Dear friends,

This year, Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, took place between 7 and 15 December, celebrating the spiritual survival of the Jewish people. Hanukkah commemorates the victory of the Maccabees, named after their leader, Judah Maccabi, in 164 BC, against the armies of the Seleucid Greeks who three years earlier had entered Jerusalem and desecrated the Temple. The commemoration of Hanukkah over two thousand years of Jewish life also recalls the persecutions and attempts at forced conversion - in Portugal, the history will be told in the Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa. Hanukkah also commemorates a miracle that Talmudic tradition tells us about: when the Temple was taken back from the Greeks, there was only enough oil for the sacred candelabra for one day. However, the holy light continued to shine for eight days, thus symbolising Jewish spiritual survival. That's why the Hanukkah celebration lasts eight days, with one candle lit each day on each arm of the nine-armed candelabra, one of which is the lighter.

It's a joyous festival, during which children play with a four-sided spinning top called sevivon in Hebrew, on each side of which are written the initials of the phrase "nes gadol hayá sham" (a great miracle happened there - in the Promised Land). Sweets and potato pancakes are also eaten.

As a joyous festival commemorating a "miracle", we celebrate the beginning of the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, particularly the children, their mothers and grandmothers who are now returning to their families and hopefully also to their normal lives and the end of such a painful period. On behalf of the Associação Hagadá, we express our hope for the rapid release of all the hostages, as well as our solidarity with their families.

May the glow of the Hanukkah candles symbolise the value of life in contrast to the culture of death!

The Board
Associação Hagadá – Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa

David Harris

CEO of American Jewish Committee (AJC) from 1990 to 2022

Antisemitism, or Jew-hatred, is on the rise once again, after decades in which it appeared to be in remission.

Perhaps the impact of the Holocaust and its legacy, including the testimonies of survivors, had held it in check, but memories are now fading and the survivor generation is passing on.

And the spread of liberal democracy doubtless helped as well, though liberal democratic values are being challenged from many directions today, whether in the streets, the ballot boxes or in social media.

As history has painfully shown, the resilience of antisemitism should never be underestimated. Indeed, it has been described as the world’s oldest hatred.

So, what can be done to combat it? Well, regrettably, there is no single vaccine on the horizon to inoculate the world against this relentless social pathology.

But that doesn’t render us helpless, not at all. There are important roles for government leaders and elected officials; for law enforcement and the judiciary; and for religious figures and civic organizations.

And, above all, education is essential, both in the short and long terms.

In Portugal, where the Jewish community is small, a far cry from its heyday centuries ago before the Inquisition, it is very likely that many residents have little to no contact with Jews, Jewish culture and religion, or the Jewish place in Portuguese history.

Yet it is precisely this contact which can best serve to “humanize” and “demystify” the Jews, and build a bridge of communication, understanding and connection.

That is why the planned Jewish Museum is so exciting — and, dare I say, so essential.

For the first time, it will provide a place to tell the remarkable, if little known, story of the Jewish presence on Portuguese soil for millennia…of the countless contributions of Jews to society…of the losses as Jews fell victim to religious fervor and intolerance…of the modern era, as neutral Portugal played an important role as a transit point for some Jews, including my mother and 13 other members of my family, fleeing the Nazi Final Solution…and of the most recent efforts to create a vibrant Jewish life in the country.

And that’s not the Museum’s only role, though it is a vitally significant one. Yes, it is envisioned as a spectacular destination with world-class architecture, well-designed exhibits and precious artifacts.

It is also intended to be a living, breathing space to bring people together, celebrate art and music, organize lectures, conferences and symposia, and open minds to new information and new ways of looking at things.

In other words, this institution is about Portugal as much as it is about Jews. It is about Portuguese history as much as it is about Jewish history. And it is about Portugal’s future as much as it is about the Jewish future.

And if that’s not a way of overcoming intolerance and ignorance, and replacing them with understanding and cooperation, I don’t know what it is.

HIGHLIGHT
Public presentation and defence of João Naia da Silva's master's thesis: "Estudo e Conservação de Quatro Alba Amicorum do Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa" (Study and Conservation of Four Alba Amicorum from the Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa)

EXHIBITIONS
Opening of the travelling exhibition "The Portuguese Jewish Diaspora" at the Tomar Synagogue

On 5 December, the Tomar Synagogue inaugurated the travelling exhibition "The Portuguese Jewish Diaspora", a joint initiative of Éditions Chandeigne (Paris) and the Associação Hagadá, responsible for the installation and management of the Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa. This event, which marked the historic date of the Edict of Expulsion of Jews and Moors by King Manuel I, was attended (online) by João Schwarz, grandson of Samuel Schwarz, a key figure in the history of the Tomar Synagogue, and Livia Parnes, researcher and author of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be open to the public until 17 December 2023, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10h00 to 12h00 and 14h00 to 17h00.

COLLOQUIUMS
Colloquium “Unlocking Diaspora Archives: Western Sephardic Diaspora Roadmap Workshop”

The colloquium "Unlocking Diaspora Archives: Western Sephardic Diaspora Roadmap workshop" was held on 28 November at the Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, attended by the executive director of the Associação Hagadá - Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa, Manuel Pizarro.

During the colloquium, the WSD Roadmap project was presented, an open-access portal that brings together documentary collections from libraries and archives around the world that contain materials of interest for the study of the Western Sephardic diaspora and its antecedents. In the context of the participation of Portuguese and foreign researchers, archivists and librarians, the Portuguese Jewish archival heritage and that of the Portuguese-Jewish diaspora was debated, as well as strategies for its preservation, dissemination and accessibility.

The recording of the conference is available for viewing on the CHAM - Humanities Centre YouTube channel (morning session; afternoon session).

DOCUMENTARIES
Documentary presentation "Cais da Europa: Roger Kahan no Porto de Lisboa"

On 9 November, the documentary "Cais da Europa: Roger Kahan no Porto de Lisboa" ("Pier of Europe: Roger Kahan in the Port of Lisbon) was presented at the Alcântara Maritime Station. This documentary was produced by the newspaper Mensagem de Lisboa and directed by Humberto Giancristofaro, and takes as its starting point the fact that the Port of Lisbon was, at one point during the Second World War, the only port in Europe open to taking in refugees, mostly Jews, and allowing them to leave on ships with the hope of a new life.

After the screening of the documentary, a debate followed on "The role of the Port of Lisbon, the city and Portugal in saving lives in the Second World War: why is it so forgotten?", which included the participation of Ferreira Fernandes, author of the book "O Cais da Europa, Roger Kahan, refugee, photographer - Lisbon, 1940", Manuela Goucha Soares, a journalist for Expresso newspaper, José Pacheco Pereira and Irene Fluser Pimentel, historians, diplomat Seixas da Costa and José Ruah, from the Israeli Community of Lisbon, with moderation by journalist Catarina Carvalho (Mensagem de Lisboa).

DOCUMENTATION
Letters from Thessaloniki
16th Century

The Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa recently acquired for its collection a set of 16th-century letters belonging to merchants from the Jewish-Portuguese community of Thessaloniki.

Some are written in Portuguese with a Latin alphabet, while others are written in Aljamiado Portuguese, i.e. Portuguese written with Hebrew characters, a very rare script of which very few documents are known today.

The letters are undated, but previous studies have shown with some certainty that they were written between 1550 and 1570. The set is rich in information as it reveals names of people and places, types of goods and prices, historical and family data and references to events of the time. Dov Cohen, a researcher specialising in the Literature of the Jewish People at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, who studied these letters, attributed them to four authors and identified three of them: Abraham Hodara, his brother Joseph Hodara and Joseph Lindo. In addition to the authors, there are several people mentioned in the letters whose Portuguese origins are undeniable: Moise Baruch, Joseph Ben-Attar, Abraham de Boton, Moise de Boton, Abraham Ergaz, Daniel Gaguin, Joseph Gedaliah, Salomon Hodara, Isaac Sebah and Salomon Seneor.

