pt-005467
type: Institution
conditions of access: All visits are guided and have to be previously booked. There are no visits on Friday, Saturday, Jewish holidays or local holidays. You may be asked for your identification. NOTICE : For security reasons it is not allowed to enter with the travel bags (suitcases), shopping bags and other volumes.
sources: ClaimsCon'06
sources: cilisboa.org
opening hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays : 9am to 12.20pm
agent has or had location: 1
has or had agent name: Jewish Community of Lisbon
has or had agent name: CI Lisboa
history: The present Jewish Community of Lisbon originated in the Sephardic Jewish Groups that have settled in Portugal in the early XIX Century. They were mainly tradesmen, coming from Gibraltar and Morocco (Tangier, Tetouan and Mogador) and some of their names still expressed a connection to their Iberic lands of origin, before the period they were expelled from there. That is the case of CONQUI (from Cuenca, province of Cuenca) or CARDOSO (from Cardoso, Viseu District). They were above average-learned people, knowing how to read and write and speaking, besides the liturgical Hebrew, the Arabic or English and Haquitia, a Jewish-Hispanic-Moroccan dialect. They had numerous international contacts, not only due to their trading activities but also to their family ties spread around the world. These factors explain the quick economic and cultural flourishing not only of Lisbon Jews but also of the groups that have been settling on the first half of the XIX Century in the Azores and in Faro. Parallel to their fast and successful integration in the Portuguese way of life, the first Jewish groups have sought to organize themselves as such, creating prayer lounges and acquiring plots to bury their dead loved ones according to the Jewish Ritual. The first grave belongs to José Amzalak, departed in February 26th 1804 and buried in a plot belonging to the English Cemetery of Estrela, definitely due to the British nationality of the first Jews in Lisbon, that came, as we have seen, from Gibraltar. By this time, Jews were still considered as a foreign colony and the community had no legal existence yet. The Constitutional Charter of 1826 only recognized Catholicism as the sole religion allowed to Portuguese citizens, referring all the other creeds to foreigners. That is why back then it was called the Israeli “colony”, just like the English or German colonies were. Since legalization of the community was not possible to get, Jews in Lisbon, especially in the second half of the XIX Cent…
name: Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa