"IT ALL ENDS WITH ME"
"I am the last Jew in all of the Azores," Jorge Delmar says...
He is a stocky man in his early 50's who runs an import- export business in Ponta Delgada, the capital city of Sao Miguel, the largest of the nine islands that comprises the Portuguese archipelago.
"Thirty years ago, there were 16 Jewish families on this island," he adds. "We were a community. We had services in the old synagogue and made all the festivities in my grandfather's house. But all the others have died or converted or moved away. I am the only one left."
Mr Delmar's wife and children are Catholic. He says his wife sometimes asks him, "Why do you say you are a Jew? What happened to the Jews?" He tells her, "As my mother is a Jew, I am always a Jew. That's all."
The truth, though, is more complex. Mr Delmar's connection to
the Azores began in 1818, when the Bensaude family of Morocco came to this volcanic
outcropping, mythologized in lore as the remnants of the lost continent of Atlantis.
The family made their fortune trading crops with England for manufactured goods, and
trading bills of exchange while transporting emigrants to Brazil. In the process, they
changed the nature of the Azorean economy, says professor of economic history at the
University of the Azores, Fatima Sequeria Dias.
"The Bensaudes had the trade connection that enabled
them to link England, Brazil and Newfoundland with the Azores," Ms Dias says.
"When they got into the bill of exchange business, that was the beginning of banking
in the Azores." This single Jewish family, she says, succeeded in integrating the
islands' economy, establishing a chain of retailers throughout the archipelago that
offered imported goods on easy terms and developing its maritime transport industry.
Today, the Bensaudes remain the Azores's chief economic entity, a financial empire with international interests. But they are no longer Jewish. Fearful of a Nazi occupation of Portugal, most converted during World War II. Vasco Bensaude,
Back in the 19th century, however, the Bensaudes' example and
the growing prosperity of the Azores served as a beacon for North African Jews. Among them
was Jorge Delmar's great-grandfather, who immigrated from Tangiers and found work in the
Bensaude tobacco factory.
Jewish communities emerged throughout the islands. At one time there were five synagogues
on Sao Miguel of Terceira and Fayal. Only one of the synagogues still remains: Shahak
Hasamain, consecrated in 1893 in a 16th century building on a busy downtown street in
Ponta Delgada.
Through the 1960's it held services; after that, the premises were maintained by two
Jewish sisters who lived in the building. Since their death, it has fallen into disrepair.
Only Jorge Delmar stands between the Synagogue's existance and its extinction. "I pay the taxes and for the electricity and water. I keep the Torah, six silver candelabras and the other heirlooms in my home. Maybe one day the synagogue will be rebuilt and they can be put back in their rightful place," he says. "It seems impossible, but I have hope."
Up the rickety staircase and through an arched wooden door is the high-ceilinged sanctuary of the synagogue, with its bima of old wood, its ark draped with a green curtain on which the Ten Commandments are embroidered in gold. Everywhere there is disorder and disrepair as furnishings, prayer books and prayer shawls succumb to the island's humidity.
Mr Delmar points to the second row where as a child he would sit behind his uncle. His grandfather sat next to the reader's desk. "We never had a rabbi. The oldest Jew was in charge, and that for many years was my grandfather."
Mr Delmar may close the book on the story of the Jews of
Azores but some researchers believe there is another Jewish story here, one that pre-dates
the Bensaudes' arrival by some 300 years and one that continues to live on in mysterious
ways. "The Jewish presence in the Azores had two moments," says the director of
the municipal department of culture and history on the island of Terceira, Francisco dos
Reis Maduro Dias.
"The second, which began at the start of the 19th century and continued through the
20th century, is well documented. The first, which coincided with the discovery and the
settlement of the Azores in the 15th and 16th centuries, is not documented at all. All we
know is that Jews were here and, like those on the mainland, were pressured to
convert."
However, Mr Dias says historians are now beginning to believe there is some connection between the early Jews and a uniquely Azorean ceremony known as the cult of the Holy Spirit. These ceremonies are held in fanciful little chapels that look like crosses between one-room schoolhouses and wedding cake decorations.
Each year, on the seven Sundays following Easter - roughly
corresponding to the period between Passover and Shavuoth or the counting of the omer -
these otherwise unused buildings come to life.
Repainted, redecorated and profusely adorned with flowers, they become the sites of
worship of the Holy Spirit, of confirmation type ceremonies for children and of the
community feasta for the fulfillment of pledges made earlier in the year. Sometimes a type
of flat bread made without yeast and stamped with the seal of the crown of the Holy Spirit
is used. "No one will tell you the cult is a Jewish custom," Mr Dias says.
"It was born within Christianity during the 11th and 12th centuries through brother-
hoods who contested the divinity of Christ. But we believe it was used perhaps developed
by Jews at a certain moment as a means of coexisting with the larger culture." It is
easy to see why New Christians, still Jewish in their hearts, would be attracted to the
cult.
"The entire procedure has nothing to do with the church," Mr Dias says. "The emporia have no crosses, no representations of holy figures.....Moreover, the Holy Spirit is God with no Christ. It is the presence of an abstract God."
Feasts and brotherhoods connected with the Cult of the Holy Spirit were widespread in medieval Europe and lingered in Portugal into the 19th century. But while the Cult died out everywhere else, it inexplicably developed a powerful following in the Azores, and to this day continues to be a defining aspect of the island culture, extending even to emigre communities in America.
One group of Azorean- Americans still maintains its emporium on the island of Flores. Every year, a number of people travel to Flores, perform the rituals and partake of the festival. Afterwards, they clean up, close the doors to their little temple, and return to America.
Aside from the Holy Spirit sites, today the only evidence of a Jewish presence in the Azores is a couple of cemeteries and a deteriorating synagogue which Jorge Delmar, for the past 20 years, has struggled to preserve. He has been writing letters, meeting with government officials and trying to raise 200,000 dollars to restore the deteriorating structure.
"Its easy to be a Jew any place now," says the last
Jew in the Azores. "But here we are soon to be no more. This synagogue should remain
as a reminder that once we were here... I feel I have to do some thing. It all ends with
me." Myrna Katz Frommer
FORWARD
Jan. 9, 1998
E-mail: Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum