History of the Jewish Community of Oporto

 

 

 

II - The Jews of Oporto

 

At the Beginning

In the three thousand years old Celtic settlement, formerly called Cale, where the Roman Empire built a port it called Portus Cale, Jewish tradition dates back to time immemorial. Future archaeological excavations may shed some light on this ancient presence. For now, the Douro River, in its undulating purity, is the only witness to the existence, for a long time, of traces of a people with an instinct for tribal brotherhood, a pronounced family spirit, hard-work, a predisposition for commerce, and vision beyond borders.

The list of the Jewish qualities listed above, mixed with the resistance to adversity typical of people who had experienced great persecution, was present from very early days in the lands of Sepharad. 

Present in the Peninsula before the Romans, the Goths and the Muslims, the Jews looked to the distant times of the Bible for the origin of their settlement in the country. Some claimed that the first of their lineage had arrived, brought from Babylon, by Nebuchadnezzar, and others claimed that even earlier, in Solomon’s time, Hispania had been a vassal and tributary of that great King.[1]

The influence of the small people from Judah gave the city part of the tone that characterizes it. The Jewish spirit of Oporto is revealed in different aspects, such as the capital of work, the commercial and industrial vein of a globalist nature, the strong initiative to create new horizons, the habit of “balanced budgets”, the parochialism associated with cosmopolitanism, and the sense of independence and non-subordination. The citizen of Oporto is very similar to the Israeli Sephardi.

History is based not only on monuments, stones, documents and other material objects, but also on everything that, for three millennia, involved the history of a city like Oporto. That is the cultural and religious civilization examined in this text. In time, History will complete the missing documentation, but in the meantime, the known basic facts allow us to conclude that “a Jewish colony existed a long time ago in this ancient city, as in so many other places on the Iberian Peninsula, although the history of most of them is little and sometimes not at all known to us”. [2]

Despite being lost in the dark clouds of time, the Jewish presence in Oporto predates any existing memories or monuments in the city and may date back to Phoenician commercial expeditions (given the similarity of the languages) or to periods after the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE.

The conquest of Oporto by the Roman legions, like the conquest of all the major port cities of Sepharad, brought with it many Jews, whether authentic, as slaves or as those who deliberately went over to the side of the strongest, at a time when Jewish communities prospered throughout an entire Empire that roamed the regions bathed by the Mediterranean.

These were the times of Pax Romana. During the pagan period of the Roman Empire, residents could be both Roman citizens and citizens with their own religious customs. Although in foreign lands, due to forced exile, the Jews believed that Jerusalem would once again be, in the words of the prophets, the moral centre of the world.

The “People of the Book” did not neglect their origins and their religiosity. All members of the community were religious. There were no exceptions. As everywhere where there were small Jewish settlements, Oporto would have seen, from very early on, places for Jewish prayer, meeting and study, located in private residences and discreet buildings, small family temples, without ostentation, if not hidden from the eyes of the non-Jewish majority.

The Jews were involved in the construction of old Oporto, which then saw the banks of the river joined by small barges, when the current allowed it. Proud of their belonging to the tribe of Judah, they had travelled thousands of kilometres on foot, in fragile wagons or poorly equipped boats.

Interconnecting houses, as in a small Jewish quarter, were part of the life of the small people everywhere, in the East and in the West, not so much because of the demands of the surrounding populations, but thanks to their own instinct for defence and an inescapable desire for independence.

The early marriages that were then customary throughout the Jewish world, combined with a sober life, allowed a remarkable fertility of a colony essentially composed of small traders, doctors, and men of law who always grew stronger through their own suffering and difficulties.

The Jewish community in Oporto was a distinct community that had its normative religion, its culture, its language, its poetry and its books, in addition to the most diverse international connections, which were not limited to Europe. The number of Jews who migrated to Africa has always been remarkable, since their arrival in Sepharad and in all subsequent times.

Indeed, the spreading presence of the Jewish people throughout the known world, with each Jewish community in contact with the others through ties of faith and family, gave each of its members an internationalist stamp – the international Jew – that no other individual, people, or network of traders could hold at that time.

The first millennium of the Common Era was marked in Oporto by changes in the dominant power, always accompanied by changes in the living conditions of the Jewish people, high city walls, uncertainties regarding the future, dreadful afflictions, depopulations and settlements: German tribes against Romans, German tribes against each other, Aryan Christians against Catholic Christians, both against Jews, Christians against Muslims, Muslims against Catholic Visigoths, classes against classes and the powerful against the weak.

After struggles and divisions between forces so opposed to each other, there would always be moments of calm to make agreements, national and religious unions. The different element, the Jew, however much he explained himself, would certainly not infrequently have taken the blame for all previous conflicts.

Jewish history is full of tribulations, but also of impressive cases of regeneration, even in the most unexpected latitudes and situations. The appeal of Jewish blood and soul always comes back, sometimes with more impetuosity.

It is possible that both the Jews and the other inhabitants made attempts at assimilation, but fate condemned them to an inescapable heterogeneity. Popular customs themselves, held in great esteem in those distant times, often even assimilated as civil or divine laws, could easily cast the eastern neighbour as sacrilegious.

Jewish history in Oporto brought with it different periods of Christianity, in the form of Catholicism or Arianism, always associated with the persecutory stain, more or less exacerbated, “The Jews killed Christ”, as if a possible judicial error of the former Sanhedrin, that never happened, could produce the eternal condemnation of an innocent people.

Christianity has always prohibited conversions through violence, but it did not consider violent, but rather sacred, dragging people to baptism or the attitude of terrified Jews who, to save themselves, said they wanted to be baptized. This was how infidels quickly became heretics.

In the fourth century, with the Christianization of the Roman Empire, anti-Jewish thinking spread, giving rise to the first forms of crypto-Judaism and the concealment of religious identity in Iberia. Unlike Marranism, a much later phenomenon, secret also by the very nature of the Marranos (who were neither Jews nor Christians), crypto-Judaism was known to the Jews since they confronted the powerful Hellenic, Assyrian and Babylonian empires and it had as its greatest protagonist the Biblical figure of Queen Esther of Persia.

When Iberia was invaded by Germanic tribes, who copied Roman culture and the Christian religion for themselves, the fierce struggle between Alans and Suebi pushed the latter to the right bank of the River Douro, and particularly to Oporto, where the Suebian King built a splendid castle, on the hill of Pena Ventosa, building many houses around it. This place took the name of Castelo Novo de Cale and certainly had a very lively history.

The Visigoths fought the Suebi in the next century, captured their King and proclaimed a new era. Soon Arianism replaced Catholicism throughout Iberia. If until then, with more or less difficulty, the Jewish colony had still been able to live according to fundamental religious precepts, then it was prevented from doing so and was brutally expropriated of its goods, its savings, its commercial plans and, at times, of their children.

The Jews had no reason to regret the defeat of the Visigoths by the Muslims at the beginning of the 8th century and may have contributed to this desideratum through their brothers of faith who had long populated Africa. Thus began the “Golden Age” of the Jewish community of Sepharad and a period of fierce struggles between Muslims and Christians, and of the latter among themselves, reflected in the city of Oporto, initially depopulated and transformed into a “strategic desert” to serve as a buffer zone between Moors and Christians, and then heavily repopulated by the latter of Visigoth origin, a century later.

By habit very sparing in their expenses, the Jews always understood that this was their greatest asset in a social context that lacked guarantees. In Oporto and around the world, they never lacked for friends” with unpaid debts, unfulfilled dreams and needs to revitalize their pockets.

An important, if not a decisive, part of the trade in essential goods, the Jews were also excellent helpers of the authorities of each era in collecting taxes from the population. 

The indisputable importance that the Jewish colony of Oporto achieved allows us to assume a progressive and remarkable influence for six consecutive centuries, from the reoccupation of the city by the Christians (868) until the date of expulsion (1497). [3] 

 

After D. Afonso Henriques

In 1096, King Alfonso VI of León married his daughter Teresa to Henry of Burgundy. He granted them the “County of Portucalense”, with its capital in Oporto. Their son,
D. Afonso Henriques, would make Portugal an independent Kingdom in 1143. This separated Portuguese Jews from their brothers in the territory which would later be called Spain, though their origins, families, and histories were essentially the same.

There was no lack of Jewish help for D. Afonso Henriques. A descendant of the Royal House of David, Yahya Ben Yaish, who had already been recognized by the Emirate of Cordoba for his military skills, became an ally of the young King. He was fluent in several languages and knowledgeable in the art of war, and in mathematics and geography. Yaish collaborated with the King in the taking of Santarém and in the settlement of the Kingdom with Jewish populations fleeing the Almohads. D. Afonso Henriques granted him a coat of arms and made him the Royal Treasurer and Chief Rabbi of Portugal.

To organize an efficient administration, the Chief Rabbi elected an Ombudsman or magistrate who oversaw questions of justice in each of the seven provinces of the Kingdom. Each Ombudsman was located in the capital of the province. Oporto served as the capital city of the region between the Douro and Minho Rivers.

The first documentary references to a Jewish community in the city of Oporto, much after its actual presence, date from the century, as the Christian Reconquest of Portugal advanced towards the Algarve. There are records of small Jewish quarters in the city, that were developing and changing location.

Synagogues continued to function only in uncharacterized spaces and learning required the existence of a Beit Midrash (school) and probably also a kolel (academy) of professional students who studied the Torah and who were supported by the most affluent and philanthropists of the community.

Religiously, the Jewish minority of Oporto was a compact community following traditions dating back to Abraham, Moses and Mount Sinai. Politically, it was a working community, influential in the governance of the Kingdom, with favored status. Economically, it was involved in the administration of public income, and enjoyed the material comforts of the nobility and the prosperity of the city. Commercially, it had entrepreneurial skills and mastered the languages spoken all over the world. Jews spoke Portuguese, Castilian Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and other languages used in Europe and North Africa.

The laws applied to the Jews were compiled in the Afonsine Ordination (the 15th Century codification of Portuguese law), but they practically formed a nation apart, with a philosophy based on the Talmud and Tanach. The Babylonian Talmud and the recent Mishna Torah of Maimonides, which had compiled the norms of numerous Jewish codes of conduct, clarified all issues that the Jewish population needed for daily life.

Proof of the importance of the Jewish community of Oporto achieved in the second half of the thirteenth century, was an order of the Bishops in 1297 prohibiting damage to the property of the Jews and placing its members under the protection of the local bishop.

There was a relationship between the Catholic and Jewish populations, involving a minimum of influence of one on the other. Cases of violence occurred sporadically, on the pretext of practicing a different religion, and for this reason the Jews were immediately considered to be speculators, spies, and enemies.

Jacob Judeu (a physician at the time of D. Dinis), Jusaf Ben Abassis and Salomão Negro (philanthropists and wealthy dealers in the time of D. Fernando), Josef Ben Arieh (Rabbi of Oporto at the end of the 14th century), and Judah Negro (a courtier who’s father, David, saved King João de Castile from an attack perpetrated by D. Leonor Teles) are some of the most illustrious names of Oporto Jews of that time.

The disagreements between the King D. João I and his mother-in-law D. Leonor Teles arose due to the filling of the post of the Chief Rabbi of Castile. The rich D. Judah Aben Menir was the favourite of D. Leonor, but the son-in-law opted for D. David Negro. Angrily, the woman hired a Count to kill D. João, which came to the knowledge of D. David, who “immediately transmitted the information to the King, who soon made the necessary steps to save himself. He ordered them to arrest, that same night, D. Judah, as well as one of his chambermaids who also knew about the plot. D. Leonor, taken prisoner, was also brought to the monarch and interrogated. With complaints against the King and outrage at the Jews, she sought to justify herself.” [4] 

In the 14^th century, a Synagogue was built in Oporto, which was very different from the previous ones. The Synagogue of Monchique, a large building that was not inconspicuous in any way, was erected outside the city walls. From the text of the inscription in Hebrew it is clear that that the Royal court was familiar with the Jewish community and that it felt protected. The inscription reads:

1. Someone might say: why was such house of repute not saved inside a wall?

2. But he well knows I have an acquaintance who is recognized by the gentlehood.

3. It is he who guards me, as he declares with no doubt whatsoever: I am a wall.

4. The greatest among the Jews, the strongest of the heroes, and as leaders stand up there he stands.

5. Benefactor of his people, the servant of God in his integrity, he has built a house to his name in carved stones. For the King he is second, at the head he is controlled by its grandeur and in the presence of Kings he rises.

7. He is Rabbi Don Yehudah ben Maner, light of Judah and in charge of authority.

8. By order of the Rabbi, he, Don Joseph ibn Arieh, shall live in charge and as leader to the task.[5] 

 

The text of the inscription, found in the 19th century on the western wall of the chapel of the Convent of Madre Deus of Monchique, then in ruins, alludes to the Chief Rabbi of King Ferdinand, Don Yehudah ben Maner (or Don Yehudah ben Moise Navarro), and to the person responsible for the work, possibly the Rabbi of Oporto, Don Joseph ibn Arieh (or Don Joseph ben Abasis).

Among the family names of Portuguese Jews living in Oporto at that time, mostly of Hebrew origin and the rest of Iberian origin are Abeatar, Aberrocas, Abibe, Aboav, Abulafia, Adida, Alcalay, Alfarim, Aragones, Azecri, Barchilan, Baruc, Barzilai, Beja, Ben Haim, Ben Hayun, Benatar, Ben Hassan, Ben Sasson, Calderon, Camhi, Caro, Cassute, Cohen, Dahan, Danam, Davila, Elmaleh, Fadida, Faray, Franco, Funes, Gabay, Garson, Habib, Hadida, Haim, Harari, Leon, Levy, Machorro, Maimon, Matalon, Medina, Naaman, Nahmias, Navarro, Negrim, Obadia, Saba, Safran, Saltiel, Sarfati, Sequera, Shalom, Sasson, Toledano, Torigo, Tuvi, Veniste, Verdugo, Vilhedigo, Zarco and others.

There were many professions within the small Jewish community. These included doctors, lawyers, goldsmiths, merchants, cloth sellers, tailors, silk makers, shoemakers and mule drivers. There were also shipowners and specialists in foreign trade who lived in Vila Nova de Gaia, on the south bank of the Douro River. Tax collection by Jews caused the common people to identify the community with Royal oppression.

There were so many Jewish doctors in the city that the name Rapaport, still common among Jews today, may have come from the Hebrew word Rofé (doctor) of Oporto. The large numbers of Jewish doctors may have been a cause of prejudice in Europe. The spread of epidemics may have been attributed to the strange neighbours from the East.

Persecutions of the Jews may have started from struggles and denunciations by members of the Jewish community itself. In Spain, Rabbi Shlomo-Ha Levi, who later converted to Catholicism under the name of Pablo de Santa Maria, was one of the architects of the future Inquisition of Castile.

The killings of Jews in Seville, Toledo, Barcelona and other cities led to a great migration to Portugal. Most Jewish homes did not have the space to absorb so many people. Oporto was one of the cities that welcomed the most refugees. This resulted in marriages between Iberian Jews from both sides of the border.

The members of the Jewish community married exclusively with each other. In exceptional cases, parents married their daughters to members of the nobility. This resulted in the birth of Jewish grandchildren and increased social influence. However, this failed to obtain tolerance and understanding within the Jewish community, which disliked mixed marriages.

D. Duarte forbade the Jews to enter the homes of single women, widows or virgins who lived alone or whose husbands were absent. If they wanted to do business with these women, they could do so only in Oporto, Lisbon, Santarém, Évora, and few more cities, always in public or in front of their homes. The Rabbis supported these measures to prevent intermarriage.

During the Middle Ages, Oporto became an important city internationally. The Ribeira (riverfront district) was a chaotic marina overloaded with small and large boats, many of them owned by Jews. The Jews dominated not only domestic trade but also maritime trade with several countries.

The economic and social development of Oporto in the 14th and 15th centuries is evident in the Bolsa de Mercadores (Merchants Market), one of the oldest in Europe. At the same time, Jews from Oporto associated with Jews from other countries making significant steps in world trade.

The historian Amador de Los Rios underlines the unstoppable growth of the “rich and flourishing Jewish community in the city of Oporto”, which engendered the envy of others. [6]

Some simple Jews protested against the rich, close to royal power and the city authorities, who lived outside the Jewish quarter and who did not always donate to charity, as was expected by the community. Some had noble titles and rode horses, wearing fine clothes and carrying golden swords.

The Jews were a minority and subject to mistrust. It is likely that the wealthy would find no better way to defend the Jewish population than to be distant from them and from their problems, but exercising their influence whenever they could.

The researcher Amílcar Paulo, a distinguished member of the Jewish Community of Oporto in the second half of the twentieth century, noted that the Jews “lived apart in the Jewish quarter, constituting there a kind of municipalities, called communes, from which they could not leave at night, after the bell of prayer. The communes were ruled by councillors and afore-workers, private municipal judges and other Jewish officers. Above the local magistrates was The Arrabi-Mor, high crown official and supreme magistrate for Hebrew business. There was within the Jewish communities a strict hierarchy of officials who performed religious functions of jurisdiction and teaching.” [7] 

The prosperity of the Jewish community of Oporto and many of its members did not please everyone. Some were falsely accused of buying gold and silver to blend them, which was a serious offence receiving heavy punishment. This situation was reported to the King in 1421 by Judah Negro, son of David Negro who was referred to above.

The most famous Jewish Quarter in Oporto was the Olival. King John I, in order to protect “his Jews,” ordered the concentration of all Jews in one place. “The reason, alleged by the sovereign, was to keep those apart and closed, due to the war with Castille, probably for fear of anti-Jewish uprisings or a maritime attack.” [8]  

The City gave the Jewish authorities an area of 1.8 hectares for the Jewish community, which continued to extend itself to the Olival, from nearby Vila Nova de Gaia. The modernity of the new buildings and streets of the newly opened Jewish Quarter contrasted with the gloomy alleys of the old city. It was demarcated by high walls, and only accessible through two massive iron doors adorned with Jewish images. The Jewish Quarter had its own officers and a certain degree of autonomy in relation to the city, containing numerous small houses of prayer and a larger Synagogue, whose location is unknown. There was also a court to settle Jewish issues. The Ombudsman of the Oporto region lived there as the officer in charge of the justice in the Jewish communities.

In 1487, D. João II expelled several Jews as heretics from Oporto. They had arrived from Spain, fleeing the fires of the auto de fé, appearing as Catholics. The alleged heretics were discovered by a small Inquisition that was formed with the permission of the Pope, and which included theologians and jurists.

Five years later, in 1492 Jews were expelled from Castile, with repercussions felt in Oporto and throughout the country. About 75,000 were part of the Portuguese Jewish community that lived and prospered in Lusitanian lands for many centuries[9] and Abraham Zacuto wrote that about 120,000 Spanish Jews spoured into Portugal[10]. This was an extraordinary number, given that the population of Portugal at the time was approximately 800,000 people. Suddenly, the Jewish community formed one quarter of the Portuguese population. 

The first thirty Castilian families who arrived in the city of Oporto, by royal order of King John II, were led by Rabbi Don Isaac Aboab, the highest religious authority in the Jewish world of the time. It was a great honour for the city, which also welcomed other families in flight. In a few months, more than a thousand souls were added to the local Jewish community. It is likely that the arrival of the Rabbi and his entourage had an emotional impact on the city.

D. John II kindly received the venerable and almost blind elder, esteemed by the Spanish sovereigns, in response to his requests, and offering him relatively advantageous conditions. To the Jews accompanying Aboab [among them Rabbi Abraham Zacuto] he offered the pleasant city of Oporto for his establishment and ordered the magistrate to provide them with housing on the street of S. Miguel. (...) The gentle welcome and assurance the King offered old Aboab brought new hope to Spanish expatriates. All those who feared a long sea voyage – or who, for health reasons could not undertake it, those who had the hope of being able, from Oporto, to visit the old homeland more easily and review the abandoned tombs of their parents and brothers, or those who only considered a temporary stay for later, sooner or later, continue travel to Africa [which, for reasons of force-majorforce, Zacuto and others would do from December 1496], European or Asian countries – they felt happier to be welcomed in a country so close to their homeland and so similar in language and customs. [11] 

Things seemed to be heading for better times for the Jewish community of Oporto, but a succession of events changed everything. Even before the bubonic plague returned, and the guilt was attributed to the Jewish newcomers from Castile, the Chief Rabbi fell ill and died in March 1493. The funeral address fell to his disciple Abraham Zacuto:

 Rabbi Isaac Aboab, my lord and my master, of blessed memory, died in Portugal in the year 5253 of Creation, seven months after the expulsion. He lived sixty years and I gave a sermon upon him, based on the verse ‘behold, I send you an angel’. [12] 

At the same time, D. João II sent about 2000 Jewish children under the age of 14 to São Tomé. They were the sons and daughters of Castilian Jews who had arrived in Portugal and who were unable to pay the fee required of them. Many children left from Oporto. The drama in the community is unimaginable. Many desperate pleas were directed at the monarch by the cabalists of the time. It is said that when he died, the King suffered from hallucinations and shouted, “Get these children away from me!”.

Many Jews from Castile, not having the eight cruzados (gold coins) that they were required to pay, were reduced to the status of slaves. With all these misfortunes, the exodus abroad, from Oporto and from other cities, began, long before the Manueline Edict. It continued in successive waves.

 

The Expulsion of Judaism

In 1495, during the reign of D. Manuel, Castilian Jews were released from their status of slaves on the advice of Abraham Zacuto. He had provided help to the monarchical regime and to the King himself in the fields of medicine, science and astrology, and had predicted prosperity and the arrival of the Portuguese in India. However, breaking with the past and the healthy relationship between the Jewish and Catholic communities, particularly in the city of Oporto, D. Manuel signed the Edict of Expulsion on 5 December 1496 in Muge, in the District of Santarém. It read:

 

That Jews and Moors leave these Kingdoms, and cannot live or stay in them. For every faithful Christian, above all things must perform those that are at the service of Our Lord, that enhance his Holy Catholic Faith, and for these shall not only all postpone gains and losses of this world, but also their very lives, which Kings should do much more fully and are obliged to because they are on behalf of Jesus Christ our Lord, and rule, and from him do they receive in this world the greatest mercy, much more than any other person, therefore and as We are very sure that the Jews and Moors are obstinate in their hatred of our Holy Catholic Faith of Christ our Lord, whom by his death has redeemed us, they have committed, and continuously against him committing great evils, and blasphemies in these Our Kingdoms, which blasphemies are not only to them who are children of evil whilst their hearts remain hard, they are cause for more conviction, but also to many Christians who make veer from the true path that is the Holy Catholic Faith; for these, and other very great and necessary reasons, that move us to this, that are notorious and manifest to all Christians, and following a mature resolution with those of Our Council and Scholars, we hereby determine and order that as from the date of publication of this Our Law and Determination and throughout the whole month of October of the Birth year of our Lord one thousand four hundred and ninety seven, all Jews and free Moors that exist in Our Kingdoms, must leave them, under penalty of natural death and of losing their estates to those who accuse them. And anyone whom after said period of time has hidden any Jew or free Moor, for this same fact We want them to lose all their estate and property to those who accuse them, and we Request and Commend and Order by our blessing, and under penalty of a curse on the Kings who succeed us, that they should never at any time allow Jews or free Moors to live or be in these our Kingdoms, and owners thereof, for whatever reason or thing whatsoever, said Jews and Moors we shall let leave freely with their assets, and Order shall them to be paid any outstanding debts to them in our Kingdoms, and so for their departure we will give them all guidance and orders outstanding. And as far as all rents and rights from Jewish quarters and Moorish quarters that We have awarded, we order the people who from us receive such rents to request them from us, for We shall be pleased to order them to receive as much again as said Jewish quarters and Moorish quarters generate for them.

After signing the Edict, the King began to show signs that, unlike the King of Castile, he did not wish to expel the Jews, but rather to eliminate religious and cultural Judaism. He wanted all members of the community to convert to Catholicism and to continue to serve the powerful Kingdom of Portugal as Catholics.

With the lack of free and integral Jews, Portugal, which had the divided the world in two with Spain in the treaty of Tordesilhas, would soon enter into a decline. Oporto and Portugal as a whole were already strong on the world scene and had an opportunity to develop further. However, the Portuguese elites not only rejected such an opportunity but also expelled their most prominent doctors, businessmen, scientists, astronomers, and financiers.

On the eve of one Shabbat in March 1497, D. Manuel ordered that all Jewish children from 4 to 14 years of age be baptized the following Sunday. The King reached the hearts of parents through their children, through a plan drawn up by the apostate Levi Ben Shem-Tov.

Aware that danger loomed, many Jewish families fled across the border and travelled to Morocco, Tunisia, and other places of refuge. It is difficult to imagine, how it was possible to travel so fast and so far at that time. In the words of Cecil Roth, “This period probably belongs to the foundation of the Portuguese communities in Thessaloniki, Smyrna and elsewhere in the Levant”. [13]

The month of October was set as the final date for the departure of Jews from the Kingdom. Three ports were promised for departure: Oporto, Lisbon, and Algarve but only the port in Lisbon remained. It was stripped of most boats so that few could travel. Rabbis, the rich, the poor, the learned and the indifferent were subjected to inhuman treatment.

Tens of thousands of people were dragged by force to the baptismal fonts. In Oporto, the walls of the Judiaria do Olival (Jewish Quarter) were torn down. Jewish symbols were erased, including the cemetery that had existed for centuries and where the last Gaon of Castile was buried. The area of Jewish Quarter in Oporto was renamed “Victoria”, an allusion to the victory of Catholicism over Judaism.

Inside the Monastery of S. Bento da Vitória, built on the ruins of demolished houses in the Jewish Quarter, is a Latin inscription representative of this idea. “The seat of darkness is now the palace of the sun. When you cast out the darkness, the sun triumphs.”

Today there are almost no historical records of the presence of the Jews in Oporto at that time due to the ferocity of the Edict of Expulsion. Oporto of that time, with about 15,000 residents, in addition to the population of Greater Oporto, with at least equal numbers, saw the destruction of everything Jewish. Synagogues, schools, inscriptions, books, documents, religious objects, the cemetery, and even the word judeu (Jew) disappeared.

The Jewish community that lived in Portugal in 1496 was one of the most educated and literate in the world. The Edict of “expulsion of Judaism” from Portugal was followed by the confiscation of all Jewish property, including books, under penalty of death of their owners.

There were times of immense sadness and fear. Rabbi Abraham Sabba was forced to deliver his collection of hundreds of books in Oporto, from where he left in tears. There were similar cases all over the country. Many of the Jewish books were burned and others were sold by the authorities to collectors around the world.

Many of the Jews of Oporto managed to leave the city for other countries and for remote locations in Portugal. The rural areas of the North and on the borders of the country were subject to less vigilance and Jews could maintain their traditions more easily there. Many remained, however, in Oporto, side by side with the Christian majority, and wearing the same clothing.

The Hebrew language, the teaching of the Bible, the work of rabbis, the ritual baths, the rituals of birth, life and death, were all erased in a few years by the force of circumstances. Not even the Hebrew calendar, which marks relevant dates to celebrate, existed anywhere.

Nevertheless, the Edict of D. Manuel was not felt in Oporto in the same way as in other places. Many fled, but there was no mass flight. Many Jews accepted conversion to Catholicism. Although they secretly maintained their faith in the God of Israel, they sought to find it in the Catholic Old Testament (corresponding to the Tanach) and no longer in Jewish books.

When Judaism was officially banned, the former residents of Olival established residences elsewhere in the city, especially in the Ribeira (riverfront) area. 

Their abandoned Synagogues, wrote Arthur Carlos Barros Basto, were ruined with time and the prayers and psalms that were recited and sung there began to be muttered in improvised oratories in the residences of false Christians, thus giving rise to the cryptojudaism practiced by those who could not escape or who for intense love were trapped in the beautiful Portuguese land, where their ancestors had been resting for centuries. [14] 

In 1536, the Tribunal do Santo Ofício (Inquisition) was established in Portugal, designed to try crimes against the faith and put an end to heresies and apostasies. Denial of the facts by the subject of the inquiry resulted in months or years in prison and torture until a new hearing was scheduled. The prisoner was forced to pay all the expenses of the imprisonment, the trial, and torture and, if convicted, all property was confiscated. Most of the acquitted were completely ruined when the chase finally ended.

The inquisitorial system, which permitted baseless complaints other than hatred and envy, lasted about three centuries, a seemingly endless time in a rural society. Cecil Roth points out: 

Since the beginning of history, there has probably been no point on Earth where such a systematic and long persecution has been perpetrated for so innocent a cause.[15] 

Tax collectors, nobles, knights of military orders, politicians, book sellers, teachers, lawyers, craftsmen, merchants, confectioners, priests, friars, nuns, students and even school children were persecuted, in depositions written by officials in conditions of the utmost secrecy. The names of the accusers were always concealed.

The great Jewish historian quoted above recounts the story of a Portuguese citizen who attempted to free his Catholic doctor, descended from a family with a long history of impeccable Catholic observance, from the Inquisition. He had been forced, under torture, to falsely confess his Judaism. The Inquisitor was captured and, by the same methods, an identical confession was obtained.

The Inquisition, in addition to persecution of Jews, often accused and convicted Christians of heresies, in order to confiscate their property. The only way for the accused to save their lives and put an end to torture was to confess to false Jewish practices. They then exposed their impeccably Catholic families as heretical. In this way, the number of “false Jews” grew.

In 1543, Oporto witnessed its first public inquisition. The establishment of a Court of Faith in the city was due to the Bishop, an angry Carmelite, of impetuous and inflexible character, to whom the New Christians of Oporto had pointed out some illegalities in the process of building a church in Rua de S. Miguel.

In the wise words of the Jewish historian, Meyer Kayserling:

The worst criminals and most depraved women were used to falsely testify against the CryptoJews. All this was the work of a Bishop, of the same man who, a few years later, had the courage to brave the Vatican against the decay of customs in Rome. [16] 

When the Inquisition was established in Oporto, the City Council created such a high number of obstacles to the Inquisitor that he complained to the King. In the meantime, some mixed marriages between new and old Christians took place at the city.

The Tribunal da Inquisition of Oporto was active between 1542 and 1544. There were two autos-de-fé (the rituals of public penance imposed by the Inquisition) next to the Porta do Olival, where about a hundred new Christians were punished for allegedly maintaining Jewish practices. It was proven that some of the accused did not eat pork, game, or fish without scales, had celebrated the Sabbath, Passover, and other Jewish feasts, and had fasted until nightfall on several days of the year.

It is said about both autos-de-fé that those who were burned sought death to put an end to their torture. There are doubts about that. However, it is likely that they were rich and that their assets were expropriated by the Court that judged them.

With the end of the Court of Faith in Oporto, and after a brief period under the control of the Court of Lisbon, it was up to the Court of the Inquisition of Coimbra to pursue cases from Oporto. Until the official end of the Inquisition in 1821, about 900 New Christians from the city of Oporto were persecuted, with the youngest 10 years of age and the oldest aged 110 years.

The first generations of New Christians, until the end of the 16th century, knew their family origin. They were still Jews, increasingly uneducated but undoubtedly part of the Jewish People. The little they practiced of religion in hiding could be considered Judaism. Later there emerged another type of religion and of being religious: marranism and marrano.

Many New Christians obtained royal permission to leave Portugal for a pilgrimage to Rome. As soon as they were able to take a different route, far from their homeland, they went to Africa, Flanders, or to the Ottoman Empire to get rid of the crucifix.

In the 17th century, Gabriel da Costa, destined for the study of law, exchanged obligatory Catholicism for Judaism, and convinced his mother and brothers to travel to Amsterdam. There they all rejoined the Jewish People. He took the Hebrew name of Uriel but soon called into question the authority of rabbis and and the excessive rigors of the Rabbinate of Amsterdam. He was the target of a chérem, Jewish excommunication. This would be repeated with his countryman, also of Portuguese origin, Baruch Spinoza.

