Tings Lisbon' Jewish Gide to Lisbon

You don't have to be Jewish or Hebrew to find this story fascinating

This post an update of the original post from 2016.

In 2015 after more than 1 year’s search we finally found our house in Graca and decided to officially move here from Kathmandu.

It would take us another 2 years before we would welcome our first guests at Tings Lisbon. So even though we had a lot of work creating Tings Universe we still had plenty of time to ‘kill’.

Besides walking around town for hours every day, I spend time reading about Lisbon.

In the beginning mostly novels and non-fiction books. But after a few months when my Google Alerts and # started working my Tablet was packed with stories and updates from magazines & newspapers, blogs, websites & social networks.

I spend hours reading about food, music, history, architecture and all my other interests.

But what’s more interesting was all the stories I read about things I didn’t know interested me…

Like Lisbon’s jewish history that – thanks to Gil Zohar’s story in The Jerusalem post – suddenly had become a part of our new life here in Graca only a few minutes walk from where it all happened 800 years ago.

Hip Lisbon combines history and modernity
Welcome to Lisbon, I thought to myself, uncorking the bottle of wine that was put out to welcome me together with a basket of fruit and a jar of delicious tomato jam.

Gil Zohar Jerusalem Post, 19 June, 2016

Where I come from ‘Hip’ is not always meant positively. So I was prepared for the worst when I read the first lines of the editorial in The Jerusalem Post… Are they sarcastic? Don’t they like Lisbon?

We have close friends in Israel and don’t want them to get the feeling that Lisbon is over-hyped that the hot air in the balloon will cool down before they have visited us.

My fear was no less when I saw the picture that followed the story. Maybe the worst photo of Ponte 25 de Abril I’ve seen… quite an achievement considering the quality of the camera we all have in our cell phones.

After a few minutes reading I forgot all my worries

I was drawn into Gil Zohar’s vivid description of Lisbon.

Through the historical highlights and facts – which most media mention (the earthquake, Vasco da Gamba, the Portuguese Empire etc.) – he manages to ‘sell’ all the main attractions without the use of a single photo.

And then, unlike all other travel stories we’ve read so far, he goes one step further and highlights – for obvious reasons – the Jewish background to some of the most popular sights and parts of town. Sights that either are a part of our daily life and/or surround us when we leave the door and.

April 19, 1506, during the Easter season. Thousands New Christians were killed here

On the evening of 19 April, Dominican friars instigated the population to kill the new Christians. Between 2,000 and 4,000 people have died in a barbaric form, incinerated in piles in various parts of the city.Inscription

Memorial to the Victims of the 1506 Massacre. The Inscription

Memorial to the Victims of the 1506 Massacre

The memorial is a work of 2008 by Graça Bachmann, on a proposal from the Jewish Community. It is made of stone, a sphere, a symbol of the world, truncated that evokes violence and chaos.

The wall of ” Lisbon, city of tolerance”, written in 34 different languages, close to Sao Domingo Church. In 2023 it was taken down

On the evening of 19 April, Dominican friars instigated the population to kill the new Christians. Between 2,000 and 4,000 people have died in a barbaric form, incinerated in piles in various parts of the city.

Inscription in the pavement. On the evening of 19 April, Dominican friars instigated the population to kill the new Christians. Between 2,000 and 4,000 people have died in a barbaric form, incinerated in piles in various parts of the city.

But it’s Pedro IV Square, popularly known as the Rossio, which brought me to tears. The square, once the headquarters of the Inquisition where heretics were burned at the stake for Judaizing, includes a monument to the Lisbon Massacre. Here on April 19-21, 1506, a mob of local Catholics and foreign sailors whose ships were anchored in the Tagus, tortured and killed hundreds of Conversos – Jews forcibly baptized in 1496 – who they accused of clandestinely practicing Judaism.

Gil Zohar Jerusalem Post, 19 June, 2016

Of course I know that the Jews were here – but mostly from the history of the Portuguese Kitchen – especially the Alheira de Mirandela that was created by the Jewish as part of an elaborate decoy to trick the Portuguese Inquisition into thinking they were Christian.

Today I always think about the massacre when I cross Rossio.

And when we cross Marques de Pombal I always think about how Sebastião de Melo achieved what his colleague Haussmann would have achieved a century later in Paris.

And I can’t help thinking if perhaps Hausmann copied his 100 year younger colleague – knowingly or unknowingly? In that case it explains why I always think about Buenos Aires, Barcelona and of course Parish when we walk around Liberdade – cities Hausmann has influenced.

Erecting gallows to discourage looters, prime minister Sebastião de Melo (better known as the Marquess of Pombal), famously ordered, “Bury the dead and heal the living.” The marquess reconstructed Lisbon based on the urban planning ideals of the Enlightenment.

As Baron Haussmann achieved in Paris a century later, the marquess’s legacy of replacing the medieval city’s ramshackle byways with broad avenues and squares is what has made Lisbon such a jewel today.

Gil Zohar Jerusalem Post, 19 June, 2016

Going to Lisbon? The Jerusalem Post is still very inspiring.

I don’t know how many travel inspirational Lisbon stories I’ve read since we decided to move here in 2015.

Thanks to Google Alerts & Hash Tags I receive stories from media from all corners of the world. So the number of stories must be counted in thousands.

Still its surprisingly few that inspire me as much as the story in Jerusalem post. Of course I have heard about the Portuguese jews.

But why did it take me long time to find a story about a part of Lisbon’s history that obviously has had big impact on not only many of the touristic sights, but also the whole City?

Is it because of bad journalism?

Or has it something to do ‘with the Jews’ – after all Richard Zimler’s bestselling novel The Last Kabbalist was initially rejected by 24 American publishers before it got published.

Maybe it’s a combination – or a coincidence.

Anyway – since I read Gil Zohar’s Lisbon story in The Jerusalem Post and after having had lots of our jewish friends visiting us I have been cruising around Lisbon on my bike and checking out all of the Jewish sights, monuments and kosher shops. If you are interested I have mapped them with relevant links in the Google map below.

And I have re-read Zimler’s The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon – which I opposed the first time I read it found more interesting. The story may be fictional and the cruel happenings may be 800 years old.

But it all happened in our backyard here in Graça, it still happens in other parts of Europe’s North-Western corner and this morning I woke up to some idiots in Sweden burning the Quran…

Shalom, Tashedalek, Namaste, Ciao, As-salamu alaykum, Hej, Hejsan, Nǐhǎo, Konnichiwa, Bonjour, Hallo, Zdravstvuyte…. Peace & Love

Thomas