History of the Jews in Portugal


The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula.

Before Portugal

Jewish populations have existed in the area long before the country was established, back to the Roman era, even though an attested Jewish presence in Portuguese territory can only be documented since 482 CE. With the fall of the Roman Empire, Jews were persecuted by the Visigoths and other European Christian kingdoms which controlled the area after that period.
In 711, the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula was seen by many in the Jewish population as a liberation, and marked as the beginning of what many have seen as the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, even if the Jews, as well as the Christians, under Muslim rule were considered Dhimmi, and had to pay a special tax.
Rapidly in the 8th century, the Christian kingdoms of the north mountainous areas of the Iberian Peninsula started a long military campaign against the Muslim invaders, the Reconquista. The Jews, since many knew the Arabic language, were used by the Christians as both spies and diplomats on this campaign that took centuries. This granted them some respect, although there was always prejudice.

Medieval Era

King Afonso I of Portugal entrusted Yahia Ben Yahi III with the post of supervisor of tax collection and nominated him the first Chief-Rabbi of Portugal. Jewish communities had been established prior to these years, an example of Jewish expansion can be seen in the town of Leiria founded by King Alfonso I in 1135. The importance of the Jewish population to the development of the urban economy can be inferred from charters Alfonso granted in 1170 to the non-Christian merchants living in Lisbon, Almada, Palmela and Alcacer. These charters guaranteed the Jewish minorities in the towns freedom of worship and the use of traditional law-codes. King Sancho I continued to honor these charters by protecting the Jewish community from rioting crusaders in 1189 by forcibly removing them from Lisbon. The importance of the Jewish community in the economy of Portugal can be inferred from the punishment against those who robbed merchant men, robbing either Muslim, Christian, and Jew was of equal severity. King Sancho I of Portugal continued his father's policy, making Jose Ibn-Yahya, the grandson of Yahia Ben Rabbi, High Steward of the Realm. The clergy, however, invoking the restrictions of the Fourth Council of the Lateran, brought considerable pressure to bear against the Jews during the reign of King Dinis I of Portugal, but the monarch maintained a conciliatory position.
Until the 15th century, some Jews occupied prominent places in Portuguese political and economic life. For example, Isaac Abrabanel was the treasurer of King Afonso V of Portugal. Many also had an active role in the Portuguese culture, and they kept their reputation of diplomats and merchants. By this time, Lisbon and Évora were home to important Jewish communities.
The Inquisition had been established in Spain in 1478 to repress heresy, especially among the many Jews who were suspected to secretly practice their old faith. After the conquest of Granada, the Spanish crown had ordered the expulsion of the Jewish population, many Spanish Jews fled to Portugal.
Portugal was the destination of most Jews who chose to leave Spain after their expulsion in 1492. Around 100,000 Jews had decided to move to the neighboring Kingdom of Portugal, a minor Jewish population was already residing in Portugal.
The Portuguese were reluctant to admit the Jews into Portugal, but John II proposed to collect a tax of eight cruzados per person. Metal-workers and armorers would pay half. Officials were appointed to collect the tax at five points, issuing receipts which served as passports to enter Portugal. After eight months, the Portuguese crown would provide transport elsewhere at an additional fee. Six hundred wealthy families were offered a special contract to remain in Portugal and were settled in the larger cities. Those who could not afford the fee demanded from them by King John II after those eight months were declared his enslaved personal property and distributed to the Portuguese nobility. However, the Portuguese were not willing to house the large remaining population of Jewish immigrants. In some cases Jewish families were housed within Christian households, in the city of Évora the authorities refused to let more Jewish families. King John II attempted to facilitate the transportation of Jewish families to other kingdoms.
When Manuel I of Portugal married a daughter of the Spanish rulers, he was pressed to align his policies with theirs. In December 1496, all Jews and Muslims who refused to be baptized were to be expelled. King Manuel I decided to use the port of Lisbon to ship the Jews of Portugal, delaying their expulsion the Jewish communities were forced into Portuguese society.