According to the same researcher, the letters are the correspondence of Portuguese Jews who traded in the Ottoman Empire and Europe and acted as agents from Thessaloniki. Their products were traded along the route that linked Thessaloniki to Italian cities that passed through Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and other port cities along the Adriatic coast and through Ancona, Pesaro and Venice. The cities and towns mentioned in the letters are Adrianople, Ancona, Ankara, Bologna, Castel Novo (south of Dubrovnik), Dubrovnik, Ferrara, Florence, Giannitsa (west of Thessaloniki), Pesaro, Siderokastron, Sofia, Venice, Veria and of course, Thessaloniki.

This important acquisition will open up new possibilities for the study of Jewish languages and, specifically, provide a unique opportunity to deepen our knowledge of this Jewish-Portuguese community, particularly the early period of its formation and development.

HISTORICAL FIGURES
Samuel Schwarz
The Discoverer of the Marranos

One fine afternoon in April 1920, a delegation from the Association of Archaeologists of Portugal arrived in Tomar to find out what was being said about an unusual building in Rua Joaquim Jacinto. The delegation included the engineer Samuel Schwarz and Colonel Garcez Teixeira, who, in 1925, would publish a work on the Old Synagogue of Tomar. Samuel was immediately enthusiastic about what he saw, even though the building was very dilapidated at the time and was being used as a warehouse for goods and grain. He didn't hesitate, and in 1923, he bought the building and decided to carry out the cleaning and excavation work. This revealed to the world the existence of a synagogue that is still one of the few testimonies to Portugal's Jewish heritage today. In the meantime, the Portuguese government decided to classify the building as a national monument. In the 1920s, little was known about the history of the Jewish community in Portugal, even though this community accounted for almost 30 per cent of Portugal's population during the reign of King Manuel following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. There is a work on Hebrew gravestones by Cardoso Bethencourt, but little else was known, and few scholars in Portugal were interested in the subject.

Following Bethencourt's work, Samuel became interested in the existence of Hebrew tombstones. He published an article in 1923 entitled "Inscrições Hebraicas em Portugal" (Hebrew Inscriptions in Portugal) (in Arqueologia e História), re-edited in 2022.

The idea then arose to use the space of the old Tomar Synagogue as the first Luso Hebrew Museum in Portugal and as a place where the Hebrew tombstones scattered around the country would be exhibited. The official creation of the museum was made official by ministerial order on 27 July 1939. In a document from July of the same year, Samuel Schwarz proposed not only an epigraphic museum that would bring together all the tombstones discovered to date but also a historical museum representing the cultural activities of Portugal's ancient Jews. The Municipality of Tomar has just reissued this work under the title "Museu Luso-Hebraico de Tomar".

Samuel came from Poland, which at the time was part of the Russian empire, and was part of a big family in which his father Ysucher was a great scholar whose house was home to all the great Jewish thinkers of the time. Samuel, born in 1880, was the eldest of 11 brothers and sisters who had naturally been brought up to observe Jewish cultural and religious precepts.

When Samuel reached the age of 16, his father, Ysucher, decided to send him to Paris, where he completed a degree in mining engineering. After completing his course, Samuel travelled to work in many countries, including Spain, Azerbaijan, Italy and the Ivory Coast.

In Spain, in the mines of the Ourense and Pontevedra regions, he was confronted with the Marrano phenomenon for the first time. He wrote two articles on the subject and the Jewish diaspora following the 1492 expulsion edict of the Catholic Monarchs. In these articles, Samuel refers to a grave in a Warsaw cemetery that reveals the Sephardic origin of the buried person. Samuel would later claim that, in fact, his family was of Portuguese Sephardic origin and that the name had evolved from Soares to Schwarz.

In 1914, Samuel married Agatha in Odessa, and while travelling around Europe on their honeymoon, they were prevented from returning home by the outbreak of the First World War. Passing through Spain, where Samuel had already worked, he was told Portugal was a welcoming country. When he arrived in Lisbon, he decided to stay there because he found the country pleasant. He immediately joined the Jewish community in Lisbon and, as a mining engineer, went to work in the Trás-os-Montes region, particularly in Belmonte and Vilar Formoso.

