^{The Mekor Haim Choir - The European Day of Jewish Culture, 2023}

The Jewish Community of Oporto will celebrate the European Day of Jewish Culture on Sunday, September 7, 2025. The organisation hopes to welcome thousands of visitors, like in recent years, and has prepared this event in close cooperation with the Israeli embassy in Lisbon and the National Library of Israel.

The programme includes visits to the largest synagogue in Sepharad, the Holocaust Museum, the Jewish Museum, movie theaters, an art gallery, a library, the kosher wine store and the community restaurants. The public can attend conferences and get to know Jewish music, painting, literature, cinema, videography, photography and gastronomy.

The European Day of Jewish Culture is celebrated in the largest European cities, with activities coordinated by the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel. The aim of the event is to provide information on the history, religion, laws, customs, principles, symbols, and philosophy of the Jewish people.

^{The Jewish Musem of Oporto - The European Day of Jewish Culture, 2023}

This is a rare opportunity for the public to get to know the city’s main Jewish institutions which, apart from the Holocaust Museum, are only open during the year to welcome students, teachers and members of the Jewish community.

The Jewish Museum of Oporto presents four millennia of world Jewish history and two millennia in the land that is now Portugal. Valuable objects, documents and films are dedicated to the brightest era of the Jewish community of Oporto, to the edict of King D. Manuel, to the times of the Inquisition and to the community’s return in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

The Holocaust Museum of Oporto exhibits objects left behind in the city by the refugees in the 1940s and depicts Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust. It also has a replica of the dormitories at Auschwitz and a room of the names of victims.

^{The Holocaust Museum of Oporto - The European Day of Jewish Culture, 2023}

In the art gallery, the visitor can see twenty large paintings depicting the history of the Jews in Portugal, from the foundation of the kingdom to the development of an empire, and from the expulsion of the Jews to the decline of the Portuguese nation.

The Mekor Haim choir will sing works in Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino, from its repertoire of songs from the Renaissance to the modern period.

At the Rosh Pinah library, the visitor can see the impressive collection of 10,000 books on history, philosophy and Jewish law.

In the kosher restaurants in the community, which will also be open on European Day of Jewish Culture, the visitor can experience the gastronomy that the Jewish world has to offer.

^{The art gallery and the Rosh Pinah library - The European Day of Jewish Culture, 2023}

In the cinema of the Porto Jewish Museum, four films will be screened:

1) “The Light of Judah”
This documentary is a voyage in time, from the medieval fairs, to the Torah study rooms, the edict of Dom Manuel, the escape of many Jewish families, the implementation of the Inquisition in the Kingdom, the inquisitorial hunt for the main families of Jewish origin in Porto, the official rebirth of the Jewish community in the early twentieth century with the city's Ashkenazi families, the efforts of Barros Basto to return the Marranos to Judaism, the Portuguese Dreyfus case, the decades of darkness in the Kadoorie synagogue, and the revival of the community in recent years.

2) "2000 kidnapped Jewish children"
This documentary reports the tragic fate of exiled Jewish children on a distant and inhospitable island after the expulsion of Spain in 1492. In the Jewish world, Sao Tome became known as I Hatimshaim, "The Island of Lizards."

3) “1506 – The Lisbon Genocide”
This documentary shows a massacre of the Jews that has been forgotten. The19th of April is the anniversary of the start of the massacre which lasted for three days and assassinated close to three thousand Jews in Lisbon. The bonfires went as high as the houses, in a city filled with quartered bodies where heads were paraded on the points of spears.

4) "The Nun’s Kaddish"
This short film portrays a true story of inter-religious kindness in which a nun observes a Jewish memorial ritual for an old Jew who died in Porto in 1982. It elevates the spirituality of the two faiths towards a higher feeling of universal brotherhood. The story is a source of fraternity, hope and joy in the heart of the world.

^{The Holocaust Musem of Oporto - The European Day of Jewish Culture, 2023}

This event, so important to Portugal in terms of Jewish culture, will feature contributions from the Israeli Embassy in Lisbon and the National Library of Israel. who promise to add to what was described above.