Portuguese discoveries

In 1497, Vasco da Gama took Abraham Zacuto's tables and the astrolabe with him on the maiden trip to India. It would continue to be used by Portuguese ships thereafter to reach far destinations such as Brazil and India.
Zacuto might have an uncredited appearance in Luís de Camões's 1572 epic poem, The Lusiad, as the unnamed "old man of Restelo beach", a Cassandra-like character that surges forward just before Vasco da Gama's departure to chide the vanity of fame and warn of the travails that await him . This may be Camões' poetic interpretation of an alleged meeting between Vasco da Gama and the older Abraham Zacuto at a monastery by Belém beach, just before his fleet's departure, in which Zacuto reportedly gave Gama some final navigational tips and warned him of dangers to avoid.
The so-called Amazonian Jews did not arrive in Brazil during the colonial era, but rather are descended from Moroccan Jews who immigrated to the Amazon region during the Amazon rubber boom.

Inquisition

In 1492, Spain expelled its Jewish population as part of the Spanish Inquisition. Tens of thousands of Spanish Jews subsequently fled to Portugal, where King John II granted them asylum in return for payment. However, the asylum was only temporary—after eight months, the Portuguese government decreed the enslavement of all Jews who had not yet left the country. In 1493, King John deported several hundred Jewish children to the newly discovered colony of São Tomé, where many of them perished.
Following John's death in 1494, the new king Manuel I of Portugal restored the freedom of the Jews. However, in 1497, under the pressure of the Spain through the marriage of Isabella, Princess of Asturias, the Church, and some Christians among the Portuguese people, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed that all Jews had to convert to Christianity or leave the country without their children. Hard times followed for the Portuguese Jews, with the massacre of 2000 individuals in Lisbon in 1506, further forced deportations to São Tomé, and the later and even more relevant establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1536.
The Inquisition held its first Auto da fé in Portugal in 1540. Like the Spanish Inquisition, it concentrated its efforts on rooting out converts from other faiths who did not adhere to the strictures of Catholic orthodoxy; like in Spain, the Portuguese inquisitors mostly targeted the Jewish New Christians, conversos, or marranos. The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to the Portuguese Empire, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and India. According to Henry Charles Lea between 1540 and 1794 tribunals in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Évora burned 1,175 persons, another 633 were burned in effigy and 29,590 were penanced. The Portuguese inquisition was extinguished in 1821 by the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Courts of the Portuguese Nation".
Thousands of Portuguese Jews, the vast majority, would eventually emigrate to Amsterdam, Thessaloniki, Constantinople, France, Morocco, Brazil, Curaçao and the Antilles. In some of these places their presence can still be witnessed, as in the use of the Ladino language by some Jewish communities in Turkey, the Portuguese based dialects of the Netherlands Antilles, or the multiple synagogues built by what was to be known as the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.

Post-Inquisition

Despite strong persecution, conversos of Jewish ancestry did stay in Portugal initially. Of those, a significant number converted to Christianity as a mere formality, practicing their Jewish faith in secret. These Crypto-Jews were known as New Christians, and would be under the constant surveillance of the Inquisition – to such an extent that most of these, would eventually leave the country in the centuries to come and again embrace openly their Jewish faith, joining the communities of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in places like Amsterdam, London or Livorno.
Some of the most famous descendants of Portuguese Jews who lived outside Portugal are the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and the classical economist David Ricardo.
Very few Jews, the Belmonte Jews, went for a different and radical solution, practicing their faith in a strict secret isolated community. Known as the Marranos, some dozens have survived until today by the practice of inmarriage and few cultural contact with the outside world. Only recently, have they re-established contact with the international Jewish community and openly practice religion in a public synagogue with a formal rabbi.
In the 19th century, with the end of the inquisition, some affluent families of Sephardi Jewish Portuguese origin, namely from Morocco and Gibraltar, returned to Portugal. The first synagogue to be built in Portugal since the 15th century was the Lisbon Synagogue, inaugurated in 1904.

