In Spain and Portugal Spanish and Portuguese Jews were originally descended from New Christian conversos (i.e. Jews converted to Roman Catholic Christianity) whose descendants later left the Iberian Peninsula and reverted to Judaism. Although legend has it that conversos existed as early as the Visigothic period, and that there was a continuous phenomenon of crypto-Judaism from that time lasting throughout Spanish history, this scenario is unlikely, as in the Muslim period of Iberia there was no advantage in passing as a Christian instead of publicly acknowledging one was a Jew. The main wave of conversions, often forced, followed
the Massacre of 1391 in Spain. Legal definitions of that era theoretically acknowledged that a forced baptism was not a valid sacrament, but the Church confined this to cases where it was literally administered by physical force: a person who had consented to baptism under threat of death or serious injury was still regarded as a voluntary convert, and accordingly forbidden to revert to Judaism. Crypto-Judaism as a large-scale phenomenon mainly dates from that time. Conversos, whatever their real religious views, often (but not always) tended to marry and associate among themselves. As they achieved prominent positions in trade and in the royal administration, they attracted considerable resentment from the "
Old Christians". The ostensible reason given for issuance of the 1492 Alhambra Decree for the conversion, expulsion or execution of the unconverted Jews from Spain was that the unconverted Jews had supported the New Christian conversos in the crypto-Jewish practices of the latter, thus delaying or preventing their assimilation into the Christian community. After the issuance of Spain's Alhambra Decree in 1492, a large proportion of the unconverted Jews chose exile rather than conversion, many of them crossing the border to Portugal. In Portugal, however, the Jews were again issued with a similar decree just a few years later in 1497, giving them the choice of exile or conversion. Unlike in Spain, however, in actual practice Portugal mostly prevented them from leaving, thus they necessarily stayed as ostensible converts to Christianity whether they wished to or not, after the Portuguese King reasoned that by their failure to leave they accepted Christianity by default. For this reason, crypto-Judaism was far more prevalent in Portugal than in Spain, even though many of these families were originally of Spanish rather than Portuguese descent. Over time, however, most crypto-Jews both of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry had left Portugal by the 18th century.
Crypto-Judaism , Portugal, 1497 Scholars are still divided on the typical religious loyalties of the conversos, in particular on whether they are appropriately described as "crypto-Jews". Given the secrecy surrounding their situation, the question is not easy to answer: probably the conversos themselves were divided, and could be ranged at different points between the possible positions. The suggested profiles are as follows: • Sincere Christians, who were still subject to discrimination and accusations of Judaizing on the part of the Inquisition; some of these appealed to the Pope and sought refuge in the Papal States. • Those who had honestly tried their best to live as Christians, but who, on finding that they were still not accepted socially and still suspected of Judaizing, conceived intellectual doubts on the subject and decided to try Judaism, on the reasoning that suspicion creates what it suspects. • Genuine crypto-Jews, who regarded their conversions as forced on them and reluctantly conformed to Catholicism until they found the first opportunity of living an open Jewish life. • Opportunistic "cultural commuters" whose private views may have been quite sceptical and who conformed to the local form of Judaism or Christianity depending on where they were at the time. For these reasons, there was a continuous flow of people leaving Spain and Portugal (mostly Portugal) for places where they could practice Judaism openly, from 1492 until the end of the 18th century. The typical escape route was, first, to Antwerp (or sometimes London), then to Ferrara or Venice, from which they might or might not travel on to the Ottoman Empire; later on, permanent communities were founded in the Netherlands and England. They were generally accepted by the host Jewish communities as
anusim (forced converts), whose conversion, being involuntary, did not compromise their Jewish status. Conversos of the first generation after the expulsion still had some knowledge of Judaism based on memory of contact with a living Jewish community. In later generations, people had to avoid known Jewish practices that might attract undesired attention: conversos in group 3 evolved a home-made Judaism with practices peculiar to themselves, while those in group 2 had a purely intellectual conception of Judaism based on their reading of ancient Jewish sources preserved by the Church such as the
Vulgate Old Testament, the
Apocrypha,
Philo and
Josephus. Both groups therefore needed extensive re-education in Judaism after reaching their places of refuge outside the peninsula. This was achieved with the help of •
Sephardim living in Italy (and to a lesser extent,
Italian Jews proper); • 1492 exiles living in Morocco, who were the immediate heirs of the
Andalusi Jewish tradition; • especially in Holland and Germany, Ashkenazi Jews.
