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But we never fail to understand it as a place of art. But a place of art that is trying to in Yiddish in the Coral Tradition. It was in this period that the curator, after years
experience, in real scale, other possible worlds". of work at the Center for Jewish Culture, began to approach the building, located
Experiencing other possible worlds was certainly what the progressive Jews who in a now mostly Korean and Bolivian neighborhood and with its rather dilapidated
founded the space in Bom Retiro shortly after World War II and the Holocaust wanted building. "Casa was not closed. These women have kept it heroically alive, but working
in the 1940s. And it is only through an understanding of this long history of the House, as much as possible", says Seroussi, referring to figures such as Hugueta Sendacz,
strongly intertwined with the political and cultural events of the 20th century, that one now 92 years old and still a master of the choir. At the same time, as a result of the
can understand the performance of the institution today. "Because all the resumption launch of the book Vanguarda Pedagógica (2008) and a mobilization through social
was made from a rereading of history. But not with the look of the historian, say, but networks, a group of Scholem alumni also became involved with the House and
more with the techniques of the healer. The idea is not necessarily to look for factual discussed the future of space.
veracity - not that this is not important - but much more to think about how to use, It was from 2012, with a new board - which already included Seroussi - and an embryonic
and perhaps abuse, this story in the present", says Seroussi. team that things began to change. "I had no money or employees, but I remember
thinking: with this place, this history, this architecture and without paying rent, or I
THE ANCIENT HISTORY make things happen or I change my profession", he jokes. "And we decided to do the
The history that the curator talks about referes to the 1930s and 1940s, when thousands same way it was done there in 1953. That is, put groups to use space. There came
of Jewish immigrants fleeing poverty and persecution in Europe began to inhabit Bom a fashion group, one of graphic design, one of urban activism. And today we have
Retiro, in São Paulo's downtown, and when two narratives come together. On the one 25 groups or collectives using the house". This time, no more people linked to the
hand, the emergence of anti-fascist associations - as in various parts of the world - Jewish community, but from the most varied origins, transforming the institution into
created during the war to combat anti-Semitism, support the Allied countries' struggle a space for meeting and socializing among different people. "If the Jew is the other,
and, at the same time, a secular Jewish culture. Also, the desire to pay homage to par excellence, a Jewish house must be open to all others. It has to be a space of
the millions of dead in the Nazi concentration camps. "It could be made a memorial, radical alterity, open to the trans people, the black population, the indigenous people
a sculpture, with the names, where they would put flowers once a year. A gesture of and the immigrants in the neighborhood".
remembrance is ready", comments Benjamin. What was done, however, was a "living From a questioning on what should be a cultural center of the 21st century, and more
monument", a space that brought together anti-fascist associations - such as the specifically in that space, three major axes of work were defined. The first, gedenk
newspaper Nossa Voz and the Youth Club - and at the same time honored the dead. ("remember" in Yiddish), guides the performance of the house as a living memory
"The two narratives meet: the cultural center and the memorial. So it's a memory space, which tells the story of resistance of the groups that have gone through it,
space, but a place to remember is to act. A place where history is not written on the but seeks to bring this history to the practices of the present and future ideas. The
wall, but it is inscribed in bodies and architecture, and it is up to us to activate it". second axis, tsukunft ("future") emphasizes the experimental role of the house
With a project by Ernest Mange - architect who worked with Rino Levi and Le Corbusier and the desire to make it a space to think about new artistic and multidisciplinary
– Casa do Povo gained its headquarters in 1953. With three large decks with almost no practices. The third axis, Farain ("association"), refers to how the first two axes could
partitions and a terrace, the modernist building on Rua Três Rios became a cultural be worked, that is, through the action of collectives, autonomous movements and
center and space for political action. "It makes a lot of sense for Mange to have neighborhood associations that started to inhabit the place, living together and using
designed a building with these free plants, which allows you to adapt the spaces. I the spaces so flexibly.
imagine he must have thought that the best building to remember is one in which each The three axes relate directly to an unavoidable question, according to Seroussi: "Here
generation invents their ways of remembering. Because we never know how, tomorrow, were groups of a political vanguard. It was built a modernist architecture building,
we'll remember yesterday", says Seroussi. The space also housed the Brazilian Israeli had an experimental school and a Brechtian theater. Then the place condemns us to
Gymnasium Scholem Aleichem, a children's school of renewed education (a humanist dare. It asks us to do differently". Different even from what was done there in the
pedagogical line similar to Constructivism), and in 1960, it inaugurated in its subsoil 1940s and 1950s, in a radically different context. "When the Casa do Povo opened
the Brazilian Israelite Art Theater (TAIB), designed by the architect Jorge Wilheim . there were two or three cultural centers in the city. Today only that neighborhood
With the coup in 1964 and the establishment of the military regime, Casa do Povo places Pinacoteca, the Oswald de Andrade Cultural Center, the Sesc Bom Retiro, the
enters a troubled period of its history. While the newspaper Nossa Voz was closed by Sala São Paulo, the Porto Seguro Theater, the Sacred Art Museum and the Container
the government, the school increasingly housed children of persecuted politicians Theater. So we were going to make another place with exhibitions, theater season and
(including many non-Jews), who won scholarships and, if necessary, false names. shows? No, we wanted to do something else", he explains. "Even because these spaces
Teachers came to be arrested and tortured and the institution became a pole of are fundamental, but I think they do not account for a series of contemporary artistic
resistance to dictatorship, especially through the activities of TAIB. In it were staged practices. Because I think they often separate culture from the other spheres of life".
pieces of the Arena Theater - by authors like Plínio Marcos and Augusto Boal - and Today, with the groups and a schedule divided between what the institution organizes
the Sesi Popular Theater, among others. At the same time as the presentations filled and what it hosts, the annual budget went from R$ 60 thousand in 2011 to R $ 1.2 million,
the theater and the school continued to function, many members of the Jewish captured between incentive laws, edicts, contributions from groups and associates,
community moved away, out of fear of persecution or ideological disagreement, and locations and an annual collection event - such as Caetano Veloso's show in 2018.
financial difficulties increased. The institution's library, after 40 years closed, was reactivated last May, representing
"From the 1980s the Casa do Povo loses the enemy - the Dictatorship - the friend another big step for the place in the sense of resuming its history and, at the same
- the socialist bloc - and the social base - the Jews who lelf the neighborhood and time, opening itself to society. "There have been several generations here, including
often move away from the left-wing", sums up Seroussi. In 1981 the college closed its many people who have died, but we have this collection, this archive, which is the
activities, emptying even more space, in a period that the center of the city also lives hard core of the institution, which tells its story", says Marilia Loureiro, curator and
a growing abandonment by the elites and the public power. If Casa do Povo did not programmer at the institution. The next step is the restoration of TAIB, now quite
completely close its doors, being maintained by the almost heroic performance of some degraded, in a planning that is already at an advanced stage.
associates, it entered a long period of crisis that only ended in the current decade. The newspaper Nossa Voz, symbol of the institution, was relaunched in 2014 and
RECENT HISTORY is published annually with texts on current topics and collaborations of artists and
It was more or less the story told to Seroussi in 2011 - certainly with more details and intellectuals. In the last issue of 2018, the cover stamps the Herzog Vive! Manifesto
emotion - by the women who continued to go to Casa do Povo every week to sing published by the Jewish group for Democracy in the election period in reaction to

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