World War II

A new chapter for Jews in Portugal was marked by World War II. From 1929 Portugal was under the nationalist regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, but Portuguese nationalism was not grounded on race or biology. In 1934 Salazar made it clear that Portuguese nationalism did not include pagan anti-human ideals that glorified a race, and in 1937, he published a book where he criticized the ideals behind the Nuremberg laws. In 1938, he sent a telegram to the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin ordering that it should be made clear to the German Reich that Portuguese law did not allow any distinction based on race and therefore Portuguese Jewish citizens could not be discriminated against.
In 1937, Adolfo Benarus, Honorary Chairman of COMASSIS and a leader of the Lisbon's Jewish Community published a book where he rejoiced with the fact that there was no anti-Semitism in Portugal.
Portuguese Jewish scholar and economist Moses Amzalak, leader of the Lisbon Jewish community for more than fifty years, believed that Nazis were defending Europe from communism. Later, when Nazi anti-Semitic policies became evident, Amzalak got actively involved in rescue operations leveraging his friendship with Salazar.
Yad Vashem historian Avraham Milgram says that modern anti-Semitism failed "to establish even a toehold in Portugal" while it grew racist and virulent elsewhere in early twentieth-century Europe.
Early in September 1939, Portugal proclaimed its neutrality to combat threats to its colonial possessions from nations in both the Allied and Axis camps. Nonetheless, its sympathies were clearly on the side of the allies following Germany's invasion of the Catholic nation of Poland.
Upon the declaration of war, the Portuguese Government announced that the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance remained intact, but since the British did not seek Portuguese assistance, Portugal would remain neutral. The British Government confirmed the understanding. From the British perspective, Portuguese non-belligerency was essential to keep Spain from entering the war on the side of the Axis."
At the outbreak of World War II, to the nearly 400 Jews that were living in Portugal an additional 650 Jewish refugees from Central Europe were granted a quasi-resident status. However, under threat of military action from the Nazis Salazar issued orders on November 11, 1939, that consuls were not to issue Portuguese visas to "foreigners of indefinite or contested nationality; the stateless; or Jews expelled from their countries of origin". This order was followed only six months later by one stating that "under no circumstances" were visas to be issued without prior case-by-case approval from Lisbon. Portugal's regime did not distinguish between Jews and non-Jews but rather between immigrant Jews who came and had the means to leave the country and those lacking them. Portugal prevented Jews from putting down roots in the country not because they were Jews but because the regime feared foreign influence in general, and feared the entrance of Bolsheviks and left-wing agitators fleeing from Germany. Antisemitic ideological patterns had no hold in the ruling structure of the “Estado Novo” and a fortiori in the various strata of Portuguese society.
Germany's invasion of France in 1940 brought the Nazis to the Pyrenees which allowed Hitler to bring unanticipated pressures on both Spain and Portugal.
On June 26, 1940 the main HIAS-HICEM European Office was authorized by Salazar to be transferred from Paris to Lisbon.
A few weeks later, on the summer of 1940, the Jewish community on the Portuguese island of Madeira also grew considerably due to the Evacuation of the Gibraltarian civilian population during World War II to Madeira, which included a number of Jews, who attended the Synagogue of Funchal. Some of these evacuees were buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Funchal.
Following the Nazi invasion of Russia which cut off their supply of wolfram from Asia, Germany initiated tactics to extract wolfram from Portugal, initially by artificially running up prices in an attempt to get the people to bypass the Portuguese government and sell directly to German Agents. Salazar's government attempted to limit this and in October 1941 Germany retaliated by sinking a Portuguese merchant ship, the first neutral ship to be attacked during World War II. Germany torpedoed a second Portuguese ship in December. England then invoked long-standing treaties with Portugal dating from 1373 and 1386 and Portugal honored these by granting a military base in the Azores to the Allies. The Allies then promised all possible aid in the event of a German attack against Portugal. Portugal continued to export wolfram and other goods to both Allied countries and Germany until 1944 when Portugal declared a total embargo of wolfram to Germany.
