The Hidden Jews of Belmonte

I was bored in the hotel in Guarda, so here's what I came up with:

About four kilometers on a rural road in rural eastern Portugal, there lies an unassuming little town of about 2,500 people. It is so rural and so unassuming, in fact, that it had been able to hide a secret for the better part of 450 years.

The town is called Belmonte, and the secret was a group of about a hundred Jews, living and practicing their Judaism even under penalty of death as dictated by the Inquisition. From 1492 to 1821, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Jews were burned at the stake in both Spain and Portugal, and as a result, Jews in those lands either moved out (though seldom had the means), converted to Christianity, or were killed. There was, however, a minority that chose neither of those three. These Jews became known as Marranos or crypto-Jews; Jews who officially converted but who still practiced secretly in their homes.

As the generations passed, many Marranos either lost their traditions altogether or were discovered and killed. Those most successful at hiding their religion often lived in places difficult for the government's forces to reach, and this is where Belmonte comes in. The Jews there had been small-time merchants and shopkeepers, hardly worth noticing in the context of the larger community, and more importantly, they were living tucked away in the mountains at a time where “tucked away in the mountains” meant days if not weeks by horse, not a few hours in the car.

And so, for the better part of five hundred years, the hundred or so Marrano Jews of Belmonte lived in their isolation, lighting Shabbat candles and hiding them under jars, baking matzah for Passover under old roof tiles, and carrying around “pocket mezuzahs” because putting one on a door frame would have meant instant death. They married each other, and when the family trees began growing ever inward, they worked out complex charts and carefully arranged marriages as far away genealogically as possible. As the time passed, they became convinced that since they heard no news of other Jews, and knew nothing about the world outside their region, that they must be the last Jews on Earth.

In 1917, an Ashkenazi captain in the Portuguese army “discovered” the Marrano community. So great was their surprise at not only meeting a Jew, but one that openly identified himself as such, that the Marrano Jews of Belmonte refused to speak to him. Surely it must be a trick. The King of Portugal must have learned of their existence and sent this spy to draw them out of hiding and kill the last remaining Jews. But it wasn't a trick, and light was finally shed on those Shabbat candles for the first time in centuries.

For that captain, it must have been quite a feeling. Imagine driving through New York and bumping into a group of people who still feared King George and the British army. It was the equivalent of finding a Chinese village that still builds walls to keep out the Mongols. These hidden Jews had been taught fear and secrecy from such a young age that they knew nothing else, and indeed, many still do not. Despite the construction of a brand-new synagogue, a museum, and the availability of “authentic, Sephardic kosher wine” for sale from the region, there are still community elders in Belmonte who will refuse to speak with an outsider about their Judaism. I wasn't by any means the first researcher to visit their village (indeed, not even the first one that day, I would come to learn), but I was still regarded with mild curiosity by the Marranos I met. It was as if they couldn't believe that they lived in an age where a kid from New York could read an article, jump in a car, and greet them with a “Shalom” like it was the most normal thing on earth.

I arrived in Belmonte on a rainy Tuesday morning, and within three minutes of leaving the world of my climate-controlled, iPod-connected Citroen coupe, I was standing at the doorstep of the brand-new synagogue. “My, how things have changed,” I thought to myself as I walked through the doorway and admired their ornate, hand-crafted silver mezuzah gleaming in the doorframe.

I heard voices in the chapel, so I carefully and overly timidly tiptoed into the room. I've learned from my visits to other communities that being excessively respectful makes those around you try to loosen you up by being as informal and friendly as possible, so I played that card here as I approached the group of five men standing in the middle. One of the five, a round and serious-looking man, walked up to me and began asking me questions in Portuguese, and though I plainly told him that I was an “estudiante do Judios do Novo York,” neither he nor the men I heard speaking English not five feet away would speak to me in English for some time. Instead, I was relegated to standing on the outside of the strange little circle that had formed, where a huge, pushy man with a notebook was asking questions to another in Hebrew, who then translated them into English to a slim, young guy would then translate them for the two old men who would nod appropriately and give their answer. The whole process would be reversed, and before the Hebrew-to-English-to-Hebrew translator had said a tenth of the Portuguese response, the man with the notebook would cut him off and ask another question.

As I would eventually find out, the impatient Hebrew-speaker was Israel Friedman, editor of Yated Neman, an Orthodox Jewish newspaper from Israel. Friedman's first “translator” was his friend and colleague, Joseph Walis, and the English-to-Portuguese man was Pedro Moura, a guide they had hired from Porto. The two elderly men they were speaking to were Josef Mendes Henriques and Ibiliu Moreau Lenix, vice-president and president of the Belmonte congregation respectively.

Over the course of the next three hours, they showed us their candellas (Shabbat candlestick disguises), their synagogue, and cemetery. They told our little press junket about how the Jewish community in Belmonte had consistently maintained good relationships with priest after priest over the course of their centuries of hiding, and how fake weddings in churches would be arranged and real ceremonies performed in whispers in cellars. From time to time, Israel Friedman would prod the men and ask them something about a man called “Tio Julio,” (Uncle Julio) of whom I had never heard. Eventually, it was explained to me that he was the brother of Vice-President Josef, and also the son-in-law of the oldest woman in town (with such a slender family tree, this sort of thing apparently happens a lot). Since tradition in this community was handed down maternally, the eldest woman would know a great deal.

It was quickly approaching lunchtime, that magical two hours when no one in Portugal or Spain can ever be asked to undertake anything, and it looked like we would have to leave without meeting Tio Julio. After the cemetery, however, Josef agreed to take us, and we all piled into the Toyota that the Israelis had rented and drove the few minutes across town. Tio Julio lives in a small flat in the newer portion of town, and we saw as we entered that he had little Jewish trinkets—a little menorah here, a Star of David keychain there—sprinkled around his front room. In the back, his mother-in-law and wife sat, but we were told that it was traditional for men not to greet the women, and so we didn't.

Tio Julio and his wife didn't have much to discuss, and the much-touted mother-in-law spoke not at all, but they did agree after much prodding from Israel Friedman to sing for us. The song they sang was a typical Shabbat tune, and since I speak no Portuguese, I can only imagine what it meant, but I did recognize the name “Maria” over and over again. Had these Marrano Jews finally weakened at the end of their years of hiding and agreed to believe in Jesus and Mary? Were these actually Christians with Jewish trinkets? I got my answer before I could even ask my question, as Pedro (Portuguese-to-English) explained to us that “Maria” was substituted for “Miriam” so that they could sing the praises of their Biblical heroes and remain undetected. It had fooled me as it had fooled Portuguese would-be murderers for hundreds of years.

After such an amazing tale of survival, perseverence, and tradition, my meeting with the Marrano Jews ended on somewhat of a sour note. Tio Julio told me and my Israeli counterparts that they no longer bake their matzah under roof shingles but instead buy it from an importer in France. Their children and grandchildren don't know these modified songs because they can learn the “real” ones in the synagogue, and even then sometimes they choose not to. For generations, the Jews of Belmonte had clung to any vestige of Judaism that they could, thinking that the survival of Judaism in the world rested on their shoulders. They lit candles they couldn't see, baked special bread to celebrate freedom over bondage though they still clearly lived in the latter, and made innumerable modifications to maintain a religion they had been expressly prohibited from observing. Now that they can walk the streets with kippot, humming whatever tunes they wish, some of the new generations are simply choosing against it. If the Jews here spent hundreds of years being denied the right to Jewish books, and then within fifty years of getting those books chose not to read them, are they any better off? If they have a synagogue that a new generation doesn't bother going to, is that better or worse than having to rush through a whispered wedding ceremony in a basement?

Driving out of Belmonte on the slick cobblestone streets, I found myself struggling with these questions and realizing that I was making many of the same choices. How many books sit unread in my home synagogue's local library? How many of them have I probably never even heard of? How many religious edicts do I break every day just to be a normal, secular guy in 21^st Century America. And yet I visit this community and talk about what a shame it is that they're not observing their Judaism like their elders once did. The Jews of Belmonte aren't abandoning their religion; they're simply catching up with the rest of the world, and if they continue to call themselves Jewish out loud and eat matzah—no matter where it comes from—then they are paying homage to the generations who didn't have those rights.

To see the the state of Portuguese Jewry in 1526, one probably wouldn't have thought it would have survived until today. I won't be so foolish as to make a similar prediction.