Portugal wants to encourage more Jews to line and invest in the country, said the Secretary of State, Ana Mendes Godinho, during a visit to the US.
“We want a Jewish presence in Portugal,” said Godinho, “and we look to Jewish investment.”
Godinho spoke with Jewish organizations, including the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the American Sephardi Federation and Anti Defamation League, and outlined the historic connection of Jews to Portugal.
“As we have a vast Jewish heritage and a very ancient and profound connection to Jewish communities. We have evidence of Jewish presence in Portugal since 390 AD. We identified as a priority the promoting of the Jewish Legacy and of the Jewish routes in Portugal. It is quite interesting to remember that in the 15th century, around 20% of the Portuguese population was Jew, so we always say that every Portuguese may have a Jewish origin.”
Godinho said that in 1497, following the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, Portugal gave its Jews the choice of conversion or expulsion.(* see Readers Comments - Peter Booker)
The Portuguese inquisition did not officially end until 1821, by which time thousands of Jews had been killed and thousands more were forced to emigrate.
Many Jews who converted remained crypto-Jews, and today some 20% of the population claims Jewish ancestry.
“The Jewish communities have had crucial roles in the Portuguese history, namely Pedro Álvares Cabral, who discovered Brazil, and in the United States, the oldest synagogue, Shearith Israel, located in New York, was founded by Portuguese Jews. This is why we have created a special law to grant Portuguese nationality to descendants of Sephardic Jews, and we have been experiencing a very high demand,” said Godinho.
In 2013 Portugal passed its Law of Return for Sephardic Jews and their descendants, designed specifically to encourage Jews to return to Portugal and settle.
Nearly 1,800 descendants of Sephardic Jews acquired the Portuguese nationality in 2017 under the new law,with another 12,000 applications pending.
In Lisbon, a large Jewish museum is under construction and is on schedule to open in 2019.
The Rede de Juderias network of cities in Portugal with Jewish heritage sites was established in 2011 and now includes sites in 27 municipalities. A new program called Rotas de Sefarad, or Sepharad Routes, was launched in 2014, involving some of these city councils plus sites in at least 17 venues.
The renovation works under the Rotas de Sefarad ended in December 2017 with a total investment of €6 million, most of it from Portuguese government funding.