Despite Salazar's strict policy, efforts to provide entry visas into Portugal to Jews via rescue operations continued. The number of refugees that has escaped through Portugal during the war has estimates that range from one hundred thousand to one million, an impressive number considering the size of the country's population at that time. "In 1940 Lisbon, happiness was staged so that God could believe it still existed," wrote the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The Portuguese capital became a symbol of hope for many refugees. Even Ilsa and Rick, the star-crossed lovers in the film Casablanca, sought a ticket to that "great embarkation point." Thousands had flooded the city, trying to obtain the documents necessary to escape to the United States or Palestine. Not all found their way.
The number of visas issued by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Paris, cannot be determined. There is no consensus on the number of refugees that used Portugal as an escape route in those early days of World War II. Yehuda Bauer says that the number of visas must have been close to 10,000 and that is the number of refugees who actually reached Portugal in the summer of 1940. But he adds that of these 10,000 “not all of them received visas from Mendes, but a very high proportion must have”. To reach a more accurate figure, the visas granted by the Portuguese consulates in Rotterdam, Den Hague, Antwerp, Paris, Toulouse, Berlin, Geneva, and other cities would need to be counted, according to Yad Vashem historian Avraham Milgram in a study from 1999 published by the Shoah Resource Center An analysis of the list of visas granted by Sousa Mendes to Jews and non-Jews in May and June 1940 indicates that the number of visas granted by the consul was lower than the numbers mentioned in the literature, raising questions about Portugal and the entry of Jewish refugees. Milgram concludes that the discrepancy between the reality and the myth of the number of visas granted by Sousa Mendes is great.
More recently, in 2011, Milgram published a densely researched book, “Portugal Salazar and the Jews” where he again challenges the long-maintained but fuzzy numbers of the Sousa Mendes disobedience episode. To make his point on the exaggeration of the numbers, Milgram also cross checks the Bordeaux numbers with those of the HICEM reports. According to HICEM reports, only 1,538 Jews who came to Portugal as refugees without visas to other countries sailed from Lisbon in the second half of 1940, and an additional 4,908 Jews, with the help of HICEM, sailed during 1941. To this number should be added approximately 2,000 Jews who came armed with American visas directly from Italy, Germany, and countries annexed by the Germans. In total, in the eighteen months from July 1940 to December 1941, the HICEM took care of the sea transport of 8,346 Jews who left Lisbon for trans-Atlantic countries.
Because of his efforts in opening up a refugee escape route, Sousa Mendes has been honored by Israel as one of the Righteous Among The Nations. The escape route remained active throughout the war, allowing an estimated one million refugees to escape from the Nazis through Portugal during World War II.
Mendes' actions were not unique. Issuing visas in contravention of instructions was widespread at Portuguese consulates all over Europe.
Other cases were supported by Salazar. The Portuguese Ambassador in Budapest, Carlos Sampaio Garrido and the Chargé d'Affaires Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho, under Salazar's direct supervision, helped an estimated 1,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944. They rented houses and apartments in the outskirts of Budapest to shelter and protect refugees from deportation and murder. On April 28, 1944, when the Hungarian secret police raided the Ambassador's home and arrested his guests, the Ambassador physically resisted the police and was also arrested, but he managed to have his guests released on the grounds of ex-territorially of diplomatic legations. In 2010 Sampaio Garrido was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Other Portuguese who deserve further credit for saving Jews during the war are Professor Francisco Paula Leite Pinto and Moisés Bensabat Amzalak. A devoted Jew and a Salazar supporter, Amzalak headed the Lisbon Jewish community for more than fifty years, from 1926 until 1978.

