On the first Sunday of September, 2026, throughout the day, the religious and cultural institutions of the Jewish Community of Porto (CIP/CJP) will be open to the general public. The free visits focus on the largest synagogue in the country, the Jewish museum, the Holocaust museum, the Rosh Pinah library with 10 thousand books, the community cinema with historical films produced by the community, the art gallery, the kosher Port wine cellar, and more, in a program also filled with high level conferences and performances by the Mekor Haim choir.

The host community is a world leader in promoting Jewish culture, something unusual in a country like Portugal. Although cities such as New York, Tel Aviv or Paris have more in absolute terms, the cultural facilities observed there are managed by dozens of specialized institutions. They are not conglomerates in a single organization.

The European Day of Jewish Culture, marked by symbolic events in all major European cities, can well be called, in Portugal, the Day of Sharing between the Jews and the Portuguese in general. We pointed out in a previous article, published in 2025, that the annual event celebrated in Porto, the most complete of its kind on the continent, allows the general public to identify with the Jewish community, a feeling of ancestral communion, the celebration of a collective identity that touches the national soul. Judeo-Christian Civilization had as its bulwark the country founded by Dom Afonso Henriques, later transformed into a scientific and military empire, by virtue of joint effort and shared values between Catholic and Jewish leaders.

In the modern debate around the world, there is hardly a national history as underestimated as that of Portugal. The aggravating factor is that the problem begins in the Portuguese land. In recent decades, there has been a consistent historiographical and political blindness that has sought to review the nation's past through a transformative prism. Deeds considered heroic for centuries, including during the First Republic, became landmarks of oppression, colonialism, and violations of human rights. The good has become evil, and how many times has the evil become good. This cultural war, and war is really the appropriate word, resulted in the Jewish community and the more traditional Portuguese population, which in truth is the vast majority, came to be seen as ideological anachronisms. Anachronistic? That is one perspective. The CIP/CJP has another. Seven centuries have elapsed between the Treaty of Zamora and the publication of the first volume of Karl Marx's "Capital", which gave birth to Eduard Bernstein and countless proud continuators to this day.

The millennial history of Portugal and the contributions of the People of the Book since the times of Yaish ben Yahia and his lineage, never cease to excite young Jews as they begin their first years of learning. Those who have contact with the world Jewish reality are aware that communities tend to emphasize the contributions of their elders, in the nations where they lived, as a way of ensuring solid references and preservation of identity. The ancient history of Portugal is highly respected by the Jewish community, for the results achieved, although not everything has been rosy during the almost four hundred years of partnership between Catholics and Portuguese Jews. For the Jewish community, the chessboard of life is observed as a whole. Life is not good for wasting time, promoting injustices, envy, vanities and slander that have now become professions.

When that historic founding union of the nation ended and the leaders of science and economics were put to flight, the country was destined to never be the same again. Other competing empires emerged, such as the British, Dutch and Ottoman Empires, populated by Portuguese Jewish exiles. Dom Sebastião's adventure in Alcácer Quibir was just another disaster. The Jewish advisors of yesteryear would never have subscribed to the need for that invasion, which toppled the national nobility, to the point that Portugal lost its independence and became almost a country of ladies. We spare the reader the details that preceded the battle of Northern Morocco, but it is worth mentioning that a large number of Iberian Jews, then free and living in Africa, did not accept to be converted to Christianity again. A rare document on this theme is on display at the Jewish Museum of Porto: the Megillat Purim Sebastiano. The 6th of September will allow visitors to see this important manuscript. It is short and easy to read and understand.

Purim is an ancient Assyrian word linked to good luck. For the Jewish communities, as for their usual enemies, no matter how different their clothes, the word has a special meaning. Several Nazis, at the time of the Nuremberg gallows, shouted "Purim, Purim", believing that they were being targeted by Jewish justice. The traditional festival of Purim celebrates a feat that took place two and a half millennia ago, in the Persia of Achashverosh and the beautiful Queen Esther. The wicked Prime Minister Haman and his ten sons were hanged on the same rope that he had carefully prepared for the leader of the local Jewish community. These facts impacted the Persian population of that time so much that many wanted to convert to Judaism or simply declared themselves Jews to benefit from the protection of the God of Israel.

Given some explanations about the Megillah Purim Sebastiano and its framework and symbolism, we can go a little further in the history of Portugal. The most internationally acclaimed film in Portuguese cinema, "1618", produced by CIP/CJP, marks another relevant historical moment. Porto's economy, destroyed this year by the imprisonment of the leaders of the local "New Christian" community, put the inquisitors and the city's judicial authorities in open conflict. The ecclesiastical court was even surrounded by guards on horseback. It was of no use to the Inquisitor to travel to Madrid and ask for help from King Dom Filipe, because Filipe could not and did not want to confront the independent magistrates of the Court of Appeal of Porto. This is how the separation of powers worked at that time. In this matter, as in others, the fine words of the laws do not count, but the objective reality of the facts does.

