Journey To Portugal: The History of Forced Conversion in Portugal & the Ruling Regarding Suicide

this Tower class is brought to you by torahanytime.com okay good morning everyone assalamu alaikum first we want to welcome our steam guide Diego okay who's the expert on all Portuguese history thank you for joining us and a lot of Portuguese Jews was slightly better than of it it's counter card in Spain the position of Jews were was favorable practically until The Bitter End so for example in 1391 when there were forcible baptism forcible conversions in Spain and 200 000 Jews were forcibly baptized in Portugal the Kings protected the Jews so they were not subject to forcible uh baptizing now there is a prestigious family called the Yahya family and in succession they served the king one after another generation after generation the barbanell's family was protected here in Portugal and even though there was mounting feelings of anti-Semitism in general the kings of Portugal Protected Their Jewish constituents so at first Alfonso V he brings in the avar benella as his finance minister after Alfonso he's he succeeded by II or uh you are the second or in English John and John continues to uh use that bar vanilla as his Finance Minister however in 1483 was accused of conspiracy against juau and abarinel gets the message that the king wants to have private word with him now that barbarinal had heard that the king had just assassinated all of his father's advisors and that when the King was asking the Barbara now for a private meeting it was to be able to put the abrar vanilla in something called relaxation relaxation means he was going to kill him so that barbarinal flees Portugal and just makes it into Spain just as his pursuers were about to catch him by the way barbarell writes that when he came to Spain he was unknown nobody even knew who he was he had more time to study he had more time to learn actually wrote his commentary to Tanakh while he was in Portugal so uh now after John's death the throne is ascended by Emmanuel now Manuel was off for the following is the following um match he wanted to marry Isabella the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella however Fernando Isabella said that if Manuel is going to marry our daughter it's on condition that Manuel brings the Inquisition and the explosion to Portugal so against manuals he had no choice so he brought the explosion into Portugal he was a little bit more kind than fernan and Isabella so he gave the Jewish people a 10-month race period however he did not make good on his word so in April 19 1497 Manuel made a rule made a lot that every single Jewish child below the age of 14 were would be forcibly kidnapped and baptized so if you were a child in Portugal a Jewish child below the age of 14. you no longer were a Jew you were taken away from your parents the parents never saw you again actually Ravi avram Saba anybody know which safer from Saba Road very good Mr Rabbi Rossman nailed it on the head gives it give the man a cigar and his two children forcibly kidnapped and baptized he never saw them again many of the children were taken off to uh islands of Portugal to Saint Thomas off the west coast of Africa so this was a very this was actually a more cool aspect of the Portuguese explosion than the Spanish explosion now on the first day of pesach without any warning all of a sudden Emmanuel comes in with an entire Army he rounds up all the children and they're baptized what was the reaction of the Jewish people in Portugal different than in Spain many Jewish people killed themselves that was the reaction in Portugal in Spain they allowed conversion in Portugal they committed suicide they killed themselves they killed their wives they killed their children and we're going to speak about the the letter of raviabra of Ravi avram zakuto rabba from zakuto is the inventor of the Astro lab he was King personal astronomer and my father relayed a very important story that's actually recorded in an introduction of raviar ramza puto safer hayopsen now when Christopher Columbus came to the new world he was captured by cannibal Indians and they put him in a pot by the way it's always best to avoid being caught by cannibal Indians because let's say you won't be joining us for the next stop right so we're going now what's our first stop tuman and then we're going to Porto so if you're captured by cannibal Indians you'll be with us for two man you will not be with us for a Porto because you will be someone's dinner the Indians caught Christopher Columbus and uh his end was coming there and he had on him the astronomical tables of Christopher Columbus that predicted a lunar eclipse okay and that predicted a lunar eclipse so Christopher Columbus says if you don't release me I'm gonna pray to my God and blood out the light of the Moon and a short while later all of a sudden it became dark and the light of the moon was blotted out and they deemed Christopher Columbus a God and they heaped on him great praise and actually you could go to the museum in Lisbon today where you will see the astronomical tables with the hagoys with the footnotes of Christopher Columbus in any event was the personal astronomer of King wow and in the safer he discusses the halachik issue is a Jew allowed to kill himself to avoid torture or conversion we know that according to Jewish law the worst sin is taking one's own life we believe that if somebody takes their own life they lose their share in the afterlife the most valuable commodity that we have is our life we are not the owners of our life we are not even the owners of our body you know you you walk around a lot of the European countries and