“The Jews played a role of the highest importance in the administration of the country and, with their scientific, cultural, commercial, economic capacity and mastery of many languages, they contributed to Portugal’s diplomatic relations, and obviously to the voyages and discoveries around the world that transformed a small county into an Empire.”

The Jewish Museum of Porto, Portugal, welcomed a thousand teenagers from schools in the North, Center and South of the country, on the anniversary of the Edict of Expulsion of 1496 that banned Judaism in Portugal

During the visit, the students were able to learn about the long history of Jews in Portugal and commemorate the dark day.  They learned that Jews were present in the territory long before the founding of the Kingdom of Portugal in the Twelfth Century and were linked to its founding and development.

Gabriel Senderowicz, the president of the Jewish community of Porto, told the students:”The Jews played a role of the highest importance in the administration of the country and, with their scientific, cultural, commercial, economic capacity and mastery of many languages, they contributed to Portugal’s diplomatic relations, and obviously to the voyages and discoveries around the world that transformed a small county into an Empire.”

In addition, the director of the museum, Michael Rothwell, explained that the Edict of Expulsion did not just have a negative impact on the Jews, but also on Portugal itself.

“The Edict caused the Jews to begin to leave the kingdom and to enrich other competing powers. A chain of events even led to the loss of Portugal’s independence in 1580, as seen from a rare object exhibited in the museum, the ‘Megillat Purim Sebastiano’,” explained Rothwell.

“It demonstrates how the Moroccan Jewish community feared being converted to Christianity by Dom Sebastião and, with the help of two Portuguese New Christians (forcibly converted Jews), provided decisive information for the Muslim armies to prepare for the clash. This resulted in the crushing defeat of the Portuguese nobility, the death of the king and, two years later, the loss of independence of the country, which passed into the hands of Spain.”

Among the objects that stand out the most in the Jewish Museum of Porto are Jewish objects of great value, paintings on the foundation and development of Portugal, the epigraph of a fourteenth-century synagogue, a memorial in honor of the last Gaon of Castile, Isaac Aboab, who died in Porto and whose funeral was presided over by the rabbi and astronomer Abraham Zacuto, a prison cart of the Inquisition, a book by Friar de Torrejoncillo who assured that the Jews had a tail, and a mural with about 900 names of Porto residents victimized by the inquisition.

The young students also visited the museum’s cinema, where the community’s acclaimed films “The Light of Judah”, “The Lisbon Genocide” and “1618” were shown. They portray the immediate effects of King Manuel’s Edict on the Portuguese Jewish community, the massacre of thousands of Jews in Lisbon and the activities of the Inquisition in the city of Porto.

Speaking to the teenagers about the last film, the museologist Hugo Vaz pointed out that: “The municipal and judicial authorities of the city of Porto opposed such Inquisitorial persecution, and even ordered the siege of the ecclesiastical court by guards on horseback. This case, unprecedented in Portugal in the seventeenth century, led an onlooker Sebastião de Noronha to travel to Madrid to complain to King Dom Filipe”.

The Jewish Museum of Porto was inaugurated in 2019. However, for security reasons, it is only open to schools and the Jewish community, except for the European Day of Jewish Culture, which falls on the first Sunday of September each year. On that day, it is open to the public, together with the Holocaust Museum and the Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue.