Inquisition

Resilience of Portugal’s Jews

King Manuel I of Portugal (1495-1521) had a problem. To marry Princess Isabella of Spain, he consented to the request of her parents – Ferdinand and Isabella – to rid Portugal of its Jews. But Manuel wanted to keep the Jewish citizens close by, for their economic benefits (money and skills). His solution? In 1496-7, he forced Jews to convert. (He also expelled the country’s Muslims.)

Manuel believed that New Christians – this population is likewise referred to as conversos, anusim or Crypto-Jews; marranos is a derogatory term that should not be used – would continue to boost the country’s economy. It should be noted that Jews in Portugal already paid a special poll tax and a special property tax.

Even after they were forcibly converted, Portuguese Jews could not live wherever they wanted. They lived in separate quarters referred to as judiarias, what we might call ghettos. They worked as artisans and rural labourers, weavers, tailors, cobblers, carpenters, leather tanners, jewelers, and every branch of the metal industry, ranging from ordinary blacksmiths to armourers and goldsmiths.

Several Jews nonetheless reached prominence in medieval Portugal. Among them was Abraham Zacuto, originally from Spain. Portuguese King John II invited Zacuto to be the royal astronomer. The king wanted Zacuto to chart a sea route to India. Unlike most of his fellow religionists, Zacuto managed to flee Portugal after King Manuel imposed conversion on the country’s Jews.

There was also Isaac Abarbanel, who was King Afonso V’s treasurer. Yehuda Even Maneer was the richest Jew in the kingdom and, for that reason, was appointed Portugal’s finance minister. Master Nacim, a Jewish eye doctor, was accorded certain privileges because of his professional skills.

Before King Manuel decreed the forced conversion, the Jewish community of Tomar built a synagogue, in spite of attacks orchestrated against them and other Jews in the country. Unfortunately, the building was used for its original purpose for only a short period, after which – for years and years after the forced conversion – it was used by the Church. The town itself became one of the sites of the Inquisition tribunal. Today, the synagogue has been renovated and is considered a national monument.

Crypto-Jews continued to covertly practise Judaism. In the town of Porto, for example, the Crypto-Jews secretly operated a synagogue, hiding it from the Inquisition.

photo - In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up a Torah ark, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour — In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up a Torah ark, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

In 2013, a renovation project at a facility for Portuguese senior citizens turned up an amazing find. Hidden behind the eastern wall of the dining room was a Torah ark, or aron kodesh, carved directly into the stonework separating the building from its neighbour. There were two compartments, a square space topped by a slightly larger arched tablet-shaped opening, with space for approximately six small Torah scrolls. Besides this relatively recent discovery, we have the 16th-century testimony of Immanuel Aboab, a native of Porto. (The late Yom Tov Assis, who was a professor at Hebrew University, had likewise been trying to locate where such an aron kodesh was located in the area.)

It was common among Crypto-Jews to light one Shabbat candle in a secret cabinet. There was also an emergency tool for snuffing out Shabbat lights if it was suspected that a Christian neighbour was spying. To make Shabbat different from other days, these secret Jews ate no meat. Purim was marked by three days of fasting beforehand. Passover was celebrated two days late, so as to throw Christians off the track. Other secret Jews took the risk of undergoing circumcision.

Within limits, these Crypto-Jews read psalms and recited the Shema, didn’t work on Shabbat, didn’t eat pork and fasted on Yom Kippur. Manuel (Abraham) de Morales passed out manuscripts of what he thought were important points to know about Judaism. But most of the Jewish customs were orally transmitted from mother to children.

Not surprisingly, the period before the forced conversion was not totally free of tension between Jews and Christians: Franciscan and Dominican clergy walked through judiarias, ready to convert Jews. Moreover, Portugal’s new merchant class was apprehensive about the influence of the Jewish citizens and their capital. Under the reign of João I (1385-1443), new laws obliged Jews to wear an identifying sign on their clothes and imposed curfews on the judiarias. There were scattered outbreaks of violence, like the attack on the Lisbon judiaria in 1445, in which many died.

photo - Jew Street in Lisbon, Portugal — Jew Street in Lisbon, Portugal. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

After the forced conversion, New Christians would be charged with being infidels, not heretics. These New Christians generally adopted Christian given names and Old Christian surnames. They probably did this to deflect attention. But harder times still followed for Portuguese Jews, with the massacre of 2,000 conversos in Lisbon in 1506 and the Portuguese Inquisition, which began in 1536. Inquisitors would come to a town and tell the gentile population that they were looking for secret Jews. They would present a list of suspicious behaviour to look for.

