the Jew in Porto Judeu

Kristallnächter - The "Jew" in Porto Judeu

Porto Judeu or Port of a Jew is a town that lies on the Southeastern coast
of Terceira, East of Angra. It was here that the first settlement took
place. Settlers, then spread to São Sebastião, the town East of it and to
Praia, the first capital of Terceira.

The reason that this town is called Porto Judeu, has nothing to do to a
particular Jew or Jewish family, as is often misinterpreted (Rolf Sang, die
Azoren). Seraphic Jews were part of the Portuguese society and they were
everywhere in Portugal as well as here in the Azores.

Now, Jews were well educated and they had a way with money that made the
society prosper wherever they were. It is thanks to them that Portuguese
kings could afford their expeditions into the new world. Many of them were
doctors and mathematicians, skilled artisans, astronomers, merchants,
bankers, retailers, contractors, successful business people . Many others
held high positions at the court, the university and other key institutions.
They were, without a doubt, Portugal¹s intellectual class and partners of
the Age of Discovery and Exploration.

The printing press came to Portugal thanks to them. They became involved
in the trade of new spices that came from the Far East and Brazil. It is
thanks to them that the sugar business prospered and Portuguese society
flourished.

Wherever the Portuguese went, along came the Jewish merchants, the
accountants, and court clerks. They made up Portugal¹s economic and
intellectual backbone. Portuguese kings tended to support and depend on
them.

More indifferent than Spain about their Jewish population, Portugal for a
short time even became a haven for many Spanish Jews fleeing Spain. In 1497,
however, after the marriage of Portuguese Princess into the Spanish court,
Portugal followed suit with the new pseudo-Christian measures imposed by the
Inquisition.

It is at this point that the whole society instigated by a fanatic urge went
into a Non-Christian cleansing rampage. "Judear" or tease the Jew became
the in thing. The more irrational, the braver were the acts. Much like the
situation in any war zone today, every day spelled a threat to any Jewish
citizen. They became public enemy number one. Often scoffed, accused of
treason and heresy, they were treated with uttermost contempt and
disrespect. It became common for bands of brigands to break into Jewish
homes, drag their dwellers into the public squares or "Rossios" followed by
mobs of frenzied people who thought they were doing the right thing in name
of God and the Church. Pelourinhos or torture pillars, pillories, are still
seen in many Portuguese towns is where many of those executions took place.
Lisbon's Commerce square and Rossio saw many such a scene. There, they
stoned, decapitated, hanged and burnt many a Jew, whole groups of Jews day
after day, month after month, years in a row.

The Inquisitors would on their part round the more influential Jews, the
ones who held high positions in government and or business and accused them
of siding with the devil. Many were brought to makeshift courts run by
monks of low instincts who would accuse and find fault and finally bring to
the gallows anyone who fell into their disfavor. The ones they could not
destroy, they slandered and forced to Christianity. These became the
"marranos, or "New-Christians.

Now mind you, these procedures were also applied to anyone who confronted
the Church. Among the victims were also Protestants and free thinkers. The
Portuguese poet, Camões, himself, who did not see eye to eye with some
Church and court dignitaries, was considered a heretic and sent to Morocco
where he lost one of his eyes in a battle. He spent much of his life in Goa
(India) and Macao in the Far East, returning at the end of his life to see
his country the epitome of decadence, greed and pettiness.
In other words, this was not a proud occasion in Portuguese History. It
actually drained Portugal of its intellectual class. As the anti-Jew,
Anti-Christian frenzy spread, many of the Portuguese Jews quickly fled
Portugal to Amsterdam, Antwerp and other Northern European countries, as
well as Livorno and other regions of Italy. With them they brought their
skill, know-how, determination and success. Spinoza, for example, was a
famous philosopher born to a Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam. In
Antwerp Portuguese Jews became famous in the jewelry business, in
Amsterdam in the textile and so on. Other Jews converted to Christianism,
but fled to the interior or remote areas of Portugal or the Azores where
they carried on their cult in secret. A large group of them settled on the
island of Graciosa, and São Miguel where Jewish cemeteries still exist.
It was thanks to these Portuguese Jewish communities that settled in the
Netherlands that the Dutch came into new trade routes in the New World that
is in Brazil, India and Indonesia. Thanks to the exiled Jews, Portugal won
a new and more powerful enemy, the Dutch. Wherever the Portuguese were,
soon the Dutch would be there too, for the Jews held on to their contacts
and their business dealings with such places as Brazil and India.

In a few years, very few if any Jews were left in Portugal. The mass
hysteria that led to the macabre pograms, the lynching, burnings and street
executions, had done their thing. The Jews would shun Portugal and Portugal
would lose its one source of stability and focus, an intellectual class of
people who had kept the country running, had made it go forward and change
the course of history. With them gone, the country began a phase of
destitution from which it has never really recovered.

Gradually, these Jews, the one who had survived, would move on not only to
the Northern countries, but to Brazil and the Far East, even into the
British colonies. Portuguese Jews founded the first synagogue in the United
States, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.

Here in the Azores for a while longer there were many Jews. As everywhere
else in Portugal, the people carried on its zealous mission of discomforting
the heretic or making life for the New Christian as hard as they could; give
them pork to eat for example, downgrade and slight them, make jokes and
berate them publicly.

Often Jews would react to the abuse in a grumpy or angry manner. They would
be sullen, bad tempered, and somewhat distant and aloof. The reason, thus,
that Porto Judeu was so named has to do with those very attitudes. That is,
the sea in the area of Porto Judeu is said to be treacherous, disagreeable
and hard to sail. Sea people referred to it as the "Mad as a Jew Port," for
the water in that area behaved like any Jew under teasing, and the name
stock to this day.

During World War II, the Portuguese government true to its alliance with
the powerful, but not always just, sided with NAZI Germany. As such, it
severely punished Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Consul-General at Bordeaux
for allowing visas for many Jews who were trying to escape NAZI Germany.
He was released from his job and not allowed to come back to Portugal. This
attitude once again proved Portugal once more against the Jew and against
Justice. Portugal's Judicial system today projects that reality, as it is in
Europe the most corrupt and backward of systems, one that the government
itself wants to correct for recent abuses and scandals that clearly showed
the low character and abusive nature which, while condoned during the
Fascist government, have no place in a democracy.

Silvério Gabriel de Melo
Terceira,