As he recounts in his book "Cristãos Novos em Portugal no Século XX" (New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century), published in 1925, the discovery of the Jewish origin of the inhabitants of Belmonte and the region was a revelation. Samuel Schwarz was only able to be admitted as a co-religionist to the community of New Christians in Belmonte when, after another attempt to convince the New Christians that they were members of the Jewish people, the oldest woman asked him to quote at least one prayer in Hebrew, "the language of the Jews". Samuel Schwarz chose the prayer Shemah Israel: " Listen, Israel". Every time he pronounced the word "Adonai" ("My Lord"), the women covered their eyes with their hands. "When we finished," Schwarz writes, the same woman turned to those around her and announced in a tone of great authority: "You really are a Jew because you have pronounced the name of Adonai."

A new edition of the book " Cristãos Novos em Portugal no Século XX" (New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century) was published in 1993 by the Institute of Ethnology and Sociology of Religions at the New University of Lisbon. It was published again in Portuguese by the publisher Cotovia in October 2010.

Samuel published, among other works, "Cântico dos Cânticos" (Song of Songs) (1942), "Anti-semitismo" (Anti-Semitism) (1944), and “História da Moderna Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa” (History of the Modern Israeli Community of Lisbon) (1959) as well as "Arqueologia Mineira" (Mining Archaeology) (1936). In the magazine Ver e Crer he wrote: "O Sionismo, no reinado de D. João III" (Zionism during the reign of King John III), "A Origem do nome e da lenda do Preste João" (The origin of the name and legend of Preste João), "Quem eram os mensageiros que D. João II mandou em busca do Preste João" (Who were the messengers that King João II sent in search of Preste João?) (nos. 11, 14 and 17, 1946).

In the Lisbon Municipality Magazine, he published "A Tomada de Lisboa" (The Storming of Lisbon) and "A Sinagoga de Alfama" (The Alfama Synagogue) (no. 55, 1952 and no. 56, 1953). The book "Cristãos Novos em Portugal no século XX" (New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century) greatly impacted the Jewish community worldwide. It was translated into English, Italian and Hebrew. The same book was published almost 100 years later in French under the title "La Découverte des Marranes".

In this book, Samuel Schwarz writes about the New Christians of Belmonte and tells how difficult it was to win the trust of a community that had lived underground since the beginning of the Inquisition. She says she discovered that it was the women who safeguarded the traditions.

"Then we learnt that it was mainly the women, especially the older ones, who knew all the Jewish prayers by heart and said them, presiding over religious meetings and ceremonies. The poor creatures had never heard of the Hebrew language, nor did they know it existed."

Another work published posthumously deserves to be mentioned. It is a compilation of prayers recited by the Jewish community that Samuel had collected during his wanderings in the region.

The book entitled "Orações Criptojudaicas" (Crypto-Jewish Prayers) was published in 2019 with the support of the Belmonte Jewish Museum.

As the travelling exhibition “The Portuguese Jewish Diaspora” arrives in Tomar and the Jewish heritage will be visible in the future Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa, Samuel Schwarz's lifelong contribution to this cause is fully realised.

by João Schwarz, grandson of Samuel Schwarz.

Edict of Expulsion

This video brings together information on the Edict of Expulsion of Jews and Moors from Portugal and how it affected the lives of thousands of people forced to leave the country.

The Samuel Schwarz Library

The Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of the Universidade Nova is home to a representative part of the precious library that Samuel Schwarz gathered throughout his life.

Interview with João Schwarz

Samuel Schwarz was a key figure in Portuguese Judaism in the 20th century. In this interview, his grandson João Schwarz talks about his grandfather's work and the collection he donated to the Tikvá Museu Judaico.

EVENTS 

Edict of Expulsion of Jews and Moors, by King Manuel I
5 Dec. 2023

"We determine and command that all Jews and Moors who are free in Our Kingdom be expelled from it, under penalty of natural death and the loss of their estates....".

The Edict of Expulsion of Jews and Moors was signed by King Manuel I in Muge, near Santarém, on 5 December 1496. Interested in marrying Isabel, the eldest daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, King Manuel gave in to their blackmail: marriage, yes, but only in exchange for the expulsion of all Jews from Portugal. The Edict of Expulsion was the coup de grâce for Iberian Judaism, which had flourished on the Peninsula for over a thousand years, and the culmination of the journey begun in Spain by the Catholic Monarchs with the Expulsion Decree of 1492. Unlike the Catholic Monarchs, King Manuel didn't let the Jews leave Portugal. His decision was different: to keep them in the kingdom and their property, not as Jews, but as Christians. This happened a few months later through forced baptism.

