History of the Jews in Belmonte

The earliest sign relic of the Belmonte Jewish community is an inscribed granite reliquary dating to 1297, from the town's first synagogue. According to Antonieta Garcia, the wife of the former Mayor of Belmonte and who grew up as a Marrano, the existence of Inquisition dossiers against residents of Belmonte in the Court of Coimbra shows that the Jewish population did not disappear. Jews continued to hide their religious rites and practices even after the Inquisition officially ended in 1821. == Schwarz's arrival ==

In 1914, a Jewish Polish mining engineer named Samuel Schwarz arrived in Portugal at the beginning of World War I. He and his wife moved to Lisbon, Portugal in search of work. In Portugal, it was a common practice to hang pork chouriços to dry. They had no rabbis, and religious ceremonies were conducted at home by the women of the family. According to Garcia, Schwarz's arrival and the generally more lax atmosphere of Portugal at the time triggered a period of openness among the community, no longer as afraid to hide their faith. The revelation of the Belmonte Jewish community created significant shock waves in the worldwide Jewish community, some going so far as to launch efforts to "re-judaize" the marranos of Portugal, or reintegrate them into formal Orthodox Judaism. Three young men from Belmonte went to study in the yeshiva of Porto to become future teachers and rabbis; 1928, they were present at Passover services, and gave a number of Hebrew-language and religious basics lessons to some of the older members of the community. == Under Salazar ==

António de Oliveira Salazar's rise to power caused the Portuguese Jewish community to retreat from public displays of their faith. However, many of Belmonte's crypto-Jews who had come out as Jewish continued to differentiate themselves from their Catholic neighbors, avoiding the performance of public Catholic ceremonies, and meticulously cleaning their houses on Friday. Garcia interviewed one woman from the community on this: == Modern day ==

On 1974, April 25, the Carnation Revolution marked the end of the Salazar regime, leading to more openness in Portuguese society. Correspondingly, the Belmonte Jewish community began to open up more to the outside world. In 2003, the Belmonte project was founded under the American Sephardi Federation in order to raise funds for acquiring Jewish education material and services for the community. A Jewish Museum of Belmonte opened on April 17, 2005; the museum underwent a renovation in 2016 and reopened in 2017. In 2019, the Jewish community of Belmonte completed an Eruv. ==See also==