HEBRON - A JEWISH COMMUNITY - NOW , AND FOREVER

HEBRON - A JEWISH COMMUNITY - NOW, AND FOREVER!

HEBRON JEWS: A COMMUNITY OF MEMORY

Hebron Jews: A Community of Memory
Jerold S. Auerbach

Israel recently marked two momentous events in its brief history: two years ago it observed the fortieth anniversary of the Six-Day war, followed last year by the sixtieth anniversary of independence. Although each offered an appropriate occasion for celebration of a stunning historic achievement, both provoked prolonged lamentation by many Israelis, first over Israel’s shameful responsibility for “Naqba,” the Palestinian dispersion in 1948 that accompanied the rebirth of a Jewish state; and then over the “Pyrrhic” victory and “occupation” of “Palestinian” land since 1967. Two anniversaries this year, if noticed at all, are likely to attract even sharper criticism. Hebron Jews will commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the horrific 1929 massacre, which led to the expulsion of a 400 year-old Jewish community from the City of the Patriarchs. But they also celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of their return to inhabit abandoned Jewish property after five decades of forced exclusion from Hebron. Together, these commemorative occasions will demonstrate the power of Jewish memory in a community of Jews committed to preserving the historical links between biblical antiquity and modern Israel, between Judaism and Zionism.

Yet no Jews are as reviled as the Jews of Hebron. Vilified as “zealots,” “fanatics” and “fundamentalists” who illegally “occupy” someone else’s land, they are the Jewish settlers whom legions of critics love to hate. It is seldom noticed that their most serious transgression, settlement in the Land of Israel—the return of Jews to their historic homeland— defines Zionism.

Living in the ancient biblical city south of Jerusalem, Hebron Jews are clustered near Me’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of Machpelah, the oldest Jewish holy site in the world. There, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the first parcel of land owned by the Jewish people in their promised land to bury Sarah. There, too, the other patriarchs and matriarchs were entombed. Since biblical antiquity Jews have lived and prayed in Hebron and made pilgrimages to the Machpelah shrine. Conquered, massacred, expelled and exiled over the centuries, they have always remembered Hebron and they have always returned. One of the four ancient holy cities, Hebron was honored with designation as a city of refuge and a priestly city. It became King David’s first capital, an important administrative center for King Hezekiah in his eighth-century war against the Assyrians, and a crucial battleground during the Maccabean and Bar Kokhba uprisings. There, at the beginning of the Common Era, King Herod built the massive stone enclosure around the burial tombs that remains the oldest intact structure in the entire Land of Israel.

But Jews were not alone in finding sacred meaning and inspiration in Hebron. Over the centuries, Christians and Muslims attempted to make Hebron exclusively theirs.

Beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, Muslim rulers prohibited Jews (and other “infidels”) from entering Machpelah to pray at the tombs, permitting them to ascend no higher than the seventh step outside the enclosure. But itinerant Jewish travelers persisted in making pilgrimages to the ancient burial site and some elderly Jews moved to Hebron to be buried near their biblical ancestors. Following the expulsions from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, a small group of pious Jews built a community of study and prayer in Hebron on land purchased for them by a wealthy benefactor. Sephardic Jews trickled in from villages and cities in the Middle East, subsequently joined by Hasidim from Eastern Europe. Gathered around the Avraham Avinu (“Our Father Abraham”) synagogue, in a dark and cramped quarter adjacent to the market in the center of town, they clung tenaciously to their precarious foothold, dependent for economic survival largely on emissaries dispatched to benefactors scattered throughout the Jewish world.

During much of the nineteenth century, a time of impressive community expansion, Hebron Jews maintained relatively harmonious, if largely subservient, relations with their Muslim neighbors, who treated them as dhimmis. Hebron became widely known for its Talmudic scholarship and learning.

Yeshivas sprouted, a medical clinic opened, and the first paved road from Jerusalem linked Hebron to other Jewish communities in Ottoman Palestine.

But there was little connection between Hebron Jews and the nascent Zionist movement. The secular Jews who rode the swift currents of nineteenth-century nationalism largely abandoned the religious Judaism that had framed Jewish life during 2,000 years of statelessness and exile. At the founding Zionist convention in Basel in 1896, Max Nordau insisted “Zionism has nothing to do with religion.” Like other emancipated modern Jews, these iconoclastic Jewish nationalists were prepared to cast off a religion that looked backward to the past and inward to divine revelation and sacred texts. Only Zionism, stripped of religious content, could provide an answer to the Jewish Question—the place of Jews in modern society—by relocating them within the boundaries of their own homeland.In 1929, after nearly a decade of British rule in Palestine following World War I, Hebron Jews suffered another of the horrific pogroms that had long punctuated Jewish history. Incited by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, Arab rioting swept through Palestine. The venerable Hebron Jewish community was suddenly attacked. Sixty-seven Jews were murdered; scores were assaulted, severely wounded, even mutilated. After British soldiers removed traumatized survivors from their homes and evacuated them to Jerusalem, Hebron became Judenrein. Two years later an attempt to rebuild the community failed. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Hebron was conquered and absorbed within the Kingdom of Jordan. In the old Jewish Quarter remnants of its past— synagogues, yeshivas, even the ancient cemetery—were desecrated and virtually obliterated.

Nineteen years later, when the Israel Defense Forces swept into biblical Judea and Samaria near the end of the Six-Day War, Hebron—along with Jerusalem—was restored to Jewish control after 2000 years. For the first time since 1267, Jews could pray inside the Machpelah enclosure. Israelis visited Hebron by the thousands, and then tens of thousands. On a single June day, 70,000 Jewish visitors flooded the city.

Inside the venerable shrine a Yemenite man blew repeated blasts on his shofar while a Moroccan woman, wailing Ima, Ima (“Mother, Mother”), kissed the cenotaph marking Sarah’s tomb.

The return to biblical Judea and Samaria was the unanticipated consequence of an unwanted war. Determined to erase the lingering humiliation of 1948 and annihilate the Jewish state, Israel’s Arab neighbors—Egypt, Syria, and Jordan—had inadvertently compelled secular Zionists to confront their Jewish past and future. The sudden presence of Israeli soldiers and tourists in Hebron provoked vigorous debate in government circles over the fruits of victory, the rights of conquest, the claims of history and possibilities for peaceful co-existence—a debate that continues to divide Israeli society.

The Labor government acted with alacrity in Jerusalem. It bulldozed the Arab neighborhood abutting the Western Wall and annexed the Old City and east Jerusalem. In the Old City, where the Jewish Quarter had been abandoned since 1948, ancient Jewish history and modern Zionism converged in an outpouring of nationalist and religious enthusiasm.

There was virtually no question, either in government circles or in an exultant nation, but that the Western Wall would remain under Israeli sovereignty and the historic Jewish Quarter would be rebuilt.

But the government remained ambivalent, at best, about Hebron. A symbol of the old religious yishuv that secular Zionists spurned, Hebron was problematic in ways that Jerusalem was not. Yet former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, meeting with Israeli Cabinet members, insisted: “On Jerusalem we must not budge. We have to quickly establish a large Jewish settlement there. The same with Hebron.” And in a ceremony at the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives two months after the war, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan boldly proclaimed, “We have returned to all that is holy in our land….We have returned to the cradle of our people, to the inheritance of the Patriarchs….We have returned to the Mountain [the Temple Mount], to Hebron and to Nablus. We will not be parted from the holy places.” Not all Israelis appreciated the encounter with their ancient heritage. A promising young writer, Amos Oz, confessed: “I don’t have any feeling that Hebron’s part of my homeland. But I do feel this about Holon,” the dreary town outside Tel Aviv where he first fell in love. Archaeologist Yigal Yadin sharply denounced the embrace of national and religious relics as “idolatrous.” As passionately (and publicly) as he had previously celebrated his own discovery of the bones of nine hundred suicidal Jewish Zealots at Masada, he now ridiculed Jews for praying inside Machpelah, which he dismissed as the likely site of tombs of Arab sheikhs. In the spring following the Six Day War, a group of predominantly religious Zionists, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, came to Hebron to celebrate Passover. Levinger, born in Jerusalem in 1935, had attended a Bnei Akiva yeshiva, served in the army, and studied at the Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem. Then he joined Kibbutz Lavi, near the Golan Heights, where he combined rabbinical duties with shepherding.

