🙂 (Re: your survey) I'm one of your Catholic subscribers, and have one fairly recent Sephardic Portuguese ancestor (1/32), a man surnamed Muñoz I believe, who was a finance professional like me. He lived in Charleston, S. C. and I refer to his ethnicity as I don't know his religion of practice (in America it might have been Judaism, Christianity, or none). I'm faithfully Catholic and have significant exposure to Jewish culture. So you're reaching diverse viewers 🙂keep it up
"Muñoz" is not Portuguese spelling, it is Spanish. The Portuguese version would be "Munhoz". But of course, there was always cross border migration. (I'm Portuguese and I have several Galician ancestors.) Usually, the spelling of names would change to match the language of the country you were moving to.
I know you're still at least two years away from WWII, but, when you get there, if you delve into the Shoah, PLEASE have a therapist on hand. Speaking from experience.
There is also the village of Carção, between Braganza and Mirando do Douro in north-east Portugal, (Trás-os-Montes), where the village coat of arms is a Menorah.
Here in Brazil we had a lot of new christians. A city near where I live, in Paraíba, actually has a cactus forming a Menorah as it's symbol, crowned by a cangaceiro's hat with a star of David.
Hitler drove away many nuclear scientists. The Soviets drove away many educated Russians. A country that discriminates against its own population is one that shoots itself in the foot.
The community at Belmonte bears a striking resemblance to the Kakure Kirishitan, ironic considering how it was the Portuguese who brought Catholicism to Japan.
Hi from Portugal! Been following you're videos for a while. Excellent work. I myself can trace some ancestry stemming from Castelo Branco area and loved to visit Belmonte. I can understand why Barros Bastos efforts failed however. Its too distant in the past, so many didnt see a point in reverting. Glad we are making amends with the past though. Looking forward to your next video!
Wish I had this video (and You tube for that matter) when I was doing East Asian Studies in college. A perfect compare and contrast case for Japanese Christians under the Shogunate. Ironically, most of the missionaries working in Japan in the 16th century were Portuguese priests. When Japan opened again (and allowed Christianity to be practiced) after 250-odd years, there were still some "underground" Christians with some idiosyncratic traditions and prayers.
I come from a new christian family. My great grandfather, in fact, was even called Crispim, which is associated with this heritage. It's cool to see the history of the community in Portugal covered! From a Portuguese
Dear sam arronow, as non-jewish person who is an avid followers of yours, I hope you will continue your brilliant and impartial service to narrating history even beyond the creation of israel and even to the modern day, especially until the oslo accords. the world has already enough of biased telling, and there is something in your way of telling that truly captures the mind and attention of others, whatever religion they may be.
@neptune3569 If I may answer as well as a gentile, it's fascinating to learn about the history of a small ethnoreligious community that has traversed multiple continents and has immensely shaped both science and religion over the millennia. Their story of survival despite great persecution is incredible.
@@chronikhiles Plus on top of that, these videos are extremely well researched, well presented, and are talking about aspects of history that most people have no idea about. In my opinion, if all people did videos about their ethnic group's history like that, more people would be interested. I'm sometimes interested in some ethnic group's history but the videos presenting them are very boring and repetitive, as a result, I turn away.
Muito bem feito o vídeo. Parabéns! From Wiki: "A Kahal Zur Israel (Congregação Rochedo de Israel) foi a primeira sinagoga das Américas. Funcionou em Pernambuco durante o período de dominação holandesa (1630 a 1657). Durante esse período emigraram para o Recife milhares de judeus sefarditas de origem portuguesa, refugiados nos Países Baixos, que vieram para a então colônia holandesa atraídos pela liberdade de culto religioso. Seu primeiro rabino foi o luso-holandês Isaac Aboab da Fonseca (1605-1693) que chegou ao Recife em 1641 e ficou por lá durante 13 anos. Derrotados na Batalha dos Guararapes, fruto da Insurreição Pernambucana, as famílias judias retornaram para a Holanda a bordo do navio Valk. O desembarque ocorreu em Nova Amsterdã, atual Nova York, onde os judeus formaram a Congregação Shearith Israel, a primeira comunidade judaica da América do Norte."
