Schwab: So pork was was very widely eaten. But there was this special dish that many of them would prepare which is some sort of sausage that looks like pork but was not made from pork.
We have so many versions of this now…..like the fake bacon, imitation crab sushi.
Yael: Crypto sausage.
Schwab: From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Jonathan Schwab.
Yael: And I’m Yael Steiner and I am so excited to have the opportunity this week for the first time in season five to just sit back, listen and learn. Schwab is going to be teaching me something. Can you give us a heads up as to what we’re gonna be diving into?
Schwab: Yeah, I’m very excited about this topic. I’ve been spending the last couple of weeks reading about it, reading everything I can, which there’s not a huge amount of. And those are always my favorites, the ones that are somewhat obscure. We’re going to talk about a gentleman by the name of Samuel Schwarz. not the one you know, if that’s what you’re going to say.
Yael: Is he, he’s not my sister’s friend’s little brother.
Schwab: No, not the guy I went to camp with, not Sammy Schwarz. I, yeah, I thought that so many times like that. We all know someone named Samuel Schwarz.
Yael: Got it.
Schwab: But the Samuel Schwarz, we’re going to talk about, we’re going to talk about his discovery of a crypto Jewish community in Portugal. And that might be a term you’re familiar with.
Yael: It is a term that I’m familiar with. I think we may have discussed it previously, maybe in our episode about the Spanish Golden Age. But just to clarify for anyone who maybe hasn’t heard of it, it has nothing to do with crypto currency.
Schwab: Right. This is well before crypto currency. Samuel Schwarz, his discovery of them dates to 1925, their existence as a community, although they didn’t go by the name crypto Jews is from a lot earlier than that. So, yes, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin, although there is weirdly a mining connection.
Yael: Or Ethereum.
Schwab: He’s because Samuel Schwarz as as I keep thinking about him and my notes for this episode the title that I that I gave them is Sammy Sammy Schwarz the original crypto bro.
But yeah, so he discovers this crypto Jewish community and to explain what that is, I think we need to go back in history and then we’ll come back to Samuel Schwarz and the discovery and what’s happened since then and what it has to do with the present day.
Yael: So my understanding, and I’m sure you’re gonna get to this, is that crypto Jews emanated from the Sephardic community and a Sephardic tradition. Samuel Schwarz sounds like a proto Ashkenazi person. So he’s not one of, okay, he’s not one of, he’s very Ashkenazi. Okay, great.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Very, very Ashkenaz. Yes. He’s from the most Ashkenaz place there is.
Yael: The lower east side.
Schwab: So yes, exactly, we’re thinking the same. Well, he’s, all right, well, let’s do the whole history and then we’ll get to him, because he’s interesting too. Yeah, so yeah. So what I thought you were going to say is like, what are crypto Jews and where do they come from?
Yael: We’ll get there. Okay, awesome. I’m jumping ahead. I’m just so excited to learn from you.
Schwab: There are a bunch of different, what are crypto Jews? So to explain who they are, we need to talk about my least favorite couple of all time. I was talking to my wife the other day and with no context, I just started saying, you know, I think we all know couples who bring out the best each other. And then there are some couples who just bring out the worst in each other. you know who I’m thinking of who just like these two people. They got together and they just were awful and they made each other awful and they made the lives of so many people awful. Yeah.
Yael: My God, can I guess? Ferdinand and Isabella. my God!
Schwab: Yes. It is Ferdinand and Isabella. So she thought I was talking about someone we know. And then she was like, are you talking about, like Ferdinand and Isabella or something? And I’m like, I am talking about, it was her second guess, Ferdinand and Isabella. So yeah.
Yael: Haha. And she guessed? Amazing, amazing. I’m really curious who the couple she thought you were talking about was, but we can talk about that later.
Schwab: So Ferdinand and Isabella, the worst couple of all time, right. They, they get married very young they were, they got married when in their teens, they’re like 16 and 17 when they get married and they unite two different, uh, royal areas, you know, from their families and create a united Spain. And this isn’t even our main topic. I’m just, I’m so fascinated by them.
Uh, they. And then they hate Jews and they’re like, we made a united Spain, so we need to do all sorts of things, including absolutely we need to get rid of our Jews. So in 1492, they declare that all Jews need to convert to Catholicism or leave the country under penalty of death.
Yael: I don’t know if this is something that came up in your research, were they themselves very religiously devout? Okay.
Schwab: Yeah, it seems like they were pretty bought into this. They really felt religiously this was important. And also it’s in the context of the Reconquista , right like bringing Spain back from its from country like bringing it under Catholic control means they also they also hated Muslims. I know like so I guess.
