Tour “Sephardic Jews in Portugal” — Trancoso and Belmonte

Sephardic Jews in Portugal did not live only in the big cities such as Porto and Lisbon. We invite you to walk through the streets of the Jewish quarters of Trancoso and Belmonte. These towns are practically on the border with Spain, where thousands of refugees from Castile and Aragon came to Portuguese lands from 1480 to 1492, fleeing the persecution of the Inquisitor Torquemada and the xenophobic policies of the Catholic Kings.

In Trancoso, we will visit the ISAAC CARDOSO Jewish Interpretive Center and the BEIT MAYIM HAYIM (House of the Living Spring) synagogue, opened in a house where a Jewish family once lived. We will learn why the local shoemaker Bandarra was judged by the Inquisition in Lisbon and under what conditions he returned to his hometown. We will try to understand what the various strange symbols on the jambs of the houses of the so-called "new Christians" mean and for what purpose they were left. The Lion of Judah, carved in granite on one of the houses in the town, guides us on our way.

In a village with the poetic name Beautiful Mountain or Belmonte, for almost 500 years the local baptized Sephardim, or Marans, as they were called, secretly kept a spark of Judaism, despite the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition. In the 70s of the twentieth century, the Jewish community came into contact with Israel and admitted that they remained faithful to Judaism. Now the village of 3500 people has a synagogue and the Belmonte Jewish Museum, dedicated to the Sephardim of this remote Portuguese border region, opened in 2005.

We do not recommend booking this tour on a Monday, as the museums will be closed.