Kesher Talk

Jews in odd places: Portugal: It is tough being a hidden Jew.

Fernando Manuel da Costa has been attending Shabbat services at the Ashkenazic synagogue in Lisbon for nearly two decades. Now da Costa wants to tell other Portuguese with suspect Jewish roots how they can return to the fold.

But older members of the congregation sometimes would tell him to take off his tallit and would call him — a member of a crypto-Jewish family that hid its Jewish roots since the 16th century Inquisition — “a guy playing to be Jewish.”

posted by William @ 10/30/2003 09:56:53 AM