In Oporto, nothing had changed. 

Inquisitorial zeal did not diminish. In 1618, the entire city of Oporto went into great uproar after the arrest of almost all the “New Christians” merchants who controlled trade with the colonies. [17]

In that year, a search led to the arrest of 128 suspected new Christians of high social standing. It had been over a century since the Manueline Edict. It was still known who was who. It is likely that most of the persecuted were still Jewish, due to the social positions they held.

There was a unique case of resistance to the Inquisition by the municipal, judicial and religious authorities of the city. The importance of the Oporto Jews over the centuries led the local authorities to face the Inquisitor in their defence, to the extent that the Court of Appeal had the ecclesiastical court surrounded to prevent some prisoners from being taken to Coimbra. The shocked Inquisitor, Sebastião Noronha, travelled to Madrid to complain to King D. Filipe.

That episode tore the city’s social, economic, and financial system apart. The crushed businessmen started a great migratory wave of new Christians. They said goodbye to the land of their ancestors and left for the four corners of the world. It was a remarkable moment.

In a 1623 document, the Municipality of Oporto lamented the loss of its successful entrepreneurial new Christian community which had been driven from the city by religious fanaticism: “The business people, if any existed at some time in this city, ceased to be with the arrests that occurred by the Holy Office.” [18] 

At this time it was almost impossible to distinguish who was Jewish, who was Marrano and who was Catholic. There were those who, far from practicing clandestine Judaism remotely corresponding to the original, no longer knew their genealogy, and practiced rituals closer to Catholicism than Judaism. Generations had grown up immersed in a framework of strict Catholicism that rejected everything Jewish as a crime.

New Christians forced to attend church and who prayed the rosary loudly for neighbours to hear, believed that salvation was only possible in the Law of Moses. They respected the Shabbat in their thoughts, married within their community, arranged their children’s marriages, and were buried with their families. However, they did not do much more than that. To assume that at some point there was a secret Synagogue where faithful gathered is absurd.

The romanticism of most historians regarding new Christians is unjustified. When asked what knowledge of Judaism the Portuguese who arrived in Amsterdam or London had at that time, Cecil Roth did not hesitate to answer: “nothing”.

Most new Christians were so assimilated for so long in the homeland that they were totally lost to Judaism, often embracing the diaspora as good Christians. Spinoza, in his Tratactus Theologico-Politicus, also wrote about the Judaism of the new Christians, saying that “nothing was left of it, not even memory”.

After the Visitation of 1618, some New Christians remained in Oporto. The great majority fled and were integrated into other Jewish communities around the world, especially in Western Europe, North Africa and the former Ottoman Empire.

The Jewish families who, for two millennia, lived in Sefarad, would remain together. 

In line with the connections between Portuguese and Spanish Judaism, it is interesting to add that the fraternal association between one and the other continued after the expulsion: one and the other constituted the great Sephardic family. [19] 

The Inquisition, active until the beginning of the 19th century, would leave more than 40,000 court records for posterity to analyse. The end of the Inquisition poses the question: Who was really Jewish among the persecuted and condemned?

The majority of inquisitorial victims for three centuries were not Jewish in the light of Halachá, the only permissible criterion in determining that quality. During the first generations of converts, the New Christian community knew who was Jewish by remembering who was born of a Jewish mother. For the Holy Office, the classification of someone as a Jew (“new Christian”) was carried out in denial of Jewish law and was linked to pretense, supposition, and vague suspicion of Judaizing heresy.

The Inquisition had no Rabbis, neglected Halachá, and was a “factory of Jews,” not of true Jews, but of fictitious Jews. 

Jews were multiplied, as long as it was understood as a Jew every individual that the process of the Holy Office declared as such, more their descendants and relatives to a very distant degree. (...) The famous Friar Domingos de São Tomás, of the Order of Preachers and Deputy of the Inquisition, used to say that, just as in Calcetaria there was a house in which currency was made, so there was another in Rossio where Jews were made, or New Christians, because he knew how those who had the misfortune of being arrested were prosecuted. [20] 

In the 17th and 18th centuries, descendants of New Christians from Oporto, converted to Judaism, occupied prominent positions in the Jewish communities of North Africa, the former Ottoman Empire, Italy, Holland, England, Asia. It is worth remembering the role of the relatives of the last Gaon of Castile, including his great-grandson, the scholar Emanuel Aboab.

 

19^th Century

Due to the Manueline Edict and the activities of the Inquisition, that lasted 285 years, the Douro River could witness how painful and remarkable was the disappearance of the Jews, the primitive inhabitants of the city of Oporto. Only after the official abolition of the Inquisition did some Sephardic Jews, with ancient roots in Sefarad (Iberia), gradually began to return to Portugal. They settled in Faro, the Azores, Lisbon, and Oporto, the second largest city in the country and a major capital of industry.

These men and women came not only from Morocco and Gibraltar, but also from Venice, London, Marseille and other places. They bear the names Abudarham, Amzalak, Abohbot, Anahory, Azavey, Azulay, Benhanon, Benchimol, Bensabat, Cohen, Danino, Ezaguy, Ohayon, Serfaty and others.

Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), a British philanthropist born in Livorno to a Sephardic Jewish family, drank Port wine for more than fifty years. It is said that in the hours before his death, he drank three glasses of Port wine. It is known that Montefiore was a religious Jew. It follows that the Port wine he consumed was kosher, i.e., supervised by Orthodox Jews from the harvest to the bottling. The most reasonable explanation is that the wine was produced by, or with the help of, Sephardic residents of Oporto.

The existence of a small Sephardic community in Oporto was confirmed in 1867 by the German Jewish Rabbi and historian Meyer Kayserling, mentioned above. After visiting Portugal, this scholar of the history and literature of Judaism of the Iberian Peninsula published “Geschichte Der Juden in Portugal” [21]. He wrote that after the abolition of the Inquisition, a Jewish community of hundreds of people settled in Lisbon and “a smaller community was founded in Oporto”. [22] 

There are very few objective records of Sephardic Jews in Oporto at that time. In addition to the existence of small businesses of the Buzaglo, Aflalo, Anahory and other families, the most notable case of a Sephardic Jew from Oporto, is that of Jacob Bensabat (1823-1898). He was a polyglot, born in Gibraltar to a Sephardic family. He taught English in the Liceu Central of Oporto and was the author of a vast work that is still a reference in teaching in Portugal. A grandson of Morocco’s highest rabbinical authority, Bensabat taught that English was the language of business and that French was the language of diplomatic relations. [23] 

Small private Synagogues, which were prayer rooms in family residences, were used by Sepharadi Jews in Oporto probably for short periods of time. The Anahory family, today spread across Portugal in multiple branches, retains in the memory that some of its members lived in Oporto in the 19^th century and that there was a Synagogue in a very narrow street at the city[24]. In addition, on March 7, 1905, an Azorean newspaper, the “Persuasão”, published a news story about Sephardic Jews with links to the archipelago, who would open a Synagogue in Oporto, just as they had opened one in Lisbon.

It is certain that the Sephardic community of Oporto existed in the 19^th century, but it did not develop lasting religious and cultural institutions because these Jewish families had ties mainly to the communities and institutions previously established in Lisbon, Faro and the Azores. Without a Jewish cemetery in the city, the deceased were buried in the non-Catholic plots of municipal cemeteries, in the British cemeteries of Oporto, Lisbon and Figueira da Foz and in the Jewish cemeteries of other communities.

By the end of the 19^th century, the Jewish community of the city was essentially Ashkenazi, especially of German origin. The first record of a Jewish birth refers to the birth of Carlos Cudell Goetz, on May 13, 1897. He was the son of the German Jew António Goetz, an industrialist who lived in the parish of Cedofeita in the 19^th century.

 

20^th Century

Before, during and immediately after World War I, with the arrival in Oporto of Jews from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, the Ashkenazi community grew rapidly. Families included the names Cohen, Goldschmidt, Reisman, Goetz, Kimpel, Rosenthal, Kieper, Feldmann, Gotscher, Kolitzus, Naupton, Hitzmann, Rothgang, Feist, Zoller, Karlheinz, Wigder, Neumann, Friedman, Yanovsky, Sorin, Stern, Halpern, Roskin, Knikinsky (often written Kniszinsky), Schuman, Bronstein, Levy, Goold, Levithin, Lieberman and others.

By 1920, the Jewish community of Oporto consisted of about thirty families of merchants from Eastern Europe, who were looking for a better life. They used to gather in private homes. Closely related to each other by marriage, the families of that Jewish colony divided their lives between Oporto, its business base, and Lisbon, the capital of the country, where there was a well-developed Jewish infrastructure linked to the local Sephardic community.

Ashkenazi heads of families were Chaim Sorin, Leon Sorin, Yitchok Yanovsky, Shepsl Yanovsky, Herschel Yanovsky, Tobias Stern, Armand Halpern, David Halpern, Hoshea Roskin, Menasseh Knikinsky, Meir Knikinsky, Abicin Schuman, Haim Bronstein, Ezra Bronstein, Ber Levithin, Abraham Lieberman, Giuseppe Levy and Gregoy Goold. Some of these families are described below, based on the research in the archives of the Jewish Community of Oporto by Miriam Assor, daughter of the legendary Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Lisbon, Abraham Assor.

Yitchok Yanovski, married to Nusia Terlo, both from Lunna, Belarus, set up a lucrative jewelry business in Oporto. His brother, Shepsl Yanovsky, married to Rachel Kaplan, helped him in his activities for four years and later returned to Lunna. He left there for Palestine, taking with him a letter from Yitchok to present himself as a “capitalist” at the British consulate.

Ber Levithin and Herschel Yanovsky, also from Lunna, were part of the Jewish community of the city of Oporto. The latter was married to Leah Sorin, a cousin of the aforementioned Yitchok and Shepsl. On their advice, he travelled to Portugal and placed advertisements in the Jewish newspapers of Warsaw “Der Moment” and “Heint”, encouraging other coreligionists to do the same. The first to follow such counsel were Leah’s sister and brothers: Chaim, Leon, and Rivka.

Rivka Sorin, married to Tobias Stern, and Leon Sorin, married to Helen Klain, settled in Rua do Bonjardim no. 120. Chaim Sorin, who had been ordained as a Rabbi and considered by his coreligionists a specialist in diamonds, was married to Hanna Halpern. She was accompanied by her relatives, David and Armand Halpern, who had business in Oporto with Abicin Schuman. Abraham Schuman was married to Régine Reisman (born in Oporto on 12 December 1897), who was the daughter of the German industrialist, Nachman Reisman.

Abraham was an industrial chemist from Smolensk, Russia. He was born in Warsaw, as were other Poles in the community, including Abraham Lieberman, Nathan Beigel who arriving in Oporto during the 1920s, along with Haim Bronstein (of Russian and Romanian descent) and brothers Meir and Menasseh Knikinsky (Bendov) from Lithuania.

Branca Roskin, was Meir’s niece by marriage. Menasseh’s new fiancée brought her father, Hoshea with her from Lithuania. The family business was centred around two fur stores at Rua de Santa Catarina, no. 355, and Rua Brito Capelo, no. 226, in Matosinhos.

Ashkenazi Jews continued to arrive to Oporto. Ezra Bronstein, his wife Manye and their daughter Hanna were born in Odessa, a site of brutal persecution in the early 1900s and with the advent of communism in 1917. All fled to Portugal. On the journey, the couple’s son, and Hanna’s brother, lost his live.

Even so, that family did not give up on the idea of coming to Portugal, since Ezra’s sister, Regina Bronstein, and her brother-in-law, Moises Liberman, had already settled in the country a few years earlier, in 1913. There was comfort in a family support network.

After arriving in Oporto, the suffering, Ezra became the owner of a small factory of knitwear and fabrics, and his family settled in Travessa das Condominhas, in an old two-storey building. The couple’s daughter, Hanna Sabina Bronstein, eventually became godmother to Samuel Yanovsky, who is still a distinguished member of the Jewish Community of Oporto.

Those Ashkenazi Jews were too cautious to engage in organizational activities that involved bureaucracy and contributions and obligations to the State, so they never gave official or legal status to the community to which in fact they composed.

A lack of leadership, a lack of religious observance by most of the members of the community, and the fear by those who once victims of persecution in their countries of origin, explain the lack of records of religious and cultural activities. The small Jewish community of Oporto lived largely unnoticed.

In 1921, the Jewish community of Oporto received a new family, headed by a soldier of great vigour and intellectuality. His name was Arthur Carlos de Barros Basto. He had converted to Judaism in 1920 in Tangier. His wife, Lea Azancot, the daughter of a Moroccan Jewish father and a Catholic mother, had also converted to Judaism in Lisbon, with the help of a Rabbi from Palestine. [25] 

In 1923, Captain Barros Basto convinced 17 members of the community (Yitchok Yanovsky, Shepsl Yanovsky, Herschel Yanovsky, Leon Sorin, Haim Sorin, Tobias Stern, Armand Halpern, David Halpern, Hoshea Roskin, Menasseh Knikinsky, Meir Knikinsky, Abicin Schuman, Haim Bronstein, Ezra Bronstein, Ber Levithin, Abraham Lieberman and Gregoy Goold) to set up an association called the Jewish Community of Oporto (CIP) similar to the Jewish Community of Lisbon (CIL), established two decades earlier.

The Oporto Jewish community organization (CIP) was established and run by the only person who was really able to do so, the Portuguese army officer. Five sections of the new association were created: “Red Sign” to help hospitals, “Jewish Instruction” for the creation of schools, “Jewish Observance” for religious education, “Patronage of Workers” for work assistance and “Eternal Rest” for burial services.

The Captain was an idealist with broad horizons who had led many lives. He had been a freemason, a revolutionary, and a soldier in World War I. He thought of reconnecting the Jews of Portugal with the Sephardic communities of the world and restoring the former Chief Rabbinate of Portugal. For this he needed financial support.

To obtain support, the Captain devised a plan to return to Judaism the ‘Marrano’ populations living in the remote areas of Trás-os-Montes and Beiras in Portugal. The Marranos, were descendants of New Christians who still practiced some modified Jewish rituals. The plan was designed to have sentimental impact on the Sephardic community of Portuguese origin in other countries. [26] 

In 1926, the Captain received a visit from three Marranos of unknown matrilineal genealogy, who ate pork and who practiced Christian customs mixed with Jewish prayers, spoken in Portuguese. He began headed a personal project, with the help of the Sephardic community of London, to try to convert thousands of Marranos across the country to Judaism.

Barros Basto’s challenging project resulted in the creation of a Theological Institute, functioning as a school for Marrano youth, a newspaper called “Ha-Lapid” (The Torch), a network of permanent contacts with international Jewish organizations, and the beginning of the construction of the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue in 1929. The Jewish Community of Oporto became the centre of operations for the attempt to rescue Portuguese Marranos.

The Captain was an educated man, knowledgeable of military and Jewish history, with numerous publications on these subjects. The name chosen for the Synagogue, Mekor Haim, meaning Source of Life, was inspired by the title of a book by the century Spanish Jewish philosopher and poet, Shlomo Ibn GabiroI (known as “The Jewish Plato”).

Regardless of the beauty of the Synagogue that was being built in Oporto, and whose inauguration took place in 1938, “The Marranos wanted to remain apart from the Jewish mainstream, as a group ‘mudeu’ [mixture of marrano with Jew], of old beliefs already strongly tempered by 500 years of Christianity and without links to traditional Judaism, however liberal it was. Judaism could not accept something like that.” [27] 

The “Work of Rescue” was a huge project that had never been attempted elsewhere. It was performed by one man alone, sometimes mounted on horseback, over mountains and hills, without the accompaniment of Rabbis or other support to perform mass Jewish education and even conversions to Judaism. The result was predictable. The Marranos did not abandon their particular religion and the Captain found himself struck down by the greatest injustices that a good, hardworking, and generous man can face.

After more than a decade of work for the Jewish Community of Oporto, and almost eight years of “the Work of Rescue”, Barros Basto was the subject of slanderous, anonymous denunciations that falsely accused him of crimes a sexual nature, specifically child abuse and homosexuality. Inspired and instigated by two families from Hamburg and Odessa who intended to manage donations from abroad for the rescue of the Marranos, the complaints came from four young Marranos who were students of the Captain at the Jewish Theological Institute of Oporto and who had rivalries with other peers.

Although the Public Security Police, after a brief investigation, concluded that these complaints were slanderous and related to internal rivalries within the CIP (jealousies and false accusations of violent behaviour and embezzlement of donations from abroad), the Portuguese State took the opportunity to destroy the good name of the accused, the balances he maintained among the members of the Community and his role as leader of the organization and its departments.

The anonymous denunciations resulted in criminal and disciplinary proceedings that aimed to drag the accused into the courts for years, destroy his life and damage an active Jewish community. Thus, was born the “Portuguese Dreyfus” case.

In 1937, the Portuguese court acknowledged that the complaints against the Captain were false. However, the State, which had investigated his life in detail, proved that he had participated in circumcision operations of his students. They considered this behaviour immoral and instigated his dismissal from the Army, damaging the then thriving Jewish Community of Oporto. It only recovered in the 21st century, specifically in 2012.

During and after its construction, control of the Synagogue building was given to the Ashkenazi families of the city (Yanovsky, Knikinsky, Roskin, Beigel, Rabinovich, Finkelstein, Cymerman, Pressman, Oppenheim and others). It played an important role in welcoming refugees during World War II. This was followed by decades of emptiness, even though there were always more than enough Jews in the city to constitute a minyan, the ritual quorum of ten men required for prayer.

For many years, the CIP/CJP did not fulfil the function of a Jewish organization legally recognized by a State. Similarly, the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue did not fulfil its mission as a regional Jewish centre.

 

21^st Century

At the turn of the millennium, there was a widespread feeling within the Community that its history was filled with emptiness, just like the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue, an immense building always practically empty. Everything suggested a century to come far worse than the preceding one. The palm trees in the garden had died, the white building of the Synagogue was covered with moss and from the inside the sounds of terrible quarrels could be heard, owing to the involvement of an Israeli proselytizing organization, which was eager to take over the building, to drive Jews by birth away from the Community and undertake mass conversions of individuals who falsely claimed to be Marranos.

However, from 2012 the Oporto Jewish Community was successfully brought back to order, in line with its statutes. It was able to bring about rehabilitation on several fronts – of Captain Barros Basto, the Synagogue, the Congregation and the organization itself – as a result of which the Community was at last reconnected with the entire Jewish world and with international Judaism. All of this made CIP/CJP (CIP’s new designation) one of the strongest single Jewish organizations in the world in terms of religion, culture, education and social utility.

In a few years there was a numerical growth of 1000% of the community and an intense work took place: the incredible rehabilitation of Jewish life at the Kadoorie Synagogue, building centres for young Jews, kosher establishments, the Jewish cemetery of the city (which had been destroyed in 1497), the Holocaust Museum, the Jewish and Holocaust Museums of Oporto, the Jewish Cinema of the city, the production of three feature films about its centuries-old history, the handling of inquisitorial proceedings in danger of rotting at Torre do Tombo, the elaboration of the largest Jewish library of Portugal and Spain, the fight against antisemitism and the many donations to the poor, the sick, the elderly, to hospitals and to kolelin and Synagogues all over the world, for Shabbat meals for Jewish communities in 14 countries, for the biggest Chabad Center in Europe (in Cascais), for mikvaot centres, schools and cemeteries in Jerusalem, Ashdod, Moscow and Bangkok, food banks in a number of countries, aid to catastrophes in Africa and Asia, for all Keren Hayesod projects in Israel, for social actions of the Oporto Diocese and the world initiative Mukhayriq, whose aim is once again to join together the Jews and Muslims who have grown apart owing to mutual misunderstandings.

A Jewish traveller who has visited Jewish communities in 55 countries in 2021 attended Yom Kippur in the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue and wrote this about her experience:

I would like to thank you for letting me attend Yom Kippur services. I have written to several friends and family to tell how moved I was emotionally moved. Never before had I heard such passionate prayer sung in a Synagogue. It was not just the power of the voices praying in unison that moved me so deeply, it was also the symbolism of so many Jews gathered in a Synagogue in a country that was heavily shaken by the Inquisition. [28]

In the year 2022, with a membership of about 1000, counting resident families and foreign students, the Community was proud to have three Synagogues, the Holocaust Museum (which was the most visited museum in Portugal in 2021), the Jewish Museum, restaurants, shops, a kosher hotel, an online school, two newspapers, a cemetery, a male choir, a painting gallery and even films about its history, namely “Sefarad”, with the last century-long history of the Jewish Community of Oporto, and “1618”, with the story of the last Inquisitorial Visitation to the city of Oporto. This latter feature film, the Portuguese cinematographic production with the most awards ever, was seen around the world and its rights were even sold to airlines from Arab and Muslim countries. The Community showed its desire to hasten the advent of a better, more tolerant, more just, godlier world, a true “Malchut Shaddai” (Kingdom of God).

The astonishing and meteoric development of the Jewish Community of Oporto was due, in good measure, to a great mazal in the sense of a favourable alignment of the planets, consistent religious and secular leaders, a lot of teamwork, high professionalism, demotion of vanity, gossip and envy, rehabilitation of the Synagogue building (2012), a tourism department (2013) and creation of a kosher hotel (2014). In addition, from 2015, Portuguese legislation which restored nationality to Jews of Sephardic origin, reconnected Portugal with its Jewish diaspora, greatly swelled the number of Oporto Jews and, with the revenues from fees charged to applicants for Sephardic certification, enabled the achievement of great projects that otherwise would not have been possible, including museums, establishments for the acquisition and manufacture of kosher products, a holy burial site for the dead, schools and mikvaot abroad and even the Chabad Centre in Cascais, owned by Chabad Portugal, with Rabbis in Lisbon and Oporto, in the latter case in one of the CIP/CJP Synagogues: the Kadoorie Mekor Simcha.

The so-called “Sephardic law” (in fact two complementary diplomas: Organic Law n.º 1/2013, of July 29, and Executive Act n.º 30-A/2015, of February 27, 2015) the law was a factor in the development of integral Judaism and Jewish culture in Oporto and throughout the country on a Portuguese sentimental basis. That was the spirit with which, in 2019, the President of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, visited the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue, talking to Jews of multiple nationalities and saying that he was counting on them to row in favour of the country. The experienced statesman was not mistaken on this point, because the will of all those present was identical, but Sousa was unaware that, in the years immediately following, a handful of political agents mixed, consciously or not, with loudmouths and delinquents, would scandalously destroy all these achievements, with serious damage to the reputation of the Portuguese State that is still far from being accounted for.

In fact, what began as, in the words of the President of the Republic, a “Palestinian cause of the Minister of Foreign Affairs” [29], probably with too many interests behind, gave rise, over time, to an unthinkable association of different forces (some linked to high crime and others to political, economic, media and judiciary elites) that converged to the total and implacable persecution of all significant Jewish realities connected with Portugal: the strongest national Jewish community, the most capable leaders, the wealthiest Jews, B’nai B’rith International Portugal and, of course, the “law of the Sephardim”, which was a great missed opportunity (and never recoverable) for the country founded by D. Afonso Henriques, which sinks, year after year.

Let us return, however, to 2015, in order to examine how the new legislation was felt and interpreted by the Portuguese Jewish communities, by the Jewish world in general and by the political class. There was something on which they all agreed. No living Jew had a genealogy or any other document that went back to Portugal centuries ago, nor did the law require it, requiring instead the “tradition of belonging to Sephardic communities of Portuguese origin”.

The legislators in 2013/2015 decided on two techniques:

One: they did not emphasize the word Portugal, but rather the “Sephardic communities of Portuguese origin”, exemplifying the latitudes where they settled: “in some regions of the Mediterranean (Gibraltar, Morocco, Southern France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algiers), northern Europe (London, Nantes, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, Rotterdam and Amsterdam), Brazil, Antilles and the US, among others”.

Two: they provided examples of some of the objective criteria of the tradition of belonging to Portugal, such as family surnames, languages spoken throughout history and family memory attested to by reliable means.

 

The Jewish Community of Oporto suggested to the PSD/CDS Government of Portugal that it should set up an international commission to assess the Sephardism of the candidates seeking Portuguese nationality. The Government ignored the idea and in 2015 decided to have the Portuguese Jewish communities certify the Sephardism of the candidates, so as to reconnect Portugal with the Sephardic diaspora of Portuguese origin while also promoting Jewish religion and Jewish culture in this country.

It should be added that when the aforementioned legislation was published, its authors publicly and genuinely declared that their objective was to reconnect Portugal with Jews of Portuguese origin spread across all continents (even if they lived abroad and did not speak Portuguese); to promote the growth of the national Jewish community (one of the smallest and most powerless in Europe) and to send a signal against antisemitism through the described act of historical reparation.

Within the Jewish world, many have always argued that, as a matter of fact, the actual number of Jews descended from Portuguese Jews corresponded to practically all the 14 million Jews existing on Earth[30] because looking back over the past 18 or 19 generations, and considering a people who have always intermarried and whose families have always migrated for reasons of security, trade and marriage, every Jew alive in the year 2015, has up to 1 million ancestors over the last five hundred years: 2 parents, a mother and a father, 4 grandmothers, two grandmothers and two grandfathers, 8 great-grandparents, 4 great-grandmothers and 4 great-grandfathers, 16 great-great-grandparents, 4 great-great-grandmothers and 4 great-great-grandfathers, 32 third great-grandparents, 16 third great-grandmothers and 16 third great-grandfathers, 64 fourth great-grandparents, 32 fourth great-grandmothers and 32 fourth great-grandfathers, 128 fifth great-grandparents, 64 fifth great-grandmothers and 64 fifth great-grandfathers, 256 sixth great-grandparents,128 sixth great-grandmothers and 128 sixth great-grandfathers, 512 seventh great-grandparents, 256 seventh great-grandmothers and 256 seventh great-grandfathers, 1024 eighth great-grandparents, 512 eighth great-grandmothers and 512 eighth great-grandfathers, 2048 ninth great-grandparents, 1024 ninth great-grandmothers and 1024 ninth great-grandfathers, 4096 tenth great-grandparents, 2048 tenth great-grandmothers and 2048 tenth great-grandfathers, 8192 eleventh great-grandparents, 4096 eleventh great-grandmothers and 4096 eleventh great-grandfathers, 16 384 twelfth great-grandparents, 8192 twelfth great-grandmothers and 8192 twelfth great-grandfathers, 32 768 thirteenth great-grandparents, 16 384 thirteenth great-grandmothers and 16 384 thirteenth great-grandfathers, 65 536 fourteenth great-grandparents, 32 768 fourteenth great-grandmothers and 32 768 fourteenth great-grandfathers, 131 072 fifteenth great-grandparents, 65 536 fifteenth great-grandmothers and 65 536 fifteenth great-grandfathers, 262 144 sixteenth great-grandparents, 131 072 sixteenth great-grandmothers and 131 072 sixteenth great-grandfathers, 524 288 seventeenth great-grandparents, 262 144 seventeenth great-grandmothers and 262 144 seventeenth great-grandfathers. The calculations for 19 generations show that each individual has up to 1 048 574 ancestors, numbers that reinforce the conclusion that every Jew alive today almost certainly has Portuguese and Castilian origins (mixed with many others), especially since, at the end of the 15th century, there would be just over 1 million Jews worldwide[31]. 

The Portuguese Jewish communities had different understandings about the “Sephardic law”, based on the expression “tradition of belonging” to Sephardic communities of Portuguese origin. The Jewish Community of Lisbon interpreted the law as meaning that it allowed any mere “descendant” of Portuguese Jews to be certified (which included practically all of Latin America, 300 million non-Jewish people) and hired two non-Jewish ladies to carry out this work. CIP/CJP, however, restricted the number of candidates that could receive certification to the descendants of traditional families from the strong Sephardic communities of North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and some European cities (limited to about one million people) and handed this work over to Rabbinate of Oporto, whose Chief Rabbi was recognized by the Grand Rabbinate of Israel and graduated in Jewish studies and Jewish history.

The different criteria were formally accepted by the Conservatória dos Registos Centrais de Portugal (Central Registry Office of Portugal) and validated by the Ministry of Justice over the years, despite the fact that the CIP/CJP has always argued, contrary to the interpretation of the Lisbon Jewish Community (CIL), that a rule already existed for mere descendants of Portuguese (article 6[6] of the Nationality Law) and that the Portuguese State would not have needed the Portuguese Jewish communities if the objective had been to certify non-Jews. Jewish tradition only reveals who is a Jew and from what families and latitudes, it does not reveal whether a non-Jew had a Jewish relative many generations ago.

On the other hand, given such different criteria, the large number of daily certifications would tend to be issued by CIP/CJP. The traditional Sephardic Jewish families, such as the Biton and the Habib, from Morocco and Turkey, could immediately obtain a certificate of Sephardism or even become members of the organisation, while a single case like the Christian Nilton Coelho, from Brazil, involved in a falsifiable genealogical diagram, showing fifteen generations (until a supposedly Jewish victim of the Inquisition, while offering no evidence of the alleged Jewishness), had to wait for days, weeks or months before being assessed by CIL and, not being Jewish, could never become a member of this organisation.

As set out in the minutes of the Board of Directors of CIP/CJP, once shared with the Lisbon Jewish Community and the Israeli Embassy: 

CIL ended with a fragile Committee, operating only in working hours, consisting of two non-Jews (aided by unpaid CIL “volunteers” which, while romantic, is hardly fitting in a large organisation), they did not act under the guidance of an orthodox rabbi, spoke no Hebrew, received no cases in Hebrew, did not require proof of Judaism (which they were not even in a position to evaluate), but merely requested proof of Sephardic ancestry, becoming involved in extremely complicated cases of non-Jews and Ashkenazim and easily forged family trees with all the associated risks, all of which led to major delays in proceedings, the negative reputation resulting therefrom and the subsequent race to Oporto by applicants, their friends and family, where they were given a reply the very same day. [32]

In March 2022, seven years after publication of the regulation, the CIP/CJP had certified around 100,000 Jews of Sephardic origin, actually less than a tenth of the possible candidates. However, before Shabbat, the Chief Rabbi of Oporto was arrested and the largest Synagogue in Sepharad was invaded by armed police, because the Oporto Community certified more than the Lisbon Community and because, in the opinion of the authorities who presided over such steps, being Jewish was a “religious belief” and not a matrilineal genealogy known to Jewish tradition. To these aberrations were added many others that history will record. We will list some below.

The criminal process that led to the arrest of the Rabbi (who was released shortly after being heard by a judge) was set up by different social structures, already mentioned above, from the outset some State agents, few by the way, but powerful at the time they acted, who only wanted, since 2015, a “law of convenience” to garner international praise for Portugal and its politicians, not to bring a full Jewish life to the country. Thousands and thousands more Jews in Portugal, in their majority Israelis, was something they would not contemplate. In the opinion of such individuals, Jewish life meant only “Jewish heritage”, which, naturally, had long existed in Portugal, with Synagogues almost empty, often for the exclusive use of tourists, memorials about persecution by the Inquisition, ceremonies in homage to Aristides de Sousa Mendes and celebrations of special dates with the attending photo opportunities and declarations.

In fact, among the ruling elites in politics and also in the Portuguese media, lamentable individuals feared the supposed strength of the Jews in world affairs and rejected the traditional Jewish philosophy of life based on loyalty to Israel and a religious and normative culture that they considered obscurantist. They wanted the country to welcome many migrants, but not Jews of Portuguese blood, Jews attending Synagogues, Jewish businessmen, Israeli Jews, in short, Jews, a “minority” that, in their opinion, did not have the right to vigorous defence like other minorities, because they were rich white people and plutocrats with their own terrorist State in Israel. They praised religious freedom, yes, but they hated Judaism, which they saw as a reactionary religion, a secret worldwide brotherhood in the hands of Zionist preachers (i.e. the orthodox Rabbis) that urges the Jews to be faithful to a spiritual homeland in Jerusalem. They insisted on the need to teach about the Holocaust, yes, to be bigwigs of the “free world” and point the finger in the face of all their political enemies, but they could not bear the fact that the most visited museum in Portugal was the Oporto Holocaust Museum, run by an organized Jewish community, CIP/CJP, which practically monopolized education on the subject in Portugal, with tens of thousands of school students every year.

