Portugal - Trancoso and Guarda

We are writing this near the end of our visit to Portugal and we are back in Porto.  

We have come full circle, leaving Porto just over a week ago, travelling east to three mountain villages, Trancoso, Guarda and Belmonte; moving south west to Obidos; further south to Cascais; and then to Lisbon, where we met up with Irving and Ruchama Alter; and then joining with the JRoots tour from the UK to retrace our route through Castelo Da Vide, Belmonte and Trancoso; and finally returning to Porto this evening. 

Because we have actually visited a couple of the places twice, instead of the daily diary blog that we normally post, this time we will present a summary of the places we visited and the people we met since we departed from Porto just over a week ago. 

This has been a very interesting trip and has served to hammer home the strength, vitality and commitment of the Jewish people to its roots and to tradition, despite facing the greatest adversity imaginable.

We will start with a quote from Rabbi Elisha Salas, the Rav of the Belmonte Jewish community, one of the most unique places we have ever visited. If you want to watch the entire interview, and it is well worth it, imho, here is the link on our blog:

http://travelkosherwithus.blogspot.ca/2017/03/portugal-links-to-video-interview-with.html

Here is a picture of us with Joao Jochanan Diogo, President of the Belmonte Jewish Community and Rav Elisha Salas, their spiritual leader. 

When he spoke with us a few nights ago, he said (and I will paraphrase) "in a few weeks we will mark Yetziat Mitzraim (the Exodus from Egypt). We are taught by our sages that the reason that Jewish life was kept alive during the 210 years that Jews were in Egypt was because of three factors; they did not change their Hebrew names, their Hebrew language or their particular mode of dress; ie; they did not assimilate, and therefore Moses was able to lead them out of slavery to accept the Torah at Mount Sinai". 

"Here in Belmonte (a remote village high in the hills near the Spanish border), it was not 210 years but 600 years! They did not keep their Jewish names, they certainly did not speak Hebrew or Ladino, and they dressed the same as the Portuguese". And then Rabbi Salas flashed that warm smile of his and added "and I am certainly not Moshe Rabbeinu". 

And yet after six centuries, this tiny village, against all odds, in the darkness of their cellars, in total  secrecy, were able to continue to observe their Judaism with great courage; while externally, and constantly in fear of being discovered by the Church, they acted religiously like their Christian countrymen. Today, they are back in full view observing their Judaism openly; there is a minyan every Shabbat, a functioning mikvah, observance of Kashrut, youngsters going off to Yeshiva in Israel and returning to serve as the community's baalei kriah (reading the Torah) and local men walking through the village proudly wearing their kippot. 

It is a miracle and a testament to the eternity of Torah and our sacred traditions. Absolutely amazing. 

We began our trek a week ago early Sunday morning, driving almost due east from coastal Porto toward the Spanish border. And all the while you sensed that you were climbing in altitude as the highway snaked its way up into the hills. Our first stop was to be the tiny walled village of Trancoso where we met our first guide of the day, Bruno Fonseca. Bruno was recommended by the Regional Tourism Office in Belmonte and would be with us for the morning tours in Trancoso and Guarda. We would spend one hour walking thru each town and then drive on to Belmonte where we would meet our second guide, Elizabeta, a representative of Belmonte's Jewish Museum for a two hour walk thru the village.

Bruno led us thru the medieval wall of Trancoso and we were walking on an ancient cobblestone street. 

We walked to the town square down the shopping street and unlike some of the walled towns in Italy or Greece that we had visited, where the stores looked modern with attractive displays despite the ambiance of being housed in an ancient building, there was not a souvenir store in sight and the displays and product offerings in the store windows looked stuck in time from a period that we remember 40 or 50 years ago. 

No current advertising or signage, clothing that looked very dated, and it was eerily quiet, perhaps because it was Sunday morning and everything was closed. We passed the occasional villager on their way to church, and we were among the few tourists who were visiting that sunny morning. 

