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Spain

The Moors ruled Spain for centuries in medieval times and greatly influenced Spanish culture.  Until the 1492 Inquisition, Spanish Jewry thrived.  The Golden Age of Spain, under Muslim rule, was a time when Jews held positions of importance and prestige in Spanish society.  Jews, such as Maimonides and Judah Halevy, flourished in the areas of literature, philosophy and the sciences.  for centuries following the expulsion, there was not a single openly-practicing Jew in Spain, though many converted "New Christians" covertly practiced Judaism.

'Spain's medieval Jewish Golden Age came to an abrupt halt with the 1492 expulsion decree by Isabel and Ferdinand, whose inquisition turned the Iberian peninsula into a bastion of anti-Semitism and religious intolerance for centuries to come.'

The Spanish Republic's 1868 pledge of religious tolerance brought Jews back in small numbers. Today's community numbers around 14,000, mostly Moroccan Jews who immigrated in the 1950s, along with expatriates from the Americas and some Spaniards rediscovering their Jewish roots.'  Most settled in Barcelona and Madrid.

A few years ago, my wife Shirley and I were in Gerona, Spain and during our wanderings, we found the old synagogue and mikva'ot'oth in the old, hilly part of town.  There, you will also find the Catalan Museum of Jewish Culture.

This area is referred to as "The Call" and probably the name came from the Hebrew word Kahal, meaning community. "The Call" was an autonomous government within the city, which had no jurisdiction over the Jews. 

Gerona is about 40 miles by train from Barcelona and is a very well worth day trip. The train is comfortable and once you arrive in Gerona, you will quickly see how the Jewish residents lived before 1492.  You'll walk in streets so narrow that your shoulders will literally touch the walls of the buildings on both sides of the twisted and turning "streets" ... better to call them paved paths.

"Stones of Silence," recounts the visit to the medieval Jewish quarter of Gerona, Spain, some resources, history and more by author Schelly Talalay Dardashti. Full story at:
www.jpost.com
click on Jewish World, scroll down, or use this complete URL http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A
/JPArticle/ShowFull%
26cid=1062646044353
 
http://tinyurl.com/mje3
 

Nat Reiss  reiss@rci.rutgers.edu  in a message on JewishGen dated 4/6/99 stated in answer to a question from Menna Megan Kearns "Why do many Sephardic surnames seem quite Italian ... or at least sound like it?"

"Your observation is correct, and I know of at least two good reasons.   First, some ethnically-Italian areas - Sardinia and Sicily - were under Spanish control at the time of the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the Jews living there were in a similar situation to those living on the Iberian Peninsula;"

"Second, and probably more importantly, at the time of the Spanish expulsion, most areas on the Italian peninsula were accommodating to Jewish immigration.  However, this changed drastically over the next decades and centuries as persecution of Jews became common, forcing many Jews to leave."

"The Islamic Ottoman Empire, which then included most of the eastern Mediterranean, was close-by and welcomed the Jews.  It was the logical place for them to go. Many Jewish families from Turkey were of Italian origin and many kept their Italian citizenship.   Turkish Jewish families often have names of Italian towns including Cori, Taranto, Pontremoli, Modiano/Modigliano, etc."

Jews have been living in Spain from before Christ.  More and more Sephardic sites are appearing on the web.  Those links that I am aware of at this time are available below, but I can assure you that as more sites are discovered, they will be added to my site.

In Spain in 2006, there are about 20,000 Jews, which include those who consider themselves Jewish.

Names and lots of personal information about Jews who lived in Spain prior
to 1492 can be found in the Notarial records of Spain, of which there are
about 2-3,000 per town per year and in which Jews are clearly mentioned as such.  Extracts of these Notarial records are found in books such as Leon
Tello's 2 volume book "Los Judios de Toledo" and several others.

For more information check out Jeff Malka's website pages and go to "Early Notarial and Inquisition records of Spain".
http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm

  Books

"History of the Jews in Aragon, Regesta and Documents 1213 - 1327" authored by Jean Regne and published in Jerusalem in 1978

"Jewish Remnants in Spain: Wanderings in a Lost World" - authored by Sidney David Markman.  Provides a mix of history, architectural commentary and travel anecdotes in a survey of Jewish remnants in 27 Spanish cities and towns.  Included are tracings of city maps, photographs of alleys and crumbling synagogues.  ISBN 0972723706 To order: 1 480 858 5777 evsdg@asu.edu or thru my Amazon.com link

"Jews in the Notarial culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350" - authored by Robert I. Burns and published in Berkeley by the University of California Press in 1996.

"Les nomes des Israelites en France" authored by Paul Levy in Paris in 1960

General Spanish
Genealogy              Jewish woman in Tangiers
Information

For further information, you might want to visit this Sephardic Web Site
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321
or my Sephardic web page

Archives

Archives - Archivo General de la Guerra Civil Espanola - in Stlamanca http://www.mcu.es/lab/archivos/SGV.html 

http://www.mcu.es/archivos/index.jsp

Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) - http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm

Argentinean Jews - significant numbers of Argentine Jews are moving to Israel and America, but ironically a number are also moving to Spain in an ironic twist of history -- cultural similarities, a common language and economic prosperity.

Conversos - * Chuleta=chop (as in lamb chop) -    Chueta=pork lard
The source for the latter is
http://shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/13-05.html
which discusses the whole matters of Conversos in Spain.

Espasfarad - a forum (in French) dedicated to Sephardic and Spanish/ Portuguese researches
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/espasfarad

ETSI - Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Society  - The purpose of "ETSI" is to help people interested in Jewish Genealogical and Historical Research in the Sephardi World.  "ETSI's" field of study covers the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Greece, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Egypt); North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia); Spain, Portugal, Italy and Gibraltar.  The study of every Sephardi community or family who lived in other regions is equally within the society's aim. 
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321  
or email laurphil@wanadoo.fr

Global Gazetteer is a great web site. It is a directory of  2,880,532 of the world's cities and towns, sorted by country and linked to a map for each town.  A tab separated list is available for each country.
www.calle.com/world/ 

World-Wide Gazetteer
www.fallingrain.com/world/index.html

411 Information:
http://springboard.telstra.com

Alicante - there are Jews living in the city.

Archives - National Archives - in Lisbon
http://www.iantt.pt/ 

Aventuriel - site of the Jewish culture in Murcia, Spain in Spanish, but if you use Google, it will translate into English
http://www.iespana.es/heberg/

http://www.ayto-murcia.es/Inicio/default.asp

Barcelona - the capital of Catalonia with a population of 1.5 million. Jews lived here as early as the 9th century  It is commonly believed that after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., Responsa from Babylonian rabbis to those in Barcelona have been traced back to the 700's and in the 8th century Jews were driven out and came back in the 12th century.  By the 14th century, Jews comprised 15% of the city's population mostly settled into the El Call (the old Jewish Quarter).

The better, well-off among them settled at the foot of the Montjuic (Jewish Mountain) where a Jewish cemetery stood already in the first half of the 10th century.  More info can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/shl_gur/Catalonia-engl.htm 

Barcelona - a story about this colorful and historical city was authored by Dyana Z. Furmansky and appears in the March 2006 issue of Hadassah Magazine.

Cemetery - there is a Jewish cemetery that is thought to have been there for at least a millennium with more than 500 tombstones - 140 of them facing east and dated to about 1034.  Some of the early tombstones have been relocated to the Castell de Montjuic, a 17th century fortification that is now a military museum.

Communidad Israelita de Barcelona is located on Carrer de Avenit 24; Telephone: 011 34 93 417; Email: info@cibonline.org

Jewish Barcelona - Reborn - visited and reported by Robert W. Case
http://www.jewishsitesvisited.com/articles/JEWISH-BARCELONA.pdf

A pogrom on August 5, 1391 in the El Call killed about 200 Jews. Prior to the Inquisition, over 100,000 Jews left the country. After the Inquisition, another 250,000 Jews left Spain.  In 1918 there were about 100 Jews in the city which later grew to about 5,000 around the time of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.  Spain, during WW II, Spain allowed European Jews entry and in the 1960's, South American Jews reentered the country. In 2006, of the 20,000 Jews, 5,000 now live in Barcelona.

Sinagoga Mayor (thought to be the oldest synagogue in Europe) is located at Carrer Marlet 5 in El Call, but is actually housed at Carrer de Castanyer 27. The site is in both Hebrew and Spanish
www.atid.es

www.calldebarcelona.org

Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives and other archive sites are located at the University of Arizona by following links from:
http://www.state.az.us/education.html

Castelar's Web Site by Clara Yael who resides in northeastern Brazil and writes about her background:
http://www.geocities.com/Paris?leftBank/1300

Castile - Don Pedro I ruled this area some 600 years ago and was known as a good friend to the Jews.  His Jewish minister of Finance was Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir Abulafa.  The Rabbi was such an efficient government minister that Don Pedro became one of the richest kings in all of Spain.  When a civil war broke out among the populace and Don Pedro was imprisoned, the insurgents made sure his Jewish minister was jailed along with him.  Rabbi Shmuel ransomed not only himself but also the king for a huge sum.  Don Pedro was restored to the throne and Rabbi Shmuel resumed his duties as head of the Royal Treasury.

In 1360, the Rabbi became the target of a libelous plot, in which his enemies accused him of revealing state secrets to a foreign power.  The Jewish minister was arrested, his wealth confiscated and he was tortured to death at the age of 40.

Catalonia - Shlomo Gurevich talks about his visit to places where the prominent Spanish rabbis - the ancestors of the Horowitz family resided: Barcelona, Gerona, Narbonne, Montpellier, Lunel
http://www.geocities.com/shl_gur/Catalonia-engl.htm 

Jews in Catalonia: 1250 to 1400
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/
catalanjews/CatalanJews.html

Converso Information - Are You Jewish? Converted Jewish In Spain - a web site developed by Jose Pardo Hidalgo e-mail: pardoinfo@ono.com    http://usuarios.lycos.es/pardoinfo/crising.htm
and
www.semiticroots.com 

Ancient Jewish Quarter in Cordoba

Cordoba - once an important Sephardic-Jewish city in the Middle Ages - Maimonides was born there.

Crypto Judaic Studies - this society unites descendants of Crypto-Jews with scholars who study them.  Most Jewish descendants of the Southwest trace their ancestry to secret Jews who arrived in what was then a remote corner of New Spain in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. 
www.cryptojews.com

ETSI ("my tree" in Hebrew) is the first Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Society, founded in 1998 in Paris, France. Contact :Laurence or Philip Abensur:
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321
or email to: laurphil@wanadoo.fr

Gerona (Girona) - a wonderful and most interesting small town north of Barcelona.  It was a renowned center of Jewish learning in the 13th century.  Kabala's first appearance in Spain was here.
http://www.geocities.com/shl_gur/Catalonia-engl.htm 

Museum of Jewish History, Forca 8, Girona; 011 34/972-216-761

www.ajuntament.gi/call/eng

Ha Lapid, Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies - general focus on Iberian descent:
http://sephardiconnect.com/halapid

A Haven From Expulsion, Ottoman Empire -
http://home.earthlink.net/~bnahman/

Hispanic Division, Library of Congress
http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/

Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York - can be contacted by writing to Murray Hill Station, PO Box 818 New York, NY 10156-0602
http://www.hispanicgenealogy.com 

Jewish Communities
Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain
Madrid 28010, Spain

Jewish Network of Spain - during the 16th to the 18th century, there were important communities of Conversos in Spain.  These towns included Toledo, Gerona, Cordoba and others.  If you can read Spanish, Felipe Aira has pointed me to his web site at
www.cidadesdixitais.org  
The site asks for a password, but I suggest you just click on one of the names and read further. Felipe's email address is AIRAPARDO@terra.es 

Jews and Gypsies - "During the Inquisition in Spain, the Jews, Moors and Gypsies were all persecuted.  Many took refuge together in the mountains.  The most notable byproduct of this cultural mixing is flamenco.  If you listen to the pure flamenco singer you might think you are in shul listening to a cantor. Surely, there was more going on among the cultures than just music!"  Marshall Kandell from a posting on JewishGen

The film Carpati is on a similar theme. A gypsy band is introduced to a
surviving Jew from the Holocaust.
http://www.remember.org/carpati/CarpatiSummary.html

La Pajina Judeo-Espanyola -
http://home.earthlink.net/~bnahman/

Live From Santa Fe - many magazine articles by Art Benveniste: http://www.livefromsantafe.com

Lunel (Lunar City) -

Madrid - this is the capital city of Spain, and it is the home for more than 800 Jewish families.  There are four synagogues , but Beth Yaakov is the largest.

Malaga - there are Jews living in the city

Map of Spain
http://www.europeetravel.com/maps/

Monpellier - capital of the Province of Languedoc - http://www.geocities.com/shl_gur/Catalonia-engl.htm 

Murcia - see Aventuriel above

Names From Spain and Portugal - Harry Stein's page - http://home.earthlink.net/~bnahman

Narbonne -

National Association of Sephardic Artists, Writers and Intellectuals - site for those of Sephardic, Mizrahi and Crypto background 
http://www.ivri-nasawi.org

Palma - there are Jews living in the city.

The Portuguese Jewish Community in Tunis offers quite a bit of interesting information and a link to Marriage Licenses issued from 1788-1823 & 1853-1878.  I suggest you start at Bob Cassuto's web page and just follow the links. 
http://www.bobcassuto.fr.st/

Schulamith Halevy's web site.  Schulamith is of Sephardic descent and an expert on the subject:
http://sal.cs.uiuc.edu/~nachum/sch/index.html

The Sepharade Page - European Sephardic Institute (English and French) - http://www.sefarad.org/

The Sephardi Connection -
http://home.earthlink.net/bnahman/

Sephardi Genealogical & Historical Society and Review publication: http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321

Sephardic Family Site - a wonderful amount of Sephardic Information as well as information on the Malka-Gelfand family created by Jeff Malka. http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm

Sephardic Genealogy 
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/DJGH/letter.html

Sephardic Genealogy Sources:
www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm

Sephardic mikva'ot'oth Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, established in 1659 as the oldest synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.  The original building dates from 1732 and was dedicated in 1763.  This congregation aided financially in the building of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York in 1729 and the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island in 1763. 

This information is confirmed in the book "Precious Stones of The Jews Of Curacao" by Isaac Emmanuel and in the 1984 edition of the "World Guide For The Jewish Traveler"  authored by Warren Freedman.   

"According to Jacob R. Marcus in "The Colonial American Jew 1492-1776", a synagogue was established in Curacao by 1659.  Marcus says that they built another in 1692 which replaced a wooden house where services had been held since 1651, and both were superseded by the fourth synagogue in 1703 which apparently still exists, "the oldest extant Jewish sanctuary in the Western Hemisphere."  This is the one which was named mikva'ot'oth Israel-Emanuel;  Marcus doesn't give a name for the earlier one.  Maybe the 1702 structure was considered to be a rebuilding of the 1659 structure."

"Marcus also notes that there were synagogues in the Sephardic community in Recife, Brazil when it was governed by the Dutch in the mid 17th century.  There were two synagogues probably dating from the 1630s and had at least one rabbi including Isaac Aboab de Fonseca.  The Portuguese, however, recaptured the colony, bringing with them the Inquisition.  He claims that this  was the largest Jewish community in the Americas until the 19th century, but it survived little more than two decades.  Some of those that fled subsequently settled in the Guianas, the West Indies, and of course, New York City."  

Sephardic Name Searching
http://www.sephardim.com

www.sephardic.com

Sephardic site - a very fine and informative site http://www.orthohelp.com/geneal/sefardim.htm

Sephardic World, Chaiya's - the history and culture of Jews in Medieval Spain
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8636/

Spanish Jewish Site - Sinagoga La Javur�, Valencia (Espa�a)
http://www.uscj.org/world/valencia/

Surnames (Jewish) in Valladolid, Guadalajara and its province, Cuenca, Teruel and Valencia - from a posting to JewishGen by Laurent Germanaud
on July 16 2000

Toledo - ancient Castilian capital of Toledo

Translating

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Translating - there are many translating services, some for free, available to help with your translating needs in most languages including Spanish and Portuguese.  One of these sites is
http://www.dictionaries.travlang.com/

Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department.  They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English.  A nominal fee is usually charged.

Valencia - there are some Jews living in the city.

Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish: A European Heritage - lots of information on this fascinating subject at
http://209.15.64.51/hosted/english/eblul/index.html

Majorca 

"It might be of interest that when I was in Majorca 15 years ago, it was
said that a third of the current Majorcan population was of Jewish origin.
Conversos in Majorca are known as Chueta (i.e. pig)*.  I was staying in a
pension and I noticed that there was an amulet on the wall which contained Hebrew lettering."

"I then went to a nearby religious and philosophy bookshop where I came
across a book in Spanish of sights/sites of Jewish interest across the whole of Spain whose title I can supply.  From a posting on 9-5-03 by Nick Landau  N.Landau@btopenworld.com

* Chuleta=chop (as in lamb chop)
   Chueta=pork lard

The source for the latter is
http://shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/13-05.html
which discusses the whole matters of Conversos in Spain.

There are plans for a rabbi and a Jewish studies center in Majorca, where many Jewish descendants live.

Portugal

Jewish History in Portugal ended in 1496, when the Jews of Spain who had fled to Portugal in 1492 and those Jews who had been living in the country, were forced to flee from the Inquisition.  There are about 300 to 900 Jews living today, mostly in Lisbon.  They do not have a Rabbi, kosher food, nor can hold a Minyan, except for holidays, but they do have two synagogues - one is the Sephardic Shaare Tikva and the other is the smaller Ashkenazi Ohel Yaacov.  Portugal is about the size of the State of Maine.

The capital city, Lisbon, is interesting to visit, especially the Alfama quarter where large numbers of Jews settled in the 15th century.  There is still remnants including the Rua da Judiaria, which is found among the narrow streets.  At 8 Beco das Barrelai, you will find a site of an ancient synagogue.

In the financial section, known as Baixa, there were two Jewish quarters - the Judiaria Grande, which is close to today's Sao Nicolau Street, and the Judiaria Pequena, created in the 13th century in the place where today, the Bank of Portugal stands.

In the Archeological Museum in the Chiado quarter, you will find the "Mochique Stone" with inscriptions written in Hebrew..  And in the center of Lisbon, there is the Shaare Tikva Synagogue at Rua Filipe da Mata 113-2�, 1600-070 Lisbon which was built by several groups of Sephardic Jews from Gibraltar.

  Books

"The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon" - authored by Richard Zimler

"The Rough Guide to Portugal"

Archives - National Archives - in Lisbon
http://www.iantt.pt/ 

Belmonte - in the 1990s, the 180 Jews returned to Judaism after 500 years of outward Catholicism and secret Jewish practice.  An interesting story can be found in the December 2002 issue of Hadassah Magazine about the Kehilat Beit Israel congregation's Rabbi.  Another article by Judith Fein can be found in the August 2006 issue of the San Diego Jewish Journal. The town is just up the road from Covilha.

Belmonte's Jews stem from a tiny community that preserved Judaism in secret after Portuguese King Manoel in 1496 ordered all Jews to convert to Christianity.  The community is now free to practice its faith openly, but many members of the community have left in search of jobs and Jewish life elsewhere.  

The Belmonte Jews descend from Sephardim who took refuge in these mountainous borderlands during the century of pogroms that erupted in the 1390s in neighboring Spain.  Belmonte is a town in the highest mountains of Portugal, in the Serra da Estrela range, which, at 6,000 ft. high and only about 80 miles from the border of Spain.  The population is 3,000 inhabitants, and around 200 Sephardic Jews who are still averse to talking to outsiders, therefore, there is precious little information.  In fact, the Jews of Belmonte only married one another to preserve the secret of their faith.  Centuries of endogamy (intermarriage) have left many of these Belmonte Jews suffering from hereditary diseases.

While they are friendly to Jewish visitors, they are zealously secretive when asked about their religious practices.  The world did not even know about the existence of this clandestine Jewish community until it was reportedly discovered in 1917 by Samuel Schwartz, a Polish mining engineer. The Jewish community has its own synagogue, rabbi, cemetery and a holocaust museum.  The Abarbanel Wine Co. produces Terras de Belmonte, the first kosher wine produced in Portugal in more than 500 years and is kosher for Passover.  This information was obtained from a posting by Robert W. Case
http://www.jewishsitesvisited.com

David Canelo - a Portuguese historian has done a lot of studies about the Jewish community
http://www.cryptojews.com/key_to_the_500.htm

"The Crypto-Jews in Belmonte Portugal"
http://tinyurl.com/m76o7

Covilha - like many towns and villages near the mountainous Spanish-Portuguese border, Covilha also is though to have a significant population of descendants of 'New Christians', descendants of Jews who converted under duress after a royal decree in the late 15th century.  Kosher wine is now being produced in a local winery.

ETSI - Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Society  - The purpose of "ETSI" is to help people interested in Jewish Genealogical and Historical Research in the Sephardi World.  "ETSI's" field of study covers the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Greece, Palestine, Syria, Libya, Egypt); North Africa (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia); Spain, Portugal, Italy and Gibraltar.  The study of every Sephardi community or family who lived in other regions is equally within the society's aim. 
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321  
or email laurphil@wanadoo.fr

Jewish Community of Lisbon
Lisbon 1200-280, Portugal

Jewish Portugal - Portuguese Sephardic History
http://www.saudades.org/

Jews of Portugal - a collective work described in ETSI
www.geocities.com/Etsi-Sefarad

Kehillah-or-ahayim Blog - there is much information here but it is in Portuguese
http://kehillah-or-ahayim.blogspot.com/index.html

Lisbon - Alfama is the old Jewish District of Lisbon.  Rossio is one of the main squares of the city where the bloody Lisbon Massacre, which began on April 19, 1506, reached its horrific climax.  Between two and four thousand Jews, who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism, were taken from their homes and burned alive on two massive pyres

the President of the Shaare-Tikva aka Lisbon Synagogue, is Jorge Sampaio,  It is the first synagogue (Orthodox) built in Portugal after the 1497 expulsion of the Jews.
http://www.cilisboa.org/sin_cent.htm
(in Spanish)

Kehilat Beit Israel is a tiny community that is the home of Ohel Yacob, the only Ashkenazi synagogue in Portugal, and perhaps on the entire Iberian peninsula. It was founded by German and Polish Jews after WW II.  Contact Marco Moreyra, Rua Filipe da Mata 113-2�, 1600-070 Lisbon, Portugal info@beitisrael.org The site is in Portuguese and Hebrew
www.beitisrael.org

"The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon" - a book about the Jewish Diaspora, Sephardic families that must go out of Portugal due to religion. Authored by Richard Zimler
http://www.zimler.com/

Map of Portugal
http://www.europeetravel.com/maps/

Masorti - traditional Conservative Jews (Masortil)

Names From Spain and Portugal - Harry Stein's page - http://home.earthlink.net/~bnahman

Porto - located on the Costa Verde north of Lisbon, the town of Porto has a long history and traditions of a flourishing Jewish community.  In 1386, the Jews of the town were given land to build a village and a synagogue was located on the Escadas da Vitoria, a set of steps that the local people still refer to as 'Escada da Esroga (the steps of the synagogue) and where today you will find a plaque with that name.  In the center of Porto, there is a synagogue that was built in 1929 called Mekor Haim (Fountain of Life). A secret synagogue was found hidden behind a false wall inside an old Portuguese house.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, in the ancient town of Pointe de Lima, famous for its Roman bridge, medieval towers and beautiful manor houses, there was a Jewish Quarter.  The Jews of the town were the originators of the local fair which continues each month, to this day.

The Portuguese National Tourist Office, 590 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10036 offers a free brochure titled "Journey to Jewish Portugal".  Phone 212 354 4403

Saudades - Portuguese site -
http://home.earthlink.net/~bnahman/

Sefard Forum: JewishGen's group Sephardic genealogy - http://www.jewishgen.org/sefardsig/SefardForum.htm

Translating Services - Click Here

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Just in case you didn't think of it, contact a nearby university or college's foreign language department.  They may offer to write letters and translate letters into English.  A nominal fee is usually charged.

Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish: A European Heritage - lots of information on this fascinating subject at
http://209.15.64.51/hosted/english/eblul/index.html

Gibraltar

Surnames of Gibraltar from Genealogia Hebraica: Portugal e Gibraltar
http://sephardichouse.org/

Please let me know if there is a favorite link of yours that is not included in my site and I will be happy to add it to Jewish Web Index