THE ODYSSEY OF THE PORTUGUESE JEWS
by Manuel Luciano da Silva, M.D.
BIO OF DR.
DA SILVA
ENGLISH PORTUGUESE
SPANISH
The cultural session, entitled "The Odyssey
of the Portuguese Jews," held on Sunday, February 21 , 1999, was a great success. The
event took place in the main amphiteater of the new building of the Faculty of Economics
of the Roger Williams University, in Bristol, Rhode Island. Even before the
scheduled time, the hall was full of people including the aisles. The subject matter that
was going to be dealt with, had awakened great interest among the cultural élite of New
England, so much so that the audience was composed of individuals who came from various
localities in Rhode Island, as well as from neighbouring states: Massachusettes,
Connecticut, New Hampshire and even New York. Various groups had no choice than to return
to their homes because there was no more space in the amphiteater.
The session was kicked off by Mr. Steven Gorban, Director of the group called
"Saudades-Sephardic Project", whose objectives are to utilize all the good
intentions of the Portuguese Sephardic Jews uniting in a brotherly manner and in communion
with all the Portuguese scattered throughout the world. Mr. Gorban emphasized that:
"Five hundred years ago, due to the Inquisition, the Portuguese Sephardic Jews had
been separated from all other Portuguese. The time has come for us to initiate a new
period called "The Next 500 Years" and employ all our energies to stimulate the
friendship and the spirit of mutual respect among all Portuguese Sephardic Jews, Catholics
and Moors".
After a short introduction by Mr. Gorban, I initiated my lecture with color slides. I
started by showing, albeit schematically, a geographic information for better
comprehension of the relationship between Judea or Palestine and the territory that much
later became Portugal. I showed a map of the Atlantic Ocean recalling that it was 125
million years ago that the separation of the continents started, when Portugal was part of
New England!...
And America still continues to creep away from Europe, about one inch per year, therefore
causing the great threat of a huge earthquake in California. The theory of the separation
of the continents started with the German metereologist Alfred Wegener, who wrote, in
1915, a book "The Origins of
the Oceans". He was very much criticized by the geologists, but today his theory is
totally accepted.
It was due to the separation of the continents that the Mediterranean Sea (meaning: sea in
the middle of the earth) was born, resulting much later on, in the establishment of
several countries around its shores. After the last glacial age, ten thousand years ago,
the human race began to scatter throughout Europe and the peoples from Mesopotamia and
Middle East started to use the Mediterranean Sea for fishing, transportation, and
colonization.
The honors must go to the Phoenicians - today's Lebanon - because they possessed an
abundance of special cedars on their mountains and began to build their typical vessels
which allowed them to navigate with ease throughout all the Mediterranean. Perhaps because
they had a need of communication, the Phoenicians invented the CONSONANTS which we use
today in our alphabet. Their neighbours, the Greeks, invented the VOWELS and PUNCTUATION.
It was the mathematician Pithagoras (famous for his hypotenuse), who invented the musical
staff as well as the punctuation:
period, komma or coma, the colon and semicolon. It needs to be mentioned that COLON in
Greek is the same as ZARCO in Hebrew.
The Egyptians tarried in the margins of the Nile, basing their civilization on agronomy
and agriculture. They preferred to navigate in the Nile only. The Phoenicians were
followed by other peoples such as the Greeks and the Romans, and even later by the Arabs,
and they started using frequently the
Mediterranean and even dared to pass the Strait of Gibraltar, and settle along the
European shores of the Atlantic, including the maritime coast of the future Portugal.
NAMES OF PORTUGAL
The Greeks -five thousand years ago -- called the peninsula which comprehends Spain and
Portugal today, Iberian Peninsula and the people as IBEROS, which means "MOST
OCCIDENTAL", or "SUNSET". Afterwards came the Jews, considered "the
People of the Diaspora"-- they established themselves about four thousand years ago
in the Iberian Peninsula and they started to be called Sephardic, which likewise means
"MOST OCCIDENTAL", or "SUNSET". And finally came the Moors, who after
conquering a large chunk of the peninsula started calling our territory
"ALGARVE", which also means "MOST OCCIDENTAL", or "SUNSET".