In medieval Portugal, turning in New Christians became a profitable venture. Arrested conversos had their assets seized by members of the Inquisition. Occasionally, Church officials would accept bribes for temporary pardons.

Apparently, if a New Christian approached an inquisitor, he had a chance of redeeming himself by admitting that his family lit Shabbat candles or washed sheets for Shabbat. On the other hand, if an Old Christian accused a New Christian of still practising Jewish rituals and the latter denied the observances, he would face a worse outcome from his trial.

The number of Inquisition victims between 1540 and 1765 is estimated at 40,000. Punishment included being raised by a pulley with one’s hands behind one’s back. Convicted infidels were then burned at the stake.

Cells where Crypto-Jews were held before their Portuguese Inquisition trials. *(photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)*

The cruel punishments passed down by the Portuguese Inquisition drew large crowds of spectators. The crowds were akin to those who would come to watch bullfights.

Trials ceased after about 250 years, although Portugal’s Inquisition was not officially abolished until 1821.

Jewish informers should also be mentioned. These people, as can be imagined, found an open ear among Portugal’s prejudiced secular and religious leaders. If these traitors were discovered by the Jewish community, they might have had their eyes gouged out, their tongue removed or been put to death for putting the community at tremendous risk. So serious a crime was acting against one’s own people that even Maimonides condoned Jewish informers.

The impact of the forced conversion and the Inquisition continue to be felt. Take, for example, Belmonte, located in the northern part of Portugal. It has a small Jewish community that has retained the rituals of Judaism despite all the hardships and persecution. In the 1990s, when the idea of building a synagogue was raised, some Jewish community members were against it. Why? Because being a member of the anusim community was their cherished identity. Almost 200 years after the Portuguese Inquisition had been abolished, they couldn’t imagine living openly as Jews.

Estimates are that at least 20% of Portugal’s current population has anusim roots.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Trip sparks realization

Starting in 1539, it took Spain 250 years to construct the six-level fortress El Morro in Puerto Rico, and Spain’s former power still emanates from the walls. (photo by Lauren Kramer)

I was in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, recently, when the full magnitude of the Spanish Inquisition hit me like a ton of bricks.

The scene seemed an unlikely one for a blast from the Jewish past. I was with Pablo Garcia, a fast-speaking guide with Spoon, a boutique food and history company, and we were standing in the Plaza del Quinto Centenario, in front of fortifications that were more than 500 years old.

These were fortifications Spain built in the 1500s, not long after Christopher Columbus “discovered” Puerto Rico in 1493. “Discovered,” because the indigenous Taino people had been there for centuries but, for reasons that seem unfathomable now, that didn’t matter to the Spaniards.

Back home in Spain, 300,000 Jews were being expelled, murdered in the Inquisition or forced to convert to Catholicism, with some of them practising their Judaism underground. To appreciate the kind of force they were up against, you just need to pay a visit to Old San Juan and lay eyes on El Morro.

Spain started building El Morro in 1539 and it took 250 years to construct the six-level fortress. Its thick, stone walls, 185 feet above sea level, were punctuated by garritas, dome-shaped sentry booths located shouting distance from one another, so that, when one sentry perceived a threat on the horizon, he simply yelled a warning to his cohorts. El Morro guarded the city’s harbour from invaders and its bastion, with barracks, dungeons and storerooms, still holds original cannons that face the ocean in preparation for defence.

The sites are so well preserved that, were the Spanish to resume control today, one feels certain they’d need very little additional infrastructure to guard the island. I looked at those stone walls that safeguarded the island from many battles over the centuries and marveled at the sheer strength of the Iberian Union. It dawned on me that the Jews of Spain really didn’t stand a chance against a power like this in 1492.

I was jolted back to reality when we stopped for a caffeine buzz at Don Ruiz, a coffee shop located in what was once Spain’s Ballajá Barracks. The coffee beans are from a four-generation family farm specializing in single-harvest, hand-picked beans, Garcia said. “In the 1700s, coffee was big business in Puerto Rico and one in every six cups of coffee worldwide was made with beans grown on the island. Coffee money built our roads and sealed our dams,” he said.

Over the next three hours, I wandered between restaurants in beautifully preserved, colourful buildings in Old San Juan’s narrow, brick-laid streets. I sipped soursop juice, a local hangover cure with a pear-like taste, and sampled mofongo, a pastry made from mashed, fried green plantains.

Spain maintained a stronghold on the island until 1898, when it became the US territory it remains to this day. But the Spanish influence remains pervasive, easily perceptible in the cuisine, the history of the island, the language and the islanders’ distinct cultural identity.

