Secret Jews: Samuel Schwarz’s Discovery of Portugal’s Crypto-Jews

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In 1925, mining engineer Samuel Schwarz stumbled onto a secret Jewish community in rural Portugal—families who preserved Jewish identity for centuries under the Portuguese Inquisition. In this episode of Jewish History Nerds, Jonathan Schwab and Yael Steiner trace how “crypto-Jews” survived through hidden rituals, oral tradition, and underground prayer spaces—and what happened once the outside world finally found them. What would you do to keep a tradition alive?

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Here is a link to Dr. Henry Abramson's translation of Samuel Schwartz's book: Discovering the Crypto-Jews of Portugal 

https://www.amazon.nl/-/en/Discovering-Crypto-Jews-Portugal-Samuel-Schwarz/dp/B0FK5M53KJ

For more on Samuel Schwarz and the discovery of the Crypto-Jews of Portugal, click here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cgXAN6EiJRw9qWGHeR_QeTDGMn10LutLXUZqo1iod-4/edit?usp=sharing

Watch Yael and Schwab on ⁠YouTube⁠:

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