Efforts against Jewish communities around the world have consistently caused devastation and suffering to the affected people and communities. However, these efforts have also left a shameful trail of political corruption that history has recorded. From Alexandria two millennia ago to the city of Lisbon today, the silencing of merits, or when impossible, falsification, delegitimization, dehumanization, and the application of double standards, have struck with ferocity the individual and collective Jew. Their beliefs, culture, and work have been mocked and devalued. Yet, a mark has always remained. The truth has imposed itself, however long it had been twisted to satisfy those who aimed to ruin the detested object. The history of Portugal provides valuable lessons about this segment of the “Jewish question”.

The joint efforts of the first king, Dom Afonso Henriques, and Yaish Ben Yahia, a contemporary and compatriot of Maimonides, laid the foundations of a powerful empire. This empire was not only significant in territorial terms but also in scientific, cultural, economic, and military aspects. The great Portuguese Empire that the world knew would not have existed without the Jews. Universal history vividly records that Catholics and Jews worked hand in hand for 300 years, long before the birth of modern states and their ideological frameworks. The monarchy itself followed the Sephardic tradition of naming grandchildren after their grandfathers. However, for those who rejected Jewish life, the valuable services of the Jewish community were of little interest. The reward was hatred, disregard of due merits, conspiracies, anonymous denunciations, and the prohibition of the practice of Judaism. Many were the hardships experienced by the greatest Jewish advocates of each epoch.

The climate of terror in 1496 and 1497, before and after the proclamation of the royal edict that prohibited the practice of Judaism in Portugal, was palpable. The population joined in action and omission. Throughout the country, no one defended the Jewish community or honored their work. In Oporto, where the Jewish population paid 38% of the city’s taxes, possessed large vessels, and were prominent in international trade, the Jewish quarter of the city was named “Victory,” symbolizing triumph over the Jews, who were labeled heretics and painted with everything negative. With the advent of the Inquisition in 1536, more lives were destroyed, and more goods were stolen. The victims were then given a new epithet: apostates. Meanwhile, third countries welcomed these alleged heretics and apostates. The British, Dutch, and Ottoman empires were born, while the Portuguese nation, like the Spanish, began to fade.

Three hundred years after the terrified flight of the last New Christians from Oporto, the Jewish community of the city was officially reborn. This modern revival was essentially an Ashkenazi community, consisting of a dozen families from central and eastern Europe, with only one Portuguese member. Captain Barros Basto presided over the association. He returned from the trenches in Flanders where he survived a gas attack, converted to Judaism and used his strength, belief, and culture to garner support from the Sephardic diaspora of Portuguese origin and build the largest synagogue on the Iberian Peninsula – the great Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue. One would expect that the construction of one of the most magnificent synagogues in Europe would be a source of pride for the Portuguese elites, especially with a Portuguese leading the community. However, the opposite occurred. The military man found himself accused in the political newspapers of being a mere “pantheist” leading an anti-national organization that sheltered “Bolsheviks” from the East. In reality, these co-religionists were Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Polish, and Hungarian refugees who had come to Oporto in search of safety.

Despite being a Jewish intellectual and writer who published numerous works on the philosophy, religion, culture, and history of the Jews of Oporto, and the co-founder of the nation, Yaish Ben Yahia, Barros Basto’s efforts were met with hostility. The independent nature of the organization was what really bothered those in power, which soon led to unreasonable charges against him. A political scheme was created to exploit anonymous denunciations from a small group of social outcasts, aiming to persecute Barros Basto and thereby destroy the community. Minister Santos Costa, in the 1930s, exclaimed, “We only investigated Barros Basto, not the community,” despite having participated in putting the case together through anonymous letters. It was widely known that if the captain fell, the rest of the community, being foreigners without his qualities, culture, and courage, would be terrified.

The Jewish works produced with such enthusiasm and resolve were silenced. The majestic synagogue on Guerra Junqueiro street was shunned, along with the contributions of the Rothschilds, the Kadoories, and other figures who were forgotten. The newspapers portrayed Barros Basto as a mere “pantheist” with no connection to the Jewish community. To complete the political smear campaign, a false accusation of homosexuality was leveled against him. When this did not work, as it could not have, he was accused of an alleged minor infraction – participating in the circumcision of his students – which led to his expulsion from the army. Thus, the “Portuguese Dreyfus” case was born, a case that still intrigues the world. This case plunged the community into a state of dormancy that lasted for many decades, despite the unsuccessful efforts of the few remaining, fearful associates.

The arrival of the new century could not be more revealing of the calamitous state in which the persecution of Barros Basto left the institution. There were no minyan, no friends, no culture, no resources, no hope. The mikveh did not work, the cemetery did not exist and the synagogue itself was not registered in the property registry office. It was a phantom building, which was decaying day by day. There reigned the “Shechinah bagalutah”, the total absence of divine presence and positive portents. Nothing had been left standing. There was a state of penury and complete moral poverty. All this was the result of the civic assassination of Captain Barros Basto, of the supposed pantheist that the political system intended to destroy, and did destroy, to bring down, as it did, an independent and bothersome Jewish community.

For all these reasons, it is extraordinary that the community today has two synagogues with a thriving Jewish life and is by far the strongest Jewish organization in Europe in cultural terms. No other European Jewish organization manages two museums, libraries, cinema rooms showing films of its own production, and even a gallery of paintings that reveals the fascinating history of Jews in Portugal.

It is perfectly understandable that in the recent past the elites of Portugal described the community with the word "nothing" or, contradictorily, "opulence".