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The recorded history of the Jews in Angola stretches from the Middle Ages to modern times. A very small community of Jews lives in Angola mostly in the capital city of Luanda with a handful scattered elsewhere of mixed origins and backgrounds. There are also a number of transitory Israeli businesspeople living in Angola. [1]
Angola is a country in southwestern Africa. From the fifteenth century, Portuguese colonists began trading there and a settlement was established at Luanda during the sixteenth century. Portugal annexed territories in the region which were ruled as a colony from 1655, and Angola was incorporated as an overseas province of Portugal in 1951. After the Angolan War of Independence (1961–1974) Angola's independence was achieved on 11 November 1975.
Some historians have noted the presence of Sephardi Jews in Portuguese West Africa by researching records from the Portuguese Inquisition relating to the New World. These show that there was a significant Sephardic presence in Angola and Guinea trading posts and that Portuguese settlements were crucial in the development of a Crypto-Jewish diaspora across the Atlantic region. [2]
Some historians claim that Paulo Dias de Novais (1510–1589), a grandson of Bartholomew Dias was a "Jewish" (probably meaning "Crypto-Jewish" or a Converso of some sort) colonizer who became "Lord-Proprietor" of Angola in 1571 who brought Jewish artisans to Luanda where a so-called "clandestine rabbi" was conducting services in a secret Luanda synagogue. By the late eighteenth century more Jews arrived and a community was functioning in Dondo. [3]
Historians record that there are a number of cases of Portuguese New Christians, such as Gaspar de Robles, Manuel Alvarez Pricto, testifying in the Americas that they were introduced to "Judaizing" by relatives and friends while in Angola, many attesting they were introduced to the "Law of Moses" in Angola. [4] [5]
Mariana Pequena, a black woman from Angola, was exported as a slave to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in the late seventeenth century. After obtaining her freedom in Brazil, she began a relationship with a white Portuguese New Christian chose to convert to "Judaism" (perhaps meaning: Crypto-Judaism). In her confession, she revealed the full extent of her network which included many fellow believers. In 1711, being "accused of Judaism" she was condemned by the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon for her beliefs. [6]
Some of the Jews of São Tomé and Príncipe later settled in the Kingdom of Loango, along the coasts of continental Africa in what is now the Cabinda Province of Angola, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo. [7]
There was a suggestion to create a Jewish "colony" or agricultural settlement in the Portuguese colony of Angola for Russian and Romanian Jews in the early 1900s. There was a prior proposal to set up a Jewish settlement in 1886 by the Alliance Juive Universelle encouraged by the Portuguese Jew S.A. Anahory. These efforts did not come to fruition. [8] Another failed effort was the so-called "Angola Plan" with attempts from 1907 to 1913 by the Jewish Territorial Organization, under the influence of Israel Zangwill in Britain, [9] to set up an autonomous Jewish entity somewhere in West Africa with Angola as a strong possibility. [10] After 1910, Portugal's new republican leaders proposed Angola for Jewish colonization as both a practical solution to increasing the white population and to win support from liberal Jewish circles. By June 1912 the Portuguese chamber of deputies passed the final version of a bill to authorize concessions to Jewish settlers, clearly indicating Portugal's desire to use Jewish immigration to consolidate its hold over Angola. No financial support was offered and by 1913, many officials of the Jewish Territorial Organization in London turned against it in favor of settling Palestine. [11] Another failed suggestion to settle Jews from Eastern Europe in Angola resurfaced in 1934. [12]
In 2014 the Chabad Lubavitch movement opened a Chabad house in Luanda with many Jews in attendance. [13] [14]
Angola–Israel relations refers to the historical and current bilateral relationship between Angola and Israel. Angola has an embassy in Tel Aviv and Israel has an embassy in Luanda. The Israeli government aided the National Front for the Liberation of Angola in 1963 and 1969, during the Angolan War of Independence (1961–1974). In the 1960s, Holden Roberto, head of the NFLA, visited Israel and FNLA members were sent to Israel for training. In the 1970s, Israel shipped arms to the FNLA through Zaire. [15] The Israeli embassy in Luanda was reopened in 1995, and Tamar Golan, who worked to maintain Israeli contacts with African countries throughout these decades, was appointed the Israeli ambassador. Tamar Golan left this post in 2002, but returned to Angola later on upon the request of the Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos in order to help establish a task-force, under the auspices of the UN, for the removal of landmines. The Israeli company "Geomine" provided Angola with mine detecting equipment, in order to facilitate their removal. [16] President Dos Santos visited Israel in 2005. In March 2006, the trade volume between the two countries amounted to $400 million. [17] The Israeli ambassador to Angola is Raphael Singer. [18] In 2010, the Angolan government refused to receive openly gay Isi Yanouka as the new ambassador due to his sexuality. [19]
