^{Credit: CIP/CJP}

For Jewish tourists, visiting Jewish painting galleries, libraries and museums is often a deeply personal act of identity building, ancestry research, and cultural immersion. While these facilities serve a broad educational purpose for all, Jewish visitors frequently seek specific connections to their own family histories and religious traditions.

The remembrance of local Jewish history, along with the maintenance of Jewish life to the present day, is naturally highly valued by tourists who, after all, belong to a people with a cultural and religious identity that spans millennia. For these reasons, the thousands of Jewish tourists who have visited the painting gallery of the Jewish Community of Porto for years are primarily drawn to two paintings depicting scenes that occurred at times separated by a long 525 years.

The Beith Midrash of the city, a Jewish institution that existed before the shameful expulsion of 1497, demonstrated that the Jewish community of Porto was one of the most culturally advanced in the world at that time. It not only possessed printed books but also held a knowledge of Jewish history and law that was very rare at that time.

More than five centuries later, the minyan gathering in the city, especially during Yom Kippur, which is depicted in another painting that impresses tourists, is a source of pride and joy within the Jewish world. Even Jewish tourists who are less religious are absolutely delighted to learn about such a beautiful story, so faithfully portrayed by the Jewish Community of Oporto which maintains a dedicated painting gallery as part of its cultural offerings.

Painting is an artistic manifestation that uses coloring techniques with liquid pigments, powder, charcoal or paste. The gallery features large-scale works focusing on Jewish history, culture, and values. The art is exhibited within the Kadoorie Synagogue.

This gallery is part of a wider cultural initiative that includes the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Museum, creating a comprehensive educational, artistic, and historical hub in Porto. They portray Jewish history in the city from the arrival of the first Jews to the present day. Using oil and acrylic techniques, the paintings are 1.5 m high and 1.5 m wide and portray the life of the Jewish community from the arrival of the first Jews to the present day, passing through periods of decline and ruin, of life and death. They show that the harvest years are also the years of the rats.

The project was led by a Venezuelan artist from the community, Flor Mizhahi. She coordinated a team of Portuguese and foreign colleagues (Natalia Procopovich Bagur, Helen Doc, Analice Campos, Jorge Marinho and Adélia Costa), who were given the mission of carrying out that very special work. The paintings are exhibited in chronological order.

Credit: CIP/CJP

- The role of the Jews in the founding of the kingdom and their friendship with the monarchs.

- A market of the time, where Jews were prominent merchants.

- Religious Jews rule the community spiritually.

- The Porto community prayed next to the walls of the city, facing Jerusalem.

- The role of the Jews in the development of the kingdom into a world power.

- In Beit Midrash dozens of men study the Torah.

- A ship full of Jews victimized by the edict of expulsion departs from Portugal in the fifteenth century.

- The forced baptism of adult Jews.

- The genocide of Lisbon.

- The decadence of Portugal after the anti-Jewish persecution.

- An auto-da-fé of the Inquisition in Porto.

- A map showing the fates of the Portuguese Jewish diaspora.

- An Ashkenazi wedding at the beginning of the twentieth century.

- The exterior image of the Kadoorie Mekor Haim synagogue in 1938.

- The community welcomes refugees from the Holocaust in 1940.

- A nun prays the Kaddish for a Jew who died in 1982.

- The President of the Portuguese Republic visits the great synagogue of Porto in 2019.

- Greetings between the Bishop of Porto and the president of the community in 2020.

- A Sephardic wedding in the year 2021.

- The community prays in the synagogue during Yom Kippur in 2021.

A rare gallery of paintings that tells Jewish history is always considered of significant cultural interest not only for the city of Porto, mas also to the entire world. The exhibition serves as a living testament that goes beyond local history, offering universal insights into the human condition, including themes of resilience, migration, and the preservation of identity in diaspora.