Ceuta and Melilla There are still Jewish communities in the North African exclaves of
Ceuta and
Melilla. These places, though treated in most respects as integral parts of Spain, escaped the Inquisition and the expulsion, so these communities regard themselves as the remnant of pre-expulsion Spanish Jewry.
In Italy As Sephardic Jewish communities were established in central and northern Italy, following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and from the Kingdom of Naples in 1533, these areas were an obvious destination for conversos wishing to leave Spain and Portugal. The similarity of the Italian language to Spanish was another attraction. Given their Christian cultural background and high level of European-style education, the new emigrants were less likely to follow the example of the 1492 expellees by settling in the Ottoman Empire, where a complete culture change would be required. On the other hand, in Italy they ran the risk of prosecution for Judaizing, given that in law they were baptized Christians; for this reason they generally avoided the Papal States. The Popes did allow some Spanish-Jewish settlement at
Ancona, as this was the main port for the
Turkey trade, in which their links with the Ottoman Sephardim were useful. Other states found it advantageous to allow the conversos to settle and mix with the existing Jewish communities, and to turn a blind eye to their religious status. In the next generation, the children of conversos could be brought up as fully Jewish with no legal problem, as they had never been baptized. The main places of settlement were as follows: • The
Republic of Venice often had strained relations with the papacy. They were also alive to the commercial advantages offered by the presence of educated Spanish-speaking Jews, especially for the Turkey trade. Previously the Jews of Venice were tolerated under charters for a fixed term of years, periodically renewed. In the early 16th century, these arrangements were made permanent, and a separate charter was granted to the "Ponentine" (western) community. Around the same time, the state required the Jews to live in the newly established
Venetian Ghetto. Nevertheless, for a long time the Venetian Republic was regarded as the most welcoming state for Jews, equivalent to the Netherlands in the 17th century or the United States in the 20th century. • Sephardic immigration was also encouraged by the
House of Este in their possessions of
Reggio,
Modena and
Ferrara. In 1598 Ferrara was repossessed by the Papal States, leading to some Jewish emigration from there. • In 1593,
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, granted Spanish and Portuguese Jews charters to live and trade in
Pisa and
Livorno. On the whole, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews remained separate from the native
Italian rite Jews, though there was considerable mutual religious and intellectual influence between the groups. In a given city, there was often an "Italian synagogue" and a "Spanish synagogue", and occasionally a "German synagogue" as well. Many of these synagogues have since merged, but the diversity of rites survived in modern Italy. The
Spanish Synagogue (
Scola Spagnola) of Venice was originally regarded as the "mother synagogue" for the Spanish and Portuguese community worldwide, as it was among the earliest to be established, and the first prayer book was published there. Later communities, such as in Amsterdam, followed its lead on ritual questions. With the decline in the importance of Venice in the 18th century, the leading role passed to
Livorno (for Italy and the Mediterranean) and Amsterdam (for western countries). Unfortunately, the Livorno synagogue – considered to be the most important building in town – was destroyed in the Second World War: a modern building was erected on the same site in 1958–1962. Many merchants maintained a presence in both Italy and countries in the Ottoman Empire, and even those who settled permanently in the Ottoman Empire retained their Tuscan or other Italian nationality, so as to have the benefit of the
capitulations of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, in Tunisia there was a community of
Juifs Portugais, or ''L'Grana
(Livornese), separate from, and regarding itself as superior to, the native Tunisian Jews (Tuansa
). Smaller communities of the same kind existed in other countries, such as Syria, where they were known as Señores Francos''. They were generally not numerous enough to establish their own synagogues, instead meeting for prayer in each other's houses.
