Recollections of a First Trip among the Marranos of Portugal

One day in the summer of 1984 as I was reading the newsletter of the Jewish telegraphic agency, my eyes stopped on a few lines that said, “There are still Jews in Portugal - in Pinhel, Guarda, Beira, Villa Nova de Fox Coa, and Belmonte.” As I read those lines, I felt a strong internal urging that refused to leave me alone and even gave me insomnia. Although I felt that I absolutely had to go there, I soon lost my job, and my car died.

I was still living in France then and went weekly to the house of Mr. Leijb Feldman for Bible study, prayer, and sharing about spiritual questions. When I told him about my burden, he listened to me, got up from his chair, went to his room, came back, gave me the documents and keys to his car with a bit of money, and told me “Go!”

They Journey Begins

As I left his place, I ran into a brother in the faith in the street. We exchanged a few words, and I told him about my plan to go to Portugal. He told me, “Come and see me before you leave.” Two days later, I went to his home where we prayed together, and he gave me 70 Bibles in Portuguese and some money for the trip.

The next day at dawn I began my journey, making a stop in the Pyrenees Mountains, arriving at 3 AM in Guarda the following day. During the morning as I was looking for a room to rent, I saw a sign entitled “amidad [friendship] Portugal-Israel.” I immediately tried to contact the organizer of this meeting, who turned out to be the journalist José Domingos.

I visited the Judéria of Guarda and the municipal library, where I discovered a few documents on local Jewish history and on the Marranos. José introduced me to his grandparents in a small mountain village, where I discovered that the Marranos keep a wine carafe that they only use on Friday night, but on this occasion, they took it out of the cupboard and offered the customary Friday night toast: “To Jerusalem!”

I met the mayor of Vila de Meda, and on the way to the town hall, I noticed that many houses had crosses chiseled in the granite of their doorposts. I later learned that this was a distinctive sign used to designate the homes of “New Christians,” in other words, Marranos.

These signs were used as much by the Inquisitors to identify and watch them, as by the Marranos themselves to recognize each other. Later during my travels in the provinces of Beira and Trás-os-Montes in Portugal, but also in Spain in the provinces of Léon and Estramadura, I found this distinctive sign on many houses.

I came to Vila Nova de Fox Coa, where a teacher by the name of Pissaro showed a particular interest in local Jewish history and claimed himself to be Jewish. I learned that I was in a region commonly called “Pais dos Judéos” – the country of Jews. I was shown the ancient synagogue of the small town, and I asked unsuccessfully how they knew its identity.

When I asked them if they were of Jewish descent, the inhabitants seemed embarrassed. They looked at one another uncertainly, mumbling “No sé... No sé...” – “we don’t know,” and being frankly disturbed by the insistent question, they changed the subject.

I drove towards Beira, a small medieval city surrounded by ramparts. In order to enter the city, I had to leave the car and walk up a small rocky path to cross through the city gate. I went into the main street and walked into a kind of inn where I decided to eat.

The city seemed almost deserted, and the innkeeper told me that many inhabitants had emigrated. When I asked him if there were any Jews in the city, he immediately answered “yes.” When I asked him if it was possible to meet some of them, he lowered his head. I repeated the question, but he remained deaf.

As soon as I crossed the doorstep to exit, a man on a terrace greeted me, and seeing that I spoke French, invited me to share a glass of Porto with him and to chat a little bit because he had worked in France. Suddenly I saw the innkeeper below us, leaning near his door, straight against the wall with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on me with an expression full of anxiety.

I then understood that I had to avoid asking that fateful question concerning the Jews. I understood how heavily the original “Jewish stain” weighed on these poor people, a stain from which they could not free themselves, like the atavism of a defect or a sort of shameful illness, the disgrace of belonging to a people who, like Cain, carries inexorably an indelible mark of belonging to the people who “killed God” in popular Christian imagination. In my later travels, I often saw this feeling of shame that had been inculcated for centuries.

A Touching Encounter

I arrived at Trancoso, where I met with the younger brother of the recently elected young mayor, Mr. Lévi Sarmento, and I noted that the city was also heavily marked by a tragic past of Judeo-Marrano history.

In Belmonte, while I was buying bread, I asked the baker if there were any Jews in the area. With a movement of his chin, he pointed to a child in front of the shelves and said, “his father.” I followed the child and greeted his father, telling him that I had something to share with him.