Shortly after the 1967 war, Levinger visited Hebron to explore the possibility of rebuilding the community. In the desecrated Jewish cemetery, he experienced “an awakening of tempestuous spirits.” The visit, he recalled, created “an internal turmoil that left me restless for days and weeks.” He decided to return to Hebron and restore a Jewish community there. Early in the spring of 1968, he contacted the military governor of Hebron to request permission to hold a Passover Seder and spend the night there.

In recognition of the historic Jewish presence in Hebron, Labor Minister Yigal Allon had already floated a proposal for a Jewish neighborhood nearby, perhaps an “upper” Hebron on a hill overlooking the Arab city (modeled on Upper Nazareth in the Galilee). But the government did not respond to Levinger’s inquiries. Meeting with Hanan Porat, who had led the return to Gush Etzion after the war, and Elyakim Haetzni, a maverick lawyer, the decision was reached to go to Hebron without government permission.

Rabbi Levinger negotiated a rental arrangement with the owner of the Park Hotel for Passover week in April 1968. The hotel, a nondescript two-story stone building, had fallen on hard times, losing nearly its entire clientele now that prosperous Jordanians no longer vacationed there. Posing as Swiss tourists, the Levinger group negotiated a rental agreement for one dollar nightly for each guest. Levinger left a substantial deposit for “an unlimited amount of people for an unspecified period of time.” The hotel owner assured Levinger that they could extend their stay if they wished.

Some Israeli government authorities learned of the plan, but they did not interfere. Central Command General Uzi Narkiss told Levinger, “What do you want? To settle in Hebron? I don’t care. I know nothing. Rent a hotel, put up tents….I know nothing.”

A sizable group of Israelis—estimates range between sixty and eighty—arrived in Hebron to celebrate Passover and restore a Jewish presence in the city. The Levingers, clearly intending to stay, brought their four children, a refrigerator, and a washing machine. The kitchen was made kosher, and mezzuzas were attached to door-frames. “We never told anyone that we were going only to celebrate Passover,” Rabbi Levinger recalled. “The government authorities knew that we wanted to settle.” Rabbi Chaim Druckman, another graduate of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, led the Seder. Hanan Porat attended. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a recent immigrant from France who would lead Ateret Cohanim, the movement to restore a Jewish presence throughout Jerusalem’s Old City, joined the celebration. So did veteran Irgun fighter Shmuel Katz and Maariv journalist Yisrael Harel. Elyakim Haetzni, accompanied by his wife, mother, and four children, described the Seder nearly forty years later as “a once in a lifetime experience.” Miriam Levinger sensed “an historical breakthrough, and we all felt deeply moved and excited.” After the festive meal, exulting participants, joined by a Druze soldier who was guarding the hotel, danced and sang v’shavu banim l’gvulam (“your children shall return to their borders”).

The next morning the celebrants, singing and dancing through the streets of Hebron, carried Torah scrolls to Me’arat HaMachpelah. That evening, after the end of the Jewish Sabbath, some of the older participants left the hotel to return to their homes, but younger Israelis and yeshiva students remained behind, soon to be joined by newcomers. The next day, in their exuberance, they sent a telegram to Labor Minister Allon: Blessings for festival of our freedom to you from Hebron City of Patriarchs from first of those returning to it to settle in it in the name of 30 families Rabbi Moshe Levinger.

The new settlers remained in the Park Hotel for six weeks while the government debated what to do about them. In a compromise solution, they agreed to be relocated to the former British and Jordanian police building, now under Israeli military control, on a hill overlooking the city. There they remained, in miserably cramped quarters, while the government debated their future. After two years of hesitation that ended only after a terrorist attack wounded dozens of Jews awaiting entry to Me’arat HaMachpelah during Sukkoth, government ministers finally decided to decide. The new settlement of Kiryat Arba was built on a twenty-two-acre tract overlooking Hebron on an empty hill that had been seized after the war by Israeli military authorities.

But Kiryat Arba was not Hebron. Despite Levinger’s fiery insistence that “no government has the authority or right to say that a Jew cannot live in all parts of the Land of Israel,” the time was not right, the issue was too sensitive, or there were security problems, budgetary constraints, or American pressures to consider. The Likud government of Menachem Begin, in principle at least, seemed to favor the expansion of Kiryat Arba until it reached the size of Hebron, thereby creating separate Jewish and Arab cities. But exploratory discussions went nowhere. Then, in 1978, the government stunned settlers when it signed the Camp David accords with Egypt, committing it to return the entire Sinai Peninsula and grant “autonomy” to West Bank Palestinians. Settlers sensed that opportunities were slipping from their grasp.

Fifty years after the 1929 massacre, Kiryat Arba residents decided that the time had come to return to Hebron. By community consensus, the issue would be forced by women and children, who were least likely to provoke a harsh response from the government or military. One week after Passover, at 4:00 A.M., ten women led by Miriam Levinger and Sarah Nachshon, joined by thirty-five children, eight of whom were Nachshons, arrived by truck at the rear of Beit Hadassah, the former medical clinic in the heart of Hebron. Assisted by teenage boys from Kiryat Arba, they quietly climbed ladders, cut wires to the windows, and unloaded mattresses, cooking burners, gas canisters, water, a refrigerator, laundry lines, and a chemical toilet.

Safely inside the dilapidated building, the excited children sang v’shavu banim l’gvulam, God’s promise that children would return to Zion. Hearing their voices, an astonished Israeli soldier came down from his observation post on a nearby roof to investigate. When he inquired how they had entered the building, a four-year-old girl responded, “Jacob, our forefather, built us a ladder and we came in.”

In their first message from Beit Hadassah the women declared, “When we went to live eight years ago in Kiryat-Arba . . . it was because of compromise and going towards the government. Our wish was and still is Jewish settlement within Hebron.” At the end of their first Shabbat in Beit Hadassah, yeshiva students from Kiryat Arba came to dance and sing outside. Miriam Levinger described that moment: “We felt as if the souls of the murdered of this place had come and gathered with us at the window...to rejoice with us at the sight of Jews dancing on Saturday evening in the streets of Hebron. I wanted to calm them and say to them, ‘You can rest, you have waited for many years, now we have returned. What was in the past in Hebron is what will happen in the future.’”

“With the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other,” wrote journalist Amos Elon disapprovingly, Hebron settlers had the temerity to insist that “deeds contracted in the late Bronze Age are the legal and moral basis for present claims”—as though biblical roots in the Land of Israel were not the deepest source of Zionism itself. Hebron became the ideological vanguard of the Jewish settlement movement that has embedded nearly 300,000 Israelis in Judea and Samaria.Seven hundred Jews, joined by 200 yeshiva students, now live in Hebron, surrounded by 160,000 Palestinian Arabs. For thirty years, the government of Israel has stifled growth in the Jewish Quarter, obstructed property purchases by Jews, and constricted population enlargement. With their impassioned blend of Zionist nationalism and religious Judaism blamed for undermining Israeli democracy and jeopardizing Middle Eastern peace efforts, Hebron Jews may be the only Jews in the world whose critics can viciously malign them without incurring the taint of anti-Semitism.

Their determination to remember, in the very place where Jewish memory may be said to have originated, places them at the epicenter of a polarizing conflict within contemporary Israel—as acrimonious as the struggle between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs—over the identity and future boundaries, both external and internal, of the Jewish state.

A year ago, the sole surviving member of a Jewish family that had owned property in Hebron since the 15th century Spanish expulsion, appeared before the High Court of Justice with registration records to document his claim. Yosef Ezra was the seventy-five-year-old son of Yaacov ben Shalom Ezra. Father and son had been the only Jews to remain behind in Hebron between 1936 and 1947. Yosef praised Hebron Jews as “true pioneers, among the last who are putting Zionism into practice.”