Yael: So before this, the Muslims had taken control in Spain.
Schwab: This is all intro. So I don’t want to get too far into it, but yes, we, the golden age of Spain was when Spain was under Muslim control. Jews have to convert or leave the country. They’re given four months to do so. Some of them convert a lot, leave a hundred thousand Jews leave Spain in 1492 in the very short amount of time that they’re given. and a very
Yael: Got it. Okay, super.
Schwab: a large number of those go to neighboring Portugal, which takes them in. Then, turns out, a little bit later, people started questioning whether everybody converted, you know, really intending to be Catholic. And then they started persecuting those people through something called the Inquisition, which you’ve probably heard of. Yes.
Yael: Yes, so that was subsequent. The Inquisition is a result of the Expulsion. Okay.
Schwab: Yes. And that’s the famous Inquisition is the Spanish Inquisition. But what we’re going to talk about today is the lesser known Portuguese Inquisition.
Yael: No one expects the Portuguese Inquisition.
Schwab: So the Jews certainly didn’t. So the Jews are, at first, welcomed in to Portugal under Portuguese leadership at the time, which did not mirror Ferdinand and Isabella’s leadership.
Yael: Was it a Catholic country?
Schwab: It was a Catholic country, and the kings of Portugal were related to and allied with Ferdinand and Isabella, but did not hold hold their beliefs as strongly at first. The Prince of Portugal and the heir presumptive, the person who’s going to be the next king, is a young man by the name of Prince Afonso. And he’s supportive also of bringing the Jews in. He is engaged to Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, confusingly also named Isabel, not their eldest daughter, who you may also know, because she was famous in her own right for a different reason.
Yael: Was she one of the wives?
Schwab: She’s the, yes, she’s the first wife of Henry, just cause this is all side note, but I just want to talk about Fernand and Isabella cause I really have this , like, fascination and distaste is too light of a word for them. But like they were so awful.
Yael: I can’t say that I think about them a lot, but when I think about them, yes, they leave a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
Schwab: I think about them all the time. Mm hmm. So in addition to being horrible people, I’m pretty sure they were horrible parents because their children like their eldest daughter, Catherine, who’s married off to Henry, was so awful that the King of England had to invent an entire new religion just to get rid of her. So right. Like, Yeah.
Yael: Wow, I didn’t even think about that. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I never really studied European history, mostly because I was scared of the fact that everybody had the same name. Like I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to keep the Henrys and the Catharines and the Edwards separate in my mind.
Schwab: It is, yeah. They have a younger daughter, Isabel, who is engaged to the Prince of Portugal, who’s going to be the next king. He who was, Afonso, who is accepting of the Jews. Afonso tragically dies in a riding accident in 14, yeah.
Yael: Sorry.
Schwab: Sad for him, very sad for… Yes. So when he dies, Isabel, who loved him, decides that this must have been punishment for the fact that he was accepting of Jews.
Yael: why wouldn’t it be the Jews’ fault?
Schwab: And she blames herself also for this. She hides away. She maybe starved herself also for some time. First cousin, Manuel, is going to become the king of Portugal. And for whatever reason, Manuel gets the idea in his head that who he wants to marry is Isabel, his cousin’s wife, and the person who was going to be queen of Portugal. wants to marry And she says, I will only marry you on the condition that you do what my parents did and get rid of the Jews in Portugal.
Yael: I thought dating today was brutal, but that sounds pretty aggressive.
Schwab: Yes, and he agrees to it. So he becomes king in 1495. At her insistence, issues the decree in 1496 that the Jews of Portugal need to convert or leave. He gave them 10 months. The Ferdinand and Isabella had only given the Jews four months to do it. He gave them 10 months, a little more time. And she was really serious about this, like, once the decree was made, only then could they get married.
Yael: And then you said 100,000 Jews left Spain in 1492 and the vast majority of them went to Portugal. So there are already people who had been displaced and are now being displaced again.
Schwab: Well, they’re not displaced, as we’ll see, but about, our estimate is about 100,000 Jews are in Portugal. And Manuel, like Afonso, didn’t really want the Jews to leave. I think it was, you know, not for the right reasons, but we’ll take any reason, I guess.
they were, you know, they were essential. They did jobs like you don’t want 100,000 people to just leave your country. They’re contributing positively in some way. So he decides really, I know I said convert or leave. I really mean just convert because I don’t want you to leave. So that’s why he gave them a little bit more time and really said like just convert.
