Portugal - Belmonte - Worth coming just for this!

After leaving our guide Bruno in the small town of Guarda, we were off to Belmonte.

Belmonte is a magical tourist destination for the Jewish traveler.

We had arranged a guided tour of Belmonte thru the local Jewish Museum and they assigned Elizabeta to be our guide. Not Jewish but certainly educated in Judaism and its traditions, she was an excellent guide.

A word about guides. We had Gonçalo in Porto, Bruno in Trancoso and Guarda, Elizabeta in Belmonte, and Paolo in Lisbon; I will list their contact info at the end of this posting. All four were excellent and all four spoke perfect English. Elizabeta was only 40 Euros, presumably because she was assigned by the Jewish Museum. The others were 4 to 5 times that amount, which I guess is the going rate. None watched the clock and all were willing to spend as much time as we wanted. Of the four, Paolo has a Jewish father and a mother who, if we understood him correctly, was a Crypto Jew and all were well informed of the history of Portugal and especially its Jewish history.

Our meeting point in Belmonte was just below the castle walls at the top of the hill. 

It was a very small village and there were few tourists around. The tourist season begins around April and ends in October. It was chancy visiting the hilltop towns in February because it could still be very cold and snowy at this altitude, but today was a beautiful sunny day with quite warm temperature. 

It was clear that we were in a more Jewish town, as the signs pointed to the Jewish Museum, the Synagogue and the Jewish Quarter.

The history of Belmonte, a town of about 7,500 less than 30 miles from the Spanish frontier, is legend. A foundation stone dated 1297 was discovered of a synagogue showing that this is a Jewish community with a long history. 

It was ‘discovered’ in 1917 by Samuel Schwartz a Polish Galician mining engineer, who visited Belmonte. He met local residents and told them that he was Jewish and they said that this was quite impossible, as they believed that they were the last Jews on earth. Cut off from the rest of the world with no Google or internet, they had been living as secret Jews in this remote hilltop and would not accept that Samuel Schwartz was Jewish, until he recited the first sentence of Shma Yisrael and when we said the Hebrew name of God, they began to believe that perhaps he was Jewish. 

They had maintained their Jewish identity for over four hundred years by marrying mainly among themselves and adhering to the belief in a single God who would redeem his people at the end of days. 

They practiced some Jewish observances, the Sabbath and some holidays. They often lit candles on Friday night where they could not be seen from the outside and observed Passover and Yom Kippur a day or two before or after the Jewish calendar date to confuse agents of the Inquisition. The women were the carriers of the tradition and as a result, records indicated that more women were burned at the stake than men, because they were the ones caught transmitting religion to the next generation. 

In the past 15 years, the Israeli organization Shavei Yisrael has been assisting the community to become a fully integrated observant kehillah and arranged for Rabbi Elisha Salas to become their Rabbi. 

And because some could show that the lineage on their mothers' side had been uninterrupted since 1497, they were allowed a lenient conversion, which required circumcision and ritual immersion in a mikvah as well as adherence to basic mitzvoth of Shabbat, kashrut and taharat hamishpacha. 

Others were required to undergo a stricter conversion since they were considered Christians during the many generations since the Inquisition. 

Shavei Israel was founded in 2002 by Michael Freund. The following information was culled from the Shavei Yisrael website. 

While serving as the Deputy Communications Director under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1997, Freund opened an envelope that arrived in the mail one day. That simple action was to profoundly change his life as well as that of many others.

The letter was from a group in northeastern India called the Bnei Menashe. They said they were descendants of the tribe of Menashe, one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and were pleading to return to the Promised Land. Their letter sent Freund on a mission to learn all he could about the Lost Tribes of Israel. In the process, he discovered that all across the world there are “lost Jews” dreaming of returning to their Jewish roots.

Shaved Yisrael believes that the Jewish People is a family with links that never vanish completely; they endeavor to strengthen the links wherever they may have been weakened by history, distance, or social parameters.

From northeastern India to southern Spain, from the coast of Portugal to the shores of Brazil, countless numbers of people are trying to make sense of their Jewish ancestry, wrestling with profound questions of history, identity and self. Many are literally knocking on Jewry's collective door, looking for a way to enter.

This presents the Jewish people with a tremendous opportunity to reinforce its ranks and reinvigorate its spirit by extending a courteous hand to all those who wish to return. 

Shavei Israel is the only Jewish organization today that is actively reaching out to “lost Jews” in an effort to facilitate their return. They approach each case on a human level, lending guidance and understanding in tracing Jewish roots, exploring Jewish history and evaluating options for returning to the Jewish people.

Shavei Israel supports, guides, and provides assistance for these personal journeys however varied they may be. Shavei Israel opens the door to all who have decided that Judaism and a return to the Jewish people are central to their fate and their identity. 
Shavei Israel does not proselytize nor does it support any form of missionary activity. 
Shavei Israel responds to personal expressions of desire to return to Judaism.
Shaved Yisrael is a team of academics, educators, and rabbinical figures and has the support of different rabbinical authorities in Israel and the United States of America. Their work is in complete accordance with Jewish Law and under the ongoing supervision of the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel.