It was in this antisemitic scenario, not exaggerated, but, if anything, understated, that in 2020, just as in the circuses of ancient Rome, a relentless persecution by the Portuguese State and some journalists of the “Sephardic law” was decreed, through a campaign of defamation, directed from Parliament, which ignored all positive effects of the law and characterised it as a fiefdom of material interests, business deals, money, passports of convenience and bad publicity for Portugal.

The parliamentary debate on “Sephardic Jews” lasted four months and was led by a socialist deputy with a mediocre political curriculum who, at the behest of the Foreign Minister and the Justice Minister, intended to make the law unusable from January 2022, obliging applicants to previously reside in Portugal for two years. To assure the deputies of the other political parties that her proposal was not antisemitic, said deputy told them that the Jewish Community of Lisbon(?) had told her that the Jewish Community of Oporto(?) issued certificates to anyone regardless of their Sephardic roots(?) and that therefore the law could only remain active for another two years(?). What a disgusting falsehood! What unintelligible reasoning!

The passage of the millennia has taught that one of the favourite strategies deployed by Jew-baiters was to divide the Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews. In Portugal, something very interesting happened. The good Jews lived in Lisbon, they had an empty Synagogue, for thirty years they had been talking about setting up a Jewish museum and had made use of the “law of the Sephardim” to essentially certify non-Jews. The bad Jews resided in Oporto, obeyed Jewish law, only certified Jews, filled Synagogues and created museums, history films, books, newspapers and restaurants in a few months.

Critics of the “Sephardic law” shouted that it had to be changed because it was too comprehensive and granted the right to nationality to “tens of millions of people”, but paradoxically excluded from this number the thousands of Jews of Sephardic origin who had been certified and who continued to be certified by the CIP/CJP. These were considered illegal.

In this context, an extremely convenient anonymous denunciation reached Parliament, addressed to all parties, accusing the Jewish Community of Oporto of “having drafted the 2013 law and the 2015 regulation to collect and launder millions of euros”. Who talked to whom?, who asked whom for what?, and in return for what?

The denunciation was immediately shared with mainstream journalists and the Justice Minister. The dice were cast. People from the executive, legislative, judiciary and media branches, all hand in hand, began to prepare themselves for an unbelievable persecution against the leaders of the country’s strongest Jewish community.

Seeing that history repeats itself, and that today you might find many Jews where there will be none tomorrow, the Jewish Community of Oporto has taken legal measures to ensure that should the Jews ever abandon Portugal, their assets will be given to the Jewish Agency for Israel.

There was no “Jewish question” in Portugal for State agents, while there were no Jews, the Synagogues were dormant and cultural achievements were nothing more than sporadic lectures given by septuagenarians to small audiences. The problem arose when the Portuguese Jewish scene was completely transformed, and the Jewish presence became more visible. “The Jewish question exists wherever there are Jews in noticeable numbers. Once there, their presence provokes persecution.” [33] 

At the end of 2021, there were signs that the Russian Federation intended to invade Ukraine, which it did after a few months, and the “oligarchs” considered to be close to Putin soon fell out of favour all over the world. In Portugal, such events constituted a golden opportunity for opponents of the law to launch their dirty game. They knew the world-renowned Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich had obtained Portuguese nationality, after an application for certification that was approved by CIP/CJP’s certification committee. It should be noted that the Jewish Community of Oporto always had dealt with this case transparently with the Portuguese State and immediately brought it to the attention of the Government and the Central Registry Office, who were asked to deal with the case urgently for reasons of national interest, which the member of the Government for Justice immediately did.

It was with this case that the antisemites played their devastating game from 18 December, when a young sports journalist from a leading newspaper, well-armed by political agents with official information, together with his Editor, the latter already having a resume of tirades against the national Jewish communities, reported that the famous “oligarch” was a Portuguese citizen, falsely claiming that he had obtained Portuguese nationality with the manipulation of Wikipedia, donations granted to the CIP/CJP and the intervention of a Jewish Freemasonry, the name used to describe B’nai B’rith International.

The debate about the need for immediate changes to the “Sephardic law” (or rather, its effective destruction) was launched over a “toxic” personality from a “toxic” country. The ghastly news, step n.º 1 of the conspiracy, published without the Jewish Community of Oporto being given any chance to comment, spread throughout the world the idea of a case of corruption and created considerable social alarm in Portugal, where it could be read in the newspapers daily, that, without any shadow of doubt, CIP/CJP had “prostituted the Sephardic law”.

Mixed with new and very convenient denunciations under the cover of anonymity (to ensure the impunity of their authors), intense political games followed, with exchanges of favours between friends in all sectors of the State, collusion between powers that ought to be separated, meetings between “anonymous” whistle-blowers and professional slanderers associated with working for “transparency” and even nocturnal robberies at law firms and private homes.

It is unbelievable that there has been a criminal association of professional thieves associated with the game of the elites in a European country, in the 21st century. Thieves of high calibre and professionalism began their activity in January 2022, with the realization, in a law firm in Oporto that dealt with the nationality law and CIP/CJP, of a crime of aggravated theft punishable by up to 8 years of imprisonment. The crime aimed to seek “information” to open a criminal investigation. Why? The anonymous denunciation sent to MPs two years earlier had been rejected outright, in an investigation concluded on 6 October 2021, by the Oporto Judiciary Police, on the grounds that it did not contain information that could form the basis of a “criminal report”, without which there could be no inquiry.

Nothing useful resulted from the criminal act of thievery by which the server was stolen from the office, other than the “discovery” that an external professional (who certified translations relating to administrative processes involving Chinese and Arab citizens) had the same surname as a member of the CIP/CJP Board. That collaborator did not even know what a Sephardic Jew was, but the conspirators celebrated the good news, immediately shared it with the young journalist (who straight away contacted the Community to ask for a “comment”), produced new anonymous denunciations in cooperation with mentally ill and convicted people and, in this way, on 16 January 2022, managed to get the Public Prosecutor’s Office to open the desired investigation, in an unbelievable, unprecedented union between individuals from the four major powers of the State, who all together set in motion, with unwavering faith, hand in hand with criminals, a conspiratorial plan to destroy all relevant Jewish realities connected with the country, as well the religious leadership (orthodox and rigid) and the secular leadership (intellectualised and energetic) of the Jewish Community of Oporto.

On 10 March, when he was preparing to travel to Israel, which he did habitually at least once every two months, the Chief Rabbi of CIP/CJP, Daniel Litvak, was detained at the airport, as if he were Osama Bin Laden, by a dozen fierce and well-armed police. Informed of the operation in real time, a newspaper found out that the religious leader was supposedly going to “flee the country with 3 million Euros in his suitcases”. This turned out to be false, his suitcase merely containing clothes, books, and some kosher food. The religious leader was dragged off to the police building, then treated like a rapist, illegally photographed and illegally fingerprinted. They took away his siddur, tallit and tefillin necessary for worship, put him in a cell with a murderer, allowed him no access to kosher food, kept him without food for 36 hours and, not satisfied, forced him to violate Shabbat in a despicable way. After being detained for almost two full days and having been displayed like a trophy for the world to appreciate and trample on, the authorities released the Rabbi on a cold Shabbat night, in the streets of Lisbon, with the obligation to remain in Portugal and walk several kilometres, three times a week, to humiliatingly present himself at a police station to prove that he had not run away, since he was suspected of corruption and many other crimes of the criminal code.

All these indictments were taken very seriously by society, to the point that the “suspect” was soon attacked and spat on in a supermarket in the city of Oporto by enraged patriots. Until one day, half a year later, the Lisbon Court of Appeal declared that the case was “based on nothing”. No one apologised to the Rabbi, nor to the Synagogue, nor to the Community. The “investigations” continued smoothly, as in the past in the homeland of socialism, the Soviet Union, where Rabbi Litvak’s grandparents were from. “To make it easier to identify the Jews all one has to do is to put them on the spot every now and then, as speculators, parasites and corrupt Rabbis.” [34]  

The Rabbi was not the only victim. There are no words strong enough to describe the shrewdness with which young police inspectors, as enraged as they were uneducated, searched for suitcases of money and fake invoices in the house of the Vice President of the CIP/CJP, Isabel Lopes, granddaughter of Captain Barros Basto, without even knowing who the latter was, and destroying the peace and reputation of the distinguished economist, a sick septuagenarian, of indisputable honesty, as well as her husband, whose civil construction company was indicted – according to the search warrant – for issuing Sephardic certificates on behalf of the Jewish Community of Oporto. The last police action of this kind, which took place at the home of Lopes in the distant year of 1960, this time because of her grandfather, had been carried out by the PIDE (the dictatorial regime’s political police), but then only three police officers participated in the operation, not fifteen as this time in the context of a regime that is said to be democratic.

The main target of the operation called “Open Door” was, however, the CIP/CJP Board member, lawyer and writer, David Garrett, who had in his hands, for more than a decade, in the first line, the rehabilitation processes of the Captain, the Synagogue and the congregation, as well as being guarantor of the regulatory legality of the organization, the equilibrium between its members and the lifeblood in all departments. Seen as the bearer of the vision and capacity to regenerate Jewish life where, a few years before, it had been in ruins, he was indicted for having set up a “criminal association”, in partnership with other community leaders, the Chief Rabbi and officials of the Registry Offices to “sell” Sephardic certificates for large amounts of money that were diverted from the Community and hidden from the Public Treasury. These totally crazy and surreal accusations were not invented by the police or the prosecutors, but by those who ordered them to act promptly.

The main Jewish families in Oporto – associated in the public mind with the corruption with Registry Offices and smiling billionaires with a super-valuable Portuguese passport in their hand – experienced real agony, having been exposed in the media, with the photographs of their faces, their phone numbers and addresses, which not only led to public derision, but also put their physical safety at risk. The social outcry that arose against the Jewish Community of Oporto was such that the ordinary members of the institution and all its collaborators and employees, even the cleaning lady, were asked, in the most different contexts and places, when would they be arrested.

Even the CIP/CJP doorman and museologist were not spared in the corrupted news, becoming public figures, the latter being visited, one morning, at 7:00 am, by the police (a total of five inspectors, the good and the bad, the old technique), who were frantically looking for an implausible “secret pen drive”. The museologist ended up stripped of the savings he kept in his safe and indicted for all the crimes imputed to the Chief Rabbi, without further ado, which served to definitively convince all members of the Community that a case of State corruption was underway and that those involved had to be denounced before the world, year after year, now and after death.

These were times of hidden pain and bitter tears for hundreds of Oporto Jews whose pride in bearing a Portuguese citizen card was suddenly transformed into paralysing fear. It was not an equal fight. On one side, an organised religious community consisting of 0,01% of the Portuguese population, on the other the State with all its powers and bringing all its might to bear as it deliberately intoxicated the national and international press with the brutal situation of the war waged by the Russian Federation on Ukraine.

In addition to the involvement of personalities from the Government, Parliament, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Police, burglars who broke in at the dead of night, clients from Magalhães Lemos psychiatric hospital, convicted libellers, professional slanderers, and an extortionist who wanted to be famous, the wilful journalists who were entrusted with the wretched task of denigrating the Jewish community in Oporto expended all their energies on spitting in the face of the CIP/CJP leaders, adding up the amount of the €250.00 fees that were charged to applicants for Sephardic certification and speculating about alleged “lawyers’ deals”, conveniently forgetting the investment of around 1 billion Euros made by members of CIP/CJP in the city of Oporto and the creation, by the community, of a splendid religious, cultural and social infrastructure. These billion Euros came out of the pocket of the Jews and the infrastructure was financed with income from the Jewish world for the Jewish world. None of this mattered to puppets who had been ordered to report the quantities of gold improperly entering Hebrew coffers, which they did, using anonymous denunciations and anonymous sources from the world of marginality and from the most diverse sectors of the State. Journalistic corruption was added to State corruption.

In the year in which, in just a few months, the Jewish Community of Lisbon obtained higher revenues than the Jewish Community of Oporto in seven years of overwhelming work, the “speaking classes” incessantly preached that the law was a business for the last, which gave more impetus to the judiciary authorities to freeze the bank account that the Chief Rabbi held in Portugal, where the organization had transferred its fees and expenses for more than a decade, at the behest of successive respectable Directorates. Here is the “world map” with the names and origins of community leaders during such a long period: Dale Jeffries (American Jew), Michael Rothwell (British Jew), Sam Elijah (Indian Jew), Isabel Lopes (Portuguese Jew), Gabriel Senderowicz (Brazilian Jew), Dara Flitterman (Spanish Jew), Eliezer Beigel (Polish Jew), Yigal Benzion (Uzbek Jew), Deborah Walfrid (British Jew), Eliran Graedge (Israeli Jew), Alain Piccioto (Egyptian Jew), Vivian Groisman (Swedish Jew), David Garrett (Portuguese Jew) and Rose Tacuchian (Brazilian Jew).

The Chief Rabbi, associated with dollar signs, was accused of having issued certificates of Sephardism, conscious that he could not do so, to the two biggest Portuguese philanthropists, who various bankrupt information organs in Portugal characterized, moreover correctly, as the country’s richest men: Patrick Drahi and Roman Abramovich.

Drahi is a Moroccan, French and Israeli Jew (who had been certified, and rightly so, by the Lisbon Jewish Community and not by the Oporto Jewish Community) whose Portuguese origins are attested by family surnames such as Adrehi and Sicsu and by his family memory attested by Jewish tradition, namely, a descendant of Megorashim (those expelled), such as Jorge Sampaio, former President of the Portuguese Republic, both of families who, after the Inquisition, returned to Portugal (and who are therefore referred to as “returnees” in the preamble of the legal regulation), lacking any material need, given that the person had French nationality.

Roman Abramovich is a Russian, Lithuanian and Israeli Jew (who had been certified, and rightly so, by the Rabbinate of Moscow, recognized by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel) whose Portuguese origins are attested by family surnames, namely Leibo/Leão (mentioned in the preamble of the legal regulation), for the support he gave over a period of 20 years to a Jewish organization of Portuguese origin (Chabad Lubavitch, founded by Schneur Zalmane, descended from Rabbi Baruch Portugali), family memory in Poznan and Hamburg attested by that Rabbinate, also lacking any material need, given that the person in question, having Lithuanian grandparents, was entitled to Lithuanian citizenship, which his children have. He paid a fee of 250 euros. 

“Open Door Operation”, an order, did not stop there. Suspicion spread to other wealthy men, such as Sir Michael Kadoorie of Hong Kong (descended from the philanthropist Laura Mocatta) and Andrey Rapaport from Ukraine (whose family nickname means doctor from Oporto), who also have Portuguese nationality. Thus, the four richest and most self-sacrificing benefactors of Portuguese nationality were betrayed by a poor and ungrateful country to safeguard the material interests of parasitic elites who tend to see the Jews as very dangerous rivals, particularly in the fields of economy and culture, like an octopus that weaves its international intrigues in Brooklyn, Paris, Moscow and Jerusalem.

The complete project to attempt to eliminate all Jewish forces from Portugal put a large number of civil servants at their service (more than fifty police men and women participated in the first “searches”) and sought to destroy the Jewish Community of Oporto not only in its credibility socially but also internally, as it was told to the world, through the televisions and the police, that the leaders were withdrawing and diverting large sums of money. Such falsehoods, technically impossible in the organization targeted by the prevaricators, showed the face of a nation greatly influenced by elites who only think about money and who are totally detached from high culture, good feelings, the transcendental and any immaterial reality. “Corruption!” shouted those elites in a case of State corruption that Europe had not seen since the 1940s.

On 16 March, authorities got the response they deserved. More than five hundred people gathered inside the Synagogue to celebrate Purim and promises were heard that, like Haman, the antisemites would hang from the ropes they had prepared for others. The images of the feast of Purim and of the large crowd present were immediately sent to be attached to the chilling proceedings which qualified magistrates had been forced to carry out in anger by their superiors.

On 18 May, the Jewish Community of Oporto celebrated the traditional feast of Lag BaOmer, which recalls the Romans’ attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, as well as the efforts of the Israeli leaders to fight against a gigantic army of men possessed of vanity, pride, bad language and envy. That day, in the conversations of the members of the Synagogue, the name of Portugal was equated with that of Rome. It has been said that the Jews will continue to see the ruin of persecuting countries and empires, one after another.

On 22 June, Parliament sent an e-mail to the Oporto Jewish Community requesting them to issue an opinion regarding new draft amendments to the “Sephardic Law”. In practice, that law had already been killed by a government regulation, but the Communist Party also wanted it killed in theory, doing justice to its flag (that of the Soviet Union) and the fact that, for more than a decade, it had kept in its official newspaper online “Avante!” articles that guarantee the veracity of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The request for the Community to issue this opinion was merely to comply with formalities. All political parties were quite convinced that the Community would never reply, after many months of political, media and criminal persecution. However, 50 minutes later, the CIP/CJP President, Gabriel Senderowicz, from a Polish family with a long history of persecution and humiliation, sent a response for Parliament, from which we can enunciate here a few sentences.

The Community no longer has any interest in cooperating with the State. By order of its General Meeting, it has opened a new room in the Jewish Museum of Oporto. Hundreds of school students and tourists were the first to visit this new room, presenting the chronology of antisemitism in Portugal between 2015 and 2022 and explaining the origin of the current criminal case. Soon, there will also be a brightly lit display case containing all the denunciations that led to this lawsuit, including photographs of the people who made, spread and used such denunciations for evil purposes.

The police invaded the Kadoorie Synagogue as if it were a house of ill repute and rushed to the house of the Vice-President, granddaughter of Captain Barros Basto, founder of the Jewish Community of Oporto, seeking bags filled with cash. The board member responsible for legal affairs was a reviled target, his name mentioned over and over again in the denunciations, because of the fact that for over a decade he had conducted the rehabilitation processes of Captain Barros Basto, the Kadoorie Synagogue and the very Community, without ever holding office in the institution, receiving an eminent personality, giving an interview, or indeed addressing the congregation. As written by the oldest female member of CIP/CJP, at the age of 94, “Nothing changed very much for the Synagogue for the next thirty to forty years — until one day someone came along to breathe new life into the old, empty Synagogue. The congregation grew, and grew, and now it makes me happy to see that the Synagogue has finally more than fulfilled its destiny.”

The Court released the Chief Rabbi and has not prevented him from continuing to issue certificates of Sephardism. However, the Board of Directors of the Jewish Community of Oporto has decided to suspend this activity completely, as it refuses to cooperate with a State that brings an antisemitic and terrorist lawsuit against an organised Jewish community, based on inconceivable anonymous denunciations made by the scum of society.

The indecently embracing persecutory action against the Jewish colony of Oporto led to a complaint, filed by the CIP/CJP, in August, at the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. The procedural piece carried out, with 200 points, was printed in a book entitled “The First Great Antisemitic Conspiracy of the 21st Century”, which was offered to renowned libraries in civilized countries, to the most relevant international institutions (UN, EU, UNESCO and others) and to the governments of the countries such as Israel, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, China, India, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Germany, Italy and Sweden.

History will keep a record of this grave corruption of the State, leading to the persecution of international Jewry and the only strong Jewish Community in Portugal, the unlawful detention of a Chief Rabbi, the unlawful trampling of a Synagogue, the unlawful invasion of the Jewish Museum, unlawful searches in the homes of community leaders and the unlawful constitution of defendants in the absence of any evidence to allow such measures, that is to say, all “based on nothing” in the words of the Lisbon Court of Appeal on 29 September.

In November 2022, the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic challenged the young of this country to come up with interesting ideas to commemorate the 50th anniversary of democracy. In Oporto, 44 French Jewish students wrote to Parliament suggesting an exhibition on “Operation Open Door”, urging the State never again to commit such serious atrocities as to arrest and abuse a rabbi and invade a Synagogue, involving the forging of anonymous denunciations and the use of thieves, lunatics, slanderers and more. They also asked for the “Portuguese Dreyfus” to be reintegrated in the Army.

The Jewish News Syndicate published an item about this petition on 29 November. That same evening, outsider a kosher restaurant in Oporto, the car belonging to the first signatory of this petition, Ilan Cohen, had its tyre slashed and in danger of bursting. After dinner, the young man took the motorway (where the top speed is 120 km/h) and “miraculously the tyre did not burst”, he told the Portuguese Jewish News. “As I got onto the VCI, I had problems with the steering, which was lucky, because I stopped the car and saw the tyre”.

Cohen recalled that he had been studying in Oporto for the last five years and that this was the first time something of the sort had happened. He then submitted a complaint to the police and mentioned that “this occurrence is highly suspicious” and could be the work of “a criminal network to silence me or even kill me in an accident, for in 2022 an antisemitic conspiracy against the Oporto Community used people convicted of a number of crimes and professional burglars to break into law offices and private homes”.

The Jewish Museum of Oporto now exhibits a car tire with an explanation of what occurred.

On April 25, 2024, the date that marks the fiftieth anniversary of democracy in Portugal, the Community will demand some answers from the Portuguese State:

- Who ordered the March police operation, “based on nothing” according to the Court?

- Who tried to eliminate a young French Jew and why?

- Who robbed the residence of the former President of SIRESP to steal two computers?

- Who robbed the office of a lawyer from Oporto to steal the server?

- Who robbed the residence of a lawyer with a “suspicious” surname and why?

- Who orchestrated and used allegations of convicted slanderers?

- Who orchestrated and used individuals with stints in psychiatric hospitals?

- Who led the “communication strategy” against the strongest Jewish community in Portugal and the “Sephardic law”?

- What are the names of the characters that “distributed the game” through the media?

- What does a “Palestine cause” mean?

 

 

“Operation Open Door”: an old story

The objectives of the great conspiracy are explained in the complaint that the Community made to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and that will be investigated internationally sooner or later. Here is a summary of the objectives:

To destroy the Jewish Community of Oporto (as in 1497), to seize its assets (as in 1497), to expel its members (as in 1497), to invade the Synagogue (as in 1497), to humiliate community leadership (as in in 1497), to make false accusations and take advantage of night robbers and convicts to frame people (as in 1542), to throw suspects into the fire of public opinion (as in 1618), to permit anonymous denunciations (as happened with the Inquisition and in 1936 with the “Portuguese Dreyfus case”) and much more.

To gain improper access to the correspondence of the Jewish Community of Oporto with the international Jewish community, including rabbinical authorities, B’nai B’rith International, the Anti-Defamation League, the European Jewish Association, CEJI, and the embassies of Israel, USA, UK, France, Sweden and other countries.

To destroy the “Sephardi Law of Return” in the midst of a scenario of terror, so that no one in the international Jewish community or Portuguese society could come forward in its defence.

To reject the influx of Israeli citizens interested in Portuguese citizenship (as more than 40,000 citizens of Israel have benefited from the law and this number was expected to grow) and to promote distance from that country, which comprises only 0.1% of the world’s population and is the most hated State. In the words of the President of the Portuguese Republic, the attack on the legislation “was a Palestinian cause of the Minister of Foreign Affairs”.

To eliminate Portuguese Jewish elites so that they could not harass national elites that have long parasitized the country and, for this purpose, revoke the citizenship of the holders of the greatest fortunes and other absurd names contained in a “black list” (again, “lists of Jews” and “Expelled Jews”). [35] 

 

6000 kilometers away, the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, read the book, “The First Major Antisemitic Conspiracy of the 21st Century”, understood the power games hidden behind such an uproar and wrote to the Community on 30 November: 

The authoring and sharing of this book illustrate how meaningful is the attachment to Jewish heritage for members of the community as well as how painful the sense of isolation, difference, and vulnerability can be for Jewish communities around the world. There is no question that antisemitism, in any form, is a phenomenon that no just society can come to terms with and we in the State of Israel are roundly committed to the safety and wellbeing of our Jewish brethren around the world as well as to a global reality in which hatred and prejudice are afforded no place. I look forward to the ongoing dialogue between the Jewish Community of Oporto and my office, as a reflection of the deep bonds that connect the Jewish people around the globe with Israel.

Anyone who knows the history of the Jews in different parts of the world knows that a Jewish community, collectively or individually, is always accused of ‘danger to the homeland’, the ‘exploitation of national assets’ and the ‘undue exploitation of the trust placed in them’. They consequently suffer from persecution by public authorities, national embarrassment, and disdain and hate on the part of the masses. There are few words to describe what was achieved by two handfuls of antisemites in Portugal, a country that for centuries had no Jews and therefore it had been dormant on the Jewish question.

Many historical elements came together. There was the union of the power of the State and its associates against officials of the Jewish community, persecution of the benefactors of the people of Israel, mass dissemination of ancient antisemitic myths, association of Jews with money and tricks, inquisitorial tactics of a new “clergy” with means to make great hunts, a long campaign of defamation, mobilization of public opinion, utilization of malefactors for the incrimination of their targets, and silencing of the positive activities of the Jewish community, such as one of the largest observances of Yom Kippur in Europe, one of the most visited museum in Portugal, and the most internationally awarded film in the history of Portuguese cinema.

Despite the fact that only 5% of the applicants were able to obtain Portuguese citizenship through “The Sephardi Law of Return”, the name “Operation Open Door” suggests a Jewish avalanche in the country. This fact characterizes those who declared war on the Jewish community and recalls an antisemitic Portuguese text called “A Invasão de Judeus” (The Invasion of the Jews) published in 1924.

There was no danger to the Portuguese homeland. The Jewish Community of Oporto grew religiously and culturally according to the spirit of the law of 2013/2015. The richest families symbolically intended to invest in a country of which they had emotional memories. The majority of applicants who applied for citizenship (Jews from families of the former Ottoman Empire and North Africa) did not intend to live in Portugal, but only to exercise a right. The law had been presented by the Minister of Justice as “the return of a right” and did not require interested parties to speak Portuguese or to live in the country. The conversation in the political, judiciary and media circles around “convenience passports” says a lot about their authors.

The names and faces of the perpetrators of “Operation Open Door” were never exposed by the Oporto Jewish Community because some of the civil servants used for this purpose were victims as well. In the midst of the terror of the “Operation”, the legislation that in the expectation of its founders intended to strengthen the national Jewish community and recover its strength and prestige around the Earth was assassinated. In fact, the Law of Return was revoked by a government decree of March 18. It stipulated that, from the following September, applicants would have to possess a certificate proving “the ownership, transmitted mortis causa, of rights over real estate located in Portugal, of other personal rights of benefit or of shareholdings in commercial companies or cooperatives based in Portugal”, or “regular trips throughout the life of the applicant to Portugal”, provided “that such facts demonstrate an effective and lasting connection to Portugal”.

Here is a personified “translation” of the new regulation, in its most shocking and most unfeeling part: 

Show us the five-century-old will that one of your up to 524,288 seventeenth great-grandparents left for posterity before dying of grief at having seen the building where they resided, the Jewish quarter as a whole and the sacred Jewish cemetery where their ancestors rested all destroyed.

The Government published the decree well-aware that the Jews who were once forced to leave Portugal had their assets destroyed or confiscated. No Jew of Sephardic origin can have certificates that he or she inherited such assets or shares in companies, or travelled to Portugal throughout their life, except for those who settled in the country and obtained citizenship for reasons other than their Sephardic ancestry.

The 2013/2015 legislation could have remained untouched if the problem were the Jewish Community of Oporto, given that, on March, it had already ceased to certify origin of applicants. It refused to cooperate with a State that had acted against the Jewish community and the Synagogue based on anonymous denunciations. However, this had been decided quite some time before. As we saw above, in April 2020, a socialist deputy carrying out government orders had presented a proposal in Parliament to invalidate the law in practical terms in 2022.

In summary, “Operation Open Door” was presented to the world with pomp, supposedly to stop the alleged sale of passports by a Rabbinate that acted in exchange for money and which belonged to a criminal gang involving officials of the Registry Office and was engaged in forgery, corruption, embezzlement, tax fraud and money laundering. It was actually no more than a scandalous “Palestine cause”, organised by decadent elites. Driven by unconfessable interests and having gone so far as to compare the procreation of the Sephardim to the Coronavirus, these elites wanted to put an end to the law granting Portuguese nationality to Jews of Sephardic origin (in which they were successful), to target the strongest Jewish community in Portugal and harm the Jews, the Israelis, the rich and all relevant Jewish realities connected to this country.

There is degrading evidence that the judiciary apparatus was used for political ends, exchanges of favours between mediocre elites, astounding conspiracy theories, attempted elimination of a young French Jew, at least three break-ins by thieves who entered law offices and private homes during the night (the first being to try to question the conclusion of the Judiciary Police of Oporto, in an investigation process, that there was no matter to give rise to a criminal inquiry; the second involving a lawyer who had bad luck with her surname; and the last covering the international public tender for SIRESP), false accusations of drug trafficking and schemes with Russia, the use of anonymous denunciations concocted by people who had spent time in psychiatric hospitals, agents of the State, public figures whose only known résumé is slander, convicted of crimes against people’s honour, bodily harm and corruption, an individual convicted for alleging that non-Jews are “shit” and “dirty people”, all in articulation with a murderous media campaign carried out by half a dozen journalists (from Público, Expresso, SIC and RTP) and influencers, who for long months joined efforts to destroy the credibility of a law and the respectable image of community leaders and Jews whose Sephardic origin had been certified in compliance with legal criteria, after which it was the Government who had to decide whether or not they should be granted Portuguese nationality.

Probably the main authors of the conspiracy are unknown, but in the future, they will be identified. In the meantime, the Community knows very well some names of State agents and media agents who played an important role in that plan, even if possibly used by third parties to carry out the objectionable acts that each practised and that are amply proved.

The magnitude of the offence produced against the Oporto Jewish Community and its religious and secular leaders cannot be measured in words. There was even concern that an alleged assassination attempt was made on a young French student who headed a student petition to urge the Assembly of the Republic to make a presentation on “Operation Open Door” in the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Portuguese Democracy.

Throughout the entire year of 2022, spared from the demolishing attack, in an unbelievably ostensive way, and without at any moment expressing solidarity with her persecuted sister, on the contrary, the Lisbon Jewish Community, which essentially certified non-Jews (alleged descendants of the allegedly Jewish victims of the Inquisition, of which Father Jesus from Colombia, with CIL certificate no. 1060/2016, was merely an example) continued, as in 2014, practically dead, immobilized, with aged and apathetic leaders, an empty Synagogue, a community devoid of kosher restaurants, of achdut centres or even museum and cultural facilities to work with the large numbers of youngsters in Portuguese schools. Nothing would justify the persecution of this honourable Community, but the way it was used and presented to the public – the symbol of purity in contrast to the darkness of Oporto – was burlesque, a kind of satire between that angelic Father and the terrible Sephardim.

