A 500-YEAR OLD MEMORY

A 500-Year-Old Memory

Another tragic date in Jewish history

by Rabbi Jules HarlowSpecial to the Jewish Week

1506 is a tragic date in Jewish history. Most people do not know why. 1492 is well known as the year when Jews were expelled from Spain.1948 is on our minds this year as we celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. These are just three of the dates we must remember.

Remembering is an integral part of being Jewish. We are happy to recall 1948 not only because we celebrate Israel's independence, but because so many dates in Jewish history commemorate tragedy. I do not subscribe to what Professor Salo Baron derogatorily labeled the lachrymose theory of Jewish history, since we do have plenty to celebrate, much to be proud about. Nevertheless, it is essential to remember our tragedies as well as our triumphs, since they too are part of who we are.

Our tragedies include the destruction of the two ancient Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and in 70 CE, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, a pogrom in Poland in 1648, Kristallnacht in 1938, and the overwhelming horrors of the Shoah multiple times in each year from the late thirties to the middle forties of the twentieth century.

In 1506, in Lisbon, Portugal, thousands of Conversos (Jews who had been forcibly baptized en masse as Catholics in 1497) were massacred in a public square near the Dominican Convent .The date is not familiar to most Jews throughout the world, and it seemed to have been absent from public awareness in the city of Lisbon. When you walk through this pubic plaza in the center of Lisbon, you would have no way of knowing about the horrors that were inflicted upon Jews on that very site.

This gap in memory was filled this year in Lisbon with the placement of a memorial marker near the site of the massacre. The memorial is a simple, inclined half-sphere designed by the accomplished Portuguese Jewish architect, Graca Bachmann. Here is a translation of the Portuguese text inscribed atop the marker within a Magen David:

1506-2008
In memory of the thousands of Jewish victims of fanatic religious intolerance,murdered in the massacre that began on the 19th of April, 1506, in this place.
5366-5768
A verse from Job (16:18), in Portuguese and in Hebrew, is inscribed on the square base that supports the sphere.
"Earth, do not cover my blood; let there be no resting place for my outcry!"

In 1506, the city of Lisbon suffered a plague accompanied by a drought. Those who could leave the city, including the royal court, left. Fear and hysteria pervaded Lisbon, whose citizens prayed daily for water and for compassion. Professor Yosef Yerushalmi's important monograph on the events of 1506 (Hebrew Union College Annual Supplement, Cincinnati, 1976) includes a description of the probable immediate cause of the massacre. The Dominican Convent in Lisbon attracted crowds who were praying for relief. A light that seemed to be emanating from a crucifix over the altar of a chapel was interpreted to be a divine sign. It attracted large crowds of citizens eager for a miracle. The crowd one day included "one of the Hebrews recently enlisted in the ranks of the baptized," a New Christian. He made a remark that was interpreted as blasphemy. According to one account, he asked, "How can a piece of wood work wonders?" An enraged crowd beat him to death, and his body was dismembered and burned in the square in front of the Convent. His brother, who complained about this outrage, met the same fate. This began a three-day massacre and burning of an estimated two to four thousand Conversos, also known as New Christians, Jews who had been forcibly baptized in 1497. The mobs of citizens who roamed through Lisbon violating and killing Jews were incited by Dominican friars, one of whom preached a sermon against the "Jews" that day, accompanied by outbursts from other friars that included: "Heresy! Destroy this abominable people!"

King Manuel, under whose authority thousands of Jews had been forcibly baptized in 1497, was not in the city at the time. Upon his return he arrested the two the Dominicans who had led the riot. They were executed, along with forty or fifty other conspirators. He then granted permission to all New Christians to leave Portugal, contradicting his order in 1497 that forbade any New Christian to leave the country. King Manuel also abolished legal discriminations against New Christians. The lives and the property of the New Christians (Conversos) who remained in Lisbon were never endangered during the remainder of his reign. After his death the persecution resumed.

In 2006, the 500th anniversary of the massacre, the Jewish Community of Lisbon proposed to the Lisbon City Council that a suitable memorial for the victims be placed at the site of the massacre, at the Community's expense. In 2008, the Lisbon City Council unanimously approved that proposal. The Council also approved a proposal of the Catholic Church to place a sculpture in the square commemorating the words of reconciliation pronounced by the Patriarch of Lisbon, Dom Jose da Cruz Policarpo, in the year 2000:

"The historical location in the center of Lisbon, where we meet in friendship, has in the past been the stage of intolerable acts of violence against the Hebrew people. We should not forget the sad fate of the Cristaos Novos: the pressures for their conversion, the popular uprisings, the suspicions, the denunciations, and the frightening Inquisition trials.

"As the community with a majority of believers in this city for the last thousand years, the Catholic Church fully recognizes that her memory is deeply stained by these words and this behavior ---so often carried out in her name--- which are unworthy of human dignity and of the Gospel she preaches."

On April 22, 2008, the Patriarch of Lisbon, who proclaimed those words, participated in the dedication ceremony together with the Rabbi of the Jewish Community, and representatives of other religious communities in the city.

Another important feature of the day was the dedication of a marker to be placed on the square by the Lisbon City Council proclaiming Lisbon "City of Tolerance."

April 22, the date chosen by the Lisbon City Council for the dedication ceremony, this year is the first Intermediate Day of the Holiday of Passover. The three-day-massacre in 1506 also began during the month of April, April 19 to be exact. Professor Yerushalmi has pointed out that, according to the normative Jewish calendar, Passover in 1506 began on April 9. But the Conversos in Lisbon postponed their own celebration until April 17, the day after the holiday had ended according to the Jewish calendar. Such postponements were not uncommon in the Converso, New Christian, community. They hoped to escape detection by gathering to observe a festival on "the wrong day."

Those in attendance at the memorial dedication will include a group of descendants of Jews persecuted in Portugal before and during the Inquisition. They call themselves bnei anousim, descendants of those who were forced to convert. They also refer to themselves as "survivors" ---"survivors of the Inquisition." During the past two years, my wife Navah and I have been teaching bnei anousim who want to become halakhic Jews, to return to the heritage that was so cruelly snatched from their ancestors. They turned to Masorti Olami, the international arm of the Conservative movement, for help and guidance. To date, eight of them have fulfilled all of the requirements and have come before the Masorti Beit Din in London for conversion. They will be among many others of similar background in the Jewish community who trace their families back to victims of religious persecution in Portugal because of their Jewish origins and who are now dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating Jewish life in Lisbon.

It is the hope and prayer of all people of good faith in Lisbon, as elsewhere, that the City of Tolerance will now be free of the intolerance of the past.

Rabbi Jules Harlow, founding editor of The Rabbinical Assembly, is editor and translator of Conservative liturgy.