Barros Basto is a truly fascinating figure. He was always a somewhat eccentric man, including (IIRC) founding his own occult religion (a sort of weird Spiritist/Thelema hybrid) before arriving at a new identity as a Jew. His search for roots even led him to reconstruct an etymology for his surname, 'Barros', out of 'Bar-Rosh'. Despite not being recognised as Jewish by several members of the community in Portugal even after his conversion, he threw himself into the project of bringing these cryptojewish communities back to Judaism. He was definitely what we would recognise today as a "seeker", constructing his identity as he went through life. Given his lifelong search for meaning (again, spanning various religions and practices) and his tireless canvassing for funds to visit these communities, an essay in the 'History of Religion in Portugal' (alas, only available in Portuguese) describes him as a "unique example of a religious entrepreneur in the Portuguese context". As a final aside, Salazar's official role in government was as Chief Minister / Prime Minister (Presidente do Conselho de Ministros), the head of the executive; the President of Portugal (then as now) has a largely ceremonial role.
I'll make a note about Salazar for corrections; thank you. Yeah, my sources on Barros Basto didn't discuss his occultism, but it doesn't surprise me. His fixation and subsequent biases around Jewish revival seem rooted in uncomfortably personal issues.
I myself have remote jewish ancestors as a great deal of Portuguese people. One fifth of the Hamas hostages either are Portuguese or have a link with Portugal. 20% of the Israeli Football National Team has Portuguese citizenship thanks to policy of allowing sephardic jews to claim Back Portuguese citizenship (estimated to be more then 50 thousands).
18:52 The Army feared that proselytising for any religion other than Catholicism would ruin the "esprit de corps" of the armed forces, as well as contribute to the erosion of Portuguese traditions. Officially, Barros Basto was not prosecuted for performing circumcisions. Instead, the Army found a "clever" tactic: because Barros Basto was converting adult descendants of Jews, he would perform circumcision on adult males. Since doing that meant he had to touch the penises of adults, the Army accused him of "gross indecency", thus implying that he indulged in homosexual acts (which at the time were illegal).
Ha, you did end up covering the topic I "requested" (maybe you were planning to cover it anyways, but I like to think I had a hand in it), and even gave it its own video! It's relatively short (compared to your more recent videos anyways), but as predicted, it's a nice detour within your larger coverage of the Great War. As for your European Portuguese pronunciation, that I assume you might want feedback in, you got pretty close, probably close to as good as one can get for a non-native speakers not immersed in the language, parabéns! Surprised most mistakes were understandable ones from you putting the stress in the wrong syllable, European Portuguese is a stress-timed language like English so it can sound a off if you stress the wrong syllable. I'll also say that the nasal vowels were fine, they're the hardest part for non-natives, probably borderline impossible if your first language doesn't already have them. The ⟨ou⟩ diphthong in European Portuguese, like in the surname "Sousa", is actually pronounced /ow/ or just /o/, this confusion I assume arises from the fact that, among the Lusophone diaspora in English-speaking countries, this is actually the standard pronunciation of the surname, but assuming you want to emulate the native pronunciation, it's way off. Feel free not burden your brain with this information should you never touch Portugal again. If you ever make a history of the Jews in Brazil or South America in general, the pronunciation there it's way different, so some of this doesn't apply. Someone already pointed this but you put the tilde (~) in the wrong letter in "Cristãos", the easy way to remember where to put a tilde if you speak another Romance language, is that tildes actually originate in Mediaeval writing as a small, stylized ⟨N⟩ letter to both save space and also indicate that there's no /n/ sound but there's still nasalization, so "Cristão" comes from earlier "Cristano". Personally I think we should go the way of the Germans and invent some alternative forms of writing our diacritics and special characters when they aren't available/people are lazy, too many people, including native speakers, seem to think they're optional... Anyways, Portuguese people love Portugal being noticed, and I'm no different. Glad, that this time, it's for more wholesome reasons. Ótimo vídeo e desejo-te um bom sábado!
