PAP0312 - Azkenazi Jews in Lisbon: recongregation of a community

The askenazim are Jews from Eastern Europe. They arrived in Lisbon not without unexpected reversal of circumstances in their homelands and settled, almost one hundred years ago, with several difficulties and setbacks in the Portuguese society. Their rituals, their language, their traditions and their professions were fairly different from the ones found not only among the Portuguese population in general but also from the Sephardim Jews, already settled here. Despite the fact that there was a Jewish community (Kehila) in Lisbon, since late 17th century, these Jews have arranged to found their own place for worship and religious services and established themselves in a different part of the city that came to be coined as the “Jewish neighbourhood”. This new community has almost faltered or integrated, after WWII, until recently, when “other” Jews not belonging to the Jewish Community of Lisbon (CIL) wished to gather in an alternative synagogue in the same town. That makes the expression: where there are two Jews, there are three opinions, a true mote in Portuguese soil. So this paper intends to focus on the changes occurred among the community now called Kehila Beit Israel, a Conservative Jewish congregation that has revivified the old Ohel Yaacov Synagogue and intends to remain apart from the CIL in the years to come. The study relied on qualitative research methods, including participant observation and qualitative interviews to a sample selected through the snow-ball technique. The main conclusion of the research is that even in contexts were anti-semitism is not a strong threat to the survival of Jewish identity, as is the case studied Jews tend to develop their own strategies in order to achieve self determination and congregate according to their own specificities, namely, their national, social and religious backgrounds. Traditionally, ten emancipated men, that is, ten individuals who have gone through a Bar/Bat Mitzvah – the adulthood passage ritual, may lead a religious service and start a new community. Jewish identity is, thus continuously being constructed and reshaped according to social environment.

Marina Pignatelli is a PhD in Social Sciences, Cultural Anthropology, M.A. in Anthropological Sciences and Assistant Professor at the Social and Political Sciences Institute – Technical University of Lisbon. Having completed two post-graduations (Ethnology of Religions and Sephardic Studies), as well as several open courses in Religion and Conflict Resolution, she has been researching the Portuguese Jewish reality, since 1991, and more recently, developing studies also on intercultural andethnic conflicts.


PIGNATELLI, Marina
Doutora em Ciências Sociais, na especialidade de Antropologia Cultural
Universidade Técnica de Lisboa – Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas
mpignatelli@iscsp.utl.pt