Portuguese

After the mass forced conversion of Portugal’s Jews in 1492, and after an inquisition began in 1540 to prosecute descendants of these baptized Jews who “judaized,” the Portuguese language was carried by fleeing “conversos” to new places of settlement elsewhere in Europe and the Mediterranean. In the congregations and communities they established - in Italy, the Ottoman Empire, France, the Netherlands, England, Dutch Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic coast of North America – these Jews clung to Portuguese for generations. It became the language of the synagogue, of religious polemics, and of communal record-keeping. Because these Jews lived in non-Portuguese-speaking environments, Portuguese became among them a truly “Jewish” language. The first great classic Jewish work in this language was Samuel Usque’s Consolaçam ás tribulaçoens de Israel (Ferrara 1553). From the early seventeenth century, many of the literary treasures of the Portuguese Jews were published in Amsterdam, and were disseminated throughout this far-flung diaspora.

Visit: The Department of Spanish & Portuguese website for course offerings.