Days-Feiras-Sabado-Pascoa
"How can G-d not reward
a Jew who has been coerced by force of persecution yet secretly performs some
commandments? ... One who transgresses under duress is not called a sinner, nor
wicked, nor is he disqualified.... It is improper to reject those who desanctify
the Sabbath or to despise them, rather one should welcome them and encourage them...."
Maimonides
The Jewish Influence in Portugal extends even to the naming of days....
the only country besides Israel who uses this way of naming the days of the week,
the same way of naming as in Hebrew. An interesting coincidence, (?) or a direct
translation,(?) One frequently noted by Portuguese-speaking Jews. To date, I've
never seen a study examining precisely when it was that Portuguese and Portuguese
day-naming practices began to diverge, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it
were to turn out to be in the 15th century. I would not be surprised if research
were able to discover that the Portuguese practice pre-dates Christianity
Certainly, the "feira" in the names of the Portuguese days of the week refers
to a "fair" in the sense of a "market day", so one could translate "segunda-feira"
(Monday) as "second -market day," "quarta-feira" (Wednesday) as "fourth-market
day," and so on for every day except Saturday and Sunday.
I find the (implicit) designation of Sunday as Portugal's "first market day" to
be quite intriguing, especially in light of the well-documented (and ultimately
unsuccessful) efforts on the Iberian peninsula, in both the 14th and 15th centuries,
as the church became more influential, to close the widespread open-air markets
on Sundays. Church leaders proved unable to prevail over the merchants, many of
whom refused to sell on Saturdays, as is well-documented in contemporaneous accounts.
Moreover, the Portuguese word for Saturday is "Sabbath" (Sabado), so there is
no linguistic distinction whatsoever in Portuguese between "Saturday" and "Sabbath"
(Shabbat).
Similarly, "Páscoa," which is the Portuguese word for "Pesach" (Passover) also
means "Easter," a single word conveying both meanings. Thus when we, as Jews,
have conversations with Portuguese/Brazilian Christians about "Pesach" we need
to refer to it as "a Páscoa Judia" ...i.e. the "Jewish Easter," (even if we know
that it "really" means Pesach.)
The origin of "Domingo"is traced to the Latin "dies dominicu" (day of the lord),
which was possibly introduced after the forced conversions and after the shift
away from Jewish influence and prominence in Portugal. (Received from Bob Feron)
The Artscroll Siddur pg:453
Blessing of the New Month [Rosh Chodesh] .........The day of the week is not
given as Sunday, Monday, etc., but as first day, the second day,etc., in fulfillment
of the Torah's commitment to always remember the Sabbath. By counting the days
of the week with references to the Sabbath we tie our existence to the Sabbath.
This is in sharp contrast to the non-Jewish custom of assigning names to the days
in commemoration of events or gods, such as Sunday for the sun, Monday for the
moon and so on
[Rambam, Exodus 20:8]
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Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum