Lisbon, one of Europe’s oldest and most vibrant capital cities, will soon have a museum dedicated to Portugal’s long and very rich Jewish history.
The future Tikvá Museu Judaico Lisboa is the responsibility of Associação Hagadá, a private non-profit organisation whose aim is to promote the creation, construction, installation and management of the museum.
To this end, a collaboration protocol was drawn up between the Lisbon Municipal Council and the Associação Hagadá, whereby the Municipality will transfer the surface right over a plot of land in Belém, overlooking the Tagus River. Hagadá invited the prestigious international architect Daniel Libeskind to design the building, which he enthusiastically accepted.

Judaism in the land we now know as Portugal has existed for almost two thousand years: a thousand years under the Romans, Visigoths and Moors, prior to the founding of the nation, and nearly another thousand years afterwards. The Jewish presence in Portugal is a uniquely long and culturally diverse story that confers an originality and specificity on Portuguese Judaism that is unparalleled anywhere in the world.

Despite the significant Jewish presence throughout the history of Portugal, until now Lisbon has been one of the few European capital cities without a museum to collect, preserve and disseminate this heritage. Tikva Jewish Museum Lisbon has filled a gap in the city’s cultural scene that “unveils” and gives form to part of a history that remains ignored by many, thus attracting those in Portugal and abroad who are interested in the multicultural dimension of Portuguese Judaism’s extremely rich history.

What is required is a work of memory. But something more than that. It also needs to be a project focused on the future, above all on the younger generations, that will inform people not only about the reality of Jewish culture in Portugal and the world but also about a history of light and dark, of hope and tragedy, that teaches us the value of cultural diversity and warns us of the risks of ethnic and religious intolerance. The name of the museum – Tikva, the Hebrew word for “hope” – has been carefully chosen.

Jewish culture has played an important role in Portugal, above all between the 12th and 15th centuries. Jews were artisans, doctors, mathematicians, astrologers and astronomers; they devoted themselves to trade and finance, and left an indelible mark on the history of the country.
In spite of the discriminatory measures imposed on the Portuguese Jews, during these centuries a period of coexistence reigned between the Jewish minority and the Christain majority. The Jewish community enjoyed religious freedom and was active within the economic, scientific and cultural fields, contributing to the country’s development.

This climate of tolerance was brutally interrupted at the end of the 15th century when King Manuel I signed the Edict of Expulsion, forcibly converted the Jews and established the Court of Inquisition in 1536. The Jewish neighbourhoods were abandoned, the synagogues, schools and bookshops destroyed and the cemeteries desecrated. The persecutions and the passage of time gradually erased the marks of over three hundred years of coexistence from the life and memory of the Portuguese people.

Photo: Stone tablet from the Great Synagogue of Lisbon, 1307.

Nevertheless, the signs of the Jewish presence in Portugal survive all around the country – in the architecture, street names, language, customs, culture and mentality – and all around the world through the Portuguese Jewish diaspora. Their contribution to the countries where they were welcomed is extraordinary. Still, they never forgot their “lost paradise”, which was remembered through the language and the names they gave to the synagogues and communities they rebuilt.

Judaism has undergone a slow resurgence, and a new Jewish presence exists in Portugal today. It consists partly of the descendants of former Iberian Jews, or Marranos, who kept their faith over the centuries; Jews of Moroccan origin who began to settle in Portugal at the end of the 18th century; Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, who arrived here in the 20th century following the anti-Semitic and Nazi persecutions, enriching the Portuguese Jewish community with Ashkenazi culture; and, more recently, by descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews, expelled by the Inquisition, who, as a result of the approval in Portugal of the naturalisation laws, were able to acquire Portuguese nationality.