There is not much to do on the balcony except watch the men by the bimah rocking back and forth in prayer—unless I want to pray, which I don’t, and wouldn’t know how to anyway. As if she can read my mind, the woman sitting next to me hands me a siddur after leafing through it and finding the page they are reading from. I don’t know what portion to read, but I take it and thank her quietly.
I must admit that I never imagined myself sitting in an almost empty synagogue on a Friday night in Portugal. This trip is not a pilgrimage or a search for ancestors and deep meaning. It is embarrassingly mundane. Yet here I am, confronting my unpracticed Jewishness in a town where Jews risked their lives for generations to do the opposite. It’s unsettling. I feel out of place, despite whatever came over me in the room up the street. Prayers don’t move me. Except for the Kaddish and El Maleh Rachamim, the prayers for the dead, which have somehow become embedded in my DNA, most prayers and hymns sound foreign to me, even though they are mostly spoken or sung in Hebrew, albeit in an archaic and liturgical style.
I wonder what the men praying by the bimah think of the three of us, barging into their synagogue in the middle of Shabbat prayers and interrupting the ritual. We didn’t even cover our hair.
Unfortunately, instead of feeling awe and gratitude, I feel let down. The grand sanctuary with the gold menorahs and lions protecting Aron HaKodesh is the exact opposite of what Belmonte’s hidden Jewish community represents. For five hundred years, these people practiced a religion they barely remembered—in secret and fear, behind thick walls and darkened windows. And now that they can practice openly, they do so with both grandeur and caution. I think simplicity would have been more appropriate. After all, the surviving Jews of the Iberian Peninsula will never be able to compete with the riches of the Church that obliterated their communities.
But who am I to criticize and judge? A secular woman who doesn’t bother to cover her hair inside a synagogue or fast on Yom Kippur. This beautiful sanctuary is a natural response to centuries of oppression—a way to show pride and resilience, not a frivolous display of wealth.
I want to feel spiritually moved, but I don’t. Maybe it’s too foreign to make an emotional impact. Maybe it’s my lack of preparation and my ignorance. I’ll never know if I don’t delve into it, but at the moment, I am not ready to investigate my soul.
The men down in the sanctuary seem to conclude the prayers. They close their siddurim and place them on a small table. They shake hands and, I surmise, wish each other Shabbat Shalom, even though I can’t hear what they say. They are going to leave the synagogue now and walk home to unite with their families around the Shabbat table.
“Where are you from?” The woman whispers to me in English as we squeeze our way out between the benches. She has a familiar accent, but I can’t place it.
I’m not sure what to say. California? America? Israel? Which will be the best answer? Which will prevent the next useless question, Where in Israel, America, or California?
“California,” I say, even though it excludes Vera. I can let Rita explain the rest, which I’m sure she will. I’ve never noticed it before, but during this trip, she has developed the habit of taking over any conversation I start as soon as she notices I’m speaking to someone, so why bother?
“And where are you from?” I continue before she can ask me where I live in California.
I wouldn’t ask this question if she hadn’t asked me first. It is not something I do. Mostly because I get that question all the time, and I resent it. Especially when strangers insist on where I’m “really” from.
“Brazil,” she says.
She is not the first Brazilian I’ve met in Portugal, but certainly the first Jewish Brazilian. Otherwise, why would she sit in a synagogue on a Friday night and read from a siddur?
“We’re going to look for a place to eat,” Rita says when we join her and Vera on the way out. She turns to the Brazilian woman and asks, as if she has known her for years, “You want to go with us?”
“Thank you, but I have to go home,” the woman says, letting her colorful head cover slide to her shoulders and revealing her long curls.
“Okay,” Rita shrugs and throws a question to all of us: “Any chance we get invited to Shabbat dinner?”
There are two men down in the lobby. I hope they didn’t hear her. I also wish she didn’t say that. But Rita is not the timid type. And she has some reason to think we might be invited. She’s friendly with the wife of our local Chabad rabbi and often attends Shabbat dinner at their community hall, which also doubles as a synagogue—no formal invitation needed. The rabbi welcomes visitors from Israel and locals alike, religious and secular, without judgment or expectations. But here it looks like things are done differently. These people are extremely private, and I don’t see them changing their ways for us.
“No. They don’t do it,” the Brazilian woman whispers.
When we reach the lobby, we stop to thank the men for letting us into the synagogue. The older man, one of the two who met us earlier, wishes us Shabbat Shalom, unsmiling. The younger one, someone we haven’t met yet—a tall guy dressed in jeans and a gray wool sweater, with a shiny white yarmulke on his head—wishes us Shabbat Shalom and asks in French-accented Hebrew, “Are you from Israel?”
