In loving memory of Malka z’l

The conversion of Portugal’s Jews was not occasioned, as was the conversion of 1391, by the direct threat of death. From Portuguese sources we know that when the Jews of Portugal were confronted in 1497 with the alternatives of conversion or exile, about 20,000 persons were assembled in Lisbon for the purpose of being deported from the country. But Portuguese Jewry, at that time, was supposed to have consisted of much larger numbers. Zacuto (Sefer Juhosin) tells us that more than 120,000 Jews came to Portugal in 1492, after the expulsion from Spain; and to this large number we should add the native Jewish population of Portugal, which was not insignificant. What happened to this mass of people? Assuming that about half of Spain’s exiles in Portugal left the country in 1493, and granted that the losses that Portuguese Jewry had suffered through the forced conversion of their children were not inconsiderable, it is still evident that most of the remaining body did not appear in Lisbon on the day fixed for departure.

The inescapable conclusion, therefore, is that the majority of Portugal’s Jews preferred conversion to exile. Whether the reason for this choice was materialistic or psychological (not wanting to experience another exile) or whether the minds of many were made up in its favor by their refusal to part forever with their children (the converted ones), it is clear that these converts could not qualify in the eyes of the rabbis as anusim (forced). Since the essential prerequisite for such qualification—an overwhelming fear of immediate death—was missing in their cases, they…had to be regarded as apostates (meshumadim).

As for the remaining 20,000, most of whom were also converted when the right for departure was suddenly denied them, it is difficult to judge from the different sources both the scope and determination of the resistance offered by this group to conversion. It appears, however, that while a small minority heroically and unyieldingly resisted to the end, the majority broke down after encountering the first hardships, and this despite the fact that the alternative now offered to conversion was not death, but imprisonment… Thus, at least technically, these converts, too, could hardly qualify in the eyes of the rabbis as truly forced converts.

Yet, the suffering and hardships to which the Jews of Portugal were subjected to in 1493–1497, and the fact that many of the remaining groups were, after all, dragged to the baptismal font, should be considered. If, on top of this, we consider the fact that many of these did practice Judaism secretly, we cannot explain the above-cited decision—denying the Jewish faithfulness of all the Marranos of Portugal—unless we bring into account another factor: the strong anti-Marrano sentiment that prevailed among Spain’s Jews. This and their deep-rooted conviction that forced conversion would lead to real conversion unless the convert hastened to escape from the [religious] coercion.

In 1499 the Marranos of Portugal were officially prohibited from leaving the country. Thus, the view could have been fostered among the Spanish exiles there that Portuguese Marranism was a lost cause. The rabbis’ decision referred to was probably taken a few years after the conversion, when Marrano migration from Portugal came to a standstill, and when a great deal of damaging evidence was gathered, from reports arriving from that country, about the religious behavior of the Marranos (this is indicated in Jacob Ben Hariv’s statement in I.F. Baer: Toledot ha-Yehudim Bi-Sefarad HaNozrit). Then, unexpectedly, things radically changed. The massacre of the Marranos in Lisbon in 1506 and the royal decree of 1507, permitting Marrano to depart from the country, brought in their wake the renewal of Marrano migration from Portugal and a new stream of “returnees” to the east.

Jacob Ben Hariv, who now took the lead in the struggle on behalf of the Marranos, and who clearly favored their recognition as forced converts, went so far as to claim that even the Marranos’ descendants, however remote, should be treated as Jews with respect to the law. Nevertheless, the decision of 1514, which was based on this view, related only to the Marranos of Portugal, and not to the converts of Spain. Insofar as the Spanish Marranos were concerned, Spain’s Jews persisted in evaluating them as gentiles and were determined to treat them as such. The isolated cases of “returnees”…from the many converted on the eve of the expulsion, could not alter this radical attitude, which by then was widespread and dominant.

(Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.)