Yael: Hmm, where have I heard this conversation before? OK, continue, sorry.
Schwab: To the point also where once they started getting close to the deadline, when Jews would show up in the ports to sail off to other places he would have people there in the ports, who instead of letting them on the boats, would baptize them in the water and send them back home.
Yael: So fewer people left Portugal than left Spain because
Schwab: Yeah, fewer people left Portugal, but they now have this very large number of new Christians as they’re called or in Portuguese, Christos Novos, I think is that term. Christians under duress, we’ve sometimes described them as Jews with Christian passports, right? Like nominally I am Christian. I’ve undergone this conversion, but I’m going to continue being who I
Yael: Got it. Christians on paper.
Schwab: Yeah, Christians on paper right and Manuel is fine with that. His successor is not and his successor who is john or i think in portuguese is jow invites in the inquisition to to start looking into this and saying hey this really isn’t okay. If you’re baptized as a Catholic and you are supposed to be a Catholic, you cannot secretly or not so secretly be practicing another religion.
Yael: Shades of Edgardo Mortara. If you guys haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend it.
Schwab: Yes, yes. That’s a great one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I feel like it’s a recurring theme for a reason of Jews who, for whatever reason, under duress are compelled to. It is their lives will be easier if they claim to or appear to be the religion that is the dominant religion of their home country. But in practice, they may not actually do that and the tensions or confrontations that eventually come up. So the Portuguese Inquisition starts really looking into this. And as a result, a lot of these Jews, new crypto Jews, new Christians become even more secretive about their practices.
Yael: Got it.
Schwab: And this actually in some, not as much in the main urban areas, but in some of the rural areas leads to centuries of very secretly keeping one religion while pretending to be an adherent of the other religion. And that’s what Samuel Schwarz ends up discovering 400 years later in 1925.
Yael: Wow. Did he stumble upon this? Like, was their cover blown or was he looking for them?
Schwab: So now let’s talk about Samuel Schwarz. That’s all the intro. We know this was happening in the 1500s. Then what in 1925, when Samuel Schwarz shows up, like what brought him there? What did he find? Before we get to that, the one other point I want to say is the language we’ve been referring to them as crypto Jews. There are a couple of terms people use.
For a very long time, the term that was used was Maranos.
Yael: That’s the term that I was taught in school.
Schwab: Right, that like we were taught growing up. It is an offensive term. It comes from a Spanish or Portuguese word, I think, for pig. There’s a long history of Jews being associated with pigs. We did a really good episode last season. Yeah. It is an offensive term. Samuel Schwarz, who writes about them,
Yael: I just listened to it yesterday.
Schwab: makes this attempt to say maybe, what Murano where the term comes from is from a Hebrew word, mare’ayan, of like the danger of appearing. It’s a valiant attempt. It’s not like a feasible argument at all. He’s trying to make this term okay, but it’s not.
Yael: Right.
Schwab: So there is a really great Hebrew term that should be the term that we use, is bnei anusim, which is like the children who were forced. So crypto Jew is like the best of several bad options. Conversos, or conversos, which is a Spanish word for converts. The title of his book is, he refers to them as New Christians, like discovering the New Christians
Yael: Okay. Got it.
Schwab: So like I said, Crypto Jew is the least bad, I guess, of several bad options. And like we were joking about at the beginning, it’s now even worse because crypto is like now means something else.
Yael: got it. Right, Like 15, 20 years ago, it probably was a really interesting way to refer to them. Yeah.
Schwab: It was in vogue, yeah, in academic circles, yeah.
Yael: And now it just brings to mind a guy in a Patagonia vest and you know, other.
Schwab: another Jewish Sam. So Samuel Schwarz, let’s talk about him. He is a Polish Jew, like many people at a time from a religious family. He’s not as religious necessarily as his parents. He gets an education and specifically what he focuses on.
Yael: Sure.
Schwab: Not history, he’s not a historian, is mining engineering. He is a mining expert, not mining cryptocurrency, mining specifically, I think, of tin or tungsten, a precious metal. And he is dispatched to Portugal to set up to work for a company that’s going to mine there, several years prior to this, just to illustrate his religious standing and his family’s religious standing, and it’s a story, I don’t know, that maybe some of our listeners can identify with. He goes off to Paris, and he comes back and his mom asks him, how was your trip?