Communities

The roots of Portuguese Jewry lay way prior to the forging of the Portuguese kingdom. When Afonso I of Portugal obtained recognition of his independent kingdom, in 1143, Jews had lived in the Iberian Peninsula for at least one millennium.
Later, with the Edict of expulsion of the Jews by Manuel I and the official establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition by John III came a period of intolerance and prejudice that lasted for several centuries and led to the almost complete extermination of Judaism and the Jews in Portugal. It wasn't until the twentieth century that organized Jewish communities settled again in Portugal.

Lisbon

The Jewish Community of Lisbon was officially recognized in 1913. It brings together the Jews of Lisbon. Its headquarters are on Avenida Alexandre Herculano, no.59 in Lisbon, where the synagogue Shaaré Tikvah is located. According to its official website, the purpose of the Jewish Community of Lisbon is to promote religious education for the new generations according to the values of Judaism, to recruit new members and to strengthen its engagement in the local and national affairs, by means of dialogue and interaction with the authorities as well as with civil and religious institutions.
The Ohel Jacob Synagogue in Lisbon is the only Ashkenazi synagogue in Portugal open to b'nei-anussim. It's a reform synagogue, under the guidance of Rabbi Alona Lisitsa, and was accepted as an affiliate member of the European Union For Progressive Judaism and World Union For Progressive Judaism on 14 April 2016.

Porto

The Jewish Community of Porto was officially recognized in 1923. It brings together the Jews from Porto. Its headquarters are located in Rua de Guerra Junqueiro, no. 340, in Porto, where the Kadoorie Synagogue "Mekor Haim" is located, the largest synagogue in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the largest in Europe. According to the official website of the Jewish Community of Porto, it is ruled by the philosophy of Chabad Lubavitch and among its members one finds Jews from sources as diverse as Egypt, India, Russia, United States, Poland, Spain, Israel, Portugal, Mexico and Venezuela.

Belmonte

The Jewish community of Belmonte was officially recognized in 1989. It brings together the Jews of Belmonte and its surroundings. Its headquarters are located in Rua Fonte Rosa, 6250-041, Belmonte, where the Synagogue Beit Eliahu was built. According to the official blog of the Jewish community of Belmonte, this is the only community in Portugal that can be considered truly Portuguese. Its members are descendants of crypto-Jews that managed to preserve many of the rites, prayers and social relations throughout the period of the Inquisition, marrying inside a community constituted by a few families.

History of the Jews in Madeira

Migration to Israel

The Portuguese people are the fifth largest Western European immigrant group in Israel, after Dutch people, French people, Britons and Germans. Also, Israel is home to the largest Portuguese immigrant community in Middle East.

Present

In 1987 the then President Mário Soares, for the first time in the History of Portugal, asked forgiveness to the Jewish communities of Portuguese origin for Portugal's responsibility in the Inquisition and all the past persecutions of Jews.
At present there are numerous Jewish cultural heritage sites in Portugal, including five synagogues in the country, in Lisbon, Porto, Ponta Delgada in the Azores islands and Belmonte, and several private places where the Jewish community meets. There are a series of kosher products being produced in Portugal including wine.
It is hard to say how many Jews live in Portugal. The Portuguese census estimated a Jewish population of 5,000 individuals in 2001, with a between-census estimate in 2006 of 8,000. The CIA World Factbook refers a smaller number of a thousand Jews, mainly central European Holocaust survivors. But the Marranos and returned Sephardim represent the remainder.
According to a 2008 study by the American Journal of Human Genetics, 19.8% of the Portuguese population has some degree of Jewish ancestry. The genetic signatures of people in the Iberian Peninsula provide new evidence that the number of Jews forced to convert to Christianity during Catholic rule in the 15th and 16th centuries was much greater than historians believed.
Some Portuguese personalities are known Jews or descendants of Jews, most notably Esther Mucznik, the award-winning photographer Daniel Blaufuks, screen actress Daniela Ruah, former Lisbon Mayor Nuno Krus Abecassis, and the former President of the Republic Jorge Sampaio, whose grandmother was a Moroccan Jew of Portuguese-Jewish origin. And Sampaio does not consider himself Jewish, stating that he is agnostic.

Citizenship law

In April 2013 Portugal passed a law of return, allowing descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled in the inquisition to claim Portuguese citizenship provided that they 'belong to a Sephardic community of Portuguese origin with ties to Portugal' without a requirement for residence. The amendment to Portugal's "Law on Nationality" was approved unanimously on 11 April 2013. The law came into effect in March 2015.

Notable Portuguese Jews