At a Shabbaton held at the Kadoorie synagogue, where 450 people dined and ate lunch at the same time, the highest rabbinical authorities in Europe stated that few synagogues had such a large seating capacity. In addition, at the back of the synagogue there is another, two-story building with seating for another 300 people and a study center typically hosts dinners with 200 students in attendance. In total, even without counting its restaurants, the Jewish community of Porto found a way to seat 900 people at a table in the synagogue and the study center. This fact deserves attention in a continent that had 9 million Jews in the 20th century and today has no more than 1 million.
Today the great synagogue of Oporto is on the way to completing eleven consecutive years with a minyan without a single interruption~. It is a source of great joy, especially since the community has a second prayer room for young students, which has held a daily minyan for four years. Each year represents a complete cycle of Torah readings, with the call of congregants to the bimah.
The community is specially known for Yom Kippur that is celebrated annually. It has become one of the largest in Europe, with about a thousand people singing in unison. "I don't think I've ever heard such passionate prayers and songs in a synagogue. It was not only the power of the voices praying in unison that touched me so deeply, but also the symbolism of so many Jews gathered in a synagogue in a country heavily impacted by the Inquisition.", a Jewish tourist said.
Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of Portugal in the last five centuries, in any city, not even on a much smaller scale. Times of peace and prosperity should be enjoyed with joy, but always bearing in mind that years of good harvest are also years of rats allied with anti-Semitic and corrupt elites.
The community was founded in 1923 and the central synagogue was operating since 1931. However, the political system destroy the Porto synagogue and community in 1937, using anonymous denunciations from the dregs of society, portraying the community in the corrupt press as a den of Bolsheviks, publicly proclaiming that Barros Basto was a mere pantheist who had nothing to do with Judaism. This created the social environment to kill the community, as all it took was investing in the Dreyfus affair.
Captain Barros Basto was left unemployed and without the strength to continue working to rescue Jewish life. He spent the rest of his life receiving visits from the political police at his home. A thriving synagogue and community were transformed into a mere closed museum covered in moss.