And like a good religious Jewish mother, she says, and did you pray every day? And he says, yes, of course, mother, I prayed every single day. And she was suspicious about this. So she asks him to open the bag that he stores his tefillin in his phylacteries that he would use for everyday prayer. And he opens the bag and there at the top of the bag was a golden coin that she had put in the bag as a test to see, like, did he open this bag a single time?
Yael: Good Jewish mother. Or any mother.
Schwab: And he’s incredibly embarrassed. You get a sense of where he is religiously. He comes to Portugal for this mining and a Christian merchant who he’s working with, who does not know that he’s Jewish because Samuel Schwarz, I’m guessing, did not present or look very particularly Jewish. So somebody he’s working with sort of gives him this knowing look about a competitor and says, you don’t wanna trust that other guy though. You see, he’s a Jew.
Samuel Schwarz is thinking, we’re in rural Portugal, we’re in the mountains here, what do you mean this guy’s a Jew? What are you talking about? This guy’s a Jew. He’s not a Jew. I know what Jews look like, this guy’s not a Jew. So he starts talking to this guy and is like, are you Jewish? I’m Jewish, here’s the local synagogue. The guy’s very wary of saying anything to him at all, but eventually confides in him a little bit. First also doesn’t believe Samuel. Samuel Schwarz is like, I’m a Jew. And this other guy is saying like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not what Jews look like. I know what Jews are. You’re not a Jew. Finally, this guy says, okay, if you’re really a Jew, which I do not believe at all, then come meet other people from my community and prove to us you’re Jewish. And they say to him like, if you’re a Jew, tell us.
Yael: Right.
Schwab: Tell us some Jewish prayers. And Samuel Schwarz You know, maybe he is not putting on his tefillin every day, but he knows Jewish prayers. And they’re just like, we’re completely unfamiliar with everything you’re saying. We don’t believe you that these are Jewish prayers. You’re not proving anything to us. We don’t even know what language you’re speaking in.
Yael: You know what this is. This is Shibboleth.
Schwab: It is. so what’s the, so they bring him to the head of their community. This woman, interestingly, the Sasser Dautista, who’s kind of like the religious leader and also the person who leads the community when they have this in prayer. And, and she says to him, tell me, tell me a prayer, right?
Yael: Wow.
Schwab: If somebody said to you, is the most basic, well-known prayer that you can say to prove that you are Jewish? What would it be?
Yael: Schma. Schma? Okay. Congrats, parents. You got your money’s worth.
Schwab: Yes. Yes. So, and I’ll, and I’ll, and I’ll read out. This is a translation of his work, but I’ll read out this paragraph just because he writes it so beautifully.
It was a delightful summer afternoon, gently caressed by a soft mountain breeze. In the background, the Sarah da Estrella stood tall in all its grandeur, bathed in the last golden rays of the setting sun, glowing with such dazzling radiance that it evoked the biblical image of Mount Sinai as Moses received the law from God. It occurred to me in that sacred moment to recite the sublime prayer of Shema Yisrael, the foundation of Jewish faith, a prayer that had surely echoed within the dreadful dungeons of the Inquisition, whispered by martyr Jews as they surrendered their noble souls to the flames of the Autodefé.
As I pronounced the name of God, he writes it out, I’m saying it like that. I noticed something remarkable. The women instinctively covered their eyes with their hands. And when I finished, the elderly woman, the one who had asked me to pray, turned with authority to those around her and declared, he is truly a Jew, for he pronounced the name of God. I’m just reading it. I got chills again. And it’s so interesting because.
Yael: Wow.
Schwab: He said, like, Shema Yisrael is something that, in his mind, every Jew knows. But for this community, the Sacerdotista was like, this is the most secret, arcane prayer. He must be a Jew if he somehow knows this thing, which is the most hidden esoteric knowledge that there is, and knows how to pronounce the name of God in Hebrew.
Yael: Because for them, that was something that had to be kept very close to the vest because. It was a dead giveaway. Wow.
Schwab: Yes, so there are so many things that were kept. Yeah, so he then earns their trust and he learns more about their community and writes a book about it. And so like discovering the crypto Jews of Portugal, he writes a book about what is going on and everything he discovered. They were wary, but he convinces them like.
Yael: Were they okay with that? Were they okay with being discovered?
Schwab: It’s okay. It’s 1925. It’s okay to be a Jew. Yeah, right. but he and they are convinced by the fact that like, look, he’s living openly like he, you know, he openly is Jewish. He’s not hiding this. And some of the things that he says he does, they have trouble believing because to them, Judaism is something that you only keep in secret. Like the idea of assembling in a synagogue, the idea of Zionism, which was emergent at the time. Like so many of these things were fascinating and almost unbelievable to them.
