Rejuvenation: Portugal’s Hidden Jews

[Music] hi everybody it is just after Shabbat the 21st of September 2019 the 21st day of a low of 57 79 you listening to eat herro on rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network and now we've got to say something that you've never heard me say before I'm recording this in Lisbon Portugal my husband and I are here for a week with a wonderful group organized by the person that you're about to hear dr. Hagee AMEX or to be Volta under steam which means literally in the footsteps of the Anna seam of the crypto-jews that kept their judaism despite very very difficult conditions for the last few hundred years but it's much more than that so first of all I'll just introduce dr. Hagee I meets or whom I met years ago on the tour guide course was one of my favorite teachers remained as such over the years and I have gone be called Cagayan meets or you could say to some degree following hoggie other courses that he's given and the group here which is close to 30 people close to 30 Israelis are all I would say like fans of kaga are either students of his or neighbors of his in one way or the other so he's the head of the Galilee Studies Institute and and non-stop researcher of Jewish history but really much much more than that so first of all it's very late on Saturday night and we have a long day another long day tomorrow but thank you so so much for agreeing to this interview thank you for having me and thank you for the kind words that you were saying about me and it's been a privilege and an honor to lead such a wonderful group really in one of the day in the footsteps of one of the let's say the unknown episodes of Jewish history and this is something that I was doing for several years now and taking people and going through a different events and getting to know something that people really really really don't know about and that's exactly one of the things that I want to talk to you about I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on Jewish my husband and I'd like to travel wherever we go the first thing we do is book the Jewish tour there and this so for me this is a fabulous week because the whole week is the Jewish tour but everyone knows about the Holocaust and the way and people go to Poland and see what happened and about other miserable episodes in Jewish history but the way that we learn about the Inquisition is there was a golden age I'm giving it very simplistically but that's really how I many people learned it not just in the United States where I got my education also in Israel there is the Golden Age of Spain for 500 years the Jews were here they were scientists they were rabbis the beginnings of Kabbalah then in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella come up they insist that the Jews either convert or die to Catholicism that's the end of the Golden Age in Spain and Portugal is not even mentioned and one of the things that and like it's mentioned in conjunction with Spain and that's that and I know I have family roots here and they fled to Germany and as do many other Jews but we're here in Portugal and and I'm seeing this happen not just for myself but everyone in the group who happened to be a very learning group of people these are not people who just like you know decided to come on this trip and it was so much worse here the Inquisition and as you've explained because they didn't have the chance to leave so what happened here in Portugal that was different from Spain well a couple of Corrections first what you said the Golden Age not last 500 years that's how we learned it yeah that's right the Golden Age in Spain okay lasted for something like 250 it may be even less and already in the 11th and 12th century everything was very very miserable and bad for the Jews and they actually Portugal did not exist at that time so when we are saying the word Spain in those days we mean then they the whole of the Iberian Peninsula and not just Portugal or Spain later on Portugal received its I say some sort of independence and declared itself as a separate and different and therefore usually when we look at the history of the poor his jewelry it's in the shade of the Spanish because over there there were the great rabbis and over there remained all the Torah study centers and everything and most people did not come to live in Portugal but in Portugal for example in the 15th century one of the great rabbis that was here was doughnuts haben and everyone knows him from his commentary i cant't enough and usually but but even his name when we referred to done it's like a dawn is a portuguese title and therefore you don't you don't hear about don't nee i don't know what rambha or don't whatever because they are spanish scholars and they did not come from module but so this is one thing and portugal there was a a torah study center there was a Jewish community and they were Jews all over the place but what really happened was in 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella decided to expel the Jews from Spain as you mentioned they were given a choice they had to choose if they wanted to stay they had to come back to Christianity but they had the option to go and they had the option to live and therefore hundreds of thousands of Jews who decided they want to continue their Jewish heritage they wanted to keep the Judaism they left Spain some of them left North Africa Assam to the Ottoman Empire Santa but many many of them something like 120 thousand two hundred fifty thousand Jews went to Portugal expecting to return to Spain as soon as possible most of them settled in the high mountains area close to the Portuguese Spanish border because they said well in a couple of years they will regret and will be able to go back home so they settled over there some of them went to the big cities like Lisbon but they were all the time looking forward to go back to Spain because this is where they felt this was their home this is the place where they live this better place were they studied this is where we want to go back two four years after the expulsion from Spain the Portuguese King is going to get married with a daughter of the Spanish kings of Ferdinand and Isabella and she wanted a wedding gift she said my parents took care that there will be no Jews and no non-christians in Spain if you want to marry me this is what you need to do and now we have a problem I was in one hand he wanted the Jews they are the learned people they are the nobles they are the money and finance and everything they brought the wealthy but not your knowledge they brought everything with them they were the backbone of the Portuguese economy in those days just to mention even before that when the Portuguese in the 15th century were the greatest biggest naval Empire of the world it was based on Jewish knowledge the person who drew the maps for all the Portuguese sailors to go and on these maps based also Columbus his journey and Vasco da Gama and all the others they were Jews one of them was Avraham's the coot when one of the greatest astronomers of the time and he has having two craters on the moon named after him because the world recognized he is a donation and what he gave to the world as far as his knowledge so they went and they were in Portugal these people in he understand and realized the king I don't want to lose these Jews because I don't want me to go anywhere else but on the other hand in order to marry this finally and to strengthen the relationship between the Portuguese a kingdom and the Spanish kingdom of the time so what are you going to do so I decided to do is to tell the Jews that he is going to send them back to Spain but in order to do that he needs them to gather together and to assemble in the Center central square in Lisbon which was the Harbor City and from their ships could take them back to Spain and lead them to the place where they want to go the Jews that accepted he is a call gathered all together in the central square and once they were standing over there suddenly all the priests came out from the all the churches and from everything and everywhere around they a drizzled a little bit of water on top of the heads of the Jews and said that's it you are Christians from now on and actually and literally speaking the Jews and this fine jewelry in Portugal vanished in one day the next morning there were no Jews in the portico so they had they were baptised they were there were just standing in the square they got baptized and then in one minute there are no Jews anymore they're all considered Christian all consider Christians which means that all the synagogues were dismantled and destroyed no Jewish community ceremonies or whatever could take place anywhere but most of them they came to Portugal in order to continue practice Judaism because this is why they left Spain and now suddenly they can't continue practice Judaism anymore to add to that the Portuguese King blocked and seized the ports and disallowed anyone to leave the countries so they were actually were trapped and they were like prisoners here in Portugal so the only option for them was to become crypto-jews to hide their Judaism to continue in practice different ceremonies and different practices but hiding themselves from the outside and suddenly they were not using in portal right in those days they didn't have Inquisition in Portugal forty years later they realized that many of these new Christians doesn't really practice Christianity the way the church wanted them to do that so this is how and why Inquisition started in Portugal in 1536 so you know in I mean we've just been here for three days we have four days actually including Shabbat and then we have which we obviously didn't travel on we've another three days so really only halfway through the trip and I've cried every single day standing near a stake in the middle of a town square in front of the church where the Lion of Judah the little symbol that had been in the synagogue is now proudly waved on the top of the church not even an attempt to hide what they were doing you showed us the little pits on the steps around the stake where oil was put so that the fire would be even higher I believe is just trying Co so if I'm not mistaken where they have the list of the Jews we know exactly who was burnt at the stake the children taken away from the parents to be raised as Christians the parents refusing to renounce their Judaism burnt at the stake in one of the refurbished synagogues there there's an old Torah scroll that was brought from India and you don't even know but I was starving you you read from the Torah it's on deerskin it's a very very precious Torah and and just thinking about the people who died to remain Jewish and and went through so much and now to get to this big question why don't we know this why is this story not in the textbooks you know this kind of thing about the Inquisition in Spain but the story about the Jews of Portugal only came out really in the last century or so so you know why is that that's right because they were hiding themselves so well that no one knew about him for example you remember and you recall that two days ago we visited a village called Belmont in Belmont till 1917 they were sure they are the last Jews in the world and then one day because it's applying the mountains now mines over there one day a jewish engineer that came from poland and russia arrived over there and he went to to their village over there because they ran out of dynamite and the only option to get dynamite was to bite in the grocery in the village so we entered the village and when he entered the village he asked where can i buy this dynamite and they said there are two places that you can buy but don't go to that one this is a jewish store so in 1917 the locals over there still knew that there are they are hiding and they're practicing different