EVENTS    

Inauguration of the Belmonte Synagogue
5 Dec. 2023

The Belmonte Synagogue was inaugurated on 5 December 1996, 500 years after the publication of the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews, promulgated by King Manuel I on the same day in 1496. Oriented towards Jerusalem, it is named Beit Eliahu (Elijah's House) in honour of the Jewish benefactor who ordered its construction in Rua da Fonte Rosa.

EVENTS 

500th anniversary of the Edict of Expulsion held in the Portuguese Parliament
6 Dec. 2023

On 6 December 1996, the Portuguese Parliament held a solemn session to commemorate the 5th Centenary of the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews, published on 5 December 1496. During this ceremony, presided over by the President of the Republic, Dr Jorge Sampaio, the President of the Portuguese Parliament, António de Almeida Santos, and the President of the Parliament of the State of Israel, Dan Tichon, the Edict of Expulsion was symbolically revoked unanimously.

The transcript of the ceremony can be found here.

PRIZES   

2nd edition of the Yvette Davidoff Memoshoá Research Prize
"Resistance in the Holocaust"
2023-24

The Memoshoá Yvette Davidoff Research Prize, worth 5,000 euros, is sponsored by the Israelite Community of Lisbon (CIL) and commemorates the Austrian refugee Yvette Davidoff (1921-2008) as a way of honouring this key figure who, in the 1940s, played a leading role in Lisbon's reception of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism.

Yvette Davidoff worked in the Refugee Assistance section of the Lisbon Israeli Community from 1943 to 1957, collaborating with similar institutions such as JOINT, HICEM, the Portuguese Red Cross and others. She worked closely with Aristides de Sousa Mendes because of the Jewish community's support after he was dismissed as Portuguese consul in Bordeaux due to Salazar's punishment.

The Yvette Davidoff Memoshoah Research Prize runs from 9 November 2023 to 9 November 2024, commemorating the pogrom known as "Kristallnacht".

Entries can be submitted until 31 December 2023 here. The winner will be announced on 27 January 2025. For more information, plesse contact memoshoa.premio2023@gmail.com or memoshoa@gmail.com.

BOOKS  

Os Cristãos-Novos em Portugal no Século XX (2011)
by Samuel Schwarz. Editora Cotovia.

The 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed the publication of numerous works on the Inquisition and the New Christians in Portugal. Many of these studies re-evaluated the contributions of notable Jewish figures with Portuguese roots (Garcia de Orta, Espinosa, Uriel da Costa, among others). Pombal's reforms were at the root of this progress: the "Carta de Lei, Constituição geral e Édito Perpétuo" (Letter of Law, General Constitution and Perpetual Edict), which considered "the unheard of distinction between new-Christians and old-Christians" to be extinct, dates from May 1773; shortly afterwards, autos-de-fé and death sentences were banned.

DOCUMENTARIES  

Os"Portugal, trampolim para a liberdade" (2023)
by Ary Diesendruck.

This film describes the passage of Jews through Portugal during the Second World War, showing a country that lived under a dictatorship but was not anti-Semitic. It also portrays the Port of Lisbon in 1940, as well as the actions of the Jewish Community during this period and the assistance given to refugees.

The production of this documentary film was supported exclusively by CIL - Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa. It will be distributed free of charge, excluding subtitling in a specific language, and copies will be sent to institutions and museums dedicated to the Holocaust.

Travelling exhibition "The Portuguese Jewish Diaspora"

The Hagadá Association has joined the Paris-based publisher Chandeigne in the Portuguese version of the exhibition "The Portuguese Jewish Diaspora".

If you are interested in receiving this travelling exhibition, please contact us by e-mail: tikva@mjlisboa.com.

Write to us: tikva@mjlisboa.com

FICHA TÉCNICA
Editorial coordination: Esther Mucznik 
Contents and editing: Ângela Ferraz, Esther Mucznik, Jean-Jacques Salomon, Manuel Morais Sarmento Pizarro and Maria João Nunes
Graphics: Joana Cavadas

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