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…
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