For an English speaker I thought his pronunciation was very good, they usually butch the language. I hope he covers Brazil and tries to do a carioca accent! (I'm from Rio)
Portuguese from Jewish descent here. Part of my family comes from a Spanish Jew from Trabazos (near the Portuguese border) that escaped to the north of Portugal in the early XVI century (A cousin of mine made a huge research on our family heritage which is published as a 4 volume literary work). Visited Belmonte a couple of times (Not too far from where my branch of the family established itself) and its always an emotional event for me. Thank you so much for this video!!!!!!
This may not be the most kosher post here, but the story of Samuel Schwarz's encounter with the women elders of Belmonte calls to mind similar scenes of feminine guardians of traditions from Frank Herbert's "Dune."
I mean, the three religious communities that are named in the text and depicted as still existing in the Dune universe 10000+ years from now, are: - Orange Catholics (Space Anglicans) - Zensunnis (Space Muslims) - (Crypto-)Jews (literally, actual Jews) The latter being explicitly compared and contrasted with the Bene Gesserit, albeit sometimes in some rather unfortunate ways because this is still Dune we're talking about.
Absolutely fascinating! When I heard that you were working with Sir Manatee on something relating to Poland during WW1, I was not expecting it to have anything to do with Portugal. Turns out that the town just north outside of Łódź (nice pronunciation, btw), where the Szwarc brothers were born, is Zgierz. I'm sending this video to my buddy from Zgierz right away.
My mom's maiden name is a Portuguese name that has two possible etymologies, one of which is Sephardic, so I've always wondered if once upon a time we were "New Christians".
You can take a dna test. I’m two generations admixed into other ethnicities and the test still detected my Jewish ancestry. The last name that was dropped from use after going crypto sounded Ashkenazi. And that’s what my dna test results were.
Thank you! I really love this content I would love to see the spanish side of the history. In Spain, Chorizo (sausage) and Jamon (ham) were hung at the entrance of houses so that the Inquisition would not suspect that they were not a Catholic family...
Finally caught up, thanks for entering my life and giving me at least a week of education alongside my painting and drawing. You taught me so much about history I was unaware of, and I sincerely look forward to seeing you cover more topics!
Now i hope that you do a video abiut the Crypto-Jews in Northeastern Brazil, they mostly assimilated in Catholic Religion but some of the old Jewish Practices were kelpt and its wuite interesting. Some theorize that a Region in the Northeast that had many Jews has a name of Hebrew Origin, the Seridó.
There's a documentary called "A estrela oculta no sertão" about Crypto-Jews communities in the Northest, but I don't think it has English subtitles. A rav already went there and some people have converted to Judaism!!! Incredible story!
Wasn't there a fairly significant number of Sephardic Jews that made their way from Iberia to Eastern Europe that more or less assimilated into the wider Ashkenazi Jewish population with some exceptions here and there?
Thanks again. I am especially interested in the Portuguese and Spanish Jewish communities, Because I have all three ancestries. I wish I could learn more about them, but I have only gone back to the nineteenth century in records.
just saw the Russian Emancipation video, and I loved it a lot, but I do have a few questions: 1. what role did the Czechoslovakian Foreign legion play in the pogroms (if any),their interactions with the Jews and if they even had any Jewish members. 2. what was the situation regarding the pogroms in West Ukraine (the "country", not necessarily the region) because I heard that a pogrom instigated by the Polish army caused some backlash and a forming of Jewish battalion? 3. what effect did the Russian civil war had on Jews in the Caucuses and central Asia?
I think we all know the answer. Buzzwords in the title (like Russia) and a topic involving the tribe often blamed for starting the Russian revolution. Not a bad policy to keep comments closed, even if it is annoying.
Your channel is so humanist and helpful . It shows how Jews coexisted in their communities all over the world and survived persecution. May this knowledge will help all people live together in peace someday . And yes, I’m descended from “ Conversos”.
I remember seeing a tumblr post back in 2016 from a young Spanish woman whose mother had genuinely thought that their secretive religious practice (which sounded a lot like judaism) was "pagan" in the more literal sense, and they fully believed their ancestors were Spanish witches (in the religious sense, not the magical). It never left my mind and honestly breaks my heart. I hope they found the truth of their family and are doing well.
