Reaching Out to Portugal’s Crypto-Jews
Dozens of Portuguese crypto-Jews will gather next week in Lisbon, Portugal for a special seminar and Shabbaton being organized on their behalf by the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org) organization, which reaches out and assists “lost Jews” seeking to return to the Jewish people.
The seminar, entitled “Chosen People or Choosing a People,” will include rabbis and academics from Israel and Portugal, and will focus on issues concerning Jewish nationhood and destiny, and the bond between the Jewish people and Bnai Anousim.
Bnai Anousim is the Hebrew term for people whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism during the time of the Inquisition. Historians have often referred to them by the derogatory term “Marranos.”
According to Shavei Israel Director Michael Freund, “There is a real awakening taking place among the Bnai Anousim in Portugal, who have held on to their Jewish identity despite centuries of fear and persecution. Through no fault of their own, their ancestors were torn away from us, but now many are looking for a way to come back – to come back to the religious and intellectual heritage that was so cruelly taken away from them.”
In late 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal sought to wed the daughter of Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who conditioned their consent on the expulsion of the Jews from Portuguese territory. Manuel followed suit, and issued a decree ordering the expulsion of the country’s Jews by October 1497.
But fearing the economic loss to his kingdom, the Portuguese monarch instead undertook a campaign of forcible baptism, compelling the bulk of Portuguese Jewry to convert. “Many, however, continued to practice Judaism in secret,” Freund says, “and risked their lives and well-being to pass along their hidden identity as Jews to future generations.”
“Our goal in convening this seminar is to reach out to their descendants, the Bnai Anousim, and to demonstrate to them that just as they did not forget us, the Jewish people, so too we have not forgotten them”, he said.
Shavei Israel currently has two full-time rabbinical emissaries in Portugal, who serve as rabbis for the local Jewish community while also engaging in outreach work among the Bnai Anousim.
Four months ago, a Shavei Israel delegation headed by Freund and Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum of the Chief Rabbinate traveled to Portugal together with Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, where they met with Bnai Anousim in Lisbon and in Oporto, the country’s second-largest city.
In the wake of the visit, Rabbi Amar declared that he would work towards finding a halachic solution regarding the personal status of Bnai Anousim who wish to return to the Jewish people.
The seminar in Lisbon is the fifth such gathering that Shavei Israel has held in the past two years in the Iberian peninsula. Previous such seminars were convened in Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Majorca in Spain, as well as in Oporto in Portugal.
For more information, contact office@shavei.org.