Yael: What’s truly amazing, and maybe you’ll get to this, is that for 400 years, they were able to maintain this. It did, I’m sure certain elements of it got diluted, but the fundamental precept of it is maintained down to the hands covering the eyes during Shma.
Schwab: Ah, yes. Okay, so everything you said, yes, exactly. First of all, just truly astounding that this was maintained in secret. And that’s where I think it’s really interesting to think about Samuel Schwarz, his parents couldn’t get him to put on his tefillin, you know? And meanwhile, this community was maintaining things under such serious threat in secrecy for hundreds of years.
Yael: Right.
Schwab: only through an oral tradition because they could not keep any texts. That’s a giveaway. That’s so they had no Hebrew texts, no books. Everything was just transmitted from one generation to the next. And like that is really, really incredible and impressive. And some things did change. You use the word diluted. I think evolved is probably the right term because
Yael: Right.
Schwab: things change, right? They’re especially isolated. So things evolve. So he describes them in great detail. And he’s very fascinated by these practices that evolve, or what practices are left by the ways, are no longer able to be maintained, what practices are maintained, what things change. So I want to focus on some of those just because they’re so interesting to think about.
Yael: Right. Adapt, evolved is a much better word. All right, let’s do it.
Schwab: Yes, you’re right. Like the Shema covering the eyes, that’s something that clearly was maintained in some way. Candle lighting on Friday nights is something that they did. Like they kept their there were very clear ways that they kept Shabbat. But a big part of it was candle lighting Friday night.
A big theme in general is that it seems a lot of the religion was kept and maintained and sort of moved forward by the women, the women really were the important religious role models. If you don’t have a synagogue and authority structures, then you realize how much of things being passed down by mothers or things being present in the home is really, really important. So the women really were the religious leaders in this community. So lighting candles Friday night, but lighting candles Friday night, they would only count if you lit them inside a clay pot. that, that wasn’t something you do because that’s, you you want to keep it secret. That became part of the ritual itself. If you just lit candles, you know, like out on a tray or near the window or something like that, that’s not Shabbat candles. Shabbat candles must be lit inside a clay pot, which started, presumably, to keep it secret in some way, but became part of the actual ritual.
Yael: Fascinating. Yeah. I think I heard once maybe that these communities, even when they were not scared as much of persecution, like they only pray underground. Like they all had basements and they pray underground.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Mm So, whoa. Yes. So he is shown into some of these secret basement compartments in people’s homes, because again, you can’t have a synagogue like this. The synagogues were all closed and destroyed and you can’t find a way of doing it. So all prayers were primarily in the homes and in a secret room in the homes like there. And he again, he is in 1925.
Not all of these houses were hundreds of years old. So he’s just so fascinated that somebody built a house, you know, in the 20th century with a way, with a secret compartment under a kitchen cabinet that led to a secret basement where you would go down to and pray on Shabbat.
Yael: So he met this particular community somewhere in rural Portugal in
Schwab: In a place called Belmont or Belmonte.
Yael: But in his research when he wrote this book, did he look for other communities like this or is his book only about this one community?
Schwab: So his book is primarily about this one community. There are a couple of others that each also maybe are because they’re the communities aren’t connected. Like evolution really is a good term because it really is the way we think about evolution happening like a species becoming isolated on an island and then sort of adapting to that and not mixing with you know with other with other animals or other living things and sort of changing over time.
Yael: Right.
Schwab: So yeah, he’s really focusing on this one community in particular, but there are others scattered throughout Portugal.
Yael: How big is this community?
Schwab: Not huge, but it’s not a handful of people. It sounds like it’s the majority of this town, but it’s not a huge town.
Yael: Right. Got it. It’s several, it’s several families. Wow.
Schwab: But yeah, it’s very hard to get an accurate number on the population because of the nature of like, what are they going to do, a survey? Please check here if you’re secretly Jewish.
Yael: Mm-hmm. Are these people who are secretly observing Jewish rituals in the 20th century, are they outwardly also performing Christian rituals? Are these people going to church or are these people like lapsed Catholics?
Schwab: Yes, so some and some, but there’s another book also which is written by a local Portuguese teacher there’s some skepticism and criticism of and I see why having read it. some basic things are not correct about it in his understanding of Judaism. His book is much more recent, it’s from the 90s.
Yael: Mm-hmm.