Bruno explained that Trancoso before the Inquisition had about 500 Jews which likely composed 25% of the population of the village. The Jewish presence in Trancoso dates prior to the 14th century, with Jews likely living there in the late 1200s. In 1363, King Pedro I designated the concept of the "judiaria", the Jewish quarter; but in Trancoso, the Jews were initially not in a Jewish Quarter, but owned houses on many streets in the town.  They worked as shoe makers, merchants, weavers, money lenders and tailors. 

In the 15th century, Trancoso Jews asked King João II for permission to enlarge the synagogue, which was granted in 1481. Enlargement was needed because of the population growth, making Trancoso the largest Jewish centre in the interior of the country.


We walked thru the town, past the large vertical concrete pillory in front of the church, to which people convicted of a crime were strapped and then beaten with lashes as punishment. We could not avoid seeing one of these instruments of brutality in the centre of each of the towns we visited and we could not understand why they left these "historical reminders" intact! 

Bruno pointed out markings on door posts indicating that here was the home of a "new Christian", "Converso" or "Crypto Jew". Rather than a simple cross, it was stylized to look like a upside down shin (as in the shin on a mezuza) or a circle. We heard different versions; one was that the conversos etched these in their doorposts to let the community know that they were now identifying themselves as Christians; the other was that local Christians or the Church etched these in the doorposts so that their neighbours could keep an eye on them and any sort of secret Jewish ritual that the residents might be observing. 

He then explained to us that because Jews were the merchants in the towns back then, you could recognize a Jewish home by the presence of a small door beside a double door. The small door led to the living quarters upstairs and the double doors opened wide in the morning as the place of business for the Jewish merchant.

Bruno showed us the Casa Do Gato Preto, the House of the Black Cat. Above the door was a relief of a lion, symbol of the Lion of Judah, indicating that someone Jewish and important (perhaps the Rabbi) lived in this large home. 

The community was now capitalizing on its new found success as a Jewish tourist spot and had supported the building of the Isaac Cardozo museum and synagogue in memory of Isaac Cardozo, a Jewish doctor who lived in Trancoso in the 17th Century. 

It is very strange, because the museum is just about empty. A striking modern building set amongst 500 year old stone houses, and within the structure there is a room entitled Bait Haknesset Mayim Chaim (the Living Waters Synagogue). The shul is modern and has a modern stylized Aron Hakodesh, within which resides a kosher Sefer Torah. We were told that they are in the process of collecting and cataloguing items for the museum and my guess is that an occasional tourist group uses the synagogue for tefillah should they happen to pass by the shul at mincha time. Eventually the centre will catalog the archives of the 700 Jews who were born in Trancoso and who were persecuted by the Inquisition. But it is still strange and we are trying to understand what it is doing in a town with no active Jews or Jewish Community.

We walked to the castle, which resembles the type of castle that seems to be present in every town we visited, and climbed the stairs to the top to see the 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. 

And it was quite strange standing atop the walls of an ancient castle and looking into the distance to see very modern windmills in the distance that are now dotting the Portuguese countryside in the nation's quest to preserve and harness electrical energy. 

On our way out of town, we passed a house in the town square whose owner, while doing renovations, discovered a window covered by a wall. Realizing that this was a Jewish home originally, he uncovered the window and now there is a beautiful stained glass menorah in the town square.

All in all, nice little town stuck in time, but unless something happens to improve the value of the Cardoso Centre, we would feel little reason to urge people to visit Trancoso. 

On to Guarda, another ancient Jewish town on the recommended list of hilltop towns worth visiting. Well, this one was even less interesting than Trancoso. Nice place, good mountain views, the ever present pillory but almost nothing preserved of its rich Jewish history. This sign, indicating the Jewish quarter, is one of thee few indications of a Jewish presence in Guarda 600 years ago.

We said good bye to Bruno and drove a half hour to the town of Belmonte. After a week and a half in Portugal, we can now say that while there were many memorable moments and encounters, our two visits to Belmonte made the entire trip worthwhile, that is, from a Jewish historical point of view.

Next post will feature Belmonte.

All the best

Fran and David