E-mail a Friend

You are sending:
Portugal’s few Jews leading rich lives of culture, faith

Your Email:

Friend's Email:

Note: (optional)

Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/5607/full/5607/portugal-s-few-jews-leading-rich-lives-of-culture-faith/ Portugal’s few Jews leading rich lives of culture, faith Friday, April 25, 1997 | by TOM TUGEND LISBON—While much of the Jewish and Hispanic world marked the quincentennial of the 1492 edict expelling Jews from Spain, the anniversary of a similar death knell dealt to Jewish life in Portugal only four years later has barely been noted. Earlier this month in the town of Belmonte, Israel's President Ezer Weizman and Portugal's President Jorge Sampaio oversaw the dedication of the first new Portuguese synagogue that has been built in almost 70 years. That evening, the play "From the Expulsion to the Inquisition," by Carlos Avilez, premiered in Lisbon. The next day, the National Assembly held a special session and dignitaries gathered at the site of a planned memorial, the first of its kind, marking the expulsion and the routes taken by Portuguese Jews in their new diaspora. One of those routes led to Amsterdam, where exiles established a flourishing colony. Their descendants became the first Jews to set foot in New Amsterdam, now known as New York, in 1654. Portugal's Jewish population peaked in 1492, when some 150,000 Jews fled across the border from Spain, seeking a permanent refuge. Many resumed their wanderings four years later while others, like Portugal's native-born Jews, underwent forced conversions. Today in Lisbon, traces of bygone Jewish life persist in the narrow, winding alleys of the medieval Jewish quarter and in Rossio Square, site of the Palace of the Inquisition, where 1,300 Jews were burned at the stake. Some 300 families are now officially registered with the Lisbon Jewish community. There is no permanent rabbi; kosher food is imported and, except for holidays, it is difficult to muster a minyan. Yet there are two synagogues, the Sephardi Shaare Tikvah and the smaller Ashkenazi Ohel Yaacov. Aside from skinhead graffiti, there are few signs of overt anti-Semitism in Portugal. Among the country's 10 million inhabitants, nearly all Catholic, there is a profound ignorance about Judaism. Some of this ignorance is slowly being dispelled as democracy takes firm root and Portugal forms closer media and political links with the rest of Europe. There is even a boom in Portuguese Jewish history studies, encouraged by the recently elected Sampaio, who makes no secret of his Jewish grandmother. One remarkable aspect of Jewish life in Portugal is how a few energetic individuals have taken it upon themselves to reinvigorate their communities or dig, quite literally, into their remote past. The town of Belmonte, population 35,000, where the new three-story synagogue and its mikveh was dedicated, is home to about 100 Converso families who, though their ancestors were formally converted to Christianity 500 years ago, have retained forms of Jewish ritual and consciousness. Raised in a Converso family, Helena Elias da Costa of Belmonte formally converted to Judaism when she married her physician husband, Carlos, in 1979. Her example has been followed by 70 of the 100 families. The rest, including da Costa's parents, opted to retain their Converso ways. A 22-year-old rabbi from Brazil, Shlomo Haber, is staying in town for six months and ministers to the Jews and Conversos equally, doubling as the community's ritual slaughterer. Da Costa, a high school arts teacher, has turned her spacious home into a Judaica museum, wears a Magen David around her neck and takes care of three cats who are named Golda Meir, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Oskar Schindler. Her most lasting monument may be a 12-foot-high menorah, made of welded steel, which she designed herself. The menorah stands permanently on one of Belmonte's main streets. Equally remarkable is Carmen Dolores Pirra Balesteros, a historian at the University of Evora, 90 miles east of Lisbon, and a self-made archaeologist. The 35-year-old Catholic woman decided as a graduate student to focus on the history of Zionism and messianism. She now spends most of her energy and slender personal resources excavating 15th-century synagogues, or possible synagogue sites, in Evora, in the hilly mountain village of Castelo de Vide, and in Valencia de Alcantara, on the Spanish side of the border. In Evora's old Jewish quarter, along the Rua Da Moeda (Street of Coins), Balesteros pointed to odd indentations at the front entrances of houses. She believes mezuzot were affixed at these spots, but were hastily removed and replaced by crucifixes when the homeowners were forcibly converted. Balesteros' next ambition is to establish a Jewish studies department at the University of Evora. There are other interesting Jewish sites for the medieval-history buff in Portugal. In the town of Tomar in central Portugal, for instance, a well-preserved 15th-century synagogue and mikveh have been transformed into an eclectic Jewish museum. Caretaker Luis Vasco, an old sailor, proudly said that even though only two Jewish families live in Tomar, a Yom Kippur service was held four years ago because so many Jewish tourists were in town. The occasion was marked by a procession through the streets with a Torah scroll that had been donated by the Bevis Marks synagogue in London. A synagogue, built in 1928, serves the small Jewish community in the northern port city of Oporto. Long isolated, Portugal's tiny Jewish community is now reaching out to its brethren in Israel and the diaspora, with the Portuguese government's encouragement. "Though few in number, the Jews of Portugal have deep historical roots," said Eyal Propper, first secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Lisbon. "It is important that Jews from other countries, especially the United States, come here and visit them."

Please enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below:

E-mail a Friend

Subscribe to: