While everyone has been locked indoors, the Sephardic online community has been thriving. This is largely thanks to weekly Sephardic World talks hosted by Ton Thielen and David Mendoza, which have reached an international audience.
Sephardic World was put together on a shoe-string budget but grew through word of mouth. Virtually everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in their meetings, including on different occasions losing both of them and a guest speaker. During one meeting Mendoza had to go to the hospital having cut his hand open after losing a fight with a tub of frozen ice cream and a kitchen knife. The pair’s passion for the subject, and high-quality guests, have made the Sunday meetings a success.
The friends are now spearheading the Sephardic Genealogical Society. This might seem like an arcane backwater, but Portugal and Spain offering citizenship to descendants of Sephardim has generated significant interest. Tielen observes: “The laws are well-intentioned and potentially advantageous to the countries, but Sephardic genealogy is complex. Asking religious institutions – including non-Sephardic ones – to judge who qualifies for citizenship was always something of a lottery.” It is an open secret amongst genealogists that applicants with no proven Sephardic ancestry have received citizenship in Spain, and it may be the same in Portugal.
Mendoza, one of whose family members were burnt alive in Lisbon in 1731 and who has himself become a Portuguese citizen, adds: “There is a huge opportunity. The Western Sephardim, the Nação Portuguesa, totter on the edge of extinction. Meanwhile the tourist industries in cities and towns in eastern Portugal – the traditional Jewish heartland – could benefit from support. This should be a marriage made in heaven.”
Money that could be invested into digitizing archives or developing tourism infrastructure in Portugal is instead going into the pockets of law firms and synagogues, mostly not Sephardic. The Sephardic Genealogical Society has just published a draft Code of Conduct (https://www.sephardic.world/code-of-conduct) in the hope that the Portuguese Minister of Justice and National Assembly will adopt its goals.
The need for standards is transparent. Mendoza comments: “I saw a letter signed by the president and rabbi of a prominent congregation that stated that someone’s Catholic grandmother lighting candles in the bathroom was evidence of Sephardic ancestry. Is it?! Maybe grandma liked candles. Maybe she was kinky! What about genealogical standards? We must assume these letters are written in ignorance rather than fraudulently, but should ignoramuses be part of a legal process? Indeed, should religious institutions be part of a secular process? This is a breach of the separation between state and religion. This didn’t end well in Portugal last time.”
Currently, applicants submit their genealogies to synagogues in Lisbon or Porto – neither of which communities are of Portuguese-Jewish origin – often supported by a letter from a foreign synagogue. The Portuguese synagogues can issue certificates confirming Sephardic origins, which are then used by applicants in their nationality application to the Ministry of Justice. Some Sephardic genealogists prefer not to deal with the Jewish Community of Porto citing concerns about research standards and ethics. Meanwhile, the Jewish Community of Lisbon replaced highly-regarded experts for unknown reasons.
The Sephardic Genealogical Society is hoping that the Portuguese Ministry of Justice will introduce evidential standards, broadly based on those Mendoza wrote for the S&P Sephardi Community of London which is the largest surviving congregation following the Portuguese-Jewish tradition. The Society is proposing that profits from the nationality scheme should be invested in digitizing Sephardic archives around the world, supporting Portuguese-Jewish culture, and recovering Portugal’s Jewish history. It is suggested that the family histories of those receiving Portuguese citizenship should be placed in the Torre do Tombo, the Portuguese national archives, as a permanent memorial to Portugal’s Jewish history and as a resource for future historians.
What will happen? There’s a lot of money in selling EU passports. Tielen observes: “The Sephardim are Portugal’s first diaspora. Healing the Jewish-shaped hole in the Portuguese heart, and the Portugal-shaped hole in the Sephardic heart is a cultural and romantic venture. Having handed a golden egg-laying goose to others, Portugal should expect resistance in getting it back.” A previous attempt to reform the system was seen off with insinuations of antisemitism.
David Mendoza says: “The Portuguese nationality concession represents a huge opportunity for Portugal and for Sephardim. So far, this is unrealized potential.” As yet there is little attempt to build a meaningful and lasting relationship with the Portuguese-Jewish diaspora or to develop investment and tourism. The nationality concession created a lot of goodwill within the Portuguese-Jewish diaspora, but they are now often shoved aside by those more interested in EU passports than a relationship with Portugal. Mendoza concludes: “By standing up for the Portuguese-Jewish tradition and for Portugal, we expect pushback by those currently making a lot of money, but we believe that the goodwill shown by the Portuguese people deserves reciprocation from the Sephardic side.”