In August 2012, the Angolan chancellor made a three-day visit to Jerusalem, where the governments of Angola and Israel ratified in Tel Aviv an agreement to strengthen the bonds between both countries. Israeli President Shimon Peres said that this should be based on the fields of science and technology, economy, and security, and the Angolan chancellor expressed the desire to continue with the bilateral cooperation in health, agriculture, science and technology, and the formation of Angolan experts. [20]
A 2018 report in the Algemeiner Journal: "Ambassador: Israel to Invest $60 million in Angola, Including Solar Power Plant," that Israel allocated $60 million to invest in Angola, including the construction of a solar power plant in the province of Benguela according to an AllAfrica.com report. Ambassador Oren Rosenblat made the announcement after a meeting with Benguela Governor Rui Falcão. [21]
In a 2006 article titled "Luanda Made Him a Billionaire and a Diplomat" in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, it was reported that Arcadi Gaydamak was "one of the most influential business people in Angola and one of the closest to the corridors of power with ties to president Jose Eduardo dos Santos and dos Santos' daughter businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, generals and high-ranking police officers trace back several years." According to this report the close relationship garnered Gaydamak an Angolan diplomatic passport, as well as French, Canadian, Russian and Israeli citizenship and holding a "title" in the Angolan embassy in Moscow. Angola turned him into a billionaire estimated at $3 billion in an interview with Haaretz. Flying the new president of the state-owned Russian rough diamond exporter Alrosa to Luanda to introduce him to dos Santos. [22]
In October 2009, Arcadi Gaydamak (b. 1952) a Russian Jew from Israel living in France and French magnate Pierre Falcone were convicted by a French court of organizing arms trafficking in Angola during the civil war in 1993–1998, to the value of US$790 million, in violation of the Lusaka Protocol. Gaydamak was sentenced in absentia, and it was unclear whether he would ever serve the six-year prison term, [23] since he returned to Israel where he is known as a generous Israeli philanthropist. His conviction on the arms dealing charges was overturned by the Court of Appeal in Paris on 29 April 2011. [24] [25]
Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith; practitioners are referred to as "crypto-Jews".
The history of the Jews in Latin America began with conversos who joined the Spanish and Portuguese expeditions to the continents. The Alhambra Decree of 1492 led to the mass conversion of Spain's Jews to Catholicism and the expulsion of those who refused to do so. However, the vast majority of conversos never made it to the New World and remained in Spain slowly assimilating to the dominant Catholic culture. This was due to the requirement by Spain's Blood Statutes to provide written documentation of Old Christian lineage to travel to the New World. However, the first Jews came with the first expedition of Christopher Columbus, including Rodrigo de Triana and Luis De Torres.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the few centuries following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. They should therefore be distinguished both from the descendants of those expelled in 1492 and from the present-day Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal.
Lev (Levi) Leviev is an Israeli diamond magnate, investor and philanthropist. Leviev was the Chairman and majority shareholder of Africa Israel Investments, a diversified conglomerate, between 1997-2018. Leviev lived in Israel between 1971-2007 and moved to reside in London. He is a noted philanthropist for Chabad Lubavitch causes in Eastern Europe and Israel. In 2018, Leviev had a net worth of US$1 billion according to Forbes.
The history of the Jews in Portugal reaches back over two thousand years and is directly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities that originated in the Iberian Peninsula. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portuguese Jews emigrated to a number of European cities outside Portugal, where they established new Portuguese Jewish communities, including in Hamburg, Antwerp, and the Netherlands, which remained connected culturally and economically, in an international commercial network during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Arcadi Aleksandrovich Gaydamak is a Russian-born French-Israeli businessman, philanthropist, and President of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations of Russia (KEROOR). In the 1990s he was awarded the French Ordre national du Mérite and the Ordre du Mérite agricole for actions taken to rescue personnel in the War in Bosnia. He holds Israeli, Canadian, French, and Russian nationalities, as well as a diplomatic passport from Angola. Gaydamak's net worth was valued between $700 million and $4 billion USD in 2007, but following a series of lawsuits, failed investments, and the global economic crisis in 2008, his net worth declined significantly.