Jerold S. Auerbach is professor of history at Wellesley College. This essay is drawn from his forthcoming book, Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel, to be published in July by Roman & Littlfield.

taken from: B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

SILENT EXODUS OF JEWISH REFUGEES

Silent Exodus of Jewish Refugees

In 1948 nearly one million Jews lived in Arab lands. But In barely twenty years, they have become forgotten fugitives, expelled from their native lands, forgotten by history and where the victims themselves have hidden their fate under a cloak of silence.

A people whom legend have always associated with "wandering" many of these Jews from Arab lands had lived there for thousands of years and accepted their fate, through good times and bad times.

But 1948, the beginning of their exodus, also saw the birth of the State of Israel.

And, while the Arab armies were preparing to invade the young refugee-country, the survivors of the Shoah were piling up in rickety boats. Meanwhile a few hundred thousand Arabs from Palestine were getting ready to flee their homes, convinced that they would return as winners and conquerors.

Soon - by a terrible twist of fate they, as well, began to fill up refugee camps and passed on their refugee status to new generations.

The Jews, however, did not receive refugee status.

They had just rediscovered the land of their birthright.

And if they came from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq or from Yemen, if they had lost everything, even their relatives and their cemeteries, they were ready to rebuild their lives in the West and for many - in Israel - and try to forget their past.

Without ever asking for compensation or the right of return, or even wishing that their story be told...

(My thanks to LatterDays for posting this in his blog)

THE VANISHING DIASPORA JEW

The Vanishing Diaspora Jew

Since the destruction of the Second Temple until very recently, the masses of the Jewish people did not dwell in the Land of Israel. For 2000 years. the majority of Jews dwelled in the Diaspora, among non-Jews. Jews were dispersed in far flung places such as Poland, Morocco, Iran, Ethiopia and even China. They spoke different languages, like Yiddish, Ladino or the local tongue, and differed very much in customs, cuisine and clothing from other Jews in other exiles. Yet, despite intense persecution, massacres, pogroms, suffering and poverty, the Jewish nation survived intact, the many generation since Sinai until the today. Through the force of their dedication and commitment to Judaism, they were able to withstand the most brutal and horrible of circumstances.

Generally, the second or third generation of immigrants assimilates quite fully into the host culture. The only reminder of their origins may be the occasional family cultural celebration, a grandparent with a heavy accent or maybe a trip back to their home country. It is incredible that Jews, dispersed and separated for 2000 years, did not assimilate but always maintained their own identity. Away from their land, with no country to go back to, Jews were able to survive.

Within the span of several generations, a new and frightening trend has emerged. All Jews, until a hundred or so years ago, were religiously observant, fully and wholly committed to Judaism. Because of this, Jews were able to survive the harsh Diaspora. However, today assimilation is taking a frightening toll on Jewish communities in the United States, Canada, Russia and Western Europe.

Consider the following statistics*:

Jewish identity is declining sharply.

Of 5.6 million Jews, 2 million American Jews live in households identified as non-Jewish

60% of Jews below 40 years of age live in households identified as non-Jewish

20% of Jews over 60 years of age live in households identified as non-Jewish

Intermarriage rates are increasing dramatically.

Before 1965, 10% of Jews who married, did so outside the faith.

Since 1985, 52% of Jews who married have done so outside the faith.

Children are being raised as non-Jews.

1 million, or 54% of all American Jewish children under the age of 18 are being raised as non-Jews or with no religion.

Fertility Rates are not high enough to replenish the religion.

The average fertility rate of American Jewish women is 1.4 children per household. The replacement level is 2.1 children.

Less emphasis is being placed on a Jewish education.

In 1962, 540,000 Jewish children were attending afternoon weekend schools, and 60,000 were enrolled in day schools. By 1990, fewer than 240,000 Jewish children attended afternoon /weekend schools and 140,000 attended day schools.

NET LOSS -- 220,000 Jewish children.

Traditional Shabbat observance is extremely low.

Only 36% of Jewish households light the Shabbat Candles.

Of the population that consists of people who were born Jewish and are Jewish by choice, only 11% attend synagogue weekly.

* All Statistics taken from Council of Jewish Federations' 1990 National Jewish Population Survey. This is the most comprehensive source of American Jewish data available

The Jewish population worldwide is sharply decreasing, ravaged by the scourges of intermarriage and assimilation. A census taken before Rosh HaShana 5769 found that the Jewish population worldwide increased by 70 000, only due to natural increase in Israel. A very shocking study found that within 3 generations, 97% of non-Orthodox Jewry in the United States will be extinct.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions. The nation that stood at Sinai and received G-d's Torah barely knows about Purim and Shavuot. The Chosen People eat cheeseburgers, not even knowing that they might be unkosher! Taught by the Jewish Establishment Organizers that "thou shalt melt", Jewish parents sent their kids to public schools, creating a generation of Jewish illiterates who know little more that Fiddler on the Roof, gefilte fish and a Yiddish expression or two. This is the most pressing threat facing the Jewish people today. The apathy of young Jews and their total disconnect and alienation from Judaism should frighten and worry every single Jews who is committed to the future of his people.

During Israel's recent operation in Gaza, Jewish leaders were extremely concerned over the alarming increase in anti-Israel around the world. Not to deny the seriousness of these anti-semitic attacks, the biggest danger threatening the Jewish today comes not from anti-semitism but from assimilation and intermarriage. There is a silent Holocaust going on in the Diaspora as young Jews marry outside of the faith, their Jewishness completely irrelevant to them, a mere accident of birth. Yet, the Jewish leaders are completely silent, doing nothing to try and reach out to our brothers and sisters who are slowly drowning in goyishkeit. If these current rates continue, the future does not bode well for Jewish continuity.

Raised in completely secular environments devoid of spirituality, young Jews look for meaning in other paths and belief systems. They travel to India and live in ashrams, or become Buddhists or Zen followers. These alienated Jews make easy prey for missionary groups like Jews for Jesus who thrive on Jewish illiteracy and ignorance. Most have only the faintest inklings of Jewish rituals, a quick show at "temple" on the high holidays, boring and irrelevant classes at Hebrew School, or a family seder. They have never been exposed to the incredible spirituality in Judaism and are often amazed when they discover that Judaism has a deep spiritual legacy. Intermarriage is only the last step in complete assimilation, finalizing the irrevocable break with the tradition and lineage that extends to Sinai and before, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For generations of Jews, the question of "why be Jewish?" is unimportant. They were sent to public schools, encouraged to interfaith and integrate with non-Jews and now their own Jewish identities are nil.

To any Jew who is reading this article, I beg them please to seriously consider their own Judaism. Their ancestors gave their lives in order that they should live as Jews. Imagine their great-great grandfathers in the shtetls of Ukraine or the juderias of Spain, and how much it would pain them to know that they overcame pogroms and Inquisitions, Crusades and Auschwitz, only for their children to willingly give up their Judaism. Please, I beg you to return home, to your roots and to your people.

