"About Sugarcane and Homecoming" tells the story of a growing number of people in the North Eastern part of Brazil, on a quest for identity and faith. People who were born into Catholicism have begun to claim that they are Jewish. They congregate, creating a subculture of Judaism - the community they form observers traditional Jewish religious rites, Jewish family, and communal life. However, it is not recognized by the Jewish establishment worldwide. They are convinced that they are descendants of Jews forced to convert to Catholicism after the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and the forced conversion in Portugal.
In 1497, the Jews of Portugal were forced to convert to Catholicism. They were called "New Christians". Many of these "New Christians" found Refugee in Brazil far from the inquisition and started the sugar trade. Some of them continued to practice the Jewish faith in secret. They were pejoratively called "Marranos" (pigs). It is the belief, confirmed by many scholars and researchers, that in times of darkness, intolerance, suppression and horror, those Marranos led a clandestine life as Catholics in public and Jews in secret. Generations later, these communities gradually assimilated but never disappeared. The phenomenon became known as Crypto Judaism. Today, Communities of Crypto Jews can be found in Spain and Portugal and in great numbers in northeast Brazil (a former Portuguese colony). Many of their customs (not eating pork, draining the blood from meat, burial in plain ground without a coffin, laying stones on grave marks and marriage within the family) are different from the average Catholic communities in the area and believed to derive from Judaism.
With a conviction based on family customs, Inquisition documents, historical facts and biblical prophecies we follow these main characters taking on the process called "Return to Judaism", a long and bumpy ride to the "promised land", facing personal and family conflicts, cynicism, frustration and a very uninterested Jewish establishment.
