THE JEWS, NEW CHRISTIANS
AND CRYPTO JEWS OF PORTUGAL
By Eduardo Mayone
Dias
University of
California, Los Angeles
Lashon...Vol.5
March/April 1993
By the time Portugal acquired her
independence, circa 1139, sizable Jewish communities had already been
established in the country. Throughout the Middle Ages and early
Renaissance, Jews and New Christians constituted the intellectual and
economic elite of the country. They were the physicians, astronomers,
cartographers and royal treasurers, tax collectors and advisers. Many
wore fine silk clothes and gilt swords and rode beautiful horses.
They embodied the concept of capitalism in a mainly rural and feudal
society.
Their lives, however, were always influenced by two contradictory
factors: most of the time they enjoyed preferential royal protection
and all the time they suffered a violent hostility from the Church
and the common people.
Although legislation regulating their lifestyle was occasionally
extremely restrictive, monarchs often granted them special
privileges. They were exempted from military service, and contrary to
the situation in Spain, were allowed to own real estate.
Whether they were always enforced or not, strict laws protected them.
Individuals who referred to Jews in derogatory terms could be fined.
Punishment for those attacking ghettos included execution. After a
particularly cruel massacre occurred in Lisbon in 1506, in which
about 3,000 New Christians were murdered, King Manuel ordered the
hanging of 45 of the main culprits, including two Dominican friars
who had incited the mob.
On the other hand, Jews were regarded by the Church and the masses
with the usual European misconceptions of the time: they poisoned
wells, killed Christian babies to "celebrate" black masses with their
blood, brought about the plague and earthquakes, prostitution and
sodomy were prevalent in their midst, and Jewish men had tails and
menstruated.
Thousands of Jews entered Portugal after their expulsion from Spain
in 1492 subject to the payment of a sizable head tax. However, a few
years later, King Manuel of Portugal, pressured by the Catholic Kings
whose daughter he wanted to marry, also gave all Jews residing in
Portugal the choice between conversion or expulsion. The king did not
actually want to be deprived of Jewish knowhow and economic
potential, so when the deadline for conversion or departure
approached, he had thousands of Jews congregated in Lisbon for
embarkation to the country of their choice, but at the last minute
informed them that no ships were available and had them dragged to
church to be forcibly baptized.
Although the anussim were granted a twenty year period in which their
beliefs and practices would not be investigated, soon afterwards, in
1536, the Inquisition was established in Portugal. What followed for
over two hundred years need not be related.
It was only after the liberal revolt in 1820 that the so called Holy
Office was extinguished. In the following years Jews trickled in,
mainly from Gibraltar and Morocco. They were mainly merchants, who
revolutionized trade practices in the country. Their descendants, and
others who later emigrated to Portugal including refugees from Nazi
Germany and occupied countries, although scarce in number, now only
about 1,500 have distinguished themselves in banking, medicine,
education and other activities.
Fear of the Inquisition has marked some secret Jewish communities up
to present times. Isolated in mountainous areas near the Spanish
border, they have maintained a sketchy Judaism under the pretense of
being Catholics. Deprived of rabbis, temples, yeshivas or religious
books, they lost much of the previous orthodoxy.
When they were discovered by a Polish mining engineer, Samuel
Schwarz, over seventy years ago, they believed they were the only
Jews in the whole world and did not know that the Hebrew language
existed.
At first they refused to believe that Schwarz was Jewish, as a Jew
would never admit openly to his religion. His final acceptance only
came when he recited Shema Israel for them and they were able to
recognize the word Adonai.
They had been forced to abandon the practice of circumcision and the
celebration of any public festivities. In order to mislead the
inquisitors they celebrated Passover and Yom Kippur a few days before
or after official dates, hid the Shabbat lamp inside a clay pot and
had women lead their services. Catholicism made some unavoidable
inroads in their lives: they worship Saint Moses and Saint Queen
Esther, celebrate an occasion they call Little Christmas (roughly
coinciding with Hannukah) and use a Judaized form of the Lord's
Prayer.
They reluctantly attend some Church services, but do so under mental
reservations. A formula still murmured to this day upon entering a
Catholic Church goes approximately like this: "I enter this house,
but I do not adore sticks or stones, only the G-d of Israel."
From poor peddlars riding mules from village to village along
mountain roads, many of them have in recent years become prosperous
merchants and owners of garment factories. Also a movement to return
to official Judaism has picked up momentum, mainly among the younger
generation of their rapidly disappearing main community, in the town
of Belmonte.
The local Crypto Jewish community dwindled from a few hundred to
about 150 in our days. (Emigration and marriage outside the group
mainly accounted for this decline). However, out of the remaining
150, about half has opted for "Return", as their expression for
reconversion goes.
Several of them have visited Israel and learned Hebrew. They now have
a synagogue, a rabbi and the only mikvah in Portugal. A feud with the
Belmonte City Hall is still going on in regard to concession of land
for a Jewish cemetery.
At present probably only some 100 Crypto Jews survive in the whole
country. The admirable tenacity with which they have preserved their
spiritual roots in the face of almost unsurmountable obstacles is
both a strength and a weakness. For centuries they have clung to
their faith and rejected assimilation in a remarkable process of
cultural retention. However, it was this very endogenism that is
fatally leading to an extinction only one generation away...
Lashon...Vol.5
March/April 1993
Prepared and Submitted by: Professor Eduardo Mayone Dias
EMDias@aol.com