May HaShem merit that all of His children should come home very soon

taken from : For Zion's Sake (http://masada1234.blogspot.com/)

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF PORTUGAL (4)

15th.century synagogue uncovered in Oporto

By ©Inácio Steinhardt

Friday, October 28, 2005

A Aron Hakodesh was discovered behind a false wall, while adapting an ancient empty house for a daycare institution for the elderly

The descendants of the "anusim" (forcibly converted) in the Northern Portuguese city of Oporto are excited.
The place of the 15th. Century synagogue of rabbi Isaac Aboab, in the old Jewish quarter of Olivais, has been discovered.
This is rabbi Isaac Aboab II, "the Last Gaon of Castile", who in 1492, a few months before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the "Catholic Kings" Fernando and Isabel, went to Portugal, with another 30 prominent Spanish Jews, to negotiate with King John II, the transfer of those who would choose to wait in the neighboring country for an eventual abrogation of the evil.
They were received with honor by the King and finally an agreement was reached. Six hundred Jewish families would be allowed to settle in Portugal, in consideration for a large contribution to the king's treasury.
All other Spanish Jews wishing to escape through Portugal would be allowed in, against payment of a head tax. Those would have to leave the country within eight months. The king would endeavor to supply ships for their departure to other safe places. Those that would eventually stay longer than the stipulated term would become the king's slaves.
For Aboab and the 30 families that came with him the king ordered the allotation of suitable houses in the "Judiaria do Olival" , the newest Jewish quarter in the city of Oporto.
The "Judiarias" were closed residence quarters, were the Jews inhabitants had to live. They all had gates and guards, and no Jew was to be found outside this ghetto after the bells of the churches rang for the evening prayer of "Ave Maria".
The "Judiaria of Olival" was created in 1386 by order of King João I, when the old "Judiaria of Miragaia", in the outskirts of city, became too crowded.
It was located in Rua de S. Miguel, a very wide street which later gave place to two news streets, S. Miguel e Victoria.
The "Judiaria" had it's own synagogue and all other Jewish and own administrative institutions.
Rabbi Isaac Aboab died in 1493, eight months after the expulsion from Spain.
He was spared the trauma of the forcibly conversion in 1497 of all the Jews of Portugal, native and refugees from Spain alike, who were unable to leave the country before the deadline imposed by João's successor, Manuel I.
The expulsion of the Jews from Portugal was on of the terms of agreement for the marriage of Manuel with the daughter of Fernando and Isabel, an important match for Manuel, who expected to inherit the crown of Spain.
But the presence of his Jewish subjects was too important to the king for their financial support and for their skills that contributed largely to the Portuguese sea discoveries.
Manuel ordered them to leave and at the same time perpetrated a most cruel machination to keep them in the country. Instead of letting them out and supplying ships for that purpose, he forced them to convert to the Christian religion and remain in Portugal.
The rabbi's son, Abraham Aboab, received as New-Christian the name of Duarte Dias. His grandson and namesake, Isaac Aboab, was Henrique Gomes.
Henrique Gomes was the father of the famous Immanuel Aboab, the author of «Nomologia o Discursos Legales», written in Venice, in Spanish. He was born as a Christian, but we don't know his Portuguese name.
Immanuel, who was born in Oporto in 1556, wrote in his book that he still remembered from his youth his great-grandfather's synagogue, before it was destroyed.
In 1497 all synagogues in Portugal were confiscated and many of them became Catholic churches years later.
In 1598 a monastery, which later became a church, by the name of S. Bento da Victória, was built in the ancient Jewish quarter. Until recently there were rumors that the church has been built in the place of the ancient synagogue and that the reason to call it "da Victoria" (of the victory) was meant to celebrate the victory of the Christ over the Law of Moses.
Recently, the historian professor Elvira Mea, a specialist on the Inquisition at the Oporto University, had the opportunity to visit a house, which had belonged to the Misericordia of Oporto and had been donated to a priest who intended to adapt it for a daycare house for old people.
While proceeding to the necessary reparations they noticed the existence of a false wall. After breaking it down they found that the original wall had a sort of built-in stone closet, which, according to professor Mea must have been a Ehal (Aron Hako-desh) where the Torah scrolls are kept.
The find is located in the East wall in the ground floor of a two-store house, a few houses apart from the church.
Outside the house, in his back side, there is a stairway, which is known by the public as "Escadinhas da Esnoga". Esnoga is a miss-pronunciation, in ancient Portuguese, of the word "sinagoga". It is still used today by the Lisbon Sephardic Jews to designate their synagogue.
Ancient maps of the town show a today non-existent alley, the "Viela da Sinagoga", which may have been near this house.
Furthermore, a building two houses apart from this, is indicated by tourist guides as having been where the New-Christian Gabriel da Costa was born and lived before departing to Amsterdam, where he returned to Judaism to became the famous and unfortunate Uriel da Costa.
Elvira Mea is convinced that this house, while apparently belonging to the 16th. Century, has been adapted from the original 15th. century synagogue. She believes that the house of worship may have been used for secret prayers by the "anusim" long after the forced conversion.
The descendents of the ancient "anusim", now affiliated in an association by the name of "Ladina-Sefarad" with its headquarters in Oporto, have a plan:
They want to induce the Institute for the preservation of historical buildings to put an embargo on the works been done in this house.
They want the Misericordia to allocate another house, from the many that are vacant in the same area, for the daycare institution.
And they intend to open a Bank account to collect donations worldwide, first to compensate the priest for the large expenses he already incurred in the restoration of the house, and that he will need now to start over in a new place.
And they want to recover the house as a museum-synagogue, with the hope that new findings still may be there to be uncovered when making the necessary adaptations.

Givat Savion, Israel, October 2005

© Inacio Steinhardt

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF PORTUGAL (3)

A Synopsis of the History of the Jews in Portugal

By ©Inacio Steinhardt

Friday, December 20, 2002

"I lived peacefully as owner of my house, a house full of God's blessings in famous Lisbon, a city and a mother in the Kingdom of Portugal"
.......
"Suddenly, however, the day of afliction, punishment and shame arrived for all His people, for Israel His inheritance, the children of Jacob, His chosen ones..."
(Isaac Abravanel, "Commentary to the Book of Joshua", Introduction)

To understand the relevance of the Jewish presence in Portugal, we must recall the antiquity of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula and the roots of Portugal as a nation.

The truth is that we don’t have any written evidence of the time and circumstances of the arrival of the first Jews to the territory that was to be Portugal.

There are several legends spread about Jews arriving as settlers or merchants, with the Phoenician ships, from Sidon and Tyre, or with the ships that King Salomon, an ally of the Phoenicians, has built in Etzion-Gaber, near Eilat of today. Or they may have come as fugitives, and prisoners, at the time of the destruction of the first and second temples of Jerusalem, respectively by the Babylonians and the Romans.

Curiously enough, at a certain time, the Jews of Spain and Portugal have claimed that they could not be accused of the death of Jesus, because they were already here at the time. This happened 2000 years ago!

When threatened with expulsion they alleged their right to live in a land that was inhabited by their ancestors for so many centuries.

Written documents regarding the existence of Jews in the peninsula date from the 3rd. Century BCE, and specifically in the area where Portugal is today, from the 6th Century CE.

The late is an epitaph found in the Algarve.

The identity of Portugal as an independent country dates from the 12th century.

Thus the existence of Jewish communities in Portugal precedes Portugal’s own origins.

Therefor we must look at whole picture of the Iberian Peninsula, during the Reconquista from the Moors. From the Jewish point of view, this period can be divided in two quite different stages.

During the first stage the three ethnical communities, Christians, Jews and Arabs lived together in mutual acceptance of their different cultures (convivencia).

Thinks changed when the Christians had already recovered from the Arabs most of the territory of the Peninsula. In this second stage they were engaged in the dissemination of the Christian religion as the sole true belief. Then the infidels – Arabs and Jews – were merely tolerated.

During the first stage Jews lived in the cities held by Christians as well in those ruled by the Moslems. The fights between those two peoples were not always exempt of momentary alliances between Christian and Arab rulers, in collusion to overthrow rival leaders.

The Jews were instrumental in many diplomatic missions as much as they were later associated in the building of the new cities and the new states that emerged from the final victory of Christians.

A nobleman from Burgundy, France, had come to the Peninsula, to help the Christians in their Reconquista wars against the Arabs (Moors).

In recompense the King of Castile, Afonso VI, gave his daughter, Tareja (Teresa) in marriage to this nobleman, Henry of Burgundy and granted him the earldom of Portucale, a tiny territory whose name derived from its main city Porto (port, sometimes called Oporto in English) and Cale, a fortified island situated in front of the city, in the Douro River.

After the death of Count Henry (Henrique), his young son Afonso Henriques rebelled against his grandfather and proclaimed the independence of Portugal, of which he became the first king in 1140..

After many bloody battles, Castile finally recognized the independence of Portugal.

