What if Brazil woke one morning
and the census of the soul said: Jewish—
not Iberian fables, not marble Europe,
but a million mezuzot kissing sunlit doorframes?
Samba would keep its heartbeat,
but a shofar might answer the tamborim at dawn.
Portuguese would tilt toward Ladino,
and prayers would braid with ocean wind.
The pomegranate stalls in Bahia
would split like little red libraries,
each seed a surname carried across water,
each seed a promise to remember.
Maps would blush and rewrite themselves:
not a copy of elsewhere,
but a world that crossed the Atlantic
and decided to bloom.
And the joke is—nothing essential would change:
bread would still rise, drums would still roll,
mothers would still name their children after hope,
and the sun would set on a coast that keeps everyone.