In France In the 16th and early 17th centuries, conversos were also seeking refuge beyond the
Pyrenees, settling in France at
Saint-Jean-de-Luz,
Tarbes,
Bayonne,
Bordeaux,
Marseille, and
Montpellier. They lived apparently as Christians; were married by Catholic priests; had their children baptized, and publicly pretended to be Catholics. In secret, however, they circumcised their children, kept
Shabbat and feast-days as best they could, and prayed together. King
Henri III confirmed the privileges granted them by
Henri II, and protected them against accusations. Under
Louis XIII, the conversos of Bayonne were assigned to the suburb of
Saint-Esprit. At Saint-Esprit, as well as at Peyrehorade, Bidache,
Orthez,
Biarritz, and
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, they gradually avowed Judaism openly. In 1640 several hundred conversos, considered to be Jews, were living at Saint-Jean-de-Luz; and a synagogue existed in Saint-Esprit as early as 1660. In pre-Revolutionary France, the Portuguese Jews were one of two tolerated Jewish communities, the other being the Ashkenazi Jews of
Alsace-Lorraine; both groups were emancipated at the
French Revolution. The third community was that of the Papal exclave
Comtat Venaissin, they originally had their own
Provençal rite, but adopted the Spanish and Portuguese rite shortly after the French Revolution and the incorporation of Comtat Venaissin into France. Today there are still a few Spanish and Portuguese communities in Bordeaux and Bayonne, and one in Paris, but in all these communities (and still more among French Jews generally) any surviving Spanish and Portuguese Jews are greatly outnumbered by recent Sephardic migrants of North African origin.
In the Netherlands During the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, converso merchants had a strong trading presence there. When the
Dutch Republic gained independence in 1581, the Dutch retained trading links with Portugal rather than Spain, as Spain was regarded as a hostile power. Since there were penal laws against Catholics, and Catholicism was regarded with greater hostility than Judaism, New Christian conversos (technically Catholics, as that was the Christian tradition they were forced into) were encouraged by the Dutch to "come out" openly as Jews. Given the multiplicity of Protestant sects, the Netherlands was the first country in the Western world to establish a policy of religious tolerance. This made Amsterdam a magnet for conversos leaving Portugal. There were originally three Sephardi communities: the first,
Beth Jacob, already existed in 1610, and perhaps as early as 1602;
Neve Shalom was founded between 1608 and 1612 by Jews of Spanish origin. The third community,
Beth Israel, was established in 1618. These three communities began co-operating more closely in 1622. Eventually, in 1639, they merged to form
Talmud Torah, the Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam, which still exists today. The current
Portuguese Synagogue, sometimes known as the "Amsterdam Esnoga", was inaugurated in 1675, of which Abraham Cohen Pimentel was the head Rabbi. At first the Dutch conversos had little knowledge of Judaism and had to recruit rabbis and
hazzanim from Italy, and occasionally Morocco and
Salonica, to teach them. Later on Amsterdam became a centre of religious learning: a religious college
Ets Haim was established, with a copious Jewish and general library. This library still exists. The transactions of the college, mainly in the form of
responsa, were published in a periodical,
Peri Ets Haim (see links
below). There were formerly several Portuguese synagogues in other cities such as
The Hague. Since the German occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War and the mass killing of Jews by the Nazi regime, the Amsterdam synagogue is the only remaining synagogue of the Portuguese rite in the Netherlands: it serves a membership of about 600. On the other hand, the synagogue at the Hague survived the war undamaged; it is now the Liberal Synagogue and no longer belongs to the "Portuguese" community. The position of Jews in the
Spanish Netherlands (modern
Belgium) was rather different. Considerable numbers of conversos lived there, in particular in
Antwerp. The Inquisition was not allowed to operate, though there were sometimes prosecutions for heresy in the local courts. Nevertheless, their practice of Judaism remained under cover and unofficial, as acts of Judaizing in Belgium could expose one to proceedings elsewhere in the Spanish possessions. Sporadic persecutions alternated with periods of unofficial toleration. The position improved somewhat in 1714, with the
cession of the southern Netherlands to Austria, but no community was officially formed until the 19th century. There is a Portuguese synagogue in Antwerp; its members, like those of the Sephardic rite synagogues of Brussels, are now predominantly of North African origin, and few if any pre-War families or traditions remain.