“Yes, and California,” Rita answers, then quickly asks if he knows of any café or restaurant nearby that’s still open. I hope she’s not trying to guilt-trip him into inviting us to dinner.
The man doesn’t seem surprised or impressed to meet women from Israel. He’s probably met plenty of Israelis visiting this town to learn about its Jewish history. He might even know Umberto or the people who run Hotel Sinai. But he can’t think of any place to recommend. Instead, he offers to walk with us part of the way and show us how to get downtown, where we might find something open.
The Brazilian woman, whose name we learn is Frida, says she’s also heading downtown and can show us the way, so we invite her to join us. We exit the synagogue and head in the opposite direction from where we came. By now, the temperature has dropped even more, and the air is brutally cold. Wind from the valley cuts across the exposed side of the street, making things worse. We huddle in our scarves and jackets to keep warm, but it’s not much help. We walk in the middle of the road, and the sound of our shoes tapping against the pavement punctuates the silence.
After we pass a couple of poorly lit intersections, our French guide announces that it’s time for him to leave us. He’s going to a Shabbat dinner at a local family’s home—they’re waiting for him to arrive from synagogue. We thank him for showing us the way, though we could have figured it out ourselves. It’s hard to get lost here.
“They rarely invite guests to dinner,” Frida says after he disappears around the corner. “The houses here are small.”
I wonder if she feels left out because she wasn’t invited. She told me earlier that they don’t do it, but this guy made friends here, enough to be invited into their small home.
“We have met several Brazilians since we arrived in Portugal, but you’re the first Brazilian Jew,” I say, hoping to distract her from feeling rejected. I don’t know if it would make her feel better, but that’s my intention.
“I’m not Jewish,” she says.
That’s not what I expected to hear, and I’m a little embarrassed. But she knew what to do in the synagogue, so why wouldn’t I think she was Jewish? I’m not going to apologize, though. Being Jewish isn’t an insult—unless you’re a raging antisemite, which I’m not. Besides, maybe she likes that people think she is Jewish.
“I’m trying to convert to Judaism,” she says, looking at me. “But they make it too difficult.”
“Here, in Belmonte?” I’m not sure I understand who she is talking about, and I want to find out. Luckily, Rita is walking ahead of us with Vera, talking on the phone with someone in Hebrew. There’s a good chance I will hear Frida’s entire story.
Frida nods, hugging herself against the cold. “I came here a year and a half ago for the second time. Even before I came, I’ve been studying Jewish texts, learning to read Hebrew, and going to synagogue. I told them I wanted to convert, but they don’t care. They’re polite, but they keep telling me to be patient. Three years ago, they told me to go back home and think about it. Now it’s still the same.”
She tells me she became curious about her Jewish roots after taking a DNA test. It said she had Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Not a lot—maybe six or seven percent—but she wasn’t surprised. She always felt she was different. Even before the test, she believed her family descended from the Anusim—Portuguese and Spanish Jews forced to convert to Catholicism. After the test confirmed her suspicion, she began researching her family history and found an ancestor on her mother’s side named Abraão Rodrigues—the Portuguese version of Abraham. He had settled in northern Brazil more than two hundred years ago.
I ask if “Rodrigues” ends with S or Z because these letters can indicate a Jewish origin.
“‘Es’ was the Portuguese Jewish spelling,” she explains. “So I know I have Jewish ancestry here.”
I guess she’s learned something in Belmonte. I used to think Jewish last names ended with a Z.
I don’t know if I should congratulate her for finding a Jewish ancestor. Being Jewish is complicated, so why pursue it? Jews got killed and persecuted throughout history, from the Spanish Inquisition to Kishinev to the Holocaust. In every place where there were Jews, there were pogroms, so why does she want to be part of this trauma? But she is not deterred by history. After discovering Abraão Rodrigues, she joined a Bnei Anusim organization and decided to travel to Portugal and convert to Judaism. Before she knew how hard it would be.
I want to tell her that being Jewish is trouble, but maybe that’s what she wants: to feel special. To belong. To find meaning and a new purpose in life.
But it’s not easy to convert. I know people—men and women—who did it, often because they fell in love with someone Jewish who insisted they convert, and it took them years to do it. Judaism doesn’t proselytize—it’s the opposite of Christianity and Islam. It’s an exclusive club that is not interested in increasing its membership. If you weren’t born Jewish, the rabbis don’t seek your company. And here, in Belmonte, they seem to be even more reluctant. And I can understand them. After five hundred years of secrecy, you have to work hard to prove that you belong, and only then, maybe, will they accept you.
“I am not ready to give up,” she says, “but they won’t help me.”
I don’t tell her that I am not surprised. Her eagerness seems misplaced, even to a non-rabbi like myself. It’s one thing to apply for another passport because of one ancestor. It’s a whole different story to change your god because of it.
