The Iquitos community has been rather isolated from the rest of the Peruvian Jewish community, which is concentrated in Lima. During a trip to Iquitos in 1948 and 1949, the Argentine-Israeli geologist Alfredo Rosensweig had noted that the Jews of Iquitos were “almost a hidden community” due to their geographical separation from Lima Jews and the location of Iquitos in the far northeast of the country, inaccessible from Lima by road. At the time that Rosensweig visited, the community did not have a Jewish school, a rabbi, or a synagogue. Most Amazonian Jews in Iquitos are of Christian origin, and consider themselves to be a mix between Christians and Jews. It's believed that was due to the fact that most immigrant Jews who had came to Iquitos in the 19th century were single men, who then married the Christian women of Iquitos. In the 1950s and 60s, the Jews of Iquitos had almost disappeared due to the mass emigration to Lima. The community of Iquitos Jews had not been recognized by the rest of Peru until the 1980s, when Rabbi Guillermo Bronstein, who was then the chief rabbi of the Asociasión Judía del Perú in Lima, was contacted by the Iquitos Jews and visited the community in 1991, subsequently sending resources such as prayer books and other Jewish texts. In 1991, the Sociedad Israelita de Iquitos was established.