In Germany, Northern Europe and Eastern Europe There were Portuguese Jews living in
Hamburg as early as the 1590s. Records attest to their having a small synagogue called
Talmud Torah in 1627, and the main synagogue,
Beth Israel, was founded in 1652. From the 18th century on, the Portuguese Jews were increasingly outnumbered by "German Jews" (Ashkenazim). By 1900, they were thought to number only about 400. A small branch of the Portuguese community was located in
Altona, with a congregation known as
Neweh Schalom. Historically, however, the Jewish community of Altona was overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, as Altona belonged to the kingdom of
Denmark, which permitted Jews of all communities to settle there when Hamburg proper still only admitted the Portuguese. Spanish and Portuguese Jews had an intermittent trading presence in Norway until the early 19th century, and were granted full residence rights in 1844. Today they have no separate organizational identity from the general (mainly Ashkenazi) Jewish community, though traditions survive in some families. Around 1550, many Sephardi Jews travelled across Europe to find their haven in
Poland, which had the largest Jewish population in the whole of Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. For this reason there are still Polish Jewish surnames with a possible Spanish origin. However, most of them quickly assimilated into the Ashkenazi community and retained no separate identity.
In Britain There were certainly Spanish and Portuguese merchants, many of them conversos, in England at the time of Queen
Elizabeth I; one notable marrano was the physician
Roderigo Lopez. In the time of
Oliver Cromwell,
Menasseh Ben Israel led a delegation seeking permission for Dutch Sephardim to settle in England: Cromwell was known to look favourably on the request, but no official act of permission has been found. By the time of
Charles II and
James II, a congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews had a synagogue in Creechurch Lane. Both these kings showed their assent to this situation by quashing indictments against the Jews for unlawful assembly. For this reason the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of England often cite 1656 as the year of re-admission, but look to Charles II as the real sponsor of their community.
Bevis Marks Synagogue was opened in 1701 in London. In the 1830s and 40s there was agitation for the formation of a branch synagogue in the West End, nearer where most congregants lived, but rabbis refused this on the basis of
Ascama 1, forbidding the establishment of other synagogues within six miles of Bevis Marks. Dissident congregants, together with some Ashkenazim, accordingly founded the
West London Synagogue in Burton Street in 1841. An official branch synagogue in Wigmore Street was opened in 1853. This moved to Bryanston Street in the 1860s, and to
Lauderdale Road in
Maida Vale in 1896. A private synagogue existed in
Islington from 1865 to 1884, and another in
Highbury from 1885 to 1936. A third synagogue has been formed in Wembley. Over the centuries the community has absorbed many Sephardi immigrants from Italy and North Africa, including many of its rabbis and
hazzanim. The current membership includes many
Iraqi Jews and some Ashkenazim, in addition to descendants of the original families. The Wembley community is predominantly
Egyptian. The synagogues at Bevis Marks, Lauderdale Road and Wembley are all owned by the same community, formally known as
Sahar Asamaim (Sha'ar ha-Shamayim), and have no separate organisational identities. The community is served by a team rabbinate: the post of
Haham, or chief rabbi, is currently vacant (and has frequently been so in the community's history), the current head being known as the "Senior Rabbi". The day-to-day running of the community is the responsibility of a
Mahamad, elected periodically and consisting of a number of
parnasim (wardens) and one
gabbay (treasurer). Under the current Senior Rabbi, Joseph Dweck, the name of the community has been changed from "Congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews" to "S&P Sephardi Community". , formerly a Spanish and Portuguese synagogue In addition to the three main synagogues, there is the
Montefiore Synagogue at
Ramsgate associated with the burial place of
Moses Montefiore. A synagogue in Holland Park is described as "Spanish and Portuguese" but serves chiefly Greek and Turkish Jews, with a mixed ritual: it is connected to the main community by a Deed of Association. The Manchester Sephardic synagogues are under the superintendence of the London community and traditionally used a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese ritual, which is giving way to a Jerusalem Sephardic style: the membership is chiefly
Syrian in heritage, with some Turkish, Iraqi and North African Jews. The London community formerly had oversight over some
Baghdadi synagogues in the Far East, such as the
Ohel Leah Synagogue in Hong Kong and
Ohel Rachel Synagogue in Shanghai. An informal community using the Spanish and Portuguese rite, and known as the "Rambam Synagogue", exists in
Elstree and a further
minyan has been established in
Hendon. Newer Sephardic rite synagogues in London, mostly for Baghdadi and Persian Jews, preserve their own ritual and do not come under the Spanish and Portuguese umbrella. Like the Amsterdam community, the London Spanish and Portuguese community early set up a
Medrash do Heshaim (
Ets Haim). This is less a functioning religious college than a committee of dignitaries responsible for community publications, such as prayer books. In 1862 the community founded the "
Judith Lady Montefiore College" in Ramsgate, for the training of rabbis. This moved to London in the 1960s: students at the college concurrently followed courses at Jews' College (now the
London School of Jewish Studies). Judith Lady Montefiore College closed in the 1980s, but was revived in 2005 as a part-time rabbinic training programme run from Lauderdale Road, serving the Anglo-Jewish Orthodox community in general, Ashkenazim as well as Sephardim.