Bro a large portion of Sephardic Jews went with Columbus to the Americas around the same years of the expulsion. My family is a descendant of them. I notice that part of Sephardic history is always ignored or omitted.
I noticed that on the census videos Finland was on the list, I know of their Jewish community and even have family in Finland. Could you do a video on Jews in Finland?
There is no such thing as "New Christian" names. New Christian names were the same as Old Christian names. In fact, often times the New Christian would adopt their godparent's family name, and their godparents were Old Christian.
Also he built the Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue in Porto, and moved the heavens and the earth to get funding for it, hoping that the cryptojews would return. Its a wild story. Watch the movie “Sefarad.” Its a great cinematic thriller about Barros Basto and the Porto community.
19:37 Yeah... they are all Israelis that just wanted EU citizenship. A Portugese law in 2015 gave "eligibility for 3 million Israelis". Portugal's population is 10 million. It's all for money. An alleged (and later refuted) scandal - in which the well known Russian-Jewish oligarch, Roman Abramovich illegaly got a Portugese citizenship, caused the public opinion and the parliament change the law in 2022 and now it is quite harder for Jews to receive Portugese citizenship.
In Spain people who can prove descendancy from Sephardic Jews can have dual citizenship with any other national. Normally only people from former Spanish or Portugese colonies are permitted this. The only other group afforded this possibility are ex-International Legionaries from the Civil War, who are, naturally, a dwindling bunch these days.
@@forthrightgambitia1032 Yeah, but prove how? They must have proven genealogical records all the way back to 1492, pass difficult linguistic and cultural tests, and then a premmition from the Spanish authorities. That is not much easier for them to get many other citizenships. And Portugese's one it is still much much easier- but expensive.
It was not Jews per se, but those decedents of the jews expulsed, so it was not only practicing jews but also Cristãos Novos decedent's, Million of Brazilians acquired Portuguese Citizenship this way, even if they were practicing Catholic.
@@jackyex Just like Sam said, most of the "New Christians" have nothing to do with Jews at all. Those were not Crypto Jews. Brazilian and Portugese citizens, has equal rights anyway in the other's country. The only difference is that it's without EU/Mercosur/l citizenship.
@@AduckButSpain Just because the later inquisition New Christians weren't only Jews doesn't mean there's isn't a correlation, just ask the Lisbon Israelite Society, they are the ones who certified if one has or hasn't a real Jewish Ancestor, and yes they tend to be New Christians. The early inquisition did go much harder on Jews. And no, at least not exactly, there's quite a big difference between the Special Relationship provided between Portugal and Brazil and actually having Cietzenship.
AFAIK while your sources are roughly correct for the intial expulsion it kinda ignores that a pretty significant amount of those who were expelled actually returned to Spain eventually (and converted)
Hi, I'm a non jewish fan of the channel, that is very interested to hear about history from this perspective, as I find it fascinating. I noticed that the newer video about jewish emmancipation (the russian one) had the comments disabled, I don't remember that being very usual on the channel, so did smt happen?
19:38 I'm sorry, but I don't know where you found those stats for the Jewish population in Portugal. They are not correct. The number of people self-identifying as Jews totalled *3,061* in the *2011* Census, *1,773* in the *2001* Census (a suspicious outlier...), and *3,525* in the *1991* Census. (There was no question about religion before 1991.) But all that was *before* the law allowing for the naturalisation of Sephardic Jews. And the question was only asked to people *aged 15 or older,* and answering was *not mandatory* (the only such question in the Census). So, before the law for Sephardic naturalisation, the Jewish population in Portugal was certainly above 3,100. Furthermore, the law did not significantly increase the number of Jews in Portugal: the law didn't required them to move to Portugal, and so most of them remained in the countries they were (or took the opportunity to legally move to any other EU/EEA country). The law significantly increased the number of Jewish *Portuguese citizens,* but not so much the number of Jews *residing* in Portugal. In fact, the number of self-identified Jews in the *2021* Census fell to *2,910* - which may indicate a population decline or just fewer people willing to answer that question. Other than that, great video.
