By Gabriela Cantergi President of B’nai B’rith Portugal
Porto, the epicenter of Jewish life in Portugal, has one of the most majestic synagogues in Europe, the Kadoorie Mekor Haim, famous for celebrating Yom Kippur with nearly a thousand people praying loudly.
At the heart of the Jewish community in Porto, Portugal, is a Brooklyn native affectionately nicknamed “The Boss”. At 95 years old, Marilyn Flitterman regularly attends the central synagogue, plays piano in a jazz band, and drives her convertible car every day. She is a source of inspiration for a community that remained dormant for nearly a century but has, in just over a decade, regenerated itself religiously, culturally, educationally, and philanthropically. Flitterman recounts what she saw upon arriving in Porto in 1970: “Instead of a community of a million Jews, there was my family, three or four other families, that’s all.”
The headquarters of the Jewish community of Porto, one of the most majestic synagogues in Europe, called Kadoorie Mekor Haim, is now famous for the Yom Kippur it celebrates each year, with nearly a thousand people praying loudly at the same time. Members from about thirty countries and many young people animate this wonderful atmosphere. A Jewish visitor who has visited over 55 countries wrote about the Community: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard such passionate prayers and songs in a synagogue before. It’s not just the power of the voices praying in unison that moved me so much, it’s also the symbolism of so many Jews gathered in a synagogue in a country hard hit by the Inquisition.”
EDUCATION, CULTURE AND HISTORY
What stands out most about this community is its success in promoting culture and knowledge of Jewish history. The “European Days of Jewish Culture”, celebrated for twenty years on the first Sunday of each September, have gained even more visibility from the moment the Jewish community of Porto decided to celebrate this day, showing a full Jewish life: synagogues, a Holocaust museum, a Jewish museum, cinema, historical films, art galleries, kosher restaurants, a liturgical choir, conferences, book presentations, and much more.
It is unusual for a Jewish community to oversee a Holocaust museum, especially one that has welcomed 150,000 teenagers in just three years, out of the barely one million who live in the country. Portugal was neutral during World War II and, in Jewish memory, is best known for the expulsion of Jews and the Inquisition (1536-1821). The community has dedicated a Jewish museum to the memory of the inquisitorial period, as well as a documentary film entitled “1618”, the rights of which have been sold to airlines in Arab and Muslim countries and to Samuel Goldwyn Films in the United States. The goal is to promote Jewish history in all its dimensions.
The community’s latest documentary film was created in April of this year: “1506 – The Lisbon Genocide”, available on YouTube and Vimeo in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew. The last subtitle of this film says that the massacre “is not mentioned in school curricula and has been forgotten”. In fact, few people today know that the Portuguese capital was the scene of one of the largest genocide operations in Europe against Jews long before the Holocaust. About 4,000 people of all ages were killed and burned alive, with evil connotations. “The youngest was ten years old, the oldest 110 years old, and many Espinosas bear their name on this monument. A few years later, Baruch Espinosa was born in Amsterdam,” emphasizes Michael Rothwell, grandson of German Jews murdered in Auschwitz and director of the community’s two museums, next to a monument that commemorates this massacre. The names of his grandparents are inscribed in the “memorial room where the names of thousands of victims are displayed”.
The community has agreements with schools throughout the country, the museums are free, and we very often pay for children’s transportation from school, in case they cannot afford the trip. The museums of the Jewish community of Porto play an important national role, as do its art gallery, the largest Jewish library in the Iberian Peninsula, and other cultural facilities. Historical films, meanwhile, aim to reach an international audience.
THE 2,000 EXILED JEWISH CHILDREN
The inauguration of the Jewish Cemetery of Porto in 2023 was an event of immense symbolism. The green space, which includes what looks like a Mount of Olives, is called Campo da Igualdade Isaac Aboab, in reference to the highest Jewish authority in the world when Jews were expelled from Spain. The king of the time, D. João II, decided to take advantage of Portugal’s hospitality and demanded that each person arriving in the kingdom pay eight cruzados, under penalty of being reduced to slavery. Many could not pay them and, in 1493, the king ordered the kidnapping of 2,000 Jewish children under eight years old and sent them with hardened criminals to the African islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, 7,500 km from Lisbon. Today, the Jewish community of Porto is producing the documentary “The 2,000 Exiled Jewish Children”, which will premiere in 2024.
Another dissemination project is the book “Two Millennia of the Jewish Community of Porto, Chronology 1923-2023”, which explains the history of an ancient community expelled at the end of the 15th century and, after centuries of Inquisition, officially refounded in 1923. The central synagogue came into being thanks to donations from the worldwide Sephardic community and the efforts of a Portuguese army captain, Barros Basto, who was expelled from the army in 1937 for circumcising some of his students, an act deemed immoral by the military court. Basto is therefore nicknamed the “Portuguese Dreyfus”. The Jewish community of the time, entirely composed of Ashkenazim and consisting of about forty people, considered the persecution of its leader as a sign that dangerous times were approaching, and the community went almost underground. In the following decades, the great synagogue had virtually no activity and existed in silence. This sequence of events gave rise to a film based on real events, “Sefarad”, which the community made a few years ago and which is available on YouTube.
THE RECOVERY OF A COMMUNITY
The synagogue was almost a ghost building in early 2012, when the few members of the community restored the immense building and convinced a nearby hotel to open a “kosher” restaurant to serve Jewish tourists. The hotel agreed to pay a rabbi from Israel to organize this work, and suddenly the community acquired a hotel, a Jewish food establishment, Jewish tourists, and a religious leader. At the same time, the community asked a local university to provide dental medicine courses to young French students, given the lack of places in universities in France and the high demand. Today, the community has 300 young French students and has created a second synagogue for them, and has also made arrangements with Chabad Lubavitch for a Sephardic couple from this organization to settle in Portugal to meet their spiritual needs.
In addition, the B’nai B’rith of Portugal, one of the sections of the Jewish community of Porto, includes members from all over Portugal and from all continents. It defends not only human rights in general but also the human rights of Jews, often forgotten. Its work is carried out in collaboration with the International Observatory of Human Rights based in Portugal. Hundreds of Portuguese schoolchildren commemorate Kristallnacht in Porto.
Ten years ago, when asked why anti-Semitism was not endemic in Portugal, Samuel Yanovsky, a former member of the Jewish community of Porto, simply replied: “Because there aren’t enough Jews”. Yanovsky came from a Belarusian family that had fled neighboring pogroms and always remembered the day he attended the opening of the Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue in 1938, as synagogues across Europe were closing their doors. At 90 years old, he thought that “the community must invest in culture, history and Chabad, because it has many children and will guarantee our continuity as a people”.
Chabad, based in New York, is an organization with which the Jewish community of Porto cooperates on several levels, in fourteen countries, including Australia, India, South Africa, China, and Ukraine. For years, Shabbat meals have been served in many regions of the world. Mikvahs, synagogues, and cemeteries have been built. It is not surprising that the Jewish community of Porto was the main sponsor of the largest Chabad Center in Europe, based in Cascais, near Lisbon, while strengthening its incredible role in promoting Jewish culture in Portugal.