When I asked him if he was Jewish, he jumped sideways in fright and looked at me from head to toe as if taken aback. I tried to reassure him that I came from France, that he had nothing to fear, and that I had a message to share with him.

As he regained his composure, he showed me his house and told me to meet him there in the evening at 5 PM. At the appointed time I arrived at his home. Discreetly seated in front of the hearth of the large chimney was a frail old woman completely dressed in black, and further away from the large central table sat the child, another woman, and a pre-adolescent girl.

They invited me to sit at the table, upon which I placed two Bibles, one in French and one in Portuguese. To my surprise, no one knew how to read except the young girl. I gave her a letter of introduction which she read aloud while standing.

When the grandmother mumbled something, the mother went out discreetly and came back almost immediately with three women. They whispered together, and one of them went out and came back. Eight men then entered, then more, and in no time the room was full. They were attentive and silent in great respect as I told the young girl to read some texts in various prophetic books.

She read with great care, and the listeners were seized with emotion. Quoting Isaiah 49, I told them that the time had come when God would end their disgrace, and that the Lord would open their graves and bring them back to life. I saw tears streaming down some of their faces.

As soon as I had finished speaking, young and old alike threw themselves at the Bible to kiss it; many even tried to kiss my hands. I was overwhelmed with emotion, too. Each one wanted a Bible, and when I told them that I had a few with me, a compact flock followed me to the car. As soon as I had opened the trunk, the 70 Portuguese Bibles disappeared. Some, frustrated not to have received one, gave me pieces of paper upon which they had written their names and addresses so that I could send them copies of the Bible when I got home.

Later, with a few elders, I was able to address some of their deeper questions pertaining to faith. They told me about some of their customs and prayers, but also about the feelings of suspicion if not hostility that they experienced from the “Old Christians.” They questioned me about my faith and about my affirmation that Yeshua is the Messiah of the Scriptures, after which some noted that this is not accepted by all Jews.

Visibly this is a disturbing question because they feel and know that they are Jews. Manifestly they seem to have integrated faith in Yeshua, like the Catholics around them, but they reject what they perceive as idolatry in the Church. Although they submit to the life of the Church, before crossing its doorstep, they often pronounce the following words: “O my Lord Adonai, do not consider anything that I will say or do in this place.”

As soon as the freshly baptized newborn is brought back from the church, he is immediately washed off from his baptism. Before engaged couples go to the church to proceed with the marriage ceremony, the elders pronounce the ritual blessings over them at home. When a “Judéo” kneels next to an “Old Christian” and makes the sign of the cross, he does not say “in the name of the Father” but “no to stone” (the pronunciation is almost the same in Portuguese), and the same for the following words: “in the name of the Son” becomes “no to wood,” “and the Holy Spirit” becomes “no to plaster.”

These Marranos led me into the cemetery, to the tombs of close relatives. Nothing distinguished their tombs from the others, except that they were not adorned with images. These Marranos also did not have crosses in their homes.

One family invited me to a meal for which the woman of the house had set the table in a room on the upper floor. Someone drew my attention to an image on the wall in a golden frame, which contained the portrait of a man with his head covered with a veil, who had a majestic beard and a peaceful face resting on two tablets of stone, which he held tightly in his right hand; in his other hand he held a staff.

With pride and a sparkle in their eyes, they said, “Mosès! Mosès!” I then understood that we were in a privileged place, a kind of upper room in the intimate universe of these Marranos, far from the outside world, yet so close. By the grace of God, they had preserved the torch of Israel’s hope despite centuries of oppression and threats. Around the table, and for the length of the meal, conversation centered around Israel and biblical prophecies in an attentive and respectful atmosphere.

As I crossed arid Spain on my return from this first trip, the strong images that I had just experienced completely overwhelmed me. I had discovered the previously unsuspected field that had unveiled before me, and these facts would be confirmed upon my subsequent trips in these regions, which still were isolated at that time in the provinces of Trás-os-Montes and Beira, and later in the Alentéjo.

I became aware of the enormous Messianic potential that hides under the ashes among these survivors of the Inquisition, whose hope is as the burning bush by Mount Horeb, which although burning, was not consumed. God has not finished confounding the nations!