Portugal: A visit to Porto

The New York Jewish Week's editor and publisher Gary Rosenblatt detailed his recent trip in "Shadows of Jewish Life in Portugal." The story covers Porto's synagogue, community and rabbi, the bnai anusim (descendants of the forced) and more.

The huge synagogue in Porto, once the center of Jewish life in Portugal, is as lovely as it is unused. Built in Sephardic style about 80 years ago, it has several hundred dark wooden seats and includes a balcony for women. The earnest young rabbi, Eliezer Shai di Martino, 30, told his six American visitors on a recent weekday afternoon that he walks several miles through the hilly streets of this coastal city to the shul every Shabbat in hopes of finding a minyan. But the last time he was able to read from the Torah on the Sabbath was seven months ago.

As Rosenblatt notes, "It will never be known how many sought to preserve their religious traditions and observances in private after being forced to publicly convert to Christianity at the turn of the 16th century."

He visited synagogues in Porto, Belmonte, Tomar and Lisbon and met with Jews, bnai anusim and students.

On a tour of Trancoso, an ancient walled city dating back to the 14th century, a young history professor showed us some of the 177 symbols etched into the stone walls of various homes where New Christians lived. Crosses were supposed to indicate their dwellings, but some of the crosses appeared to be in the shape of a menorah, suggesting the residents wanted to indicate to coreligionists that they still kept their Jewish faith.

Rabbi di Martino was sent to Porto by Shavei Israel (Return to Israel), an Israeli group which assists "lost Jews," directed by former New Yorker Michael Freund, which sends Orthodox rabbis to these communities. According to Rosenblatt, however:

In the last several years, the Conservative movement has reached out to Marranos in Portugal, who feel rejected by the Orthodox establishment. Rabbi Jules Harlow of New York and his wife, Navah, have made seven extended trips to Portugal in the last two years, teaching Jewish traditions and Hebrew to a number of people, at least seven of whom flew to London for a Conservative conversion after extensive study. They underwent brit milah and/or mikveh, and accepted the mitzvot, including kashrut. But these new converts say they are not counted in the Orthodox minyan.

There is also a sidebar on Jewish Portugal.

For the entire story, click here.

On some of my visits to Barcelona over the past few years, I have spoken to clergy who had fielded calls from individuals in the Portuguese bnai anusim communities. One problem was that the contributions of the women of these communities, who had kept the remnants of Judaism alive throughout the centuries, were ignored and dismissed by the Orthodox rabbis. One rabbi quoted a caller, "We could live with the aftermath of the Inquisition, but not the rabbi who was sent."