Belmonte is a municipality in the district of Castelo Branco, Portugal. The population in 2011 was 6,859, in an area of 118.76 km2.
The Mitterrand–Pasqua affair, also known informally as Angolagate, was an international political scandal over the secret sale and shipment of arms from Central Europe to the government of Angola by the Government of France in the 1990s. The scandal has been tied to several prominent figures in French politics.
The history of the Jews of Montenegro dates back to the times when that area was connected to the division of the Roman Empire between Roman and Byzantine rule. Since modern-day Montenegro is a young country the Jewish community of Montenegro is the youngest and one of the smallest Jewish communities in the world. The decision on forming a formal community was made in June 2011 at the home of Mrs. Đina Lazar in Herceg Novi. At the end of July of the same year, the community was registered as a citizens' association and thus gained certain legal legitimacy. Very soon after registering, the Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yona Metzger visited Montenegro and the Jewish community. Rabbi Metzger, along with escorts and leading members of the community, was received by the most important state officials: the Presidents of the State, the Parliament and the Government.
The history of the Jews in Brazil begins during the settlement of Europeans in the new world. Although only baptized Christians were subject to the Inquisition, Jews started settling in Brazil when the Inquisition reached Portugal, in the 16th century. They arrived in Brazil during the period of Dutch rule, setting up in Recife the first synagogue in the Americas, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, as early as 1636. Most of those Jews were Sephardic Jews who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal to the religious freedom of the Netherlands.
The history of the Jews in Mexico began in 1519 with the arrival of Conversos, often called Marranos or "Crypto-Jews", referring to those Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism and that then became subject to the Spanish Inquisition.
The history of the Jews in Iceland starts in 1625. In 2018, around 250 Jews were living in Iceland. They often gather to celebrate the Jewish holidays. The first rabbi to be permanently located in Iceland since 1918 moved to the country in 2018.
Angola and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1993. In 1995, Israel opened an embassy in Luanda and in 2000, Angola opened an embassy in Tel Aviv.
Relations between France and Angola have not always been cordial, due to the former French government's policy of supporting militant separatists in Angola's Cabinda Province. The international Angolagate scandal embarrassed both governments, by exposing corruption and illicit arms deals. Following French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit in 2008, relations have improved.
The Jewish immigration to Puerto Rico began in the 15th century with the arrival of the anusim who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. An open Jewish community did not flourish in the colony because Judaism was prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition. However, many migrated to mountainous parts of the island, far from the central power of San Juan, and continued to self-identify as Jews and practice Crypto-Judaism.
Sephardic Jews in India are Iberian Jews who settled in many coastal towns of India, in Goa and Damaon, Madras and, primarily and for the longest period, on the Malabar coast in Cochin. After the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in the 1498, a number of Sephardic Jews fled Antisemitism in Iberia which had culminated in the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 and Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal. They settled in Portuguese Indian trading places so that they could continue practicing Judaism secretly while still remaining within the Portuguese Empire. After the Portuguese Inquisition was established, an additional number of falsely-converted Sephardic Jews made sea voyages to settle in India, because it would then be difficult for the Inquisition to investigate and punish them. They spoke the vernacular language of their kingdom and some of them also Arabic.
The Kadoorie Mekor Haim Synagogue, also the Porto Synagogue, is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 340 Guerra Junqueiro Street, in the civil parish of Lordelo do Ouro e Massarelos, the municipality of Porto, in the northern region of Portugal.
The history of the Jews in Chile dates back to the arrival of Europeans to the country. Over time, Chile has received several contingents of Jewish immigrants. Currently, the Jewish community in Chile comes mainly from the migrations occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly of Ashkenazi background.
The history of the Jews in Peru begins with the arrival of migration flows from Europe, Near East and Northern Africa.
The history of the Jews in Cambodia is based on very small numbers of Jews working or settling in modern-day Cambodia, as well as many Jewish tourists who pass through.
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