Portugal’s Jewish Diaspora and Its Lessons for Our Times    

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune  

The Portuguese have left a very deep and wide cultural footprint around the world. Portugal’s empire was spread throughout a vast number of territories in Africa, Asia and South America.

And many of its Sephardic Jews, expelled from the kingdom itself, ended up, at least temporarily, in its far-flung colonies, often as ‘Crypto-Jews,’ people who had converted to Roman Catholicism but who continued to secretly observe Jewish rituals. They created a vast trading diaspora.

At the end of the 15th century, the Iberian peninsula was swept by waves of Judaophobia, as the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms had just finished the reconquest of their territories from the Muslims and were seized with the spirit of Catholic triumphalism.

Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, and Portugal followed five years later. These Jews ended up largely in the Ottoman Empire, with some later moving to Protestant countries like England and Holland.

In both Iberian countries, however, ‘secret’ or Crypto-Jews, if discovered, faced certain death. Indeed, in 1506, somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 of these ‘convertidos’ or New Christians were murdered by a mob in what became known as the Lisbon Massacre.

Attracted by the greater security, as well as the economic opportunities offered, some decided to immigrate to the distant possessions of the kingdom. Migrants thought the culture would be more tolerant since the lands were overwhelmingly populated by non-Christian indigenous peoples. As well, they were farther from the reaches of the Portuguese Inquisition. Established in 1536 and lasting officially until 1821, that institution was empowered to execute those accused of ‘backsliding’ and secretly practising Judaism.

Cape Verde, off Africa’s west coast, was a Portuguese colony from 1463 onwards, and Jews settled in the archipelago very early, with communities on several islands. Some of these Jews established a presence in the nearby coastal regions of present-day Senegal, Gambia and Guinea, where, in some cases, they were protected by local African Muslim rulers.

However, in 1672 a branch of the Inquisition was established in Cape Verde resulting in the confiscation of Jewish trading centres. Those who wished to remain were forced to convert to Catholicism.

The Portuguese followed a policy of sending convicts and exiles to Cape Verde. Many were of Jewish origin, and some Cape Verdeans trace their ancestry to Jews or Crypto-Jews who fled or were expelled from Portugal over the centuries. During the nineteenth and early 20th century additional Jews came to Cape Verde from Morocco.

Further south, the islands of São Tomé e Príncipe were the scene of a particularly tragic episode. In 1493, before their expulsion from Portugal, King Manuel I, seeking funds to finance his program of colonial expansion, had imposed huge poll taxes upon the Jews. He also wished to colonize these two small islands but few Portuguese wanted to go there.

When it became clear that the majority of Jews could not pay the tax demanded, the king deported some 2,000 Jewish children, aged 2 to 10, to the islands. Only 600 remained alive a year later.

In 1498, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut, India, and soon thereafter Portuguese Jews, mainly involved in the spice trade, arrived in the country. When Goa, further north, was captured by Portugal in 1510, the Jewish community there flourished. But even in far-off Goa, the Inquisition was established in 1560, and the Jews were forced to convert or flee.

Jews arrived in Portugal’s biggest colony, Brazil, after 1500, primarily as New Christians and established sugar plantations and mills. In Recife, the largest city in the northeast, Crypto-Jews prospered as businessmen, importers and exporters. Although the bishop of Salvador, then colonial Brazil’s capital, was given inquisitorial powers in 1579, all prisoners had to be sent to Europe for trial.

However, when much of Brazil came under temporary Dutch rule after 1630, many ‘convertidos’ resumed practising Judaism, as the Dutch allowed for the open exercise of their faith. As well, Jews from Amsterdam migrated to the colony. Brazil under Dutch rule was the only region during colonial times where Jews were allowed to practise their religion openly and establish an organized community. In Recife, they built the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in 1636, the first erected in the western hemisphere.

Upon the return of the Portuguese, the Jews fled, with some settling in Dutch-ruled New Amsterdam (later New York), in 1654 – thus establishing the first Jewish settlement in the future United States. So at least one part of this sad story had a positive outcome.

But what is the relevance of this dismal history today?

Whenever and wherever Jews live under an intolerant ideological system that demands total compliance, the same phenomenon occurs. Hence, in the 20th century Marxist-Leninist systems of the Soviet Union and the east European states, many Jews, fearful of being suspected as ‘disloyal’ to the Communist system or – worse – ’Zionists,’ hid, or minimized, their Jewish identity. We need only observe the large numbers of younger people in today’s Poland who are rediscovering their Jewish heritage. Like the Crypto-Jews of old, their parents tried to ‘pass’ as Gentiles.

Canada is, of course, a free society, without official state-sanctioned strictures against identifying oneself as Jewish. But, more and more, especially in the more ideological realms of academia, journalism, and the arts, the very word ‘Zionism’ has become a term of vilification, something no proper person should be associated with, lest they be accused of ‘dual loyalty’ or of supporting an ‘apartheid’ state. No, we don't have Inquisitions or gulags to punish ‘bad’ Jews, but there is great pressure, in such circles, to conform to this new creed.

This is leading to some, especially younger, Jews, denying their affinity with Israel. They may not convert to another faith, or hide being Jewish, but by identifying themselves as ‘non’ or ‘anti-Zionist,’ they have ceased, in some ways, being part of Klal Yisroel. Judaism is, after all, more than just a ‘religion’ or ‘faith.’

Most of the Crypto-Jews forced to convert in centuries gone by were eventually lost to the Jewish people. Will the same fate await the descendants of today’s ‘non-Zionists?’