Hello Sir. I like your video. I am Indonesian. I would love to know how Judaism came to Indonesia. Maybe you make a video? We certainly got not a lot of jews nowadays here, but a friend of mine who is a Practicing Muslim said she has Jewish roots from her mom. I also read about Indonesian Rabbis. It would be cool.
Was super excited when I saw this video in my feed as a mizrahi Jew I always like to learn more about my culture and I feel like it's been kind of overshadowed on this channel by Ashkenazi Jewish culture and history. Was saddened to see that this was just another video about European Jewish history which is certainly interesting, just a bit disappointing. I wish we got a bit more of a look into what was going on and the other parts of MENA
Fascinating stuff. Jews in San Nicandro (which could be another great topic for a video, considering we’re in the WWI period) are similarly female-led nowadays. Do you know how Don Pacifico managed to get a role as Portuguese consul general before the Marquis de Pombal’s reforms?
Very interesting. As a side note, please be aware that it was King Ferran (not Fernando) you were referring to. He was King over the entire Crown of Aragon, which included the Principality of Catalonia, the kingdoms of Mallorca (attached in fact to Catalonia), Valencia, Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, and Aragon. The Crown took its name from Aragon because that was, historically, the first royal title acquired by the counts of Barcelona. But the Crown was mostly ethnically Catalan and led by Catalans. The King was Catalan, Catalan was his first language, in which he was known as Ferran. In Aragonese, it was Ferrando, Ferrand in Occitan, Ferdinando in Italian. He was known in Castile as Fernando (in Castilian, i.e. Spanish), where he became the regent for a number of years but was mostly rejected as a Catalan foreigner. Therefore, in English, it is best to call him the way his name is spoken and spelled in English, as Ferdinand. But if you would like for some reason to use his native name, that would be Ferran, in Catalan. 😉 As a Catalan (an agnostic one, born in a Catholic family), I can never be proud of some of the things Ferran was responsible for. Thank you for a very interesting story!
So like you dont even have to be jewish to apply for portuguese citizenship, you just have to demonstrate that you have at least ONE sephardic ancestor, doesnt matter if its from 500 years ago.....
Just discoved this awsome channel. My great-great grandmother was born in occupied Prussia then emigrated with her French born husband to American where my great-grandmother was born in about 1870. Could they have been crypto Jewish
Is Schwarz a typical jewish surname? I am researching my family members and the one that could lead to some life changing information is one of the surname Schwarz. I only have the records of where she died and know that she was born somewhere in Germany.
Yes to your question.And in a number of places in Spain.Of course also central and south America.From Baruch an old Sephardi Greek Jew with ancestors from both Spain and Portugal.I now live in London,England.
Wow bro, I was looking everywhere on the internet for that portuguese jewish flag and i couldn't find it, it is because it's an own design, portuguese jewry seems didn't have their own flag as spanish did. I am sephardic and I feel so close to portugual, not to spain despite my family came from Spain.
I always found Crypto Jews Theories Intresting(My favourit theory is the Jewish Influences in the Shinto religion both religions have weird similarities and practices)
Something i wish you had talked in more detail about is what happened to the belmonte crypto-jewish community after they were re-contacted by other jews
Ottoman Empire accepting Jews always makes me proud. It was a nation accepting everyone, no matter what their religion was... That tolarance doesn't exist nowdays, anywhere.
1. His father was a Maskil, so he probably did learn to speak with a modern accent. 2. It's 2024 and there are only so many Hebrew-speaking RU-vidrs I can call upon to provide voice roles.
Please move on from World War One. There is no reason for you to have a dozen half-hour videos on small Jewish events during World War One while almost nothing on the Kaarite Movement. I would like to request that you finish up the series quickly and then go back and make new videos covering overlooked topics. Edit: Still Thank You for the hard work you put in, I just think that the effort being very unevenly distributed between eras. We are an ancient people with an ancient history, there is no reason to be so hyper-focused on the past 200 years.
He's covering all of Jewish history. As he gets closer to the present, the knowledge we have on history becomes more dense, hence more to talk about. This is due to having more surviving records as well as having more people who have lived through or knew someone who has. All history is important and even things that seem unimportant can be linked to something bigger. Just be patient, I'm sure he'll get there