I joined Genie Milgrom in Portugal to celebrate Passover with a group of bnei anusim (descendants of forced converts) who were returning to Judaism.
By MARION FISCHELGENIE MILGROM and Marion Fischel stand next to the seven stairs going down into a mikve in the Portuguese city of Coimbra. It was discovered last year by a plumber looking to make repairs in a basement.(photo credit: Courtesy)
When author, historian and researcher Genie Milgrom asked me to join her for Passover in Portugal, to celebrate the holiday with a group of bnei anusim (descendants of forced converts) who were returning to Judaism, I jumped at the opportunity. Over the past few years I have been privileged to notice the early stages of the revival of Jewish feeling, generally thought to have disappeared from the Iberian peninsula, but that has actually lain only slumbering in the cities and villages of Portugal and some parts of Spain.Recent moves by the Spanish and Portuguese governments to offer citizenship to those who can prove Sephardi heritage – an initiative which is expected to become effective in the next few months – have raised a further question, that of reciprocity.If Iberia is willing to recognize Jews as citizens, what is Israel doing for Iberians, who consider themselves Jews, whether those who are willing to go through a return process and take on halachic who are working to restore the building, previously a university, to preserve it as a memorial, in them to formally convert to Judaism to be accepted as candidates for aliya, or would it be possible for those who can prove their ancestry to apply to be- come Israeli citizens?This entire issue – with all its ramifications – is so new that there is as yet no consensus, although individuals are working towards achieving a system that will be useful and satisfactory for all. In fact Casa Shalom, part of Netanya Academic College, recently held a roundtable to discuss the matter and came to no applicable conclusions.I joined Milgrom and her husband Michael for the journey from the faded city of Porto, via the city of Coimbra, to the mountaintop village of Belmonte, and was with them until they left for the airport back to Miami. It was decidedly a “zone” that we entered, hovering somewhere between the past and the present. I walked into what was once an Inquisition cell with Milgrom, in Coimbra, where her ancestors had been judged and in many cases executed. I met government archeologists the same way that museums are built to honor the victims of the Holocaust. What struck me most, as I looked upon these dank, empty cells, after being told that they had been filled with people, was that their situation was probably much more like a crowded cattle cars on the way to Auschwitz than the classic image of individuals languishing in solitary confinement awaiting a verdict or further torture.The village of Belmonte is a green expanse that secretly housed an ongoing Jewish underground community all the way from those horror days until the 1920s, when Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Bastos persuaded them to come into the light. Today, an Israeli, originally from Chile, is the rabbi of their community, and in addition to his parochial duties, he teaches bnei anusim who are interested in returning to the faith of their ancestors. The Milgroms’ visit to this community was a move to strengthen them and to show them that they are not alone. I have no doubt that they will be joined by hundreds of thousands more bnei anusim in the coming years.
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