people are covered from head to toe in tattoos according to Jewish law our bodies do not belong to us it's a gift from Heaven they're sacred our lives are sacred so the question is is it permitted to take one's life to avoid torture or being baptized the gamara that you just had in the zafayo me where the gemara says that a was taking boys and girls to Rome and they were going to be violated in Rome for indecent behavior and the girls asked if they jump overboard and they kill themselves well they have a share in the world to come will they have resurrection of the dead and it was expounded the passive that I will even rescue you from the depths of the sea you see another thing you should avoid doing is taking a submarine with parts that were purchased in Walmart down to the bottom of the sea that's also these are two important pieces of information number one avoid being captured by cannibal Indians and number two avoid taking submarines down to shipwrecks you learn very important things on this trip and you see these the people who went down to the bottom of the sea to rescue to see the Titanic they will not have resurrection of the dead so maybe the Marines will find molecules but those molecules are never coming back but if a Jew thank you I like that if a Jew takes their life to avoid conversion even if they go to the Bottom of the Sea and their molecules decompose how colors Roku will reconstitute their molecules in the resurrection of the dead so says from here we see one is allowed to take their life to avoid even indecent Behavior certainly conversion furthermore Rabbi ramsakuto cites the gamara and subas they come around the end of the souffle says that anyone who attended the funeral of rebe rebby was the redactor of the mishnah will automatically go to the world to come so there was a man who missed the funeral he said I can't believe I missed the funeral how did I miss such a momentum he jumped off the roof and he killed himself and the Heavenly voice said he'll also go to the world to come and then The Wanderer said I also miss the funeral so the kaivas the Wonder jumped off the roof and the Heavenly voice said she'll also have a share in the world to come so we see that if in great religious agony one is permitted to take their life and therefore says rev Ram zakuto there were many righteous Jews who took their lives to avoid torture and conversion for example in 1391 the grandson of the rush killed himself Hashem not only he his mother-in-law the wife of the Torah killed herself the torah's wife the torah's wife killed herself so from here we see that for the sake of saving oneself from conversion one is allowed to take their life now the Inquisition was preserved and upheld with great cruelty in Portugal sometimes even worse than in Spain so tens of thousands despaired converted became Portuguese conversos but once you become a converso your problems just begin because they there was Inquisition in 1504 there were programs in 1506 there were pogroms situation in Lisbon became so unstable that there was Rebellion against King Manuel so King Manuel allowed the Jews the Jewish converts those to leave and when they left thousands of conversals returned openly to Jewish practice by the way in Portugal the Inquisition continued until 1821. in Spain until 1834. so this is some of the history of the country we're going to we're going to speak about a number of the Godzilla most notably Republic who lived a very tragic personal life because of the forcible conversions here in Portugal and I want to share with you um an original idea that I'm that's in development but I'd like to speak about further on tishabab and that is you know it always bothered me why on Tish above we don't commemorate the Spanish Inquisition after all the uh the explosion was set for Tish above August 2nd 1492. so in the past we've brought out the idea that the explosion from Spain in the scheme of Jewish history is not really a tragedy because after all we're being forced to leave the Gullah so Jew never cries when they leave the Dallas but there's an another very important reason why we don't mourn the explosion in 1492 and that is the expulsion in 1492 was the best of the last of what could have happened to a Jew in the 15th century the explosion was after a hundred years of forced conversion and once you're forcibly converted and you wanted to practice Judaism secretly then there was Inquisition where there were spies everywhere if you made one wrong turn you made one wrong move if you said one wrong word they will take you they would take your family your wife your children and they would burn the person alive that was the that was the state of someone who was caught practicing Judaism in secret the expulsion was a reprieve now they had freedom to leave the country and actually in the scheme of things the forcible conversions were much worse than any faith the Jewish people ever suffered in fact the rise it rights that while many Jewish tragedies were just a repeat of suffering of the formulas that miktas the forcible conversions were a faith that we never suffered before in our history and have no parallel and have no precedent and therefore to commemorate the expulsion of 1492 would be downplaying all the disasters that happened for the hundred years before that made the explosion pale in comparison so it'd almost be incongruous and distasteful and a lack of respect for what was happening for the previous Century to to commemorate the explosion of 1492. so here is are some introductory remarks and we're going to hear more from the yoga as we get to the place you've just experienced another Torah class brought to you byctoranytime.com