity, are just as obsessed with sex, so much so that prostitution is not only common, it's organized and perfectly supervised. In fact, no hunting party leaves without its two designated « single ladies ». One for each half, of course, otherwise it's a sin. And these girls don't just cook, as you can imagine: they « voluntarily » chose this dissolute lifestyle in their teens, rather than marry a boy they probably don't like. Married women mostly put up with this state of affairs, as long as they're not too neglected.

And that, kids, is the first BIG sign that there's something weird about the SheReNTe. This combined obsession with sexual purity on the one hand, particularly unusual among Brazilian Indians, together with the practice of prostitution on the other hand. Anyone who knows anything about the Bible will know just how rampant prostitution is. Every Jewish child in the world knows what a prostitute is from an early age. ZoNah, prostitution, even appears in the most important prayer, the Shema Israel, recited daily. For the God of Israel is a jealous God who cannot bear his people cheating on him by « prostituting » themselves to foreign gods. This motif recurs time and again.

I've always wondered about this obsession with prostitution in the Bible. I mean, sure, why not - it's the oldest profession in the world, and I'll tell you more about it in S8. But for example, prostitution hardly ever appears in the Quran or the New Testament - and it's also not common in other great traditions as well. The Bible has a particular way of dealing with prostitution - which, incidentally, is the origin of certain anti-Semitic clichés about Jews prostituting non-Jewish women...

This is Sex « Jewish Style » : an institutionalized obsession with « sexual purity » coupled with an equally institutionalized obsession with « prostitution ». And the icing on the cake is this peculiar quirk SheReNTe women have of grabbing the balls of their indelicate husbands, mentioned 2 times by Curt Nimuendaju - just as in Deuteronomy 25.11, which condemns these wicked women to have their hands cut off.

While I'm at it, this institutionalization of prostitution is a somewhat « original » response to the dilemma highlighted by Chris Knight in Blood Relations. Remember that? The famous « chicken and egg » problem faced by females in securing the loyalty of males so that they contribute to the meat resources, allowing them to meet the needs of the household from gestation to sexual maturity, lactation and everything in between ... Well, the SheReNTe, like the Hebrews in the Bible, have found an interesting solution to this problem, with hunting « prostitutes ». In a way, their « institutional » status is the « exception that proves the rule ». In their own way, these free women remind husbands of their obligation to, first and foremost, provide for their wives.