In order to understand the method that was used against the Jewish Community of Oporto, it is important to remember that the Soviet Union, despite its State atheism and rejection of the Jewish cosmopolitan element, avoided destroying all Synagogues and Jewish communities, lest it be accused of acting against the Jews and attracting bad international publicity. It maintained more than twenty Synagogues as partners of the regime, such as the great Synagogues of Moscow, Leningrado and Odessa, while destroying others. In Lvov, Jarkov, Tshernovitz, Bobruisk, Smolensk and hundreds of other cities, the Synagogue-communities with some strength were closed, one by one, always in the same way. It used the press and slanderers to associate the Synagogues with business deals. It described such business deals as immoral or illegal. It evoked negative reactions from a part of public opinion and some Jews and it sought the destruction of the respectability of these Jewish organizations as promoters of Jewish life. [36]  

Ari Benami, deeply knowledgeable about Soviet Judaism, noted a curious point about the communist regime’s treacherous use of conflict at the heart of the different Jewish communities, with disputes in their midst, or even internal conflict at the heart of each community, as is the case in all human societies and in particular in the Jewish world, for thousands of years populated with individual and collective disagreements: 

As usual in Synagogues, rivalries and disputes arose around positions and honours, which the authorities encouraged, sometimes inviting individuals or groups to ‘tell all’ about rivals. In the Soviet press, the ‘note’ is a sharp and cruel weapon in the hands of the local or central authority. It is often used to disqualify or destroy people or groups that, in the opinion of the authority, deserve to be excised. The ‘note’ publishes the authentic names of the persons concerned. Woe to the individual or institution if the author has an aversion to them.[37] 

 

The author continues: 

Aroused by the series of articles about the Synagogue, letters addressed to the newspaper editor began to appear. Suddenly, young and old Jews were being led by these articles to express their negative opinions aloud. (...) Sometimes, the Synagogue, with its “illegal” activity, is incorporated by authority into spectacular trials, in particular since trials on economic crimes began. [38]  

To return to Portugal and to the persecution carried out against the Jewish Community of Oporto and everything that it represented in terms of Jewish strength. It is worth underlining that the “notes” in the main newspapers and television channels, promoted by Parliament and the Ministry of Justice agents, revolved always, totally irresponsibly and unscrupulously, around the alleged gossip by alleged members of the Jewish Community of Lisbon, and three “anonymous” Portuguese who had long ago been expelled from CIP/CJP (all of them “converted” to Judaism, including one man convicted of defamation and for alleging that non-Jews are “shit”, an individual who had spent time in psychiatric hospitals, and an instrument of an Israeli proselytizing organization linked to fake conversions and journalistic corruption), who repeated the vile feat of the Marranos who had falsely denounced Captain Barros Basto. History is full of despicable slanderers that States use when it suits them. The Inquisition also did so to the letter.

There is another aspect that deeply touched the hearts of Oporto Jews. It was very sad that Portuguese society impassively watched the successive autos-de-fé perpetrated by teams of State agents, media professionals and delinquents on the members of the Jewish Community of Oporto and the Jews of Sephardic origin it had certified. Nobody stood up in protest. The Community painfully witnessed the flight of many Portuguese partners who had cooperated with it for many years, people and organisations, believed to be faithful, but who did not want to be associated with the “crimes” of which the media spoke and in the public communications from the authorities.

Antisemitism is not always an active process, but rather, increasingly across Europe, a deliberate failure to protect Jews when they, or some of them, most need it. Among the minorities to be protected are gays, transgenders, blacks, gypsies, migrants, residents of social housing, prisoners, the disabled, women, and minors, but never Jews, who are seen as tyrannical bosses. Jews don’t count.

In the words of David Baddiel, 

If you believe even a little bit that Jews are rich, privileged, powerful and secretly in control of the world... well, then you can’t include them in the sacred circle of the oppressed. There are even those who can say that they belong to the accursed circle of oppressors. (...) The reason why activists on the extreme right and the progressive left can unite around this idea of resisting secret, mythical and sacrosanct rulers is that both like to see themselves as rebels, fighting against power. And Jews, uniquely among minorities in the West, are associated with power. [39]  

The persecution against the Jewish Community of Oporto, especially in the first six months of 2022, based on a toxic discourse associated with oligarchies in Russia in the midst of war, benefited from the almost total paralysis of the Jewish world, unfortunately populated by ineffective organizations, frozen in time, pursuing realities that were extinct in 1945. They are hand in hand with the agents of modern antisemitism rooted in realities such as traditional anti-Judaism, anti-Jewish success and anti-Israelism.

The State of Israel witnessed the public humiliation of some of its most prominent citizens in the fields of innovation, entrepreneurship, entertainment, security, sports, service to the public cause and social philanthropy in the Portuguese media, based on slander and strategic leaks from the police investigation. Honest Israeli families from Europe, Eurasia, Asia and America were treated daily, for months, with serious insinuations of fraud in obtaining Portuguese citizenship, in speech riddled with terms such as serious criminality, ill-explained fortunes, bribes, Mossad, cannabis, law firms, tricks using Wikipedia and other similar offences. There was no reaction from Israel, which has a moral duty to defend its fellow Jews around the world. Total impunity hovered and still hovers over the authors of the commissioned news stories and over those responsible for the devastating action of the police, who acted without any incriminating evidence, without any technical knowledge of the Jewish civilization under scrutiny and without any prior investigation of the Jewish Community of Oporto, highly organized and with members from thirty nations, a true spiritual and cultural powerhouse. The end result can only be a disaster for Portugal.  

Throughout the year, the Israeli Embassy in Lisbon maintained diplomatic relations and friendly meetings with Portuguese public figures who, in reality, were involved in the conspiracy and who saw in so much institutional esteem a green light to continue the attack, which they and their friends did, heatedly, while at the same time promising that the Portuguese Prime Minister would visit Israel soon. That visit did not take place. At the end of 2022, there were two votes by Portugal at the UN against Israel. One was for a motion to force the State to destroy its nuclear deterrent weapons and another for the court in The Hague to issue a legal opinion regarding “law, discriminatory measures and the prolonged occupation, colonization and annexation of Palestinian territory by Israel”, including the Temple Mount.

The Jewish News Syndicate (the fastest growing news agency covering Israel and the Jewish world), the European Jewish Association (an organization representing communities from Portugal to Ukraine), B’tsalmo (a Jewish human rights organization) and individuals like the courageous journalists Miriam Assor and Gabriela Cantergi were honourable exceptions in their uncompromising defence of the Jewish Community of Oporto and its members from dozens of nations and the Jewish people in general.

How was all this possible in Portugal, which was considered Europe’s best example in terms of the absence of antisemitism? The answer is simple. There was no antisemitism as long as there were no Jews in considerable numbers and little visibility.

In 2014, around 300 Jews lived in Lisbon, 100 in Oporto and perhaps 200 in the rest of the country. Most Jews were assimilated and disinterested. It was an invisible community. There were no manifestations of antisemitism in the form of anti-Judaism, anti-Israelism and anti-Jewish success, but there was no lack of a pronounced anti-Jewish spirit among the population. In an opinion poll carried out by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in Portugal, it was estimated that there were at least 1.8 million Portuguese with the following antisemitic sentiments: Jews only care about themselves (26%), Jews consider themselves better than others (21%), Jews are hated due to their behaviour (25%), Jews are very powerful (43%), Jews are influential in financial markets (43%), Jews control world affairs (21%), Jews control the US Government (23%), Jews control the media (17%), Jews are responsible for most wars (15%), Jews are more loyal to Israel than Portugal (56%), Jews talk too much about the Holocaust (49%), Jews exaggerate the death toll (10%) and the Holocaust is a myth (1%).

The legislation that, between 2013 and 2015, was published by romantic, well-meaning politicians and, it should be said, statesmen with a true sense of State, from various parties, had very positive effects, namely the growth of the Portuguese Jewish community in general, and of the Oporto community in particular, in diverse religious, cultural and educational areas. The immediate result, of course, was an impressive increase, in the online world, of negative posts, comments and malicious shares against “the Jews” as a religious and social group, of vandalism, of stoning the windows of the Oporto Synagogue, the throwing of red paint onto the mezuzah of a family from Oporto, physical coercion of entire Jewish families and, when offenses to the physical integrity of members of the community were expected, Soviet antisemitism perpetrated by State agents took place.

“Operation Open Door” (by break-in in at least three cases) repeated everything that history records with regard to the persecution of the Jewish community and, deliberately or not, is associated with a real criminal association that tried to eliminate a young Jew with a serious car accident and made use of expert thieves, individuals with psychoses, sentenced for defamation, specialists in the civic murder of fellow citizens, an extortionist posing as a genealogist (whose services the CIP/CJP had rejected as useless), professional slanderers that Judaism equates with leprosy, and other extras who will be recorded in history through appropriate means. 

As for the other “criminal association”, the famous one, the one that was talked about on television, the one that was pursued by all the powers of the State in league with each other, that supposedly corrupted Register Offices and trafficked passports in exchange for monetary values, this one died before being born. The Community officially decrees the end of the regrettable process that was only possible with great State corruption. New inventions are expected, new indictments, which will come late, very late, as happened in the case of the “Portuguese Dreyfus”, the founder of the Jewish Community of Oporto, a target of shameful last-minute improvisations, after the State tried to use the rabble of society and the crimes that were in fashion to destroy him and the Community he presided over.

 

---

[1]  José Lúcio de Azevedo, “História dos Cristãos-Novos Portugueses”, Livraria Clássica Editora, 1921, p. 1.

[2]  David Gonzalo Maeso, “La Juderia (“Commune”) of Oporto”, Luso-Spanish Congress of Medieval Studies, Oporto, 1968, pp. 175-176.

[3]  "La Juderia (“Commune”) of Oporto", p. 180.

[4]  Meyer Kayserling, “A História dos Judeus em Portugal”, Editora Pioneira, 1971, p. 28-29.

[5]  CIP – Jewish Community of Oporto, “A Sinagoga do Porto, Da Judiaria Velha a Barros Basto”, Fronteira do Caos Editores, 2014, p. 23-25.

[6]  Amador de Los Rios, “História Social Política e Religiosa de los Judios de España y Portugal”, Madrid, 1960, pp. 523-524.

[7]  Amílcar Paulo, “A Comuna Judaica do Porto - Apontamentos para a sua História”, Tripeiro, 1965, p. 2.

[8]  Maria José Ferro Tavares, “Os Judeus em Portugal no Século XV”, Lisbon, 1982, p. 62.

[9]  “História dos Cristãos-Novos Portugueses”, p. 43.

[10]  Abraham Zacuto, “Sefer Yohassin”, Zacuto Foundation, 2006, p. 227.

[11]  “A História dos Judeus em Portugal”, pp. 95-96.

[12]  “A História dos Judeus em Portugal”, p. 106.

[13]  Cecil Roth, “A História dos Marranos”, Civilização Editora, 2001, p. 60.

[14]  Barros Basto,  “Os Judeus do Velho Porto”, Separata of the Revista de Estudos Hebraicos, Lisbon, 1929, p. 106.

[15] “A História dos Marranos”, p. 103.

[16]  “A História dos Judeus em Portugal”, pp. 204-205.

[17]  “A História dos Marranos”, p. 77.

[18]  Historical archive of the Municipality of Oporto, Book V, no. 44, fl. 34, cited by Elvira Mea in “Os Portuenses Perante o Santo Ofício - Século XVI”, 1st Congress on the Diocese of Oporto, Times and Places of Memory, Vol. III, Oporto/Arouca, 2002, p. 430.

[19]  “La Juderia (“Commune”) of Oporto”, p. 167.

[20] António José Saraiva, “Inquisição e Cristãos-Novos”, 1969, pp. 175, 183, 184.

[21] “A História dos Judeus em Portugal”.

[22] “A História dos Judeus em Portugal”, p. 292.

[23]  Archives of the Jewish Community of Oporto and the researcher and journalist Miriam Assor.

[24]  Testimony by Rui Anahory.

[25]  “Ben-Rosh – Biografia do Capitão Barros Basto, O Apóstolo dos Marranos”, Inácio Steinhardt, Elvira Mea, Afrontamento, 1997, p. 35.

[26]  CIP/CJP files and archives of Isabel Lopes, the granddaughter of Barros Bastos.

[27]  Arnold Diesendruck, “Os Marranos, 1920-1950”, 2000, p. 52.

[28]  Archives of the Jewish Community of Oporto.

[29]  Minutes No. 86 of the CIP/CJP, 22 September 2020.

[30]  Joshua Weitz, “Let My People Go (Home) to Spain: A Genealogical Model of Jewish Identities since 1492”, JW 2014.

[31] Joseph Jacobs, https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13992-statistics.

[32] Minutes nº 57, CIP/CJP of 25 October 2018.

[33]  Theodor Herzl, “O Estado Judeu”, Consulate General of Israel in São Paulo, 1998, p. 4.

[34]  Ari Benami, “Entre a Foice e o Martelo”, Bloch Publishing, 1968, p. 268.

[35]  Comunidade Israelita do Porto/Comunidade Judaica do Porto, “The First Major Antisemitic Conspiracy of the 21st Century”, Oporto, 2022.

[36]  Ari Benami, “Entre a Foice e o Martelo”, Bloch Editions, 1968, pp. 66-70.

[37]  “Entre a Foice e o Martelo”, pp. 67-68.

[38]  “Entre a Foice e o Martelo”, pp. 70-71.

[39]   David Baddiel, “Os Judeus Não Contam”, Vogais, Lisbon, 2022, pp. 25-28.

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Proselytising organisations and journalistic corruption
 

Anyone who grew up in a community of 6 million Jews, probably cannot imagine that proselytising organisations based in Israel only create a presence in countries where there are almost no Jews, such as Portugal a few years ago. They initially use a strategy of seduction: showing their strength in the media through corrupt journalists and offering the synagogues their "rabbis" (usually former Christians) to take care of the communities.

When the few resident Jews give them the keys to the synagogues, the proselytisers begin to offer conversions to common people, calling them "Bnei Anousim", “Marranos” or something similar, make mass conversions fooling rabbinic courts, and then attempt to take over the synagogues from the few Jews that exist, for the exclusive use of these new "straw Jews". Within a few months, the artificial communities of fake “Bnei Anousim” are trying to expel the true Jews from the synagogues.

At the same time, in those countries where small resident communities are discreet in the press so as not to expose themselves to antisemitism, proselytising organisations and its agents monopolize the international news, creating an artificial reality with false news surrounding the ridiculous proselytising activities. A simple kosher jam gives rise to a great story in the media. “The first kosher jam after the Inquisition!”

 

The beginning of the 2000s was marked by the arrival to Portugal of a proselytizing organization that offered rabbis to the Jewish communities. The real objective of the proselytists was the mass conversion of Portuguese citizens in general and the creation of artificial Jewish communities. 

 

Fortunately, a decade ago the Jewish communities of Oporto and Lisbon broke ties with that proselytising organisation linked to conversions in fraudulent scenarios and journalists who are at the very bottom of their profession. 

 

A ridiculous name stood out: Cnaan Liphshiz. 

Since 2012 this reporter from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency - JTA - was working for a foreign organisation based in Israel and linked to conversions to Judaism carried out on a fraudulent basis. Consequently, that reporter lacking impartiality has always portrayed a false picture of Jewish reality in Portugal, benefitting only the interests of that foreign organisation and attacking its opponents, i.e. local Jewish community who oppose false conversions and journalistic corruption. A search of the JTA website will confirm this.

 

In an opinion addressed to CIP/CJP, António Marinho Pinto (former MEP and President of the Law Association) affirms that in recent years, "we have witnessed the creation of a huge web of bribery in the media in general, in which many journalists receive money or other undue advantages to publish fake news or to omit the publication of real news. This type of corruption consists in publishing false or twisted information, or in not publishing true information in exchange for some undue advantage. It is particularly obvious in the obsequious way in which news is presented concerning certain people or entities, or in the aggressive or hostile way in which others are treated. All this takes place in the world of subterranean relations between those who are corrupt and those doing the corrupting. Informational truth and pluralism are the great losers here.”

Journalistic corruption is particularly obvious in the obsequious way in which news is presented concerning certain people or entities.

The JTA reporter never failed to promote the proselytizing organisation, the leader of that organisation, fake Bnei anousim, a pro-Marranos gathering or proselytising activities. His creativity goes far. For example, in 2013 the Oporto synagogue celebrated 75 years of existence. There were 300 guests present. There was no one from the proselytising organisation, and of course no “Marranos”. The JTA reporter reported the event by interviewing, not the Board of Directors or Rabbi (in Oporto), but the leader of the proselytising organisation (in Israel) saying that the community had many Bnei Anousim, and that one day the synagogue would be full of them!

Journalistic corruption implies treating the corruptors favourably but also humiliating their adversaries.

