By Ari Greenspan, photos courtesy of Kulanu
Dr. Ari Greenspan has been a dentist, a mohel, and a shochet for the past 30 years. He studied at Yeshiva University under the famed Rabbi Soloveitchik, and has worked for more than 30 years on collecting mesorot (ancient Jewish traditions) from far-flung Jewish communities around the globe. He is a frequent contributor to Mishpacha magazine and writes extensively for other journals. Dr. Greenspan has been producing Judaic art for 25 years, enjoying wood, metal, and glass media.
A friend in his 80s emailed me. He was going to be alone for Passover but had asked me to share a story from the most interesting seder of my life. He said he would print it and read it during his seder by himself. Perhaps some Kulanu Magazine readers would enjoy it as well, so here it is:
In 2009, I traveled to Belmonte, Portugal with my family to serve as the rabbi for Pesach. I was interested in this community of Bnei Anusim as their genealogy is clear; the rabbanut (Israeli Rabbinic Authority) accepted them in the 1980s as Jewish. Prior to identifying as Jews, they attended church. Despite this, everybody knew who they were, and Christians did not marry them. They intermarried among themselves for 500 years, to the extent that intermarrying caused them to have a few genetic disorders.
Part of my goal visiting this community was to gain their trust in order to learn some of their secret minhagim (customs). They continue to keep many rituals such as lighting the Shabbat and holiday candles in the closet, using a unique type of oil lamp; slaughtering meat with a zecher of the gid hanashe (a remembrance of the sciatic nerve that is removed to make a cow kosher); and many more.
This community also has a unique matzah-baking ritual that interested me since I was there for Pesach: they dress in white, go to a hidden place, and lock their doors. Then, they make the matzah using a type of flowerpot to hold the hot embers, and a clay roof tile to bake on so it will look just like they’re using regular things around the house. The women sing an ancient song and often recite prayers as well.
I arrived with two kilograms of shmura flour (this is special flour that is guarded from the time the wheat is taken to the mill until it is ground into flour, to ensure that no water or moisture comes in contact with it and that it is clean and whole), my own handmade matzot, a few store-bought handmade matzot, and regular machine-made matzot, and I planned to bake matzah with the community on Erev Yom Tov on an ancient local oven.
Five hundred years of secrecy meant that nobody admitted to baking matzah, let alone having an oven to lend for the task. Erev Pesach morning, I was sitting in the square of the village that was at least 600 years old, and an elderly man, Aleppio, came to sit next to me. In my broken Spanish, I explained what I needed, and he went up into his attic and brought down his old oven for me to use. On the balcony of the shul, I started baking. This hadn’t been done since the 1980s when the Moroccan rabbi (who had been sent by the rabbanut) told them it was not a kosher way to bake matzah. All the women came out to see me baking on the balcony and many had tears in their eyes. It was very meaningful for me as I sat there looking out upon the rolling hills that surrounded me, thinking about the generations of people who had done this before me, and about the generations of people lost to us who had not had this opportunity. There are still many people who know they have a Jewish past, but either do not pursue it or are afraid to.
The community seder began and some older Jews living in ancient villages in the area joined us. One of them, an elderly woman who was bent and needed two canes to walk, made her way to the table and sat opposite me. I stood up and shared with the group of more than 80 people how excited I was to be with them and gave an introduction to the seder. I explained that we had machine-made matzot, holy matzot from Israel, and even handmade matzot from my own oven. I told them that the most exciting thing for me was preparing the matzah with flour brought from Israel and baking it on Aleppio’s old oven that he had lent me, essentially reinstating a 500-year-old minhag. There was silence. All of a sudden the elderly woman jumped up without her canes and, standing opposite me, she threw both arms up in the air and yelled out, “Gracias a Dios, gracias a Dios!” Thank you, God!
On the first day of Chol HaMoed (the intermediate days of Passover), one of the men said that the entire community would be going for a picnic. When I explained that I wanted to go touring with my family, he insistently said, “The entire community goes out for a picnic.” It turned out this was a minhag where they would leave the village to celebrate together. They also did this for a week on Sukkot every year and were able to celebrate away from the village and build a sukkah.
Another one of their old minhagim for Pesach is to jump over a stream, remembering the crossing of the Red Sea while singing a song. I asked one of the older men to show me, but he looked at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about, maintaining their secrecy of this minhag. I asked his 13-year-old granddaughter if she knew the minhag and she said she did not. So I brought her to him and said that if you don’t pass it on to her, it will be lost for eternity. Then, he and a friend started singing the song, and together we jumped back and forth over the stream, linking different Jews from different places together with customs from a different time.
The Bnei Anusim and their descendants are part of a sad but not forgotten portion of Jewish history, a history that is rich with strong and beautiful customs. The whole experience – from beginning to end – was moving and enlightening. It was a pleasure and an honor to spend time with, and to learn from, the Bnei Anusim of Belmonte, Portugal. May we always recognize the true blessings we enjoy in our lives: the liberty and freedom to do mitzvot that generations of our ancestors could only dream of.