things like that so obviously he decided to go to this to this show up and when he came there and just started to speak with him and he showed me suppose the jew and identified himself as a jewish so they said there's no such thing we are the last use in the world and they said ok so please tell us one thing that will prove us that you are really a jew so he recited the sh my search my slash effort ok ma che method and we said when he said god's name they certainly closed her eyes they started to scream no no don't say that this is something that you say only when you were hide when no one hears when no one but that was a proof for them that he is a religion so like 400 years they lived in fear one of the things that has come out so strongly this week is that it was the mothers because they couldn't do anything in public they couldn't have tor readings they couldn't give their sons Bar Mitzvahs they couldn't have public prayer because Judaism is very much a religion of community we need to live together you need to have a minyan a prayer quorum if you want to have kosher food you need to have the proper butcher we're very much a people that needs to live with other Jews and they are living in fear for all these years and it was the mothers who taught the traditions to the children who quietly lit the Shabbat candles and we saw in the museum it looks like a ceramic pot you would never know it was too light Shabbat candles it's something that I've seen in other places as well where it just looks like like a little pot in then there were a couple candles in there so no one would know wish I bought candles and they taught their children that the children some of the prayers and some of the traditions and baking much thought and and you told it's fascinatingly because how did they know the Jewish calendar well they know when Easter was because Easter maybe you can tell this to my audience yeah I know when Easter was Easter is in springtime and according to the Torah the the thing is that you need to celebrate Pesach as haha Aviv is the festival of springtime so they looked when was the new moon the beginning of the new month at the time when Easter was they calculated and counted 14 days and in the 14th day of the new month that started the same time of Easter they celebrated Pesa but they didn't celebrate on the first day they celebrated with the third day they made Layla Sarah because they knew that in an Jews the Christians over there will look after them an inquisition many come and inquisition usually used to come and let us settle because they knew that this is something that use continued to keep so they shifted the celebration to make sure that no one will be able to trace them and as you mentioned before it man would go out they will work they had to go to church they had to participate with the community with every game women especially in those days they stayed at home so they could deliver downline the entire heritage through songs when someone when a child is going to sleep the mother will just stand next to him or sit next to him and singing a rhyme to you to send him to sleep and through that she will put on the all the words and everything and as we saw in the way different songs that actually recite the Mitzvah the commandments and different verses from the Torah and different episodes that happened to Jewish Jewish people coming out from Egypt and all these things that this was the way to keep it and imaginary for I said about the Inquisition it's unbelievable no one realized that in Portugal Inquisition continued till 1820 he won the last Jew was put to death in 1821 it's unbelievable 300 years of Inquisition 300 years of terrorizing all those who try to keep something of Judaism or whatever and nevertheless they continued one of the things that has struck everyone on this group and it's a mixed group from from all different levels of religious observance is the faith that kept them going it is it's just astonishing to us because we live in a world where ok in the Muslim countries it's different you can't it's not so easy to be a Jew even if you are there and virtually no one is left but you can in the West and I imagine most of the people listening to the show if you want to be Jewish if you want to light candles you can do it too but here they had people who would literally kept the faith and the vast majority did not and I think that's important to say the vast majority either just gave up over the years and none of us can even begin to judge them or adopted Christianity willingly and I know that probably many people listening and many people who live in South America today have some trace of Jewish blood and I think it's also important to mention that they weren't they weren't considered who luckily Jewish the ones that were found in these villages 100 years ago many of them have now converted to Judaism and are living full jewish lives especially in israel but this faith this idea that hashem wants something from us and we can't let it go despite the most severe price to be paid for for keeping the Judaism alive it's just something that I see all of us and even you who's who leave the tours here it has for many many years it's something so huge it's something almost more than human yeah and it is something as you mentioned before unknown people don't know about all these stories and all these things and in the 20th century these things started for example ok we'll take one of them one of the stories of the Portuguese Dreyfus like : l Arturo bestow Bosch it was born in 1886 when he was nine his grandfather called him to the corner of the room and said secretly and quietly I want to tell you a secret that I would like to tell you that we are Jews you didn't know what does what it meant because he went to church and it was baptized and everything was done so he started to try to find his Jewish roots and what whatever should be done with it eventually in 1904 he went to