The Romans called our native land "LUSITANIA" which means LAND OF LIGHT. That is
true because even today Portugal is, of all European countries,
the one that has the largest number of sun-hours per year. The concept of naming the most
western part of the Mediterranean "OCCIDENTAL" -- such as Iberos, Sephardic, and
Algarve -- can be verified today by the name places that exist on the northwesternmost
corner of Spain: "Finis Terra". The same
idea can be verified on the westernmost part of England where one finds the name
"Land's End".
With such a variety of names, the Portuguese people preferred to create a proper name:
Portus + cale, which gave origin to PORTUGAL. (Portus referred to the City of Porto (or
Oporto) on the north margin of the river Douro, plus Cale, which was located opposite, on
the southern margin of the
same river,and is today the City of Gaia).
PORTUGUESE JEWS
After this lengthy but necessary geographic introduction, I started showing slides of
Portugal. First I showed the Castle of St. Michal in Guimarães, where the first king of
Portugal, Afonso Henriques was born. I stressed that the first adviser to this king was
Egas Moniz, a Portuguese Sephardic Jew.
Then I showed a color photograph of Prof. Doctor Egas Moniz, born in Avanca, north of
Portugal, and direct descendent of the first Egas Moniz, and who, after eight hundred
years, in 1949, won the first Nobel Prize in Medicine for Portugal, because he invented
the techniques of lobectomy and angiography. Next I switched over to the city of Coimbra,
for two motives. First to show to the audience, the buildings of the first Portuguese
University, founded in 1290, by King Dinis, and also to emphasize that in my presentation,
I was going to speak about the Portuguese Sephardic Jews who became physicians after
graduating from the "noble and hoary (vetusta..) University of Coimbra", and
also for my personal gratification since I graduated from the same Medical Faculty in
1957.
After this clarification I started to mention the names of several Portuguese Sephardic
Jews who were personal physicians to the various kings of Portugal. Abraham Zacuto was the
physician for the great King John II. He was also an astronomer and a mathematician who
wrote "Almanac Perpetuum" and made the Tables of Navigation in Hebrew, which
were used later by another Portuguese Sephardic Jew name Cristóvâo Colon during his
voyage to the Caribbean in 1492, and also were used by the great Vasco da Gama. It was
during his stay in Tomar (Jewish name meaning "mountain" ) that Zacuto built the
Arco (or Zarco) Synagogue, which is now open to the public and of which I showed several
color slides. Another Jew who was part of the crew in the fleet captained by Cristóvão
Colon was Master Luis de Torres, who, besides being a polyglot, was also a Portuguese
Sephardic Jews. Isaac Abravanel was the private physician of the Count of Braganza, who
was condemned to death because he was involved in a plot to assasinate king John II, and
this Portuguese Sephardic physician left Portugal, going to Turkey, where he became the
physician of Sultan Mehmet II, the Great. Jose Vezinho (from Viseu) was also physician to
the king. He was also mathematician and astronomer and worked on the project of the Sagres
School of Navigation. This Portuguese Sephardic Jew was member of the Commission that
reviewed Cristóvâo Colon's plan to reach India by sailing westward. Until the
Inquisition (1497) ALL the Portuguese kings were looked after
medically by Portuguese Sephardic Jews. In general all the Portuguese kings treated the
Portuguese Sephardic Jews with kindness because they admired their professional capacity
not only in medicine and surgery, but also in mathematics, finance,also as bankers and
even as artisans.
INQUISITION
Upon the marriage of King Manuel I with the daugher of the Spanish Catholic Kings in 1496,
the Inquisition - which had started in Spain in 1483 (by Torquemada) - began in Portugal
in 1497.
This tragic measure brought about the exodus of the Jews. Even the famous Abraham Zacuto
was forced to leave Portugal. The Law of the Inquisition specified that all the Jews had
to convert to Catholicism or else they were liable of being burned at the stake (
Auto-da-Fé).
