JEWISH
EAST END OF LONDON PHOTO GALLERY & COMMENTARY
London's East End Synagogues, cemeteries and more......
My personal journey through the Jewish East End of London
A Jewish
moment in Portugal – October 2007
Sometimes
truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes truth can send a chill
through your body. Travelling through Portugal recently, I took a
coach trip to a remote mountain village called Castelo Rodrigo. My
guide, a young lady by the name of Monica Figueiredo, told me that in
this tiny hamlet of cobbled streets and mule tracks Jews, Christians
and Arabs had once lived in harmony.
(double click on photos
to enlarge)
She spoke of
its
Rua
Sinagoga, its ancient mikvah (converted now into a water
storage cistern), its rabbi’s house and the house of the ‘Conversos’ –
new Christians – Jews forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism by
threat of the inquisition. I walked round this tiny place for an hour
or more, and while I found most of the sites, I could not find the
rabbi’s house – supposedly identifiable by a Star of David engraved
into an outside wall. I went back to the guide intending to ask her
where the rabbi’s house was, but first I asked if there were Maranos
(secret Jews) still living in the village. She looked strangely at me
and then asked if I had any Jewish connections. In return I asked her
if she knew what Maranos were. Her reply stunned me. She told me she
was of Marano descent. I wanted to ask her so many questions, but in
the fleeting moments available I could only ask a few. She told me
her family lit candles on Friday night and at Christmas lit a
Chanukiah. She didn’t know what Chanukah was, and didn’t know why she
lit candles on Friday night. All she knew was that she was of Jewish
descent and that the ritual candle sticks had been in her family for
hundreds of years. She came from a Marano village where descendants of
secret
Jews
had married only within their own community for the 500 years since the
inquisition had crossed the border from Spain into Portugal. She told
me that when her ancestors were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism
they were given new names, names which humiliated their bearers. And
so her mother’s maiden name was Barata, Portuguese for cockroach. She
described the curious houses her family lived in, houses without
windows facing the street. I suggested this was so that Friday night
candles could be lit and other rituals performed without hostile
passers by seeing what was going on. All too soon my encounter with a
lost member of Kehillas Israel (the Community of Israel) was over, but
the sadness I felt at hearing her story will remain with me forever.
Philip Walker