the rabbi english-born and said I would like to convert to Judaism and this guy didn't want to convert him he said you are for our part of the Cree script you're not a Jew so we're not looking who will Fernando will do during first world war he was an officer in front rear and one evening suddenly when they were sitting with all the officers over there one of the officers said they will excuse me I mean it I have to do something and he went aside and he lit candles because he was Jew so Buster Bosch asked him what are you doing he said well this is a candle lighting for Shaban Shabbat life and he asking questions I kept a question about two days and about these faiths about these things and eventually he decided to convert to Judaism it was circumcised and not only that but he started to travel in the villages in the mountains looking for his let's say lost brothers there was cryptic Jews or in many of the places they didn't want to show them to show themselves as Jews because they were too afraid so when he called them to be circumcised in portal which is something like today it's three hours drive and you can imagine to yourself that at the beginning of the 20th century this was the real journey to do from these up high mountains all the way to to the big cities and this was one of the reasons why they didn't want to circumcise so what he did he took one of his these army fellows who was a doctor and a surgeon and he also converted to Judaism cook him with him and they rode to all these places and everywhere anyone who said well I would like to be circumcised over there so this was really something and it's it's mainly up behind the mountains it's it's a very isolated area even today it's quite difficult to get there they're very narrow roads very winding roads and routes up up in the mountains and everywhere and definitely during those days about a century ago and even a couple of centuries ago it was much much much more difficult to get there but on the other hand this is why they could hide over there and keep some sort of Judaism in these places in 1992 for example in Vermont where we visited 150 people decided that they want to form once again a Jewish community not just to leave as private families each and every one for himself which was the situation along the centuries so they converted to Judaism full conversion chief rabbi of Israel came and there was a big ceremony and there was a wealthy person that donated and built him a synagogue over there and they have today actually a real formal Jewish community with with everything with keeping kashrut and keeping Shabbat and having all the ceremonies over there and the services they even have a rabbi that we were we were lucky enough to meet him here in Lisbon because on Friday morning he just returned from Israel it was in his way to Belmont here's the rabbi of the month and obviously he couldn't get there before Shabbat so he stayed here in Lisbon and we met him here in Lisbon but once again everything ties up together and everything connects and it's really really a fascinating story that we must tell how people were willing to pay the price as high it would be Missy would nefesh a real missin effort for keeping their faith and keeping what they could because most of the things they couldn't do but they really really was very very important for them to continue and keep that this is a reason for example why they only intermarried among themselves one family with the other which today causes lots of problems with a genetic problems with with relationship between these people but and some of the stories are fascinating because preserve not every time they knew which were the families of these crypto-jews so let's assume and one of the stories for example is that one guy met a young lady and they decided to get married but before they got married he said well there is something that I must ask you to do after we said ok tell me what you want to do and we'll keep that said every Friday morning you should go to the market buy a piece of pork come back home with that wrap it in a paper and put it in the bin she looked at him astonished me and said this is exactly what we are doing at our home they said oh because jeez what the what they did in order to show that they are proper and good Christians they went publicly to the market and made all the things that people will think that they are keeping all the Christian practices and going home they would do something totally different they had like signals between them to understand because if you made a mistake and told the wrong person and the Inquisition could come or so they thought and they weren't wrong when we walked around some of these towns we didn't go to all of them we just went to a few I think there you told us there are 37 that they now know that Jews were living carved because the whole area here is a granite rocks it's just beautiful and I have to say that the drive up to the mountains was one of the most beautiful drives I've ever been on vineyards you speak about Porto such as we're port wine comes from rivers and vineyards and greenery you could see how long it would take people to get there even with our modern bus and the roads it took a long time to get there but it was just just absolutely magnificent the houses are all made of stone apropos what I just said about granite and carved into the stone we showed you showed us house after house and you have to know where to look a cross that had been turned into a menorah or Jacob's Ladder or upside down or backwards the name of God and you told us how there was no mrs. obviously they couldn't have the mezuzah that's a telltale sign it that it's a Jewish home but they would kiss the lintel as they walked into the door they would touch it and then they would touch their pocket where mezuzah was in the pocket and then they would kiss that so anyway that they could connect but surreptitiously secretly all the time but some of these carvings are just to see them now and to understand that these are people who the Inquisition had you know signed the house right these are Christians yet making another little carving or a little bit of a change this defiance of you know no this is there are Jews in this house you don't know it but there are Jews there are people who are keeping the faith in this house yeah that's right it's amazing not only that was ever one of the researchers that they started to make with these people they they some of the researchers went with them to follow their daily practices and wherever and they suddenly saw that every time they came to a church even those who still continue to practice Christianity when they would go into the church they were mumbling something some of their sisters try to understand what they are saying and finally they said what are you were saying over there what are you whispering or whatever I said we don't know what do you mean you don't know this is what you're doing and everyone is doing that and finally they found out that what they are saying is shocked it's the shock say no these are words from the Torah that describes paganism and idol-worshipping and these Jews they went to the church because this is what was expected for them as Christians to go to the church and practice but whenever they would go before they enter they would stand I mean it and they will say she gets the shack sanitized and deveined and everything this is part of how they lived here and this is something as you mentioned at the beginning they don't know about people don't know about it's an unknown story many people know about the Inquisition in Spain all the stories over there about Laila said there and different things with with Spain and Spain and Spain and Spain one of the reasons is because in Spain that was a really very very big Torah study there's their centers and therefore many things were written down which was transferred later on to Italy in Salonika in other places as well so people could let's say a century later or decision read about it and what they would read they would read about the stories in Spain in Portugal no one wrote it so it remained a hidden story I know that like when I take people around thought and we talked about the Inquisition because many of the Cabalists came initially from Spain stopped in southern Enki where I was a few months ago and made the waiters a soil so the story really becomes focused on Spain but something you did for us this week which is why I really want to encourage people if you can to come here you need to learn about the story but if there's any way that you can come here and see it for yourselves it's it's actually it's it's it's hard to put into words how how meaningful it is but one of the things that you've got special permission for in in the University and I'm gonna totally butcher the name where we got to see possibly which was the personal Bible of whom you mentioned a few minutes ago Donna Barbour Nell so I just want to say before I give the mic to you to talk about that Tanakh is that one of things that I didn't know is that JK Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter books lived in Portugal for a few years and some of the inspiration for her book actually came from this University which until 100 years ago was the only University University in Portugal it's one of the oldest in Europe and till today the students are walking around we walked in there we said everyone looks like it looks like a scene from Harry Potter because the students are walking around with those same uniforms and the professors with these cows around their neck and it was like falling into the stage of Harry Potter's so that was another little connection that many of us didn't know and I was just in Universal Studios a few weeks ago where I saw the set for Harry Potter so it was just as a little aside but everywhere you go everywhere you travel you just learn new things that you there's no replacement for it anyhow tell us have been as long as you go with it with clogging of course no as long as you go with a guy but tell us a little bit about this this Bible and its massive this isn't like a little microchip you know now you can take a Bible really in a microchip and you can put it in anything but this is a very large book and what's the history of this book we don't really know exactly what happened to this book it is handwritten on parchment so just imagine to yourself the pages of the book each one is a parchment like the Torah so it's a very thick book it's not something it's very heavy and it wonder around the world because when Jews were able and some of them managed and were able to leave Portugal to go to Holland for example and this is why when you go to Amsterdam you see over there the big Portuguese synagogue all these people that came from Portugal came in the in the four years between 1930 1492 and 1496 okay Jews were allowed to leave Portugal they had to pay a lot of money so usually only the wealthy people were able to do that but there were lots of people that you mentioned fat for example Robbie its Hakka Bou have okay came from Lisbon abusive cows came from Lisbon all these people they left Spain they came to Portugal they stayed in Lisbon and from Lisbon they moved on to other places in around the world and eventually some of them found a way to its part and we when we got in Safari visits fat way we usually mentioned these people but this was the route that they were taking over there and these people when they were wandering around within the books and one of the books that was taken was this Bible of a banana which we assume the modern research assumed that this is the private bible of a of above an oil because of lots of reasons of them but it was taken from there and it was wandering around the world and thought itself i think i found its way to Amsterdam now maybe the more interesting thing is that mid 19th century this university sitting in Portugal realizing that over there in Amsterdam there is such a treasure that they should acquire they sent a librarian to look for this gem they look for this tree de treasure burn it and get it to to the library and still today it is considered as the jewel of the crown and in the library over there in the very very rare manuscripts that are holding in the library and as we were going over there usually when you go to the library you got to see the old library and there is a fascinating library like homewards it looks really like it really does there's absolutely beautiful we weren't even allowed to take pictures because even the flash can do something to the books into the wood so you'll have to take my word for it it's an amazing pleasure and not only that but they you know but if you have old books then you have all these worms and everything over there and you need to deal with that so they have two special communities of bats living in the library and every night they let out all these bats and this is what they are this is their food they are consuming all the world and this is the way they're protecting it's amazing it's a really amazing story I have to say because we were in the library they didn't tell us until we were leaving that behind the eaves like at the very top of the bookshelves were at that very moment sleeping many many bats I'm not so sure how many of us would have gone in there had we known ahead of time but that's I guess a natural non pesticide way of dealing with books yeah yeah but anyway this is the is the YouTube pleasure but we were able we had the privilege and the honor - it wasn't a pit what's the name of the university again it was it was a privilege in honor but was also because cog he wrote to them many many many months ago to say that we were group of researchers and a group of people interested in Jewish history which we are and so they only take the Tanakh out of the safe under very very strict conditions maybe once maybe twice a year and we were really privileged to be there and to see in Hebrew I mean and we could read it because we're all Israeli so we're reading the Tanakh of hundreds of years ago that somebody at good great difficulty made sure to take with them as they fled from place to place to place to place fleeing always with the only reason to keep their Judaism because for every economic and family and social and just comfort reason they it's much easier to stay put and the reason that they were constantly fleeing and on the road was because they wanted to remain Jews it's humbling it really is humbling I mean as someone who who left my mother my country of birth and my mother tongue and everything that was comfortable to go to Israel and some people think that that's such a big deal and the reason that we did it is because we wanted to live full Jewish lives and raise Jewish children in a Jewish homeland that we feel as prophecy fulfilled that Hashem brought its people home and how could we not be there but it was so much easier to do that and it still is so much easier to do that hint hint to those of you who are listening and still haven't done that and and then it's really just so the word that comes back is humbling to see all my co-religionists who over the years had to had to make so much effort in order to stay Jewish and I really have no words for that and if anything encourages me then not that I would ever think otherwise of maintaining a very proud and vibrant Judaism is that my people have were chosen a long time ago for whatever it is and and and we just have to keep doing it yes definitely this is what we are studying when we travel around the world and we see all this Jewish heritage and everything and we should remember that all they wanted through the years was lashana Bobby we shall I'm agree this was the dream this was their vision this was everything they looked for and waited for and not all of them were able to even practice Judaism out in there out in the open and for example here in Portugal and this is the amazing story only 300 years of Inquisition terrorized by the Christians being really really difficult to keep anything that has to do with some sort of Judaism and they're still so interspersed with the Jewish histories of course the history of Portugal we went to this magnificent Fortress of the Templars were they apparently had rebuilt Jerusalem they'd come back from the Crusades in the early part of the 12th century and there's like a replica of the Dome of the rock and walked which is now of course a church and realizing that we are also in the middle here of a Muslim Christian battleground the Moors and the Christians I still happen to think that Europe is still part of that battleground except that the Christians in Europe have forgotten that they're fighting the war they're going to pay a very very heavy price for that but the Jews were once again caught in the middle of that but then seeing things that I'm so familiar with in the Holy Land like the Templars whose name comes from the fact that their home base was on the Temple Mount and then they brought that back to here they brought it here back to the Christian world because of the importance of Jerusalem but of course the distance and and so many of many of there's just so much here there's so much history that if you're at all familiar with Israel to come here and just see what was done and some good people through there although not too many yes yeah it's been a long difficult Road so before I let you go because we do have a long day tomorrow and since I am on this trip just one of the participants I don't have to be at the front of the bus and I don't have to be worrying about anybody I just get out in the morning and sit in my chair it is such a pleasure for me that's like that made it a vacation before we even began but one of the other projects that you've been doing for those who are listening