Lisbon, 1941: The Messiah, the Invalid and the Fish (original) (raw)
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AJS Review, 2016
Although scholars have written extensively about Moses Hayim Luzzatto and his literary oeuvre, there has been virtually no work on his stay in Amsterdam (1735–43). The controversy over his supposed Sabbatianism, which engulfed much of the European rabbinate and led to his self-imposed exile from Padua, did not rage overtly in the Dutch Republic, and historians have generally regarded these years as nothing more than a quiet period for Luzzatto and of little con- sequence to him personally. Using previously unpublished archival material, this article demonstrates that Luzzatto was highly regarded in Amsterdam’s generally insular Portuguese community. He received charity and a regular stipend to study in the Ets Haim Yeshiva, forged relationships with both rabbinic and lay leaders, and arguably influenced the community’s religious outlook. However, a comparison of the manuscript and print versions of Mesillat yesharim, his famous Musar treatise com- posed and published in the city, reveals the limitations under which Luzzatto lived. Research into Luzzatto’s time in Amsterdam reveals the man’s enduring self-assurance and relentless critique of his critics, as well as the Portuguese rabbinate’s broadening horizons.
Modern Judaism, 2013
The book by Heilman and Friedman seeks to examine the sequences of Messianic events by analyzing the background of the leader in a kind of "biography of circumstances." It addresses the following questions: (1) how long will the religious group remain on its mission without arriving at redemption? (2) are followers satisfied with what seems to be an endless wait? and (3) what was the figure and person of the Rebbe, and how did he manage to spur such an emergence of Messianic activity?
SOAS Centre for Jewish Studies Evening Lectures Series, 4th February, London, UK, 2015
My presentation will draw on the oral history of the Portuguese Jewish Community in XXI century using family histories and life stories of three generations in Portugal, particularly from the Jewish Community of Lisbon. The images that you are seeing here are from the synagogue of Lisbon, called “Shaaré Tikva” or ‘Gates of Hope’, from the beginning of the XX century, that has a symbolic meaning in the history of the Portuguese Jewish Community, in a country that is mainly Catholic by religion. This synagogue is a reflex of the social and historical relationship that was developed over centuries: the synagogue is in one of the main streets of the capital city, but at the time it could not be visible from the street because it was not Catholic. Today I will present the outcome of an anthropological, sociological and historical study over three generations of Portuguese Jews, especially focused on the history of the Sephardim and Ashkenazim in and out of Portugal from the XV century until the present day. I used an ethnographic methodology, doing an extensive ethnographic fieldwork for two years, that allowed me to do an oral reconstruction of their life stories and family memories until modern times, debating issues such as nation, belonging, religion and the meaning of being a Portuguese Jew nowadays. The reconstruction of their history is done taking in account the national and transnational narratives of Europe, Middle-East, Africa and America. It is my intention to contribute for an understanding of the national identity in Portugal and within Europe in a time when questions such as the right of belonging or living is becoming an important part of the public and private discourses. (The PowerPoint presentation is added by my lecture/text)
While recent research portrays Portuguese ruler Salazar and the Foreign Ministry as maintaining an anti-Jewish immigration and rescue policy during the Holocaust, a closer examination portrays a more mixed picture of rejection, accommodation, and rescue meriting analysis, explanation, and expounding. Milgram found archival evidence from the Portuguese Foreign Ministry of many negative position papers on Jewish migration or transit via Portuguese territory, and visa issues impinging on individual and group rescue. Regarding the Salonikan Sephardic Portuguese sub-jects, the Portuguese government and diplomatic corps rejected rescuing Sephardim in Salonika and Athens since they claimed that most of the Spanish nationals receiv-ing Spanish protection were bogus since they received protection due to bribery or improvised patronage, and that Portuguese citizenship was attained similarly. Portu-gal did not give protection or citizenship to Dutch Portuguese Sephardim in the Holocaust since the latter had extremely faint or non-existing ties to Portugal and Portuguese culture. During the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, Portugal gave citizenship to dozens of Salonikan Jews, but in 1943 under Nazi German occupation of Salonika and Greece, these Portuguese Jews were denied protection by the Portuguese government, and their citizenship was not recognized anymore, and they were deported to Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Bergen Belsen. In Athens on April 2, 1944, 19 Portuguese Jews, together with 155 Jewish Spanish nationals were deported to Bergen Belsen, and not freed by the Portuguese government in the aftermath. These Portu-guese either died or were liberated after they were evacuated by the Nazis and put on German trains until liberated by the Allies. There were an estimated 1,000 Portu-guese Jewish citizens in France and Greece, and Portugal saved several hundred French Portuguese Jews, but betrayed its Jewish citizens in Greece. While previously it was considered that Portuguese consul Sousa Mendes in Bordeaux gave out 30,000 visas to Portugal to refugees, was put on trial and fired since he acted without au-thorization, in reality less than a third were Jews, and he did continue to receive a monthly salary from the Portuguese Foreign Ministry until his death in 1954. Most of the refugees were assisted by the Jewish refugee organization COMASSIS until 68 JUDEUS E CRISTÃOS NOVOS NO MUNDO LUSÓFONO 1841, and between the fall of France in May/June 1940 and the end of 1942, 10,500 Jews sailed from Lisbon to the Americas. After an initial rejection by the police, the personality and Ambassador Veiga Simoes in Berlin also assisted in the latter effort as well in other efforts to rescue German Jews, grant visas without prior authoriza-tion by the Portuguese police, and bring them to Portugal, and was investigated, scrutinized by Salazar, and discharged from his position in late July 1940 until rein-stated as representative to China in 1946. In 1944, Portugal issued some 1,000 visas for Hungarian Jews. The diplomats Carlos Sampaio Garrido and Carlos de Liz--Teixera Branquinho, risked their lives to help many Jews escape deportations car-ried out by the Nazis and their Hungarian allies.
Contemporary Jewry , 2020
This paper examines the complex Jewish reality in Portugal in the first half of the twentieth century. Alongside the old Sephardic community that emerged in Portugal with the dissolution of the Inquisition, the early twentieth century witnessed the emergence of two new differentiated groups: crypto-Jews, who began to return to Judaism, and Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. These two groups changed the physiognomy of the Portuguese Jewish community to a pluralistic religious, ethnic, and cultural compound never seen before in Iberian lands. Later on, the increasing Nazi persecutions and the outbreak of World War brought to Portugal thousands of Jewish refugees who tried to emigrate to countries overseas. The historical and social complexity examined in this article lasted a few years. Before the end of the Second World War, the refugees had emigrated from the country, the return of the Marranos to Judaism had lost its vitality, and the Jewish community continued its course in the Sephardic setting prior to the convulsions of the prewar years. By focusing on the unique characteristics of Jewish life in Portugal in the first half of the twentieth century and on the diversity that each group presented in social, cultural, economic, and political terms, this study sheds light on a topic that has not yet received the attention it deserves in the historiography of Iberian Jews.