Don Afonso Henriques started then his own Reconquista, aiming at enlarging his kingdom at the expenses of the Arab rulers, south of Oporto to southern shores of the Algarve.

The most important adviser to the Portuguese King in the conquest of new territories from the Moors, was the Jew Don Yahia ibn Yahia (or Ibn Ya’ish).

The Ibn Yahia’s, like the Abrabanel’s, both prominent Jewish families even today, are considered by family tradition, to descend from King David himself, by two sons of the exiliarch (Reish Galuta) Hizkiahu.

In the social structure of the society in the Middle Ages the Jews, as the Moors, were considered an entity apart, in fact owned by the king.

D. Dinis, the forth king of Portugal, referred in the official documents, to his Jewish subjects as “meus judeus” (my Jews). He could impose on them whatever duties, restrictions, missions or taxes, as he might want.

D. Afonso Henriques, the first King, established the base for a Jewish administrative structure of the country, parallel with the administrative structure of the rest of the population. Special legislation applied to the Jews, thus treating the Jews as legal and social exceptions.

The country was divided in seven districts, each one having his own Jewish ouvidores (magistrates) which administrated justice to their fellow Jews.

In each district the Jews were organizes in communities – named the comunas – each having its own arrabi (rabbi) and its officers, both for synagogue service and for their own prisons, hospitals, etc.

Upon all the rabbis and ouvidores was the Arrabi-Mor (the Chief Rabbi), a high officer, appointed by the King, and bearing his own seal. He had the supreme authority over the Jews in the whole kingdom.

Apart from administrating justice the Arrabi-Mor was also in charge of protecting the Jews under his jurisdiction against local hostility.

The Arrabi-Mor used his own influence with the king in many circumstances, an important weapon since the legal situation was defined by the exclusive will of the monarch who solved all problems according to the balance of power and not according to the law.

When the Jews received the king’s protection, it was by grace and mercy and not by right.

They had to live in separate quarters, called the Judiarias, from where they could not be out after the hour of the Ave Maria, the Hail Mary.

The special legislation for the Jews included such measures as to prevent contact (conversação) between Jews and Christians.

Obviously some of the laws were so impractical that the kings had to grant, from time to time, both collective and individual exceptions.

All those exceptional grants are recorded in the Chancelarias, the books of records of the Kings of Portugal, kept at the National Archives (ANTT) in Lisbon. Those are important sources for research on the Jewish life in Portugal.

Because of the importance of the Jews to the Kingdom, both professionally and as counselors and ministers to the Kings, their situation has known ups and downs, but was bearable until the end of the 15th century.

In 1492 there were approximately 80,000 Jews living in Portugal. This was also the time when the Portuguese seamen were most busy in discovering new lands and new paths in the sea.

The Portuguese Jews were very much involved not only in the scientific element of the discoveries, but also in the financing of the same.

This was also the year when the Jews from Spain have been put in face of the dilemma: convert or leave Spain.

There were about 300,000 thousand Jews in Spain. There are no exact figures, but it has been estimated lately by some historians, that one third managed to migrate to other countries, less than one third converted, and about 120,000 came across the frontier to Portugal.

This has been negotiated with the Portuguese King, John II. They had to pay a tax per head and they were to leave Portugal in one-year time or become slaves to the king.

At that time most of the Peninsular Jews believed that there were signs that the Messiah was about to come and they would be liberated. This might have been the reason why so many preferred not to go further than Portugal.

Most of them could not leave the country in one year – eventually did not want either – and they became slaves to the King of Portugal. John II took some cruel measures against them. One of those was sending 2000 Jews children to the island of S. Tome, in Africa, then not inhabited, and was popularly known as the island of the crocodiles. We don’t know for sure what was the fate of those children.

After the death of John II, the new king, Manuel the first, used of mercy with the Jews, canceled the situation of slavery and, as a matter of fact, used their skills and money for the expansion of the discoveries.

In 1496, thou, the King contracted his own marriage with the eldest daughter of Fernando and Isabella. The catholic sovereigns put as a condition for the marriage that the kingdom should be clean of Jews.

Manuel hoped, with this marriage, to inherit the throne of Spain and therefore unit the all Peninsula.

He accepted the challenge, but conceived a Machiavellian plan to supposedly expel the Jews and yet keep them in his Kingdom.

On the 5th of December 1496 he issued a decree that all the Jews of Portugal must convert to Christianity or leave the country until October 1497.

For those wishing to leave he promised to provide ships.

Most of the Jews decided to leave… but the ships were not provided. During the ten months that followed the King tried all possible trickeries to compel them to convert. One of those was again taking from then the children younger than 14 years and have them be raised by Catholic families in their religion.

In May 1497 he issued a new decree granting to all Jews that converted a period of 10 years, during which no inquires would be made to their religious practices at home, so that they might adapt themselves at pace to the new religion.

This decree is very important for two reasons – one for it was later extended to 50 years during which there was no Inquisition in Portugal – and second because it gave the Jews the opportunity to organize themselves in secrecy to continue their religious practices.

Eventually this was the main cause for the persistence of so many Catholic communities in Portugal, that kept secretive Jewish rituals during five centuries – half a millenium, an amazing phenomena in the history of the Jews in this country.

As the time approached, the Jews demanded from the King to keep his promise – to provide them with ships in order to escape the conversion.

They were ordered to converge to Lisbon, were they received temporary shelter in the Palace of Estaos, a kind of hostel, located then in the Rossio square, where the National Theater of D. Maria stands today.

From there, in October 1497, they were dragged to a nearby church and forced to take the water of the baptism. The same thing happened all over the country.

All religious books in Hebrew were burned and the synagogues became Christian churches.

From there on, they become Christians who had to show ostensibly that they went to the churches and they kept all the commandments of the Christian faith. At home, however, most of them continued to follow the religion of Moses.

There were several instances when they were persecuted because of this double existence, in one of which, during Passover of 1506, more than 2,000 Jews, or New-Christians as they were called then, were slaughtered in the streets of this city.

In 1538 the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition was established in Portugal, obviously not against the Jews, because there were no more Jews as such in Portugal, but against the heretics New-Christians.

The population was encouraged to denounce any suspicion of Judaism. There was a list of such sins, and it would be enough to abstain from eating pork, or changing his own shirt on Friday, or even washing oneself too many times, to have all one’s belongings seized, to be put in prison, being tortured, and eventually, if the person would not show signs of sincere repentance, he would be burned during a most impressive ceremony called the auto-de-fé , an act of faith.

The same National Archives, mentioned above, the Arquivo nacional da Torre do Tombo, hold circa 44,000 well documented files from the proceeds of the Inquisition, including detailed description of the tortures and of the auto-de-fé.

Jews – as such – were not allowed to live in this country until the beginning of the 19th century.
It is said that at that time prince Pedro of Portugal visited the British colony of Gibraltar. He was surprised to be introduced to people, mainly businessmen, whose names sounded very Portuguese to him, such as Cardoso and Pinto.

They explained to him that those were Jews families that had been able to escape from Portugal after the forced conversion.

When the prince asked why they did not return then to Portugal he was told that the law in Portugal had banned the Jews from living there.

Five years later, when the prince became King Pedro I, he officially invited the Jews from Gibraltar and Morocco to come and live in Portugal.

About 80 families came and established themselves in Lisbon, the Algarve and some of the Portuguese colonies. However the decree that forbid the Jews to live in Portugal was not abolished until the end of the century. Until then, the Jews were only tolerated.

In 1910, with the abolition of the monarchy and the advent of the republican regime, the religion was separated from the state and all religions have been permitted since.

As explained, the first settlers of this modern Jewish community were Sephardis from Gibraltar and Morocco.

The first Ashkenazi, or Central European, Jews arrived in the second decade of this century.

The first was Wolf Terlo, an expert in the wine industry from Russia, and after him, Samuel Schwarz, a mine engineer from Lodz, in Poland. Both came for professional reasons.

