Now it is a fact. The Jewish Community of Porto is on track to complete eleven consecutive years of minyan in its central synagogue, a unique achievement in Portugal in the last 530 years. The organization owns a second synagogue, it inaugurated Jewish a cemetery, and has two museums that receive thousands of children from Portuguese schools monthly. In addition, it has produced the most internationally awarded film of all time in Portugal.

This brief history becomes even more significant when this development was overseen by Isabel Lopes, the granddaughter of the community's founder – the late Captain Barros Basto, who was civilly persecuted by the Portuguese state in 1937 and became known as the “Portuguese Dreyfus”. A contemporary of Alfred Dreyfus, Basto had been removed from his post in a case fabricated with anonymous and fake accusations. At the time, no one defended the Captain and no Zola appeared, neither individually nor collectively.

Three hundred years after the terrified flight of the last New Christians from Porto, the city’s Jewish community was officially reborn. It was made up of a dozen families from Central and Eastern Europe and presided over by the Captain. It would be supposed that, in Portugal, the elites would be honored with the construction of one of the most portentous synagogues in Europe and that it would be a source of pride for the homeland that the community would be led by a Portuguese. However, the opposite happened. The soldier was accused in mainstream newspapers of being a “pantheist” and of directing an anti-national organization that gave shelter to Bolsheviks, when in fact his coreligionists were Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Polish and Hungarian refugees who had taken the road to Porto in search of a safe haven.

It was of no use to the Captain that he was a Jewish writer who published works on the philosophy, religion, culture and history of the Jews of Porto and the co-founder of the nation, Yaish ben Yahia. What really disturbed those in power was the fact that the organization was independent. Then, a scheme was devised to take advantage of anonymous denunciations made by a small group of outcasts who were part of the lowest and most treacherous layer of society. The aim was the persecution of Barros Basto and the destruction of the community, because everyone knew that, once the Captain fell, everything else would fall apart. The other members of the community, all foreigners, did not have the qualities and courage of their leader.

The Captain was branded in the newspapers as a “pantheist” who had nothing to do with the Jewish community. The Jewish work he produced with so much knowledge and will was silenced. The majestic synagogue that had been built on Rua de Guerra Junqueiro was despised. The support that the military man deserved from the Rothschild family of France, the “Rothschilds of Asia” (the Kadoorie family), and all the other figures who contributed to that enterprise were silenced. This made it possible to pass “judgment” and pronounce a “condemnatory sentence”. Thus was born the “Portuguese Dreyfus case” about which the world is still asking.

“We only investigate Barros Basto, not the community”, shouted Minister Santos Costa in the 1930s, when with the use of anonymous letters from criminals he participated in the fabrication of the case that threw an organized Jewish community into a state of hibernation that would last for many decades.

The arrival of the new century could not be more revealing about the calamitous state in which the persecution of Barros Basto left the institution. There was no religious life, no cultural activity, and no hope. However, Jewish life always regenerates. The living follow the philosophy of the dead, who are brought back to life in memory, in identity, in strength, and in prosperity.

From 2012, the captain’s granddaughter, Isabel Lopes and the oldest members of the community got to work. In a few months, the synagogue building was renovated and the community began to host major international events. In 2014, the city witnessed the inauguration of a kosher hotel, with a restaurant, attracting Jewish tourism. A small museum was built. The work of promoting Jewish religion and culture has been amplified year after year.

In 2020, a Jewish writer who has visited communities in fifty-five countries expressed in writing what she felt after a Yom Kippur ceremony in Porto, animated by members of thirty nations and many young people: “I wrote to several friends and family to tell them how deeply moved I was. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such passionate prayers and singing before in a synagogue. It was not only the power of the voices praying in unison that moved me so deeply, it was also the symbolism of so many Jews gathered in a synagogue in a country heavily impacted by the Inquisition.”

At the same time, the community became a cultural powerhouse, the most complete in Europe and a spiritual one, conglomerating traditions, cultures and arts as distinct as religion, cinema, painting, music, literature, videography, gastronomy and the promotion of Jewish history. One can imagine the feeling of the granddaughter of Captain Barros Basto, who had rehabilitated her grandfather’s memory, his synagogue, his community, his work, his cultural production, and his dream.

In the Jewish world, people do not accept growing old and discovering that they have not created anything and that they have only repeated some painful routine. However, the pains of the past were also on the way, as the slanderous anonymous letters that the Inquisition itself banned in 1774 had a long life in Portugal. Lopes was disturbed by the police one fine day at 7 in the morning to check if she might have some bags of money hidden in her residence. This was nothing new in terms of antisemitism and nothing new in terms of her family. Her grandmother Lea Azancot had long put up with police aggression fostered by the system. In order that her children would not be confused, she told them that “those gentlemen were some friends of their father who had gone there to get some documents that did not exist after all”.

At a time when anti-Judaism and anti-Israelism are two Soviet twins, remembering the “Portuguese Dreyfus” is not only remembering a Captain who raised the flag of the Republic in the Porto City Hall or the one who obtained numerous decorations after being gassed in the trenches of Flanders, but rather remembering an anti-Jewish archetype that was anchored in slanderous anonymous writings. It has occurred in all times and places.