This text is na abridged version of the book entitled Baile de mascaras – mulheres judias e prostituição: as polacas e suas associações de ajuda mútua.The author particularly addresses the contents of Chapter 3 (The charity sisterhood),where she hás analysed the mutual help society founded by a group of Jewish men and women in the city of Rio de Janeiro. What this group particularly had in common, was the same religious identity and the exercise of their activities in this city’s foreign prostitution trade, mainly within the so-called “red-light districts’.Certainly, it is fundamental to stress that this analyses is an innovating approach, for focusing on an excluded group, always judged by its public appearance, since prostitution was located on the streets, and seeking to reflect on their private worlds. In studying their philanthropic and socializing societies, she presents a different facet of these women.