In the Americas From the 16th to the 18th centuries, a majority of conversos leaving Portugal went to Brazil. This included economic emigrants with no interest in reverting to Judaism. As the Inquisition was active in Brazil as well as in Portugal, conversos still had to be careful. Dutch Sephardim were interested in colonisation, and formed communities in both
Curaçao and
Paramaribo, Suriname. Between 1630 and 1654, a
Dutch colony existed in the north-east of Brazil, including Recife. This attracted both conversos from Portuguese Brazil and Jewish emigrants from Holland, who formed a community in Recife called
Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, the first synagogue in the Americas. On the reconquest of the Recife area by Portugal, many of these Jews (it is not known what percentage) left Brazil for new or existing communities in the Caribbean such as Curaçao. Others formed a new community,
Congregation Shearith Israel, in
New Amsterdam (later renamed as New York) in 1654, the first Jewish synagogue in what became the United States. Numerous conversos, however, stayed in Brazil. They survived by migrating to the countryside in the province of
Paraíba and away from the reinstated Inquisition, which was mostly active in the major cities. In the Caribbean, there were at one point Spanish and Portuguese synagogues in various other Dutch- and English-controlled islands, such as
Jamaica,
St. Thomas,
Barbados,
St. Eustatius and
Nevis. With the elimination of the Inquisition after the
Spanish American wars of independence, which many Caribbean Sephardim had supported, many of these communities declined as Jews took advantage of their new-found freedom to move to the mainland, where there were better economic opportunities.
Venezuela,
Colombia,
Ecuador,
Panama,
Costa Rica and
Honduras, among others, received numbers of Sephardim. Within a couple of generations, these immigrants mostly converted to Catholicism to better integrate into society. In the 21st century among the Caribbean islands, only Curaçao and Jamaica still have communities of Spanish and Portuguese Jews. In Canada, at that time named as '
New France',
Esther Brandeau was the first Jew to immigrate to Canada, in 1738, disguised as a Roman Catholic boy. She came from Saint-Esprit, a district of
Bayonne, a port city in Southwestern France, where Spanish and Portuguese Jews had settled. In the British
Thirteen Colonies, synagogues were formed before the American Revolution at
Newport, Rhode Island and
Philadelphia, as well as in cities of the southern colonies of South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia. Since then, many of the former Sephardic synagogues in the southern states and the Caribbean have become part of the
Conservative,
Reform or
Reconstructionist movements, and retain only a few Spanish and Portuguese traditions. Thus, among the pioneers of the Reform Judaism movement in the 1820s there was the Sephardic congregation
Beth Elohim in
Charleston, South Carolina. Despite the Dutch origins of the New York community, by the 19th century all of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities in the United States and Canada were very much part of the London-based family. The 19th and early 20th century editions of the prayer book published in London and Philadelphia contained the same basic text, and were designed for use on both sides of the Atlantic: for example, they all contained both a prayer for the royal family and an alternative for use in republican states. The New York community continued to use these editions until the version of
David de Sola Pool was published in 1954. On the other hand, in the first half of the 20th century, the New York community employed a series of
hazzanim from Holland, with the result that the community's musical tradition remained close to that of Amsterdam. There are only two remaining Spanish and Portuguese synagogues in the United States:
Shearith Israel in New York, and
Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. In both congregations, only a minority of their membership has Western Sephardic ancestry, with the remaining members a mix of Ashkenazim, Levantine Sephardim, Mizrahim, and converts. Newer Sephardic and Sephardic-rite communities, such as the
Syrian Jews of
Brooklyn and the Greek and Turkish Jews of
Seattle, do not come under the Spanish and Portuguese umbrella. The Seattle community did use the de Sola Pool prayer books until the publication of
Siddur Zehut Yosef in 2002.
Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, a community in Los Angeles with a mainly Turkish ethnic background, still uses the de Sola Pool prayer books.