Schwab: but basically there are people who are outwardly, like who are praying in their basements on Saturdays and going to church on Sundays. Or when they’re getting married and they’re getting married to somebody else from the same community, because that’s who their parents will arrange or push them to. And they will get married in a Jewish ritual under the supervision of a religious leader. They’ll get married Jewishly and then they will go get married in a church. Yeah.
Yael: got it. So interesting. Wow. So.
Schwab: And then as, you know, as Portugal rapidly becomes more secular in the 20th century, a lot of the Christian habits fall away. But yeah, there are for some of them, it really is practicing both in.
Yael: Mm-hmm. But when the Christian habits fall away, do the Jewish habits also fall away? Or is the Jewish behavior so much more entrenched because it was something that had to be kept secret?
Schwab: Yeah, so jumping ahead sort of to the end, what happens with all of these crypto Jews once their world is sort of opened up? And they go in different directions. Some of them just assimilate entirely, becoming less religiously observant of all religion. Many of them do emigrate to Israel. very, like I think this is
Yael: Wow.
Schwab: really interesting to think about undergoing an orthodox conversion to be fully accepted as Jews. I get the argument for making sure that that’s the case. But like, of all people to say you have to convert like, haven’t they done enough?
Yael: I’m assuming that that’s also a practical choice because the rabbinate, which is governmental in Israel, probably requires it. But I agree with you, 100%.
Schwab: So that’s right. So I’m just like, I want to be very clear that I’m not drawing a comparison, but the idea of requiring a conversion of like, there might be some.
Yael: yeah. Wow. I didn’t even think I didn’t even think about that.
Schwab: There might be some feelings about that for some of these people. Yes. I want to get back to talking about some of the practices because they’re really interesting. But should they integrate into a into a larger normative?
Yael: Some historical trauma, perhaps, that you’re dredging up.
Schwab: I’m doing scare quotes, you know, here, like normative Jewish practices, or is this something that we should respect as its own branch or form of Judaism? Like what one of the big questions here is like, at what point is something authentic tradition? If they have been doing it for hundreds of years, you know, and again, we should be. Yeah, and we and we should be more than anything, incredibly impressed with the dedication, you know, so like.
Yael: Right. Yeah, what makes them different than any other far-flung Jewish community? Yeah. Wow.
Schwab: Who is anybody to say, you should stop doing this practice. But we should talk about some of these practices because some of them you might get the feeling of like, yeah, that is pretty far from.
Yael: I’m curious, okay, me the lowdown.
Schwab: There are a lot of things that are just, that are very hard to do. You can’t build a Sukkah outside your home. You are going, right. But there are a lot of things that, you know, can be observed, prohibitions that can, that can be observed because it’s much easier to secretly not do something.
Yael: Right, of course not.
Schwab: So fast days are very, very important to them. Keeping Shabbat, refraining from work on Shabbat is very important to them. And that’s something they’re able to maintain. Praying in secret, refraining from certain types of foods. So fast days they keep, but at a certain point, the Inquisition knows to look for that. And the Inquisition, I guess, was knowledgeable enough about the Hebrew calendar that they know when Yom Kippur is. And they know to look, hey, these people seem to not be eating. That’s it.
They would keep Yom Kippur, but on a different day. Like they would, they knew what day Yom Kippur was. They would eat on that day. And then they would fast, I think the following day or two days later or something, which I guess no one ever caught on to that, you know, it’s smart, also I’m just like, but that’s, that’s like, so you were eating though on Yom Kippur, like you’re observing it on a different day.
Yael: That’s so interesting. That is so smart. Right.
Schwab: Like knowingly to some extent. Similarly, on Pesach they had a whole, they would observe Passover, and they would have their own ritual about baking matzah, and they would get together and do it in secret, and they had a secret way of doing it, but they wouldn’t bake the matzah before Passover, again, because I guess people were looking for it. So they would only bake the matzah on the third day of Passover. But like, the practice is to eat matzo on the first, like you’re supposed to eat it on the first day and they wouldn’t make it until the third day.
Yael: The way that these things evolve is fascinating. And the community now, well, you’re saying some of them have undergone an orthodox conversion, but how do they maintain these customs?
Schwab: Mm-hmm. Right, that’s most of these customs have not been maintained, which to me is sort of sad in a way of like, the fact that this is a tradition that carried these people through hundreds of years at some point, like that maybe authentic isn’t the right term, but at what point is a tradition that was carried on for so long so valuable and important that we should practice it in some way in honor of those people, like in honor of the history?