Shavei Israel sponsors rabbis and teachers to work with various groups of “lost Jews” in places as far afield as India and the Iberian peninsula. Shavei Israel rabbis are currently posted in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Russia, Italy, Colombia, El Salvador, Chile and Poland.

For those seeking to undergo formal conversion to Judaism, Shavei Israel offers various educational options in Israel, including Machon Miriam, the only Spanish-language conversion and return institute in Jerusalem. Dozens of Spanish and Portuguese crypto-Jews graduate from Machon Miriam each year, and proceed to undergo formal conversion by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.

We walked with Elizabeta to the synagogue and met Joao "Jochanan" Diogo, the president of the shul. The synagogue was built in the late 1990’s, commemorating the 500^th anniversary of the publication of the Royal Decree of Expulsion of the Jews from Portugal. Representatives of the Jewish community of Belmonte, its municipality, and the Governments of Portugal and the State of Israel participated in the ceremony. 

It is a beautiful building consisting of a large Beit Knesset with four or five sifrei Torah, a social hall and kitchen, and a beautiful Mikvah. Jochanan speaks little English and Elizabeta translated. He told us that there is a minyan every Shabbat and Yom Tov and that about 20 to 30 attend services. They have adopted the sefarad liturgy and the kriat hatorah is done by either their Rabbi Elisha Salas or by one of the youngsters in the community who have spent time studying Torah in a yeshiva in Israel. 

The Ner Tamid (Eternal Light) over the Aron Hakodesh (Holy Ark) is a large scale replica of the type of container that would hold their Shabbat candles; effectively hiding them and allowing a small opening in the container where oxygen would allow the flame to burn in honour of Shabbat. 

The modern mikvah is now used by a number of local women.

We asked him many questions about the centuries of secret observance, some minhagim and the concept of marrying within your own family to ensure the sanctity of the Jewish lineage. It was fascinating and became even more interesting when we returned with the JRoots group the following Monday night and Tuesday morning. 

There was a plaque hanging in the shul lobby and it is worth translating the plaque to realize the uniqueness of this community.

"In this place the chain was never broken. Here in the village of Belmonte, in this house and the nearby houses, in the heart of the Jewish Quarter, people have been living full and richly Jewish lives from days of old. On the heels of governmental decrees, the residents of this Jewish village, like other Jews throughout Spain and Portugal, had to deny their religion, while quietly observing Judaism in their homes.

Here the candle was not extinguished. 

Here in the houses of the village, they kept the Jewish commandments in secret, for a period of 500 years from 1492 till 1992, while they passed on the traditions from generation to generation. They secretly observed Shabbat in their hearts, while appearing to observe religious Sunday openly in the eyes of their Christian neighbours. Forced to live double lives...always careful never to confuse the Jewish and Christian observances, for fear of falling into the hands of the Inquisition. They would bless the wine and the challah, mumbling words of Tefillah in darkness, guarding their Judaism within their soul. 

Here, the Jewish soul was not lost. Here the Jewish soul remains strong forever.

And from the past, will arise the future.

From the darkness and terrible times to the light of the new synagogue and centre of spirituality."

The menorah outside the shul

After our tour of the shul with Jochanan, we walked with our guide thru the small town and stopped outside the Jewish Museum, which is currently under renovation. In the courtyard of the Museum stands a huge menorah that is lit Chanukah time with the participation of the entire town, both Christians and Jews. It is significant and somewhat ironic that these Jews whose observances were hidden for so long, participate openly in a menorah lighting ceremony that personifies the mitzvah of "pirsumei nissah", open proclamation of the miracles of Chanukah.

Our guide then arranged for a local shop owner to open her store so that we could buy locally produced Sheep Cheese under the supervision of Rabbi Salas and Porto Rabbi Litvak. And a short walk down the street brought us to the temporary location of the Jewish Museum, right on the Main Street of town, next to the monument in honour of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Belmonte native who went on to discover and colonize Brazil in 1500 for the government of Portugal.  

Before leaving town, we drove over to the new hotel in town, Hotel Sinai, which has Sinai in large Hebrew letters on the side of the building and which has a large mezuzah on the doorpost. This was the hotel in which we would stay when we returned the following week with the JRoots group. We asked the receptionist if the hotel was kosher to which she replied that most of the ingredients are kosher, but if one wishes to have a strictly kosher meal, the hotel requires 24 hours notice to allow them to contact Rabbi Salas and make arrangements for a mashgiach to be on site. 

We left late in the afternoon for the three hour drive to our self catering apartment for the next two nights, in the coastal walled city of Obidos.

More to come with our posting of Obidos and Cascais. 

All the best

Fran and David