As the Jewish Community of Oporto's position is that there are no longer any Bnei Anousim in Portugal, and as it does not wish to have any contact with a proselytising organisation linked to conversions carried out on a fraudulent basis, the JTA reporter picks up the trash for news on the community, i.e., the agents of the proselytising organisation and those who are prepared to slander the community under anonymity. That reporter went so far as to place a post on Facebook appealing to those who might have bad comments to make about the community. Not even the worst tabloids do this. The lawyers of the Community commented that this was an “act of prostitution by a JTA journalist”.

Journalistic corruption consists in publishing false or twisted information consciously.

In 2018 the JTA reporter made a scandalous video at the door of the synagogue claiming that people were not allowed to enter. The synagogue has hundreds of members and receives 10 thousand tourists per year! It is the JTA reporter himself who is forbidden from entering. Lashon hara has become a profession!

Journalistic corruption also consists in not publishing real news and important information.

Two examples:

1) It has recently been reported by Haaretz that according to a lawsuit, the proselytizing organization used stolen money in its actions abroad. Obviously this was not of interest to the JTA reporter whose "journalistic ethics" have only served to fill the JTA with propaganda in favour of that proselytizing organization and to attack its opponents, i.e. local Jewish communities who oppose false conversions and journalistic corruption.
 

2) Great news for the JTA reporter to publish and launch the debate democratically was when the Rabbinic Council of Sao Paulo in Brazil threatened with a Cherem the emissary of the proselytizing organization for which the journalist has working for many years.

The rabbis wrote: “We know your activities: to seek the population known as "descendants of Anousim" with conversion proposals. This issue requires the attention only of the competent authorities, recognized legislators (poskim), and has the opposition of the Chief Rabbi (Rishon Letsion) Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Shlita, Chief Rabbi of Israel, concerning these activities. This letter asks you kindly to cease these proselytizing activities immediately. If you continue in this way we shall be obliged, on the honour of the Torah, to take measures the measures provided in the Halacha. With the blessing of the Torah.”

More examples of journalistic corruption:

1) In 2009, playing with Haaretz readers and incurring what is deemed in Portuguese law as being on the receiving end of undue advantages, that reporter travelled to Oporto with all expenses regarding travel, accommodation and perks paid by the proselytising organization, a fact to which there are witnesses. 

2) Also in 2009, in Israel, the proselytizing organization was being heavily criticized for settling hundreds of migrants from the so-called "lost tribes" in the West Bank. Only a beautiful story in the Haaretz could improve the public image of proselytisers. Who was the Haaretz Contributor who wrote various articles, full of good news of course, "interviewing" the proselytizing president and praising his organization? The famous reporter, of course!

3) In 2014, the Israeli proselytising organisation tried to use a priest in Oporto who with 1,6 million Euros in European funds would have at his disposal a “Jewish interpretation centre”, which could be a base to conversions of false Bnei Anousim. The Jewish community of Oporto was compelled to make a public outcry to get the project cancelled, and the JTA reporter reported this fact by interviewing – yes, you have guessed right! – the leader of the Israeli proselytising organisation! 

4) In 2018 and 2019 the Jewish community of Oporto and the Oporto Roman Catholic Diocese devised a global project involving the following activities: Social causes (helping children, the elderly and the sick), the promotion of the Jewish Museum of Oporto and the Episcopal Palace Museum, and the production of four films - "The Nun's Kaddish", "Sefarad", "1618" and "The Light of Judah" - covering events that have occurred over the centuries in the Portuguese society. Revenue from films in Portugal will go to social causes. This interfaith project (which has the backing of Jewish philanthropists and institutions such as the Israeli Embassy, Anti Defamation League, B'nai B'rith International and the Vatican) was transformed by the JTA reporter - based on a "source" he invented - into a one million euro film ("Sefarad", a film centered in the 1920s and 1930s) made by a tiny community to promote itself. Of course the proselytizing organization dislikes the film "Sefarad" because it demonstrates that Bnei Anousim no longer exist, so the reporter put the emphasis on the supposed high cost of the film and the supposed self-promotion of the community as well. He never fails! This is another example of the destructive and criminal nature of proselytizing and journalistic corruption.

5) In 2021, reporting on the new Holocaust museum of Oporto, the JTA reporter wrote that the community is composed by "Bnei Anousim"... and also Ashkenazim! 

Absolutely great! "Bnei Anousim" in the 21st century!

6) In 2022, to portray the sacrifice of entire families exposed in the newspapers and on television in the context of an antisemitic conspiracy against the Jewish community of Oporto, its President used the word holocaust in small print (which in Portugal / Brasil is synonymous with sacrifice). The reporter used this detail to spread that the community compares an alleged petty conspiracy to the Holocaust / Shoah.

 

All companies would love to have such a reporter at their service! The present post explains his sources of information, his history regarding the issue at stake, and also who wins and who loses with this kind of information.

Corruption endangers that which is most sacred to a reporter: his honour and his credibility. Journalism and the media are some of the most important tools for the development of society, of citizenship and of human civilisation. That JTA reporter (former Haaretz Contributor and today Times of Israel reporter) is unfit to write any news about Portugal, because his writing does not serve the readers, but rather an Israeli proselytising organization that does not even exist in Portugal. 

And so on... 

In the Jewish Museum of Oporto is a dossier of shame on Cnaan Liphshiz Lidor:

“In 2008, he visited Oporto sponsored by an Israeli proselytising organisation that wished to create a “community” of false Marranos. Pro-proselytist news began with kosher cheeses, falsely described as “The first since the Inquisition!”

https://www.haaretz.com/2009-02-17/ty-article/iberian-anusim-make-first-kosher-cheese/0000017f-db3f-d3a5-af7f-fbbf7e430000

Then came news that the CJP had been created by Marranos (in actual fact 30 Ashkenazim and one Portuguese) for other Marranos. Marranos was the name this proselytising organisation gave to those who were prepared to “admit” that their late grandmothers lit candles on the eve of Shabbat.

https://www.haaretz.com/2009-09-10/ty-article/portugals-secret-jews-come-out-of-hiding/0000017f-db7e-df9c-a17f-ff7e2dbe0000

In 2012, the Board of CJP said goodbye to the proselytisers (by expelling them from the synagogue) and told them that “there are no longer any Marranos in Portugal, just as there are no Samurai in Japan”. The 75th anniversary of Oporto Synagogue was celebrated and the journalist falsely wrote that the synagogue was “led” by said proselytising organisation, which had been expelled one year before.

https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/170487/celebrating-75th-birthday-of-sephardic-portugal-sh/

The journalist continued his “task”, based on proselytising “sources” and without knowing any traditional family in the CJP, whose Board considered him to be corrupt. He continued to use slanderous “anonymous sources”. One day, he posted on Facebook, daring others to say negative things about the CJP. Unbelievable. Out of his mind, he filmed a video at the door of the synagogue saying that the leaders would not “let people in”, meaning the friends of the reporter himself.

http://jewishcommunityofoporto.blogspot.com/2022/05/history-of-jewish-community-of-oporto.html

The CJP continued to grow. Hotel, cemetery, museums, synagogues, restaurants and others were described by the journalist and his sources as “millionaire dealings of citizenship”.

https://www.haaretz.co.il/travel/portugal/.premium-1.9500995?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=iOS_Native

The CJP produced a film about its history: “Sefarad”. The journalist used slanderous anonymous sources to query the alleged “budget” of the film.

https://www.jta.org/2019/11/21/global/this-portuguese-jewish-community-couldnt-afford-a-rabbi-now-it-made-a-1-million-movie-appearing-on-amazon

The CJP built a Holocaust Museum which in a short space of time welcomed 10% of Portugal’s teenagers. The journalist was troubled by the high cost of the museum.

https://www.jta.org/2021/01/13/global/jewish-community-shaped-by-the-inquisition-opens-portugals-first-holocaust-museum

The “anonymous sources” hated the evolution of the CJP and the journalist roared against the “profits of nationality”.

https://www.haaretz.co.il/travel/portugal/.premium-1.9500995?utm_source=App_Share&utm_medium=iOS_Native

In the years when he destroyed the CJP’s good reputation, the journalist kept silent about anything that might damage the image of the proselytisers whom he faithfully served. In Israel, a court of law landed the proselytising organisation in trouble: “Millions of stolen cash behind the return of the “lost tribes” of Israel” (Haaretz). The journalist forgot all of this.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-09-26/ty-article/.premium/millions-in-stolen-money-behind-return-of-lost-tribes-to-israel-lawsuit-alleges/0000017f-e177-d7b2-a77f-e377dc890000

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-01-30/ty-article/.premium/head-of-lost-tribes-aliyah-group-guilty-of-forgery-top-court-rules/00000186-0326-dcd2-afd6-9f76b18c0000)

In Brazil, the Rabbinical Council of São Paulo threatened the proselytisers with the excommunication (herem) of its agents. The journalist also ignored this piece of news.

http://jewishcommunityofoporto.blogspot.com/2022/05/history-of-jewish-community-of-oporto.html

He was only interested in publishing slanderous information about and against the Jewish Community of Oporto, which the proselytisers hated. In Portugal, the CJP families were humiliated and threatened by a band of Soviet antisemites. The journalist joined forces with these Soviets. The president of the CJP described the sacrifice of families with the world holocaust written with a lower-case “H”. The journalist accused him of comparing action by the police to the Holocaust.

https://www.jta.org/2022/06/26/global/porto-jewish-community-calls-portugals-criminal-probe-into-its-actions-holocaust-against-families

In an attempt to link the CJP to the “crime”, the journalist quoted an “anonymous source”, a man convicted of calling a non-Jew a “shit”.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/porto-jews-decry-soviet-style-antisemitism-as-lucrative-citizenship-vetting-probed/

A Portuguese friend of Cnaan Lidor...

The journalist Paulo Curado is on display at the Jewish Museum of Oporto, which contains a file with his illegal deeds and the following text:

“He knew that the Jewish Community of Oporto (CJP) had been destroyed in the 1930s by slanderous anonymous denunciations and he agreed to contribute to a similar scheme.

He used an “anonymous source”, whom he knew had been convicted for crimes of slander and libel against the oldest family in the Jewish Community of Oporto.

He used an “anonymous source” from an Israeli proselytising organisation that had been expelled from Oporto synagogue in 2012 for its links to fake conversions to Judaism and journalistic corruption.

He made use of an Israeli journalist, working for that proselytising organisation, who since 2013 had done everything to denigrate the image of the CJP.

He made use of trivial information that professional thieves had stolen from a law firm and which they mistakenly linked to the CJP.

He made use of information given to him by politicians to destroy the Sephardic Law, chase away rich Jews and sully the strongest Portuguese Jewish community: the CJP.

He promoted an image of the “purity” of the Israeli Community of Lisbon (CIL) as compared to that of Oporto, based on a Soviet-style initiative begun in 2020 by member of Parliament Constança Sousa.

He published endless news about the CJP’s “massive profits” from the Sephardic Law, while keeping quiet about the fact that the CIL and the Registry Office had much higher earnings.

He described the development of the CJP – synagogues, achdut centres, museums, films, restaurants, etc. – as “citizenship dealings”.

He mistreated leaders, rabbis, members and the museum curator, and falsely linked a board member to the creation of the 2013/2015 law to legal dealings and to certificates.

He omitted the fact that one CIL member had been (legally) involved in drawing up the 2013/2015 legislation and that she was a lawyer in nationality processes. An inconvenient truth.

He omitted the fact that said CIL member analysed applicants’ Sephardism processes and signed the CIL certificates. An inconvenient truth.

He disparaged the Sephardic certifications carried out by the Oporto Community (which exclusively certified Jews) and praised that of the Lisbon Community (which mainly certified non-Jews).

He destroyed the respectable image of those certified by the CJP: “crime”, “links to organised crime”, “cannabis”, “Mossad”, oligarchs”, and so on.

He falsely spread the news that based on donations and Wikipedia entries, the CJP had certified the Sephardic origin of a Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin.

At a time when Russian tanks were at the gates of Ukraine, he did not previously consult the CJP before publishing that murderous news.

The slanderous news was published days before the scheduled meeting of the Council of Ministers that destroyed the Sephardic Law. It was a political favour.

He linked the CJP to the certification of Russian Jews, although only 0,2% of said certificates were issued to people of that provenance, certified by the local Chabad.

He omitted the fact that there are more Luso-Russians certified by the CIL than by the CJP. Yet another inconvenient truth.

He spread the news that CJP had no support in the Jewish world, disregarding the support of the President of Israel, the Jewish News Syndicate, Chabad Lubavitch and the European Jewish Association.”

Everything that generally characterises journalistic corruption was present in this case. The journalist in question (i) published completely false information about the CJP and its members, without even hearing them; (ii) he published distorted information that seriously veered from the truth, without even hearing them; (iii) he omitted a large number of inconvenient truths from the “theory” he wished to foist on the public, which he contemptibly achieved; and (iv) he was obsequious regarding the illicit interests at stake of the “anonymous sources” he used and should never have used, for it is expressly forbidden by law.

The great coup of Curado.

1. Roman Abramovich paid 250 euros to the Oporto Jewish Community and met the criteria of Portuguese law, namely "family names" such as Leiva, Rosa and Leon and "family memory" attested by the rabbinate of origin. The certificate of Sephardicism issued by the Jewish community was an opinion in accordance with its knowledge of the Jewish world and its institutions. More than that. Abramovich supported a Jewish organization of Portuguese origin for decades (just as his grandfather Leibovich did before he died in Siberia) and his children are Lithuanians through their father.

2. Abramovich's magnetic name was used by Lisbon elites to end the Sephardic law, drive wealthy Jews away from the country and destroy the only Jewish community with full synagogues and museums. The coup worked. The Sephardic law ended, wealthy Jews gave up on Portugal and the Jewish community in Oporto had its reputation completely destroyed. Suddenly, journalists from all over the world were asking us how much money we had received and what our role was in the Russian war against Ukraine.

3. To make everything worse, dozens of police officers invaded the synagogue as if it were a brothel and in the midst of the confusion they forgot to take Abramovich's certification file, which wasn't that important after all. What they really wanted was to link the community to the word "corruption", which is something that paralyzes the modern world, and has paralyzed the entire Jewish world.

4. The certificate of Sephardicism issued by the Oporto Jewish Community does not compel the government to grant Portuguese nationality to those who have been certified. The government has discretionary powers to grant Portuguese nationality or not to any citizen, whoever he or she may be.

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Jewish tradition and some of the evils of the world

There is a question that is usually answered only by silence. Why are some men ineffective in their lives and others have the blessings of Hashem to create life, culture, influence, and wealth?

What is said below is a part of the answer.

1. Mediocre men are absolutely ineffective in their lives and do nothing to dignify others and to improve the world. Their lives are lost in vanity, speaking evil of others or envying those who are not envious.

2. Jealousy is part of the daily life of the mediocre. Jealousy keeps hate in the heart, wishing that other people are not successful. It is a fact that the mediocre men lack envy only for their children and disciples. (Talmud, St. 105b)

3. The ‘evil eye’ (ain ha-ra) is the name given to negative energy that is created by mediocre men who look at others with envy or bad feelings. It only affects those who care about it. (Pesachim 110 b)

4. Mediocre men have a long tongue. About three quarters of human conflicts come from the spoken or written word. The central saying of Jewish tradition, "Shema Israel", commands us to hear and not to speak.

-- Gossip usually involves conversations speaking evil of others (lashon hara). It is forbidden to hear gossip and including to turn your face towards the speaker. (Shaarei Teshuva, s.3.)

-- Passing on stories (rechilut) is also considered gossip. The Talmud says that the storyteller lives in the shadow of slander. "You shall not go about retelling stories among your people". (Lev 19:16)

-- One who tells disparaging things about others that are false is referred to as a ‘motzi sheim ra’, that is, one who spreads a bad name or report. This person is considered the lowest of the low. It is believed that the results of his slander will return and destroy him, like a boomerang.

The Midrash says that the practice of chesed (goodness) is the stone upon which stands the Universe.