In India and the East Indies – Goa, Cochin, Chennai and Malacca The signing of the
Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, divided the world between Portugal, and Spain. Portugal was allotted responsibility over lands east of the Tordesillas meridian. In 1498
Vasco da Gama arrived on India's western coast where he was first greeted by a
Polish Jew:
Gaspar da Gama. In 1505 Portugal made
Cochin its eastern headquarters, and in 1510
Goa was established as the capital of
Portuguese India.
Goa With the establishment of the Portuguese colonies in Asia,
New Christians began flocking to India's western coast. Regarding Goa, the
Jewish Virtual Library states that "From the early decades of the 16th century many New Christians from Portugal came to Goa. The influx soon aroused the opposition of the Portuguese and ecclesiastical authorities, who complained bitterly about the New Christians' influence in economic affairs, their monopolistic practices, and their secret adherence to Judaism." Professor Walter Fischel of the
University of California, Berkeley observes that despite the start of the inquisition in Portugal, the Portuguese relied heavily on Jews and New Christians in establishing their fledgling Asian empire. The influence of Jews and New Christians in Goa was substantial. In his book
, The Marrano Factory, Professor Antonio Saraiva of the
University of Lisbon writes that "King Manuel theoretically abolished discrimination between Old and New Christians by the law of March 1, 1507 which permitted the departure of New Christians to any part of the Christian world, declaring that they 'be considered, favored and treated like the Old Christians and not distinct and separated from them in any matter.' Nevertheless, in apparent contradiction to that law, in a letter dated Almeirim, February 18, 1519, King Manuel promoted legislation henceforth prohibiting the naming of New Christians to the position of judge, town councilor or municipal registrar in Goa, stipulating, however, that those already appointed were not to be dismissed. This shows that even during the first nine years of Portuguese rule, Goa had a considerable influx of recently baptized Spanish and Portuguese Jews" There are even examples of well-positioned Portuguese Jews, and New Christians, leaving the Portuguese administration to work with the Muslim sultanates of India in an attempt to strike back at Portugal for what it had done to them viz-a-viz the inquisition in Portugal. Moises Orfali of
Bar-Ilan University writes that the initially Portuguese colonial and ecclesiastical authorities complained in very strong terms about Jewish influence in Goa. The
Goa Inquisition which was established in 1560 was initiated by
Jesuit Priest
Francis Xavier from his headquarters in
Malacca due to his inability to reanimate the faith of the New Christians there, Goa and in the region who had returned to Judaism. Goa became the headquarters of the Inquisition in Asia.
Cochin, and Chennai Cochin was, and still is, home to an ancient Jewish community (the
Cochin Jews). Sephardic Jews from Iberia joined this community and became known as
Paradesi Jews or "White Jews" (as opposed to older community which came to be known as the "Malabari Jews" or "Black Jews"). Cochin also attracted New Christians. In his lecture at the
Library of Congress, Professor
Sanjay Subrahmanyam of
University of California, Los Angeles explains that New Christians came to India for economic opportunities (the
Spice trade, the
Golconda Diamonds trade, etc.) and because India had well-established Jewish communities which allowed them the opportunity to rejoin the Jewish world. As explained by Professor Fischel, the Sephardic Jews of London were active in trading out of
Fort St. George, India which later developed into the city of Madras, and is known today as
Chennai and during the early years, the city council was required to have three Jewish aldermen to represent the community's interests.
Malacca Malacca, Malaysia was in the 16th century a Jewish hub – not only for Portuguese Jews but also for Jews from the middle east and the Malabar. With its synagogues and rabbis, Jewish culture in Malacca was alive and well. Visible Jewish presence (Dutch Jews) existed in Malacca right up to the 18th century. Due to the inquisition a lot of the Jews of Malacca were either captured or assimilated into the Malacca-Portuguese (Eurasian) community where they continued to live as New Christians. Malacca was the headquarters of Jesuit priest Francis Xavier and it was his discovery of the conversos from Portugal there who had openly returned to Judaism as in the fortresses of India that became the turning point and from whence he wrote to King John III of Portugal to start the inquisition in the East. Prominent Malaccan Jewish figures include Portuguese Rabbi Manoel Pinto, who was persecuted by the Goa Inquisition in 1573 and Duarte Fernandes a former Jewish tailor who had fled Portugal to escape the Inquisition who became the first European to establish diplomatic relations with Thailand. ==Synagogues==