For this reason many Portuguese Sephardic Jews fled to the mountains of Beira Alta and
Beira Baixa (the highest mountains in Portugal) and became known as crypto-Jews. Those who
converted to Catholicism were called "Marranos" (in reference to pigs) or
"Conversos", meaning "New Christians". The slide that I showed of an
"Auto-da-Fé" on the Praça do Comércio - the main plaza in Lisbon facing the
river Tagus -- was, undoubtedly, the darkest page of Portuguese History. The most famous
physician of the 16th century was the Portuguese Sephardic Jew, Garcia de Orta, who
became a brilliant professor, and author of medical treatise , who taught in the Goa
Medical School. Even after being buried, the Inquisitors dug up his bones and burned them
and threw his ahses into the sea !
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS
With the expulsion of Portuguese Sephardic Jew physicians, as well as other Jewish wise
men, Portugal suffered such a terrible loss of intellectual values that even today, it has
not yet recoverd from such a "desesperatum", or despair. Portugal lost a lot
from the Inquisition, whereas many other nations gained from the intelligence and
professional qualities of the Portuguese Sephardic Jews. It is after the Inquisition that
we begin to see famous Portuguese Sephardic Jews as physicians in all countries
throughout Europe, not only as professors in various Medical Schools, but also as private
physicians of chiefs of government including kings and queens. Thus we see Portuguese
names in various distinguished positions such as Costa, Da Costa, Bueno, Cardoso, De
Castro, Da Silva, Fonseca and Nunez. João Rodrigues Castelo Branco also known as Amatus
Lusitanus, besides being a good physician was also a botanist in Antwerp, and even became
professor of medicine in Ferrare. He was also the physician who treated Pope Julius II.
Daniel Fonseca fled to France and afterwards became the private physician of Prince of
Budapest. Judah Abravanel went to Naples, Genoa and Venice becoming a famous physician.
Filoteu Montalto, after he left Portugal for Florence, became the private physician of
Duke Frederick. Afterwards he was called to heal Queen Catherine of Medici, in Paris,
France, because she suffered from migraine headaches, and the Portuguese physician
prescribed for her "tobacco powder" because at that time tobacco was considered
as "miraculous leaves".
Jacob Mantinho went to Italy and became professor of medicine in Rome and private
physician to Pope Paul III. Rodrigues da Fonseca was professor of medicine in Pisa and
Padua. Fabrisio de Aguapendente was professor of anatomy in Bologna and discovered
the valves in the deep veins of the legs and thighs. Rodrigues de Castro went on to
Hamburg, Germany, and later went to treat Queen Crhistine of Sweden. A large group of
Portuguese Sephardic Jews went to Amsterdam, where they built the largest synagogue in the
world outside of Israel. It is in this city that we are going to find many Portuguese
Sephardic Jews such as Fernando Mendes, who later went to London to become private
physician of Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, who suffered from gout. The
Portuguese Sephardic Jew prescribed, for the first time in England, colchicine, and this
drug is still used today, all over the world, for the teatment of gout. The Portuguese
Sephardic Jews went to North Africa, To Turkey, Holland, Italy, France, Germany and
England. It was the Portuguese Sephardic Jews who taught the British how to fry fish (
fish and chips) because they took along with them to England olive oil from Portugal. It
was Queen Catherine of Braganza who introduced in Britain the fasion of "five o'clock
tea" and it was this same queen who inaugurated the use of the fork to the Royal
House of England, and also introduced tangerines.
This same queen gave the name to the largest borough of New York City, which is called
"Queens" in her honor. I was not, by any means, loath to state in my lecture
that the First Queen of Bristol, Rhode Island, was 100% Portuguese because the first map
of the streets of Bristol (1680) show a street with the name "King" (in honour
of King Charles II) and another street with the name "Queen" (in honor of Queen
Catherine of Braganza) and this street is continued by a street even today with the name
of Caterine Street!
