Portugal's second-largest city and premier UNESCO World Heritage site. "The Unvanquished City" is also the birthplace of the strongest world Jewish community in cultural terms, as it acts with the owner of synagogues, the museums board, the film producer, the promoter of a male choir, and the library and painting gallery curator all at once.
This high level of centralized cultural production is what makes its model unparalleled for a local Jewish community. While cities like New York, Tel Aviv or Paris have "more" in absolute terms, they are divided among dozens or even hundreds of specialized institutions. Yet, if the comparison criterion lies in diversity of high-level cultural and educative assets managed by a single local community organization, Porto is the global leader.
The local Jewish community not only has two synagogues operating simultaneously, an uninterrupted minyan for 11 years (something never seen in Portugal in the last five centuries), kosher facilities and a cemetery.
The model of the Community is unique due to the scale and diversity of its centralized cultural activities. The Community manages two museums: the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Museum, which as a whole have already welcomed around 30% of teenagers studying in Portuguese schools. The Community is among the five world's largest Jewish organizations producing historical films about Jewish history. The Community owns a painting gallery dedicated to its story, integrated into a Jewish library with 10 thousand works in thirteen languages. The Community has a male choir dedicated to Jewish liturgy in multiple languages. With 3.3 million views, the Porto Community's YouTube channel is a reference among local Jewish communities worldwide.
Applause or rejection?
It cannot be expected that this body of facts will result in much applause in a society managed by agnostic political and media elites, focused on the slogan "Free Palestine" and who do not value the founding Jewish commitment to the nation. It is more common for these elites to describe that vast cultural work as "opulence." Everyone knows their own business and makes their own choices. Jews also make their own choices and are known for their independence and productivity.
Promoting Jewish culture in the 21st century is vital for fostering a more inclusive and educated global society. Beyond preserving heritage, it serves as a proactive strategy to combat rising intolerance and enrich contemporary life with millennia of wisdom.