Yael: And this goes to a much larger question about halachic authority and who gets to be the decisor of that. But the same way that, again, normatively in the larger Jewish community today, we accept that there are Ashkenazi decisors of Jewish law and Sephardi decisors of Jewish law and the mainstream Orthodox, mainstream,
Schwab: And there are differences and we accept that, right?
Yael: We accept it and we respect it.
Schwab: Right. So that that was a question at some point. Like, is this its own legitimate branch? Yeah. I think part of it is a power in numbers. Like it just wasn’t a large enough group that that was, you know, can you can make that argument. And also, again, the fact that that some of their practices were
Yael: Right. And so these people, why don’t they have exact–
Schwab: Openly on the surface Christian like undermines the idea that this is, you know, it like a as powerful or legitimate form of Jewish orthodoxy or like, I don’t know, like rigorous halakhic practice, let’s say. They also would not usually circumcise their sons. I feel like that’s a pretty big one. Again.
Yael: But it’s so admirable.
Schwab: Because that’s a really obvious giveaway. Samuel Schwarz’s book there are parts of it that are cringy to read because he is obsessed with emphasizing how they how these people look Jewish like they he’s like, they have clearly Semitic features and
Yael: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Schwab: Yeah, yikes.
Yael: I would say, like not to acquit him of all responsibility, but at that time, eugenics was all the rage.
Schwab: Right. Yes. So he’s very focused on this like they really kept to Jewish stock. He and he talks about the purity of blood, which yikes for two reasons. Yikes in general. But also that is the thing that they do well. But I’m saying not like. And in addition to that, that is exactly the same term that was used.
Yael: Yikes. Also, eight years before Hitler’s election feels yikes-y.
Schwab: But if you look at, if you search academic articles for Jews, Belmonte, Portugal, in addition to history, the other area that will come up is a couple of very interesting genetic studies because it is a really interesting.
Yael: Yeah.
Schwab: not 100%, but pretty close to it, endogamous population, meaning a population that really did marry within itself. And there are some really interesting genetic markers. Unfortunately, a couple genetic diseases that have very, very high rates in this community. But it is fascinating from a genetic standpoint of looking and saying, it does seem like this community really did maintain a pretty high degree of isolation and insularity for a very long time.
Yael: I saw a lot of similar academic work with respect to the Jewish community of India that we talked about last season, also highly endogamous.
Yael: Amazing. So did he, when he wrote this book, did he endear himself to the community?
Schwab: Yeah, they did. Yes. And then there is then a whole movement which we don’t even have time to get into. And there’s another figure involved. We should save him for a future episode because it’s very fascinating. A Portuguese like member of this community who leads an entire movement. Yes, he, Samuel Schwarz is instrumental in working with this other guy also and bringing a rabbi to Portugal to like reinvigorating this community to like bringing them into the fold in some way. But yeah, he’s not, his writing the book is not like a betrayal of them or anything like that. The one other, right, it’s not an expose. They were okay with it or okay enough. And again, it’s not like everybody in the world is reading this book. This book actually was only translated into English.
Yael: No, no, okay. It’s not an expose.
Schwab: Recently, you’ll never guess by whom for the first time. It’s Henry Abramson.
Yael: Henry?
Schwab: Yes, it’s our education lead, Henry Abramson.
Yael: We was it what language was it written in? Polish?
Schwab: He wrote it in Portuguese and French. But again, it’s not.
Yael: Wow. Wow.
Schwab: It wasn’t translated into English because it’s not like this was, I don’t know, like there were people who were reading this and fascinating advice, but it’s not like this was the number one topic on people’s minds in the late 20s and early 30s in the Jewish world.
Yael: Like I would think that, you know, this gets published, somebody hears about it, and all of a sudden, you know, every historian of the Jews in the Western Hemisphere is on a train to Belmonte, Portugal, to start talking to these people. And it doesn’t seem like that’s what happened.
Schwab: Not exactly. No, like there were, there were definitely people who came and looked at but like I think at the time, I don’t even like now I would say there probably is more tourism to Portugal to like see about this than maybe there was 100 years ago. But I don’t think it was the most pressing issue for Jews in in the 20s and 30s. I think there is some activity still there. There’s some local synagogue and there probably are.
Yael: Interesting. Are any of them still there?
Schwab: Some Jews still there who primarily facilitate tourism to their community. But it’s not a very large or active community now, as far as I can tell.
Going back to the practices, the one other thing that I wanted to mention, they, because we talked about pig, so eating the fact that they were framed from eating pork, although it seems like that wasn’t necessarily always the case because Schwarz also documents that in the 40 days leading up to Passover and in the 40 days leading up to Yom Kippur as sort of in atonement period, there were those who were framed from eating pork during that time, which sounds like at the other times of the year, this wasn’t something that they necessarily kept to.