Garcia stopped outside a local bank with a circular symbol above the door. “That’s the seal of Puerto Rico, still used to stamp new laws to this day,” he said. The seal depicts a tower representing Queen Isabella of Castille, a lion representing King Ferdinand II of Aragon and a cross, symbolizing Catholicism and Spain’s “discovery” of the “New World.”

It struck me as interesting that these two Catholic monarchs, the architects of the Spanish Inquisition, are still being lauded. Their legacies are sealed in Puerto Rico’s legal documents even today, and the authority they wielded 500 years ago still can be seen in those seemingly impenetrably thick stone walls of El Morro.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.

Familiar song from long ago

“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return / And come with song unto Zion.” (Isaiah 35:10)

Seville, Spain, summer 1480

“The fire is painful to the flesh, but kind to the soul,” said the man in red velvet robes who sat at the dark mahogany table. Such statements had earned him the title of “the Scourge of G-d.” He sat stiffly at a table that flanked one end of a courtyard fenced with eight-foot-high stucco walls. A heap of faggots surrounding a pile of tree limbs stood at the other end of the courtyard. In the middle of the enclosure, a cluster of people, surrounded by darkly dressed men with swords, shuffled their feet and stared dolefully at the dust that rose with their movement. Destitute of hope, their hearts were as dry as the earth.

One family stood rigidly facing the table where the red-robed figure scanned names from a lengthy scroll.

“It’s your choice, but be quick about it. We’ve got a town full of Jews to process before sundown.”

It was a familiar scene all over Spain. The Inquisition was in full flower, creating martyrs and new Christians. And now it was the turn of the Capouya family. And, that day, Zalman Capouya, father to three whimpering daughters plagued with heat and terror, chose life for his family. “We already have enough martyrs in heaven. We need more Jews on earth so they can grow and multiply as the Lord commanded.” His wife nodded and sobbed softly in relief.

But the life that followed wasn’t so simple. No visible thread of their Jewish identity could be displayed. Like tens of thousands of crypto-Jews, they attended church and disguised within an alien ceremony whatever level of mitzvot obedience they practised. There was always a lifeline – a tether to the ancestral faith: the lighting of candles behind shuttered windows, a Shema before bedtime with the family huddled in a tight group, a favorite song now relegated to the basement instead of the gilded assembly hall of the synagogue. No bread during Passover. There was always something. Slight and hidden, as light as a tallit thread, but a reminder that children wouldn’t forget. Maybe the seeds would sprout in other times, other lands.

New Jersey, U.S., autumn 2016

It was a haunting melody. A tide of suffering, but sweet with hope. It poured out of the open doors of the synagogue like a stream, swollen with the rains of spring. Catherine was a block away, but the song flooded her senses. She’d walked around the synagogue twice as she listened. Last year she’d heard it, too. And on this same holiday the Jews called Rosh Hashanah. Their New Year, someone told her.

But it was not only the beauty of the song that made her circle the synagogue twice in astonishment. This melody – sung by Jews – was her family song. That’s what her parents and grandmother called it: “our family song.” They sang it at Christmas and New Year’s. They sang it at baptisms and funerals. It was an old, old family custom, her grandmother had explained.

But Grandmother couldn’t explain the song’s origins. “All I remember is that my grandmother sang it to me,” she replied irritably after a hail of questions from Catherine. “It’s a family song. Enjoy it and don’t ask so many questions.” But why would Jews sing it, Catherine wondered.

At school the next day, Catherine couldn’t wait to meet her friend Rachael at their locker.

“Rachael, I walked by your synagogue yesterday morning on your holiday. They were singing this gorgeous song.”

“You must have heard us chanting Avinu Malkeinu.”

“Let me go with you next week. Would you mind?”

“No, of course not. It will be chanted again next week on Yom Kippur.”

Catherine did not tell her family the exact truth about the lure of the synagogue, only that she was meeting a friend. And that was true enough. They met a short block from the synagogue and, as they walked, Rachael explained the meaning of the day, the elements of the service. Catherine listened somberly, almost apprehensively. Something larger than she had ever encountered was looming on her horizon.

Once inside, she followed her friend’s instruction and carefully read the English for each prayer. It was all so familiar – like a dream reencountered – a spiritual déjà vu.

The congregation sang – their voices filled the domed assembly hall like the prayers of the lost fill the heart of G-d. Deep in Catherine’s being was an ache she’d never known before. She sang and let a gentle tide carry her home.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.