The ideology known as wokism has seen better days. The presidents of the world's major military and territorial powers are ostensibly against it. So are religious currents. Politics is what it has always been: unpredictable. Long Jewish history, which has crossed civilizations, bears witness to this. In each era, politics is reconfigured by those who have the power, whatever the models implemented and the words of the legal texts. The rhetoric and the notions of right or wrong do not matter. The dissatisfied submit or are eliminated. At least for the next few years, the ideological destiny of the planet seems to be mapped out on a very different basis from the one it has governed until now.
The currents of thought in vogue, despite their various positive aspects, have long excluded the Jewish community from the priority group of minorities to be protected. They have come to portray the Jew as a plutocrat by nature, a white colonizer, and someone who deserves to see his merits silenced and his supposed disloyalties proclaimed. All this has happily happened in Europe and even in the United States of America, the country of Haim Solomon and George Washington, who, relied on the strength of the Portuguese and Spanish Sephardic community, later swelled by millions of Jews from the East and other origins, created the greatest power on Earth and even printed on the first dollar bill a star of David and a nine-branched candelabra.
Donald Trump, characterized by Benjamin Netanyahu as "the best friend of Israel and the Jewish people", which is true, but does not differ so much from his predecessors, although he has a more intense and exaggerated profile. One of the keys to the success of the great nation on the other side of the Atlantic has always been gratitude to the Jews. Israel recognizes this fact, and uses diplomatic power in its favor, without this preventing it from having cooperative relations with the other powers of the world, whatever their political models. China, the imperial giant of commerce, nurtures relations with the Jewish state that go far beyond the dynamics around the port of Haifa. Israelis and Chinese, with millennia of history, know that there has never been democracy in China, in the Western concept of the word, but rather a rigid social order.
Vladimir Putin, the big bad wolf of Europe, due to Russian aggression in Ukraine, has never been seen that way in Israel. At different times, Naftali Bennett and Ariel Sharon defined the president of the Russian Federation as "a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people" and he himself repeatedly stated that "Israel is part of the cultural world of Russia, with 1.5 million Russian speakers". On the last visit that the Kremlin leader made to Jerusalem, accompanied by the chief rabbi of his country, Berel Lazar, of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, there were those who asked if it was not an obstacle for the Russian authorities that the "National Day of Education" in the United States of America be marked on the anniversary of the death of the Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the highest dignitary of that movement.
With its world headquarters in New York, Chabad is the strongest Jewish organization in religious terms. Ashkenazi in nature, it was founded by a Lithuanian Jew of Portuguese origin, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, a descendant of Rabbi Baruch Portugali. The movement has more than 5000 emissaries spread around the world, with large families that essentially intermarry, which has resulted in a body of tens of thousands of people who in most cases descend from Rabbi Portugali. The superb work that Chabad has carried out in places as different as the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom, France and in Eastern European countries (not forgetting Portugal, with emissaries in Cascais, Porto and Vilamoura) continues to be ostensibly ignored, due to an aversion to Jewish success mixed with geopolitical reasons
In the hostage crisis in Gaza, almost all the captives had dual or even triple nationality, including American, Russian and Portuguese. Citizens of 50 countries were direct victims of the October 7 massacre. The Jewish world is the whole world. It has been like this for more than two millennia. Every year, thousands of Israeli and American Jews join Moscow's Jewish community, supported largely by Jewish billionaires with Russian, Israeli and American nationality, which has contributed to ensuring that local Jewish life is lacking. Not infrequently, Jewish tourists are astonished when visiting certain areas of the capital of the Eurasian giant, as they come across masses of Jews from New York or Jerusalem and a huge set of Jewish institutions of a very high level. The same is true, albeit on a smaller scale, in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where Jewish life also thrives thanks to the generosity of prosperous ex-Soviet Jews and under the baton of Chabad Lubavitch rabbis such as Jonathan Markovich, Avraham Wolff and Yeshaya Cohen. The excellent worldwide reputation of the Chabad movement, the trust placed in it by Jewish businessmen and local authorities, and the economic, technological, and political relations of the governments of these nations with the state of Israel, are factors that have greatly benefited the local Jewish communities.
In 2022, a senior Russian official drunk with the dynamics of the war, publicly called Chabad representatives installed in Ukraine a "sect" and soon the rabbis of the Moscow community demanded his removal from office, which the Kremlin soon carried out. The following year, hundreds of young radical Muslims from Dagestan rioted at the capital's airport over a flight carrying Israelis who wanted to visit their families there. The regime's severe repression of the perpetrators of the riots and of the local authorities themselves was not long in coming. In the Western press, the case was presented as "further proof of the antisemitism of the Putin regime".
After the massacre of October 7, 2023, many apologists for the advanced doctrines of wokism and neonationalism began to call for Russia to lead a coalition of forces from the "Global South" against "Zionism", which they associated with "imperialism", to achieve a rapid reconfiguration of the Near East to the detriment of the Jewish state or even its destruction. The enemy they once claimed to hate for having invaded Ukraine, became their hidden love, so that Israel would be forced to direct military confrontation with the nuclear power whose millennium-long belligerence allowed it to win two hundred wars, to pay a high price for the "genocide" it would have supposedly committed without concern for the number of civilians affected.
The times seemed favorable for those who longed for Israel's doom. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and others were sold to the public as invincible forces. Russia's rhetorical statements at the UN against the military actions that the State of Israel considered necessary to stop its enemies did not differ much from the declarations once proclaimed by the USSR, which guaranteed it enormous popularity among Arab and Muslim countries, as well as among those who idolize the Palestinian cause. However, the premises from which those who wished the Russian Federation to lead an alliance of nations against Israel were not sufficient to make this aspiration viable.
The relationship between Israel and Russia has been intrinsically linked to the Jewish presence since the collapse of the USSR, when hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated to Israel, while others became multimillionaires in that icy country, even before the current Russian president came to power. In addition, the personal ties of this leader, since his youth, with Jewish families known for their generosity, contributed to encouraging the return of Jews of Russian origin to the country, especially from Israel and the USA, where the largest Jewish communities in the world were concentrated.
Although Russia is not aligned with Israel's territorial and security project, there is cooperation between the two states, crystallized in the connection of the Jewish communities of those nations and the direct line between the Russian president and the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Both have been in power for more than two decades in nations that have not been shaken by deep splits, successive changes of governments and unfinished projects. "Poisonings", "the Bucha massacre", "reconstruction of Ukraine", to all this Israel responded without pointing the finger at Russia, which brings together half a million Jews, most of whom are Israelis and Americans.
The State of Israel sponsored trilateral security meetings with the US and Russia, did not apply international sanctions to the powerful Eurasian regime, did not provide lethal weapons to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky (which Bennett, as Israeli Prime Minister, asked the Kremlin not to kill) and it benefited from the green light from Moscow to repress threats from Syrian territory, as long as such repression did not affect Russian military bases, Russian-trained Syrian forces and other strategic interests of the Russian Federation. The coordination team for these movements in Syria used the Russian language to communicate, with Israelis of Russian origin and officers of Jewish origin on the part of Russia. Even when Israel accidentally shot down a Russian plane full of high-ranking officers, the matter was resolved politically.
The press only becomes aware of what the chancelleries decide to disclose, as a rule vague statements, and apparently no one has any interest in dismantling great certainties and models of absolute truth that, in fact, are immersed in blindness. Relations between states, restricted, and which can change overnight, are affirmed by facts, not by ideologized propaganda machines. The very entry of the Russian military into Syria was justified by the Kremlin as an important factor for the protection of "hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens in Israel" against various radical Islamist adversaries. In Israeli power offices, the Russian presence in Syria was called "our northern neighbor", while the Russians even stated that "there would be no more threats in the Golan Heights".
Israel's stance toward Russia, China and other countries is even deeper. It has its explanation in a Jewish history of millennia, which teaches how to maintain the possible balances and equidistance in relation to great conflicts and great contenders. The complex geopolitical and geostrategic game of the world, where the largest military empires always confront or articulate, is nothing that the Jews have not already witnessed many times. It is enough to recall the tensions between the Assyrians and the Babylonians, which led to the conquest of Israel by the former and Judah by the latter. Where are these empires? They died, while the people of Israel survived, through a rational coherence of historical events.
Israel's interests are Jewish interests. The same can be said of Jewish communities in general. The Jewish Community of Oporto, composed of Jews from thirty nations and founded a century ago by a Portuguese and two dozen ex-Soviet Jews, is free and independent enough not to be subject to surfing the political waves of the moment, much less to axiological frameworks other than the Jewish ones. Proof of this is the management of the city's Holocaust museum, under the tutelage of the first line by relatives of Polish, German and Russian Jewish victims. The museum has been visited by all the embassies of relevant countries, including the United States and the Russian Federation, precisely the powers that put an end to the Nazi extermination and that, today, have the capacity, each, to destroy the whole world several times.
A decade ago, the PSD/CDS government granted the Jewish communities of Oporto and Lisbon the power to issue an opinion on the Sephardic origins of candidates for Portuguese nationality, without this opinion being binding on the State, which could give a different opinion. The law obliged applicants to present proof of their Sephardic origin to the registry office and the government had the discretionary power to grant or refuse nationality. Still, the legislators called on Jewish communities because they were aware that the Jewish world is too complex for non-Jewish entities to pronounce on it.
The central synagogue in Oporto, the largest in the Iberian Peninsula, named Kadoorie Mekor Haim, and headquarters of the local Jewish community, was built due to the generosity of a family of Portuguese origin based in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Chief Rabbi of Kiev, a partner of the Chabad Lubavitch Community, is also of Portuguese origin, he and his wife from Leningrad. Large numbers of Sephardic Jews once made their way to vast regions of the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, Eurasia, and America. Many regions of the former Ottoman Empire even became an integral part of the Soviet Union, such as Uzbekistan, still today with an official Turkic language written in the Roman alphabet.
The family origins of the Jews have nothing to do with political conjunctures, much less with the fact that any country can become a pariah among a few counterparts and for a limited time. As far as the Community is aware, two Russians who received its certification obtained Portuguese nationality. The first was Andrey Rappaport, born in Ukraine, with Cypriot nationality. He was previously certified by the Chabad of Lubavitch of Barcelona, based on his family memory and family names, including Rappaport, originally “a rabbi from Oporto”. It is an established fact that countless people with this surname have family memories of being from the second largest city in Portugal. Just talk to the current Israeli ambassador Oren Rozenblat who is grandson of a Rapaport. Having examined this first case, let us look at the second.
In August 2020, the Community certified the Sephardic origins of the Russian and Israeli Jew Roman Abramovich and, in April of the following year, the government granted nationality to the billionaire, without raising any objections or even asking the Community for any information. The case was treated urgently, for reasons of "national interest" decided by the member of the government for the area of justice. The episode generated perplexity, accompanied by news reports claiming that Abramovich had financed the Holocaust museum in Oporto, which was not true, unless one considers 250 euros enough to build a museum of such high caliber that it has already received about 1/5 of the country's population of teenagers. The billionaire did finance the Holocaust museums in Jerusalem and London, the latter of which he visited in 2021 in the company of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The certification drawn up by the Community took into account the knowledge of the rabbinical authorities of Chabad Lubavitch in Russia, the applicant's family memory and his family names, such as Rosa, Leiva and, by this way, Leibovich (son of Leo). The surname Abramovich itself appears on lists of Polish Sephardic Jews in 1580 and, in fact, over the years, the Community has approved 108 people with that name, which, in itself, was never enough for certification. In all cases, the name was analyzed together with other elements that made it possible to prove the family connection of the applicants to Jews of Portuguese origin.
None of this has been published in Portugal, but rather the epithet of "oligarch" has been used to define a citizen whose exceptionally wealthy Lithuanian grandfather was once robbed of everything, including vast estates, hotel, and transport boats, before being murdered in Siberia. For decades, the word oligarch has served almost only to attack the rich Jews of the East, or even the ruined. Significantly, when a year ago the European Jewish Association, of which the author of these lines is a board member, took billionaire Elon Musk to Auschwitz, they still did not call him an "oligarch", as is the case now.
A Jew of unbreakable soul strength, Volodymyr Zelensky is not an oligarch, nor a Putin supporter, despite having successfully asked US President Joe Biden not to sanction Roman Abramovich, whose mother is Ukrainian and who has Lithuanian children, two nationalities to which he is entitled. By proceeding in this way, the Ukrainian president demonstrated how complex the textures and connections of a people of forced migrants are.
Meanwhile, the 250 euros that the Jewish Community of Oporto received from the multimillionaire and other Russian Jews were donated to the Central Registry Office of Lisbon, "to buy umbrellas". What interests the Community is the Jewish world, where it has many friends and partners, all over the world, including in Asia and Eurasia, such as the chief rabbis of Shanghai, Odessa, Kiev, Moscow and Astana, all of Chabad Lubavitch, moreover supported by Roman Abramovich, in the last two decades, with 500 million dollars. On a much smaller but significant scale, the Community has donated to the communities of the East an amount that far exceeds that which it has received from small emoluments from Jews of these origins, who could not be excluded for political reasons, neither they nor the other Russian citizens who have been certified, and certainly rightly, by the Jewish Community of Lisbon and the Federation of Spanish Jewish Communities.
Once treated mercilessly as if it had certified Vladimir Putin's Sephardi origins, which only proves that it is a relevant institution, the Jewish Community of Oporto did its work in good faith, according to criteria approved by successive governments. Likewise, it continued to develop the other departments of the organization, examples of which are the most internationally awarded Portuguese film of all time and one of the most remarkable Yom Kippur services in Europe. It is assumed that both the registry office and the government have also fulfilled their role with zeal. If this has not happened, they can complain exclusively about themselves.
It should also be noted that in 2013 and 2014, the Community expressly asked the PSD/CDS government to endorse the certification work to an "international commission" (as it was then busy rehabilitating its majestic synagogue and opening a kosher hotel) and that the controversy surrounding "passports of convenience" began in parliament in April and May 2020, well before Roman Abramovich remembered Portugal. The reference to the convenience of passports is even unintelligible, as the law expressly exempted people from living in Portugal and speaking Portuguese, as has been the case since the 1980s with all members of communities of Portuguese origin.
Finally, we do not believe that the influx of Jews to Portugal, especially the wealthiest, could compromise the future of the country on the international stage. What can be seen on the horizon justifies this assertion. The European Commission's strategy for the promotion of Jewish life in Europe, which had 9 million Jews before the Second World War and today has less than 1 million, does not align with the aggressiveness that was directed against the law that gave back a right to Jews of Sephardic origin, much less does it explain the apathy of many in the face of the relevant structure that the national Jewish community has at present, as if it were a shame that the country today has more synagogues, more museums, libraries, restaurants, a painting gallery and even film documentaries about medieval Jewish life, the edicts of expulsion in Portugal and Spain, the genocide of Lisbon, the inquisition in Oporto, the rescue of the Marranos and the "Portuguese Dreyfus". This vast Jewish work, whose dimension has no parallel in Europe, perhaps deserves more attention at a time when Portugal and the world are facing a crossroads in history that will give rise to the next Civilization.