Yael: 40 days leading up to Passover is interesting because that’s Lent. That’s the 40 days leading up to Easter. Wow.
Schwab: Yeah, that’s, yes, right? it’s so, right? It very much sounds like, you know, and it’s not like, right? It sounds an awful lot like, and they also, which also sounds like a Christian practice, they would not eat meat on Shabbat.
They would eat meat during the week, but not on Shabbat, which is kind of opposite of Schwarz’s speculation that there was no kosher meat available to them. So on Shabbat, on the holy day, you should refrain from eating non-kosher meat, which is the only meat they had access to.
Yael: Yeah. Right. Got it. That’s the best alternative that was available to them. Interesting. That’s so cool.
Schwab: Yeah. So pork was very widely eaten. But there was this special dish that many of them would prepare, which is I don’t fully understand exactly what it is. But it’s some sort of sausage that looks like pork. They had a special recipe for making this food that looked like pork but was not made from pork.
We have so many versions of this now, but you know, like kosher sushi, crypto sausage. That’s such a great name for it. You it’s like,you can get like the fake bacon, it’s barely food. Oh, it’s, I primarily eat things that are barely food. So, like imitation crab sushi.
Yael: It was crypto sausage. It looks the new it’s the new sausage. Mm-hmm. Right. I like it. It’s good. It’s really salty.
Schwab: And like they make it look like the real thing. So they were doing that, but they were doing that not to, not, I don’t know, for the same reasons that we would eat imitation crab sushi, but because they wanted to look like they were actually eating pork. Yeah. Yeah.
Yael: Yeah. Right. Right, was self preservation. Sausage as self preservation, I like that.
Schwab: Sausage is self-sufficient. Crypto-sausage. like also. That’s such a great term for it.
Yael: Yeah, that’s, know, sausage on the outside, Jewish on the inside. Wow, this is really, this is really interesting. What’s also interesting to me, not not nearly as interesting as the existence of this community, but because in preparing for these podcasts, I’ve become really interested in the way in which history is documented and historiography.
Schwab: Mm-hmm. That’s exactly, yeah. Yeah.
Yael: The fact that Samuel Schwarz is not a historian, he’s not an academic, he’s not even a particularly devoted Jew, but he as a country miner is the one who brings all of this out. And we still know who he is 100 years later.
Schwab: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. And I, yeah. And I. I don’t know. This is definitely in the realm of speculation, but reading his book, it sounds to me from the way he wrote it that he was maybe religiously inspired or moved by this. Like, I think that’s like part of of what he’s just like, I don’t know, or I’ll editorialize, I guess, and say this. This would be my impression of just here is something that
Yael: I would be.
Schwab: that he grew up with was so easy for him, was not challenged in any way, and he took it for granted. And then he was perhaps, again, moved by how much people had fought for this for centuries. The way that I read it, I think that made me realize, oh, wow, being Jewish, I saw a quote this week, it was something like, I love being Jewish even more than all the people who hate me for it or hate Jews for it or something. And I think that was like something just like these people kept this for hundreds of years out of some sense of deep and abiding faith or love or connection, you know, and like, wow, in the face of so much and like that makes me feel not.
Not like, wow, we should constantly define Judaism by all of our enemies or all of our people. Like, wow, we should be moved by that love and devotion.
Yael: Mm-hmm. I totally get that. It’s certainly something that I experience when I see other people in far flung places sacrificing to maintain a certain lifestyle or certain acts of Judaism that I as an individual in New York City can fulfill super easily and still don’t necessarily, I don’t go to synagogue every Shabbos. I really like to sleep late.
Schwab: now you can think, I’m in honor of the centuries of crypto Jews who prayed in their homes. I too am praying in my home.
Yael: Yeah, like what would the Belmonti Jews do?
Schwab: Thanks for listening to Jewish History Nerds brought to you by Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand.
Yael: If you like this show, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please give us a rating and review.
Schwab: Check out unpacked.media for everything unpacked related and subscribe to our other podcasts and our YouTube channel. Most importantly, be in touch. Write to us at nerds@unpacked.media. This episode was hosted by me, Jonathan Schwab.
Yael: and by me, Yael Steiner. Our education lead is Dr. Henry Abramson. Our editors are Rob Pera and Ari Schlacht. We’re produced by Jenny Falcon and Rivky Stern. Thanks for listening. See you next week.