When Rebecca Hamani died two years ago at age 94 in Obidos, her daughter Mary and son-in-law Claudio ensured that she received a proper Jewish burial in the town’s well-kept Jewish cemetery. Rebecca was the 16th person buried since 1918 in the tiny Obidos Jewish cemetery, surrounded by the royal palms so prolific in the Amazon jungle. Jews who caught yellow fever or malaria and died on Amazon riverboats rest under three unmarked graves. Claudio Hamani says, "When those three got here, someone said, ‘They were Jewish, take them,’ and the community buried them in Obidos." back