Medieval Era Christian Portugal achieved victory over the Muslims in the
Reconquest of the peninsula, with King
Afonso I of Portugal becoming monarch of the newly independent region. Afonso entrusted
Yahia Ben Yahi III with the post of supervisor of tax collection and nominated him the first Chief-
Rabbi of
Portugal (a position always appointed by the
King 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 Afonso I in 1135. The importance of the Jewish population to the development of the urban economy can be inferred from charters Afonso 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. 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. It was printed in Hebrew, and published by a Jew, Samuel Gacon, who had fled from the
Spanish Inquisition. (1482/3), at the
British Library 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. After the January 1492 fall of the last Islamic
kingdom of Granada, the
Catholic Monarchs of Spain issued
a decree in March 1492, forcing Jews in Spain to either convert immediately to Christianity or leave Spain. Many fled to the kingdom of Portugal, whose monarch was more tolerant of a Jewish presence there. Portugal was the destination of most Jews who chose to leave Spain after their expulsion in 1492. Around 100,000 Spanish 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. In December 1496, King Manuel I decreed that all Jews and Muslims in Portugal had until October 1497 to either be baptized or leave the country. In this way, many Jews were expelled, while others were integrated into Portuguese society.
Portuguese overseas voyages Scientific developments by Portuguese Jews made a direct contribution to Portugal's age of exploration. 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. 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, persecutions and expulsions Spain instituted the
Spanish Inquisition in 1478 before decreeing the expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492. Tens of thousands of Spanish Jews fled Spain, including to Portugal, where King
John II granted them asylum in return for payment. However, the asylum was withdrawn after eight months, with the Portuguese government decreeing the enslavement of all Jews who had not left Portugal. In 1493, King John deported several hundred Jewish children to the newly formed colony of
São Tomé, where many of them perished. King John died in 1495, and the new king
Manuel I of Portugal at first restored the freedom of the Jews. However, in 1496, under Spanish pressure as part of the marriage of
Isabella, Princess of Asturias, the
Church, and some Christians among the
Portuguese people, King Manuel decreed that all Jews had to convert to
Christianity or leave the country without their children by October 1497. The initial edict of expulsion of 1496 was then turned into an edict of forced conversion in 1497, whereby Portuguese Jews were prevented from leaving the country and were forcibly baptized and converted to Christianity. Hard times followed for the Portuguese Jews, with
the massacre of 2000 conversos in Lisbon in 1506, further forced deportations to
São Tomé (where there is still a Jewish presence today), and the relatively late establishment of the
Portuguese Inquisition in 1536. In 1525,
David Reubeni, a Jewish man who claimed to be the commander of a Jewish army in
the Ottoman Empire, arrived in Portugal. With the approval of the
Pope, he sought the Portuguese king’s assistance in providing him with ammunition to fight against the Muslims. Reubeni stayed in Portugal for several months, during which he sparked messianic expectations among the
New Christians. His actions also led to the conversion of
Solomon Molcho, which ultimately resulted to the King of Portugal expelling Reubeni from the country. Jews in Portugal were forced to convert to Christianity, but were largely allowed to practice their religion in private. Portugal did not immediately establish an
Inquisition until 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 (overwhelmingly
Judaism) 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". When
Philip II of Spain succeeded to the crown of Portugal in 1580, Portuguese Jews there were increasingly under threat. Portuguese Jews, "Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation", migrated to cities outside Portugal, including
Hamburg, Antwerp, and the
Netherlands, especially
Amsterdam, the
"Dutch Jerusalem". Many had been successful merchants in Portugal and they established an international trading network in the
Atlantic world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The vast majority would eventually emigrate to
Amsterdam,
Thessaloniki,
Constantinople (
Istanbul),
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 (such as the
Amsterdam Esnoga or
Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London). The prohibitions,
persecution and eventual Jewish mass emigration from Spain and Portugal probably had adverse effects on the development of the
Portuguese economy. Jews and non-Catholic Christians reportedly had substantially better numerical skills than the Catholic majority, which might be due to the Jewish religious doctrine, which focused strongly on education, for example, because
Torah-reading was compulsory for men. Even when Jewish men were forced to quit their highly skilled urban occupations, their
numeracy advantage persisted. However, during the inquisition, spillover-effects of these skills were rare because of forced separation and Jewish emigration, which was detrimental for economic development. 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 private. 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 such as Amsterdam, London or Livorno. Some of the most famous descendants of Portuguese Jews who lived outside
Portugal are the philosopher
Baruch Spinoza (from Portuguese Bento de Espinosa), who was expelled from the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam;Rabbi
Solomon Molcho, mystic and
messiah claimant; Rabbi
Menasseh Ben Israel, trained as a rabbi in Amsterdam;
Uriel da Costa a precursor of Spinoza and modern biblical criticism; 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 (basically only the community from the small town of Belmonte, plus some more isolated families) 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.
Modern era 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 (such as the Ruah, Bensaúde, Anahory, Abecassis, and Buzzaglo). Jews were formally allowed back in Portugal near the year 1800. 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 1932 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
antisemitism in Portugal. Portuguese Jewish scholar and economist Moses Amzalak, leader of the Lisbon Jewish community for more than fifty years (from 1926 until 1978), believed that Nazis were defending Europe from communism. Later, when Nazi antisemitic policies became evident, Amzalak got actively involved in rescue operations leveraging his friendship with Salazar. Yad Vashem historian Avraham Milgram says that modern antisemitism 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 (Jewish relief organization) European Office was authorized by Salazar to be transferred from Paris to Lisbon. A few weeks later, in 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.
"In 1940 Lisbon, happiness was staged so that God could believe it still existed," wrote the French writer
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Twenty-first century For his efforts in rescuing thousands of refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied France, 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. The Portuguese Ambassador in Budapest,
Carlos Sampaio Garrido and the Chargé d'Affaires
Carlos de Liz-Texeira Branquinho, 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 (counterparts to the Gestapo) 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==