The Portuguese Sephardic Jews emigrated also to Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde, Guinea, Sâo
Tomé and Principe, and Brazil, involving themselves in the sugar industry, and
other professions including medicine. From Holland they went to Recife in the north of
Brazil because the Dutch had invaded that Portuguese territory , and from there they moved
on to Curaçao and to New Amsterdam, which later is known as New York, after the British
wrested this city from the Dutch.
But the Portuguese Sephardic Jews were always looking for a place where they could have
religious freedom. They decided to go to Newport, because the founder of the State of
Rhode Island, Roger Williams, guaranteed complete religious freedom. It was in New port
that the Portuguese Sephardic Jews built the Touro Synagogue, which is the oldest
synagogue in the United States of America. This synagogue is in excellent condition today,
and is a smaller copy of the one in Amsterdam, Holland. Please note that the name of the
synagogue is TOURO in Portuguese, not TORO in Spanish. The pressident of the Committee and
one of the founders who built the Touro Synagogue was Aaran Lopez, born in Lisbon,
Portugal. He became the first elected president of the Touro Synagogue. It was in this
synagogue of Newport that Dr. Mário Soares, as President of the Portuguese Republic, ten
years ago, asked for forgiveness from the Portuguese Sephardic Jews, for the
atrocities that their ancestors suffered because of religious persecutions implemented by
the terrible Inquisition in Portugal.
Then I showed slides of the Jewish Cemetery in Newport where we could see the names of
Abraham Touro, Aaron Touro, Aaron Lopez, Moses Levy, Moses Seixas, Jacob Rodrigues Rivera
and Meyer Benjamin, all Portuguese Sephardic Jews. The Portuguese Sephardic Jews of
Newport became businessmen: importers and exporters, and they used perfect Portuguese in
their correspondence, as it can be verified by the letters that exist today in the
Historical Society of Newport. Many Portuguese Sephardic Jews became famous in America:
Bernard Mannes Baruch, adviser to EIGHT American Presidents, Moses Seixas who was the
founder of the Bank of Rhode Island, Dr. Samuel Nunez who became private physician to King
John V in Portugal, and Moses Michael Hays who founded the Bank of Boston. One thing is
certain for sure: the Portuguese Sephardic Jews always honored their name and the
Portuguese traditions in all the countries where they went to live. This alone is enough
to merit our admiration. We should add to the list of the famous Portuguese Sephardic
Jews, Pedro Nunes, great mathematician and inventor of the Nonius, as well as Baruch
Spinoza, eminent Philosopher of the 17th century. We should include also the poet Gil
Vicente, Fernâo Mendes Pintos, the traveler and explored to China and author of
"Peregrinação" and even the greatest poet Luis Vaz de Camões, author of
"Os Lusíadas" because his parents also migrated from Spain to Portugal. Were
they Jewish ? I think so.
MONTICELLO
During my lecture I continued to show panoramic color slides of Portugal so that my
presentation of so many names would not be tiresome, and also to create a certain
expectation. From the City of Newport I jumped on to Monticello, State of Virgina. We then
visited, with the help of color slides, the famous house built by President Thomas
Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. With slides, I also showed the
magnificent aspect of today's conditions of Monticello, in contrast with the devastating
appearance of this famous house just a few years after President Thomas Jefferson died,
when Monticello was even sold in a public auction.
It was a Portuguese Jewish family by the name of LEVY who bought and preserved Monticello
during EIGHTY EIGHT YEARS, avoiding its total destruction. The discovery that the Levy
family was a Portuguese family was made by the historian Humberto Carreiro from Bristol,
Rhode Island, who several years ago, when he went to Virgina to visit his daughter, in a
visit to Monticello, observed the Portuguese name MACHADO engraved on a plaque of Rebecca
Machado Levy, who was the mother of Rachel Phillips Levy and grandmother of Uriah Philips
Levy who bequeathed in his will, the estate of Monticello, as a gift to the American
People. Genealogical research confirmed that the Levy family was indeed a Portuguese
Sephardic Jewish family! It is interesting to note that until recently in Faro, Southern
part of Portugal, there were Levy families living there, and even today there are Levy
families living in Guimarães, the first capital of Portugal.