Centuries passed and the Jewish community of Porto was officially (re)founded at the beginning of the twentieth century with the acronym CIP, under the patronage of Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Lord Lawrence Kadoorie to erect a monumental synagogue. Its painful end seemed, however, to be witnessed again, as soon the community leader, Captain Barros Basto, a meticulous and injured veteran from the war in Flanders, saw himself described by the political and media system as being a mere "pantheist" leading a "community of Bolsheviks". In this environment, there was no lack of anonymous letters from the dregs of society. The result was the heavy hand of the court, for reasons different from the initial ones, because something would have to be "punished". The "Portuguese Dreyfus" case brought with it the assisted death of the community into the 21st century.

The usual Jewish story of rebirth from ruin never ends. When a decade ago the CIP/CJP became a world leader in the promotion of Jewish culture, it promptly bet on the following objective: the enlargement of the continental shelf and the exploitation of the riches of the Portuguese sea. This community project aimed to help the State with the experience of world Jewry, but Power, instead of being inspired by the modern State of Israel, which made the desert bloom, became entangled in a well-sponsored "Palestinian question" whose interest in the Jews was nil. The separation of powers, or the lack thereof, made its appearance. When a draft Government decree, to terminate a law in practical terms, was answered in the negative by the CIP/CJP, through an opinion by Prof. Rui Pereira (06.12.2021), a convenient news item falsely linked a "Russian oligarch" with donations to the Holocaust Museum (18.12.2021), which allowed the executive to approve the desired decree (23.12.2021) and send that news to open an “inquiry” (28.12.2021). This was started the following month (11.01.2022) and, after a day, it is repeated, one day, mysterious professionals carried out a robbery at night in the office of a lawyer in the community, to steal a server (12.01.2022). The party began. One of the largest synagogues in Europe was invaded against all laws (11.03.2022) and, by mistake, the documents relating to Mr. Patrick Drahi were searched there, to the point that the dossier of the "Russian" was forgotten. This was followed by a professional robbery at the residence of the president of SIRESP, who had just been dismissed by the Government, who saw her computers depart for an unknown destination (29.03.2022). That was not all. Young French Jews from Porto, terrified by the atmosphere of fear that was experienced among the elderly, addressed a petition to Parliament in defense of the community (28.11.2022). The following day, the first signatory of the petition, Ilan Cohen, was the target of an attempt on his life (29.11.2022).

The Jews have 3472 years of history and in the end they are Jews, they are not donkeys. Even today the sabotaged tire of Cohen's car is exhibited in the Jewish museum of Porto, at the request of Israeli security, which in the future wants to expose the names of the author and his moral accomplices often warned about what could happen and actually happened.

At the same time that the judge Ivo Rosa was the target of Kafkaesque investigations by judiciary agents who in the meantime had been publicly exposed, it was up to these same gentlemen to have the audacity to invade the Kadoorie synagogue. This will not be forgotten nor forgiven. The fact is that the most sensitive judicial cases in Portugal in 2021/2022 were managed by exactly the same people, something relevant to History, taking into account that the staff of the Prosecutor's Office and the Judicial Police cover almost six thousand employees.

Each nation manages itself according to the leadership it chooses. However, it is prudent that, in the future, Jewish issues, or "Palestinian issues", which will amount to the same, are managed more carefully, not through the methods usually employed in decaying societies. Political philosophy has reached its lowest point. The woke system, which does not support individual Jews, the collective Jew nor the Jew of the Nations, always claims the antisemitism is promoted by the "extreme right". At the same time, it qualifies traditional Jewish thought and the Israeli government as both being “extreme right”.

The lovers of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" - that the newspaper "Avante!" likes so much - should learn that the rationality and the meaning of life that surround the universe always project Jewish constellations bathed in blood and truth. So it was again, with the Gaza hostage crisis. The names and family stories of the 25 Portuguese victims of the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel have completely overturned the thesis of power, sold to an enraged population of ten million people. An "open door"? We remember the names of Ran Guili (great-grandson of Eduardo Nada, "protected Spaniard" in Alexandria), Ofer Kalderon (from a Greek Sephardic family from KK Portugal), Adina Moshe Galante (from a Turkish family from KK Portugal), Orin Bira Kasorlla and his daughter Tair Kasorlla (from a Paredes family from the former Yugoslavia), Gila Peled Cohen and his son Daniel (from a family from the "Portuguese Jewish community of Tunis"), Dror Or Ermoza (from a Ottoman family who spoke Ladino and inspired the series "The Beautiful Queen of Jerusalem", Idan Shtivi (from the Benveniste family of Bulgarian origin), and, even more, Ariel Cunio and his brother David Cunio (from a Turkish Sephardic family), Or Levy (from a Turkish Sephardic family), Gilad Ben-Yehuda (from a Turkish Sephardic family), Tsachi Idan Eini and his daughter Maayan Idan (from a Turkish and Egyptian Sephardic family), Moshe Moshiko Saadyan (from a Turkish and Moroccan Sephardic family), Yossi Sharabi (from a Moroccan Sephardic family surnamed Turgeman), Dorin Atias (from an Ottoman and Moroccan Sephardic family), Liraz Assulin Shitrit (from a Moroccan Sephardic family), Nevo Arad Edry (from Moroccan Sephardic family), Eli Sharabi (from Moroccan Sephardic family surnamed Turgeman), Omer Shem Tov (from Moroccan Sephardic family), Segev Halfon (from Moroccan and Tunisian Sephardic family), Ravid Katz (from Bulgarian Sephardic family), and Rotem Neumann Kadosh (also from Balkan Sephardic family).

Before the tragedy of October 7, unless they wanted to be defined as fools, the Portuguese had no freedom to give an opinion different from the official booklet of the speaking classes, according to which there was an "open door" for Israelis. All citizens were given a permanent gift on televisions, in the slender body of a shiny billboard, with the fictitious name of "Abramovich da Silva". It was a parody, a lethal parody.

Those in Portugal who proudly adhered to the "Palestine question", and the question should be who did not, became agents of a project of national suicide and unqualified immigration, in which the Jews simply did not count, especially if they were Israelis and, even more, if they were wealthy. Great nations have not been built in this way, nor have they ever given positions of command to the unconscious.

At the time of her death, Dona Gracia Nasi (Beatriz de Luna) deserved a day of Official Mourning throughout the Ottoman Empire. The U.S. never failed to honor Haim Solomon, the Ladino-speaking "Financier of American Independence"; Horace Gunzburg, the "Russian Rothschild" of the Porto family, continues to be exhibited in the great museums of the East, given the enormous relevance of his work. Laura Lombroso de Mattos Mocatta, the "Rothschild of China", the first lady to drive a car in that Asian giant, still gives her name to multiple institutions in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Abraham Barak Salem, the "Jewish Gandhi" born in the Sephardic community of Cochin, is recognized by Narendra Modi as the key figure of Indian independence. Sir Moses Montefiore, the British banker and philanthropist, from the Portuguese-Spanish community in London, continues to be the subject of constant tributes in the United Kingdom. And, of course, the Chabad of Lubavitch, the strongest Jewish religious organization in the modern world, founded by the grandson of Rabbi Baruch Portugali, is permanently honored by the great world leaders and by successive US administrations, to the point that Education Day in the USA is celebrated on the date of the death of the Lubavitch Rebbe, of blessed memory. The details on this point perhaps deserve a future article. Suffice it to say, for now, that the current Trump administration, regardless of how the reader may characterize it, is not exactly served by mentally challenged individuals, but by figures with meticulous historical and philosophical knowledge, beginning with Boris Epstein, from the Portuguese Benveniste family.

All Portuguese citizens are invited to celebrate the European Day of Jewish Culture with the CIP/CJP. Anyone who does not know or dishonours the history of Yahia, the Negros, the Navarros, Guedelha, Abravanel and many others, should not speak in the name of Portugal, much less decide anything. This is the philosophy of the community and of the Jewish Museum of Porto which work with tens of thousands of teenagers from Portuguese schools and accept the cultural war that was imposed on them against their will. Portugal and the Jews have been linked since the founding of the nation. At the time of the unfortunate Manueline edict, the number of Jews in the country constituted, according to Abraham Zacuto's Sefer Yuchasin and the Jewish Encyclopedia, about 20% of the world's Jewish population. Add to this the fact that the Jews have always married each other to understand the Portuguese mark exposed in the preceding paragraphs.

The Portuguese system of power cannot be disqualified as a whole. The importance of the cultural and educational activities of the Jewish Community of Porto – which include (i) free education for students from schools across the country, (ii) the internationalization of Portuguese culture through historical films, and (iii) the fulfillment of Portugal's international obligations regarding the Teaching of the Holocaust (IHRA) and the European Commission's Plan to promote Jewish Life by 2030 was recognized by the Declaration of Cultural Interest issued by the Ministry of Culture on 11.04.2025, making the CIP/CJP eligible to benefit from cultural patronage, with the attribution of tax benefits to its patrons (article 62-B of Chapter X of the EBF).

Unfortunately, this cultural patronage has proved impossible in Portugal, given the resistance of potential patrons, for many years drowned in adverse propaganda, which is still alive, month after month, as demonstrated by the recent "news" of the Chabad school associated with "illegal casinos" and the work of the Israeli embassy associated with "paid trips". By force of circumstances, the patronage that will sustain the educational and cultural activities of the CIP/CJP will be ensured by Israeli patrons, the ill-fated Israelis, the Israeli Jews, who seem destined not to abandon Portugal, in spite of everything.