from Israel we're planning to be in Israel soon is the Sun hitting trail so just maybe a couple of minutes on something that you've been working on for a long time and that is is there now for for real one of the privileges we have this generation is the fact that we can take all the letters that were written in Jewish history and reduce literature and so forth huzzah rabbinic sources and everything and not just learn it at the bat Midrash but rather take it and put it in the field on the stone stand on the same stone the same place isn't the same so the idea was to create a trail a hiking trail along the Galilee that crosses the Galilee following their different stations the five station that the Sanhedrin was situated in after the ibaka very fond after the destruction of the temple the Sanhedrin the central unified leadership of the Jewish people move to the Galilee and by the way everything moved to the Galilee and this is part of the things that we are researching and doing with all our projects with the Galilee Galilee Studies Institute that you're more than welcome to follow different their places the website and everything and this trail is following it's a hundred and twenty kilometres going all the way from beta into Tiberias crossing the Galilee in the landscape and walking in the footsteps of Hazael and at each and every place we we formed they're different references and written sources and booklets and for everything so you can just stand at these places and there and read the tour of these rabbis or these sages plan a minimum at the same spot where they actually really did that we're walking through the archaeological excavations that were done at places that where these these things were done and the sanhedrin trail brought the effect that the Israel Antiquities Authority took some responsibility over over the trail and according to that and based on that they went to do lots of archaeological excavations which otherwise would not be planted will not be done and at least two places like we can mention one of them is OSHA itself which is amazing I keep doubt to that because year or two ago I was with and a group in OSHA which had not been really dug before and is amazing and if you would come there today you wouldn't believe what you see over there because they found houses different places different things that you in found the place that probably was the synagogue off there of the site itself in OSHA for example one of the things that was found is the stone inscribed with the leg with the worst tongue shall bat and came through so we do from OSHA that was walking and wandering around on Shabbat just going out to nature to Trevor he knew exactly where he should stop and returned back to his to his village and another place that was excavated in the last couple of years and has to do also with with the sanhedrin trail is the place of shrimp which is an ancient synagogue was found over there from the time of the temple from the from a time of Second Temple so Jews were living in the Galilee dreaming and visioning going to Jerusalem and not only that but till a couple of years ago the modern research tend to think that Jewish people Jews arrived to the Galilee only after the Hasmonean conquest and in the Galilee this happened around the Year 100 104 BCE during these excavations they found coins that were minted in Jerusalem in 127 BCE meaning that 20 years and more than 20 years before what we thought that we have Jewish presence in the Galilee already people went to who shall I am on promote probably and brought back as souvenirs or maybe there you know the change that was left there when they finished their shopping in Jerusalem when some of these coins brought them back to the Galilee and now we find the logical excavations in the Galilee so this is really something once again we can see the chain the Jewish life how it goes along along history focusing when you shall I'm after the instructor whatever going to the Galilee after a couple of centuries moving all over the around the place and everywhere and today thanks God we are able to go back and return to our own independent state with everything Jewish over there and you can really leave a full Jewish life in the State of Israel today something that our ancestors and great-grandfather's or whatever could only dream of looking at the houses with the little Jewish symbols scratched into them I could only think also about how like we light our menorah we light our economy I actually I'm Konica in the window here so - we're not hiding anymore we can be strong and proud Jews and show the symbols and and that in itself to be able to stand in these places where Jews had to hide their Judaism for so long and to just think to them and to send that thought to them wherever they are that it wasn't for nothing you should just know that you kept the faith and so did others and and we're still here and I don't know if that in anyway and of course it doesn't make up for the terrible things that they went through but at least it's not just visiting some tribe there's like some interesting tribe in the past and then they're gone this is a long and continuous story that I hope and as I know you do the best is yet to come so dr. Caggiano Easter thank you so much I'm looking forward to the next few days and to all of your work what is the website if people listening want to follow some of your work it can be the found on a place called no um hobbits or the Galilee and studies Leicester Institute in English also it's only at the moment it was only in Hebrew but we're working on there in the meantime you can all learn Hebrew as I keep talking did you do okay thank you everyone for listening rejuvenation on the Land of Israel Network I'm Eve Harrow thanks to Tabitha and to Ben and I'm gonna go to sleep now because I know tomorrow it's going to be a very long emotional and exciting day so take care everybody should watch Oh goodbye [Music]