STATUE OF LIBERTY
To emphasize the odyssey of the Portuguese Sephardic Jews in America I showed a slide of
the Statue of Liberty in the Bay of New York, and asked this question: "¿Is this
statue also Portuguese Sephardic Jewish ?" Of course the entire audience had a good
laugh. But in a few seconds the laughter subsided when I revealed that on the base of this
famous statue, the largest in the world, there exists a bronze plaque (1903) which
contains a poem of 14 verses written by Emma Lazarus, a Portuguese Sephardic Jewish poet,
niece of the famous Supreme Court Justice, Benjamin Cardozo, also a Portuguese Sephardic
Jew!
CRISTOVÃO COLON
And to wind up my lecture I declared that the famous navigator that everybody confuses
with Christopher Columbus, or Colombo, was indeed a Portuguese Sephardic Jew, with the
name Cristóvão Colon or Salvador Fernandes Zarco, born in Cuba, Alentejo, Portugal. We
then ,by means of slides, made a trip to the Vatican Library in Rome, to observe the two
Papal Bulls by Alexander VI, dated Mary 3, and May 4, 1493, on which we would see , very
clearly, the name of the navigator as CRISTOFÕM COLON. It must be mentioned that Colombo
means "pigeon", but the navigator was no pigeon... Afterwards we analyzed the
Navigator's Sigla, and then I reminded every one in the audience that Colon is the same as
Zarco in Hebrew, explaining the reason of the name Salvador Fernandes Zarco. To confirm
the name Salvador Fernandes Zarco, we followed with the analysis of the Monogram, which
was deciphered by my wife, Silvia. I concluded with the analyses of the last 12 letters
that the famous navigator wrote to his son Diogo Colon, and we verified that in ALL of
them we can observe: (1) the Sigla, (2) the Monogram, and (3) the Blessing in Hebrew.
My next to last slide was dedicated to the Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux, France,
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who saved many thousand of refugees' lives by giving them visas
to go through Portugal during the 2nd World War, including more than ten thousand Jews. My
last slide was a photo of today's President of Portugal, Dr. Jorge Sampaio, who was
elected freely and democratically, by the Portuguese people. He is a direct descendent of
Portuguese Sephardic Jews (belong to the Bemsaude Family). It took 500 years for the
Portuguese to elect a President of Jewish extraction! This is the best example that, from
now on, and forever more, we should stop with the differences and jealousies among Jews,
Catholics and Moors. There are investigators who believe that sixty percent of the
Portuguese population has Jewish blood. This should not be surprising since the Jews were
settled in Portugal two thousand years before Christ was born! This is the reason why the
Portuguese names derived from vegetables, trees, rivers and mountains have their origin in
Portuguese Sephardic Jews. Consult your family name to verify if you have or not Jewish
origin!
After me, Professor Robert Waxler of the University of Massachussets, in Dartmouth, took
the podium and described the present situation of the restoration of the Synagogue in
Ponta Delgada, São Miguel, Azores. Then, Mr. George Pacheco of Fall River, explained how
he does his genealogical family research, and to close the program, Mrs. Ada Jill
Schneider of Somerset, Mass, read a poem written by herself, inspired in the maritime
currents in the Atlantic, dedicated to the odyssey of the Portuguese Sephardic Jews of the
Azores.
Jay Rosenberg, Musician, gave us an excellent show of Sepahrdic music and songs, during 20
minutes, using a variety of instruments.
Within two weeks we have already four requests to repeat the same cultural program.
"The New Colossus"
Poem by Emma Lazarus
was inscribed on a tablet in the pedestal in 1903.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset, gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning , and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-side welcome; her mild eyes command.
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor
E-mail: Rufina Bernardetti Silva Mausenbaum