Samuel Schwarz was the first person to contact the secret Jews – New-Christians or Marranos – in the north of Portugal.

After them, there was a wave of immigration from Europe. Mostly persons that hoped to reach the Americas from here and found that they could make a living in Portugal.

During the war tens of thousands of Jews refugees passed through Portugal.

The dictator, Salazar, himself of supposed Jewish ancestry, had decided to admit any Jewish refugees into Portugal.

Pursuing a precarious line of political neutrality between his fascist counterparts in Germany, Italy and Spain, and the centuries old alliance between Portugal and Britain, he predicted that if the Jewish refugees who flew ahead of the German Army to the South of France, would cross the Pyrenees, the Gestapo would follow them.

This would put an end to Portugal’s neutrality.

However, a Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, south of France, defied the specific orders of Salazar, and granted Portuguese visas to circa 40 thousand refugees.

Mendes was brought back to Portugal, punished and discharged from his diplomatic carrier. In spite of all the possible financial help from the Jewish community of Lisbon, Consul Sousa Mendes died in poverty and misery.

Today the Lisbon Jewish Community has about 500 member, half of which are really temporary residents on business or professional ground.

One crypto-Jewish community, in Belmonte, has returned openly to mainstream Judaism and a synagogue has been built in the village.

A small group of crypto-Jews residing in Lisbon, have either joined to Jewish community there or created a minyan of their own at the premises of an Ashkenazi shtibl that subsisted from the time of the ^"of their ow

In Oporto, the Community created by Captain Barros Basto – to learn more about him click here– has known ups and downs. Today it has about 40 members, which pray at the synagogue erected by the efforts of the unfortunate captain.

Temporary Jewish residents of the Algarve have also created a social organization at Portimao.

Some associations of people who consider themselves as "anusim" and search their path to mainstream Judaism have recently been created in Lisbon, Oporto and Guarda.

Inacio Steinhardt - June 2000

ANTISEMITISM AND RACISM IN PORTUGAL

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Portugal 2007

The first ever desecration of a Jewish cemetery in modern Portugal was perpetrated in April 2007. Also in April, 36 neo-Nazis from the Portuguese branch of the violent, extreme right Hammerskin Nation were arrested.

the jewish community

Evidence of a Jewish presence in the territory now called Portugal dates back to the fifth century. From the 12th century until 1492 almost 200,000 Jews (20 percent of the population) lived in Portugal; they maintained synagogues, hospitals, bath houses, and a flourishing Jewish life.

After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, over 150,000 Spanish Jews fled to Portugal, but in 1497 they were either enslaved or forcibly converted to Christianity; most, however, continued to practice Judaism in secret. In 1506, the so-called Lisbon Massacre (Matança de Lisboa), instigated by the Dominican Order, resulted in the murder of some 4,000 Jews and forced the remaining ones in the large cities, such as Lisbon and Oporto, to disperse to numerous destinations (the Dutch Republic, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, Brazil and India). Those who chose to stay fled to mountain villages, where they continued to practice Judaism clandestinely in their homes. The Inquisition only ceased in 1821 and many Jews had already assimilated among the Portuguese population. (For details of the massacre, see Esther Mucznik, “Massacre dos Judeus em Lisboa,” http://www.cilisboa.org/hist_pt.htm.)

In the early 19th century, Jews established local businesses in Lisbon, Faro and the Azores islands. In 1880, Abraham Anahory asked permission from the authorities to congregate the Jews of Lisbon into a formal community, but it was only in 1897 that the inaugural meeting of the Comité Israelita de Lisboa took place, although a shechita (ritual Jewish slaughter) service had been operating since 1894. A synagogue was built in 1904 but was not given official religious sanction because the only religion the Portuguese Constitution (Carta Constitucional) recognized was Catholicism. Following the Republican Revolution of 1910 and the acceptance of other religions, the committee was authorized in 1912 as a legal but not a religious association.

At the beginning of World War II, Portugal adopted a liberal visa policy, allowing thousands of Jewish refugees to enter the country until restrictions were applied in late 1940 and 1941. However, 100,000 Jews and other political refugees were able to seek refuge in Portugal, with the help of the Jewish community and COMASSIS, the organization created in 1933 to help them. As a result, all Jews in Portugal, including locals and refugees, survived the war. (For further details, see Mucznik, Esther, “Os Judeus em Portugal – Presença e Memória,” http://www.cilisboa.org/hpt_esther.htm.)

After the 1974 revolution and the establishment of democracy in Portugal, the Jewish community was fully accepted as a religious minority and protected under the law of religious plurality. However, the community only received official recognition in 2001 with the publication of law no. 16/2001 of 22 June, the Religious Freedom Act, which permitted the registration of religious associations under Portuguese law.

The small Jewish community is well integrated into Portuguese society and well-regarded by the political authorities, illustrated by the latter’s reaction to the Lisbon cemetery desecration (see below). There are 4,000 Jews in Portugal (continent and islands) out of a population of 10 million, organized into four independent Jewish communities − Lisbon, Oporto, Belmonte and Algarve. The leading one is Lisbon community, Comunidade Israelita da Lisboa (www.cilisboa.org), which maintains a synagogue (with daily services), a Jewish club, and the cemetery; it publishes a periodical, Tikva, and provides kosher food through the shop El Corte Inglés,. The association Somej Nophlim cares for the Jewish aged as well as the needy. The Oporto Jewish Community (http://comunidade-israelita-porto.org/), provides regular services in the synagogue. The Algarve Community is oriented basically toward non-Portuguese Jews holidaying in the south of Portugal. The Belmonte Community was formed recently for descendents of the anusim (forced converts to Catholicism). It provides a synagogue with regular services and maintains a cemetery, and promotes traditionally Portuguese kosher products such as olive oil and wine.

political organizations

With the creation of the Partido Nacional Renovador (National Renewal Party − www.pnr.pt/) in 2000, the far right wing gained a foot in the Portuguese political arena. Although the party officially denies links to neo-Nazi/racist movements, many members and/or sympathizers of these groups are affiliated to the party. Moreover, the leaders of the PNR and the Portuguese Hammerskins (or Hammerskin Nation − a chapter of the transnational white supremacist movement of that name) are known to be friendly, and the media often reports on interaction between the two groups (see, for example, http://jn.sapo.pt/2007/04/21/nacional/lider_pnr_que_o_partido_e_perseguido.htm; also below). In the municipal elections to the Lisbon Town Hall held in July 2007, the party got 0.8 percent of the total, doubling their vote from the previous election.

The party has been led since 2005 by José Pinto-Coelho. It has been accused of promoting discrimination based on racial, religious and sexual grounds as well as inciting violence and hatred toward immigrants and homosexuals, among others (their website includes no specific reference to the Jews). There has been discussion in Portuguese society about banning the party, since the Constitution forbids any kind of discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, gender or religion. The party, which is close to the French Front National, has a youth section, Juventude Nacionalista (Nationalist Youth).

antisemitic activity

Background

Portuguese antisemitism tends to be expressed in historical stereotypes, as primary and high school textbooks clearly demonstrate, and is influenced by the way religion in general, and Judaism in particular, is presented in them. Catholicism is portrayed as the only religion in Portuguese geographical and social history, and Jews and Muslims, are regarded not as minority religious groups but as a cultural and folklore phenomenon. It should be noted that school textbooks are published by private entities and are freely chosen by both private and public schools. Until 2006, the only criterion for the selection of a school textbook was the obligation to follow the educational calendar and curriculum. Since then, with the adoption of Law 47/2006, a commission has been created to evaluate and authorize school textbooks for primary and high schools (see www.dgidc.min-edu.pt/public/manuais.asp).

A second feature of school books is the message that Jesus, the “son of God” born in Palestine, created monotheism. Judaism is never referred to as the source of Christian monotheism, traditions and beliefs, but as a negative cultural influence. School history books also mention that Hitler persecuted the “Communists and the Jews, a people who became rich from trade and interest from money lending.” Moreover, the books attempt to inculcate youth with “political correctness,” inter alia, by comparing historical realities with contemporary ones; the sentence “Being a Jew in the Middle Ages was as bad as supporting Yassir Arafat in today’s Israel,” for instance, appears in a 9th grade textbook published in 2004. By comparing Israeli citizenship laws to the 1935 German Nüremberg laws, another 9th grade history book, published in 2006, implies that they discriminate against the Palestinians. Additionally, since there is no official or legal definition of antisemitism in Portugal, many schoolbooks contain expressions such as “the Jews are a people attached to money.” (For further information, see Esther Mucznik, “A Religião nos Manuais Escolares” [Lisbon: Comissão de Liberdade Religiosa, 2007].)

There are no official statistics on antisemitism in Portugal because the Constitution forbids ethnic or religious categorization. Therefore, the sources for this report were the Jewish community website, newspaper websites, right-wing organization websites, personal blogs and websites, and oral testimonies.

Antisemitic Activity

On September 25 the Lisbon Jewish cemetery, dating from the mid-19th century, was vandalized. About twenty tombs were desecrated and swastikas painted on almost every damaged stone. The cemetery guard reported the incident to the police, who detained two individuals, far right sympathizers, inside the cemetery. A criminal investigation followed and the Jewish community is involved in the legal process. This was the first desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the history of modern Portugal. There are about nine Jewish cemeteries on Portuguese territory, including on the islands of Azores and Madeira, but only two are in use – in Lisbon and Belmonte.

Following the incident, an official ceremony was held in the cemetery on October 7, in the presence of several Portuguese politicians and representatives of other religious communities. The minister of internal affairs declared that all Portuguese “were Jews that day.” Far right blogs containing antisemitic comments relating to the attack were monitored by the Portuguese authorities and the Jewish community.

Opinion pieces on newspaper websites and reports by Portuguese journalists in the mainstream press often contain references to the Israeli army as “the Jewish army” (see, for example, http://ultimahora.publico.clix.pt:80/noticia.aspx?id=1230558&idCanal, which quotes “major Sharon Feingold, um porta-voz do exército judaico” [Major Sharon Feingold, a spokesman of the Jewish army]).

responses to racism and antisemitism

In April 2007 the Portuguese police arrested 36 neo-Nazi activists from the Portuguese branch of the violent extreme right Hammerskin Nation. Police confiscated weapons, explosives, ammunition, poison gas and publications inciting to racism and antisemitism, as well as Nazi memorabilia. They were to be charged with threats, harassment, physical attacks, kidnapping, incitement to crime and illegal possession of weapons. The arrests took place three days before a planned conference of some 250 representatives of European extreme right-wing groups in Lisbon, which was subsequently canceled by the leader of the far right PNR.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF PORTUGAL (2)

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Portugal: Visiting Belmonte's New Old Jewish Community

Belmonte didn't get an official synagogue until 1996

For hundreds of years, the Marranos of Belmonte were forced to practice their Jewish belief in secret. It is only in the last couple of decades that this withdrawn community has opened up to the outside world.

Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Jews on the Iberian Peninsula enjoyed freedom, wealth and power. Yet the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions in the late 15th century changed this. Those Jews who weren't expelled were forced to convert to Catholicism.

But in the small village of Belmonte, the Jewish community decided to risk persecution and even death and continued to practice their religion in secret. For centuries, these so-called Marranos led a clandestine existence.

Living among Christians, the Crypto-Jews in this mountainous northeast town close to the Spanish border protected themselves by giving the appearance of following the same religion. Prayers and traditions were practiced at home under maximum secrecy behind closed doors and windows.

The Marranos also abandoned circumcision, since any circumcised man would be highly suspicious. Writing in Hebrew was given up, as were most traditional Jewish rituals. Crypto-Jews even took up Christian names and went to church to mislead their neighbors.

The fear of persecution remained strong

Today, relations between Christians and Marranos are good. But that deep-seated fear of the outside world is still present, says José Henrique, an old Marrano in his seventies.

For hundreds of years, Jewish traditions had to be practiced secretly

"Of course the times of inquisition are over, but the fear remains," Henrique says. "Many horrible things happened to the Jews over the past few centuries. Here in Belmonte, there was always mistrust."

The fear of persecution remained deep. But with the end of the Salazar dictatorship in the mid-1970s, the Marranos slowly opened up, says David Canelo, a history teacher in Belmonte who has written several books about them.

Yet Canelo says that even though the Crypto-Jews are progressively reintegrating into the wider Jewish religion, some are today still following secret rituals.

"In the past, the Crypto-Jews survived within the Catholic world and today, this secret Jewish religion still exists within Judaism," Canelo says. "But either way, it's a hidden religion." Belmonte's Jews still celebrate the passah feast secretly, as well as prayers and other ceremonies, he says.

"The reason lies in the traditions surrounding secrecy handed down from generation to generation, which has given the Crypto-Jews their strength and their secret character," Canelo says.

Even the food was affected

This clandestine existence even impacted the Marranos' diets as they prepared Alheira, the heavily seasoned sausages that are still very popular throughout many parts of Portugal. By adapting their Kosher cooking, the Marranos gave the impression that they ate pork. In fact, though, the recipe involved rabbit and chicken, says resident Antonia.

Crosses marked those homes whose owners had converted to Catholicism

"Everything is mixed and in the end, it looks like if it was pig meat," Antonia says. "That's how we make Alheira."

The secret belief of Belmonte's Jews was not uncovered until the early 20th century. The Polish-Jewish mining engineer Samuel Schwartz discovered the Marranos in 1917 and subsequently published a book about his experiences.

But it still took decades for the community in Belmonte's Jewish quarter, with its maze of ancient alleyways and buildings, to openly live out their belief. A synagogue, built by wealthy Jewish donors from Morocco and North America, wasn't opened until 1996.

Belmonte is home to the last remaining Marrano community

Belmonte's Jewish community was the only Iberian Jewish community to survive the inquisition. Their rich Sephardic tradition of Crypto-Judaism is considered unique in Europe.

Today, the Marranos claim to profess Orthodox Judaism. But research into Crypto-Jewish life remains extremely difficult for outsiders. Faced with a wall of silence and distrust, even Jews are subject to close scrutiny before they are introduced into the privacy of local families.

It's estimated that maybe 100 Marranos still live in Belmonte. But only very few are willing to speak -- and with the numbers dwindling rapidly, this is not likely to change in the future.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF PORTUGAL (1)

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The Jews Of Portugal: The Modern Day Miracle (Part One)

By: Shoshana Matzner Bekerman

The small Jewish community of Lisbon recently celebrated Chanukah with a major community event, which took on a special meaning for them. The Jews in Portugal (similar to the history of the Jews of Spain) experienced a Golden Age and periods of unspeakable cruelty and persecution. The story of Chanukah is especially meaningful to the Jews of Portugal who are witnessing the revival of Jewish life and the restoration of the central synagogue in Lisbon (Shaarei Tikvah) after centuries of persecution and deportation since the Inquisition.

Early History

Legends tell that Jews first came to the Iberian Peninsula during the reign of King Solomon or in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Jews lived and remained active in social and commercial life of the peninsula during the Visigoth and Muslim periods of occupation, fifth-to-eighth century C.E. Several important Jewish communities were already active when the kingdom of Portugal was founded in the 12th century.

During the first dynasty, Jews enjoyed relative protection from the crown. The crown recognized the Jewish community as a distinct legal entity and appointed specific rulers to adjudicate their cases. King Affonso Henriques (1139-85) entrusted Yahia ben Yahi III, a Jew, with the role of royal tax collector and supervisor; Yahia be Yahi III also became the first chief rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community. Yahia ben Yahi’s grandson, Jose ben Yahi was appointed High Steward of the Realm, by Henriques’ successor, King Sancho I (1185-1211).

Tensions arose between members of the Jewish community that chose to remain faithful to their religion and the local clergy and middle/lower classes. The clergy wanted to invoke restrictions of the Lateran Council against the Jews, but King Dinis (1279-1235) resisted and reassured the Jews that they did not have to pay tithes to the church.

Golden Age Of Discovery

The 13th and 14th centuries were known as Portugal’s Golden Age of Discovery, in which Jews made a major contribution to Portugal’s success. In the early 14th century, more than 200,000 Jews lived in Portugal, which was about 20 percent of the total population. Jews lived in separate quarters with their own synagogue, slaughterhouse, hospital, jails, bathhouses and other institutions. A rabbi served as the administrative and legal authority within the commune.

Portugal was home to many famous Jews during this period. In fact, Jews became the intellectual and economic elite of the country. Abraham Zacuto composed tables that provided the principal base for Portuguese navigation, including those used by Vasco Da Gama on his trip to India.

Entrance to Shaarei Tikva, Lisbon’s main synagogue –
a symbol of the revival of the Jewish community of Lisbon.

Guedelha-Master Guedelha served as rabbi, doctor and astrologer for both King Duarte and King Alfonso V. Don Isaac Abarbanel was one of the principal merchants and a member of one the most influential Jewish families in Portugal. Another figure, Jose Vizinho, served as doctor and astrologer to King Joao II. Joao II also sent the Jew, Abraham deBeja, on many voyages to the East.

In this Golden Age, it was common to see Jews adorned in silk clothing, carrying gilt swords and riding beautiful horses. They were given preferential treatment by the kings. Naturally, this state of affairs gave rise to jealousy of the Jews’ success in the peasant and middle classes. Fights between Jews and Christians became more common after the influx of Jews from Spain into Portugal, in 1391.

Inquisition And Expulsion

The history of the Jews of Portugal is perhaps best illustrated by the memorial service that members of Portugal’s Jewish community held in a downtown Lisbon square − to mark the 500th anniversary of a massacre of thousands of Jews in the Portuguese capital’s streets. About 50 members of Lisbon’s Jewish community estimated to number around 1,000 gathered at dusk for the re-enactment of Manuel’s edict next to the Maria II National Theater, which was built on the site of an old Inquisition court. Chronicles from the time recount that at least 2,000 Jews were butchered and burnt alive when Catholic crowds, incited by a small group of priests, ran amok for three days in 1506.

Lisbon’s main synagogue Shaarei Tikva, recently renovated in the spirit of Nes Chanukah.

The solemn commemorations were the culmination of a process begun by former President Mario Soares in 1988, when he first apologized to Jews for centuries of persecution by the Grand Inquisition. Events included the inauguration of a synagogue in the small eastern town of Belmonte, where Jews secretly preserved their religion and traditions for centuries, held at Lisbon’s Maria II National Theater. Then, speaking to a packed Parliament, Portugal’s President Sampaio said the expulsion of Portugal’s Jews was an “iniquitous act with deep and disastrous consequences” for Portugal, which at the time, was one of Europe’s richest and most powerful nations.

Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Vera Jardim called the expulsion of Portugal’s Jews “a black piece of our history.” The state, he said, owed Jews “moral reparation” for centuries of “brutal persecution, deaths at the stake ... and confessions and abjurations obtained by torture.”

The 1496 expulsion was politically motivated. Manuel saw a chance of ruling the whole Iberian Peninsula by marrying Spain’s princess Isabella. Her parents, the fervent “Catholic kings” Ferdinand and Isabella, had already deported Spain’s Jews four years earlier, and would only bless the marriage if Manuel followed suit. About 60,000 Spanish Jews who had taken refuge in Portugal under Manuel’s pragmatic cousin Joao II, prepared to flee. But Manuel, anxious not to lose a pool of talent that had helped improve the technology and cartography used by Vasco de Gama and other Portuguese discoverers, cut a last-minute deal. Jews would be allowed to stay another 20 years if they converted to Christianity. But that did not always help. The Portuguese Inquisition, at times crueler than its Spanish counterpart, persecuted, tortured and burned at the stake tens of thousands of Jews.

Attempting to evade the Inquisition, many Portuguese Marrano families fled to Amsterdam, Salonika and other places across the Old and New worlds. In 1654, 23 Portuguese Jews arrived in New Amsterdam (New York) and became the first Jewish settlers in the United States. The stream of refugees did not stop until the end of the Inquisition in the late 18th century. The last public auto-da-fe took place in 1765; however, the Inquisition was not formally disbanded until after the liberal revolt in 1821.

Lisbon’s main synagogue Shaarei Tikva, view from the Women’s balcony.

Around 1800, Portugal decided to “invite Jews” back into the country and reverse Portugal’s economic decline. The first Jewish settlers to come were British. Tombstones, inscribed in Hebrew and dating back to 1804, can be found in a corner of the British cemetery in Lisbon. Other Jewish immigrants came from Morocco, Tangiers and Gibraltar.

In 1892, the Jewish community was granted official recognition, and the Shaarei Tikvah synagogue was built in Lisbon. However, the synagogue was not allowed to face the street. In 1912, the new Portuguese Republic reaffirmed the community’s rights. The Jewish community was able to maintain places of worship, a cemetery and a chevra kadisha (burial society) and could slaughter animals in accordance to Jewish law, register births, deaths, and marriages and collect charity. Conversions to Catholicism, however, were still frequent in the 1920’s, splitting families; this tendency declined by the 1950’s.

Jewish Renaissance And Contemporary Jewish Life In Portugal

Interview with Esther Muznik, Spokeswoman and Vice President of the Jewish Community of Portugal:

Mrs. Esther Muznik, the dynamic spokeswoman and vice president of the Jewish community of Portugal is a remarkable figure in the Lisbon Jewish community.

Mrs. Muznik was the instrumental force behind the restoration and renovation of the Shaarei Tikvah synagogue in Lisbon. Her current activities include lecturing on the Jewish history of Portugal in the University of Lisbon, editing Tikva, the magazine of the Jewish community, and helping to organize the various activities of the Comunidad Israelita de Lisboa – the Jewish community of Lisbon.

Mrs. Muznik emphasizes the wide scope and dynamic nature of the activities of the Jewish community center of Lisbon, which include: courses available for children, youth and adults in Ivrit and conversation; Daf HaYom shiurim for men; preparation for bar and bat mitzvah; study groups in Kabbalah, Jewish philosophy, parshat ha’shavua, mussar (messilat yesharim), and basic concepts of Judaism and Halachah.

Mrs. Muznik notes that the Jewish community does not currently have a chief rabbi. However, tefillot are held regularly at the synagogue, and the community center, which is based in the Shaarei Tikvah Synagogue, conducts activities and programs for all Jewish holidays, as well as Yom HaShoah (which takes on a special meaning in Portugal), and Yom Haatzmaut.

Mrs. Muznik is especially proud of the activities of the youth movement Dor Chadash, initiated five years ago to assure that the Jewish youth have a proper framework to form their Jewish identity. One of the recent developments in the community was the opening in 2004 of the Maccabi Country Club in Lisbon (founded among others, by Arnaldo Grossman, who arrived in Lisbon from Brazil in 1989 to establish a real estate company in Lisbon. He became one of the most successful businessmen in his field by introducing the use of the Internet to the R. E. business in Portugal.) The Maccabi club enables the Portuguese Jewish youth and adults to associate with other Jewish communities and clubs around the world – especially the Spanish Maccabi club which has become sort of a “sister club.” Mrs. Muznik helps organize the joint activities as a way for the Jewish youth of Portugal and Spain to maintain close ties and strengthen their Jewish identity and feeling of solidarity.

When asked about the source of her motivation for community service, Mrs. Muznik replies that her grandfather came to Portugal from Warsaw in the 1920’s to serve as a chazan for the community. Her mother’s side originally came from Berdichev. Her strong Jewish background is the driving force that guides her spirit in energizing the reviving Jewish community of Portugal.

This Chanukah, the Jewish community in Lisbon currently has reached out to Jewish communities around the world, to seek help in restoring the religious Judaica items for the renovated main synagogue Shaarei Tikvah. Details are available for those interested in helping at: www.cilisboa.org/abt_donat.htm