In the first week of October 2026, a landmark event in Portuguese Jewish life was celebrated at the Jewish Museum in Porto, remembering when King Manuel I ordered all Jews to convert or leave Portugal by the end of October 1497.
An estimated 20,000 Jews gathered in Lisbon expecting ships to take them into exile. Yet, instead of allowing them to board ships, authorities confined the crowd in the courtyard of the Estaus Palace on Rossio Square, where priests pressured them to convert.
Those who refused to convert were declared slaves, and the remaining crowd was forcibly sprinkled with baptismal water, turning the independent Jewish community into a population of crypto-Jews who had to practice their faith in secret.
In contemporary times, October also serves as a period for historical reflection and remembrance, including events marking both the legacy of the expulsion and solidarity gatherings. The Hebrew date of October 15, 2010, indeed 7 Cheshvan 5771 laid the foundations for the complete reconfiguration of the Portuguese Jewish community through two interconnected factors that historians will one day be able to appreciate.
