How cannibals stopped a Jewish state in Brazil (Context in comments)

David Eder, one of the early Zionist activists, was very interested in setting up a Jewish state in an uninhabited part of the Brazilian rainforest. He went to Brazil to see if it would be possible, but his trip went terribly. He was immediately accused of espionage by the government, and when he arrived in the rainforest, he fell sick and almost died. He was then captured by a tribe of cannibals who ate human meat around him and forced him to eat what they said was the head of a baby. At this point he said that he fantasized about what a tasty meal hed be once the cannibals killed him. Yet it turned out that the tribe members were just messing with him. While they really were cannibals, they only ate people who had already died, and the “baby head” was actually just the head of a monkey. They nursed him back to health, and let him go free. He never went back to Brazil, and the Jewish-Brazil idea was never again considered. (Btw if youre interested in more extremely obscure mideast history lore I have a [YouTube channel ](https://youtube.com/@hasmoneanhistorian?si=H_ZQCrLWelBww7up) where I talk about this sort of stuff. Feel free to check it out)

If you think this story is interesting, you should look up the one about Hans Staden. He was a German adventurer who got shipwrecked on the coast of Brazil and was captured by the cannibal Tupinambá tribe in 1549. While he was in captivity, Staden spent a lot of time crying and loudly praying to God for help. The Tupinambá practiced cannibalism, but not just randomly: they believed that by eating their enemies they could absorb their bravery and strength. The problem for them was that Staden cried and complained so much that they started to see him as a coward. And in their view, eating a coward wouldn’t give them any strength at all. So, ironically, all that crying may have saved his life. After more than nine months as a prisoner, the tribe eventually let him board a French ship (the French were allied to that tribe in order to fight the portuguese), and he managed to make his way back to Europe.

Imagine if hed accidentally come across one of the groups of nazis that fled to South America, just staring at each other like the Umbrella Academy meme

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