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The Portuguese, Hebrew, and Russian press published information that the Russian-Jewish billionaire Roman Abramovich had been granted Portuguese citizenship based on his roots. Citizenship was confirmed by the Jewish community in Porto. Abramovich helps and contributes a lot to the Jewish communities around the world and some articles question his connection to the deportation of the Jews of Spain and Portugal. In response, the Jewish community in Porto posted on its official website, explanations of how it works and how they examine any application of Portuguese citizenship applicants.
In addition, journalist and author Miriam Assor, author of the book “Famous Jews of Portugal” wrote an opinion column on Roman Abramovich’s Portuguese citizenship.
We present to you the main points of her article for the Jewish community in Porto:
Miriam Assor, a writer and journalist, describes Abramovich as a discreet person who does not give interviews. The Jerusalem Post called him a mega philanthropist and an ardent longtime supporter of Jewish communities around the world. It has been recognized by the Forum for Jewish Culture and Religion based on a donation of over $ 500 million to Jewish causes in Russia, the United States, Britain, Lithuania and Portugal, and elsewhere in the last twenty years.
His civil name is known but possibly not his Hebrew name: Nachman ben Aharon. His name recalls that of the great 13th century Sephardic sage, Moises ben Nachman, known as Nachmanides. Abramovich is a benefactor member of Jewish communities such as Chabad Portugal (in Cascais it has the largest Chabad Centre in Europe) and B’nai B’rith International Portugal, together with other philanthropists from the United States, Russia, China, and Israel.
In addition to donations of millions of dollars to the Jewish Agency in Israel and to Jewish communities elsewhere, Abramovich participated in symbolic acts such as the restoration of a cemetery of the Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg.
In 1940, a Polish relative of Abramovich wrote to the Jewish community of Porto (then mostly from Poland) and asked to inform the family that he had arrived in London safely.
Assor notes that from the moment Abramovich became a citizen of Israel and launched the “Say No To Antisemitism” campaign, his Jewish condition has come into focus, not to mention every stereotype that has always persecuted rich Jews. In conclusion, Assor writes that although he finances projects the world over, such as one in Israel that annually unites 1000 Jewish and Arab children through football, to tear down barriers between youths of different cultures, Roman Abramovich is well aware that many will never ascribe positive intentions or pure feelings to him. The history of the Jews has proved it.
Jewish Community of Oporto explanations
Portuguese Nationality for Sephardic Descendants
1. The Portuguese Government is regulating the Nationality Law. From October 2020 until now, the Jewish communities of Oporto and Lisbon have been offering suggestions to the Portuguese Government as to how to improve the regulation of the law. The regulation will soon be presented to the public and come into effect.
2. A piece of news was published in Portugal with the clear objective of denigrating the Sephardic law, now that the regulation is about to be published. https://www.publico.pt/2021/12/18/desporto/investigacao/roman-abramovich-cidadao-portugues-desde-abril-1989109
The news describes Roman Abramovich in the darkest terms, suggests that his Sephardic certification was carried out with pseudo-evidence from Wikipedia, states that he became a “benefactor” of the Jewish community in Porto to obtain the certificate of Sephardic and finally connects the oldest Jewish human rights defense organization in the world with Freemasonry, even talking about a “lodge” in Porto. Interests, tricks, business, money, Freemasonry, danger to the nation, this has been the talk of antisemites for centuries.
The Israeli, Lithuanian, Portuguese and Russian Roman Abramovich’s Sephardic certification process (whose full documentation has long been in the possession of the Central Registry of Lisbon) was carried out in 2020, and it includes certification from the most prestigious international Jewish institutions, some centuries old.
There was an attempt to ridicule the certification process, referring to our museologist’s having updated the Wikipedia article (since June 2021) of a notable member of the Portuguese community with information from the international media about his human condition and his actions in the world, mainly referring to Chelsea, the Anti-Defamation League and the fight against antisemitism. The museologist will naturally continue to do so.
The donations that the article suggests have been offered to the Jewish community in Porto amounted to €250.00 (two hundred and fifty euros), the fee for all those who are not exempt from it, and have nothing to do with contributions from Abramovich to the Portuguese Jewish community in general, to whose development unfortunately never a word is devoted.
3. In its contacts with the Portuguese Government (in January/November 2021, June/October 2020 and September 2019) and Parliament (in March and May 2020) the Jewish Community of Oporto has always been in favour of the requirement that Sephardic applicants have a connection in the present to Portugal that is in the spirit of the 2013/2015 law and can combat the abusive advertising that is practiced abroad.
The Jewish Community of Oporto also proposed (and is adamant on this point) that the Sephardic certification process be carried out on a digital platform to enable collaboration in real-time between the Oporto Rabbinate and the Registry Office. This teamwork would be very enriching for both institutions.
The analysis of the applicants’ documents implies knowledge of the Hebrew language and of the Jewish world. It is important that the Registrars understand exactly who is a Jew, and how to read teudat nuisim, ketubot, and other documents with halachic credibility, and become familiar with the traditional Sephardic families of Jewish communities of Portuguese and Castilian origin, which the law correctly places in regions of North Africa, the old Ottoman Empire, Europe, etc.
4. Having worked for seven years on the certification process of the descendants of Sephardic Jews of Portuguese origin the Rabbinate of the Jewish Community of Porto (CIP/CJP) emphasizes that the overwhelming majority of the certificates issued so far by CIP/CJP were granted to applicants descending from traditional Sephardic families who for centuries lived in Balkan countries – Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia – and in Arab or Muslim countries – Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, former Palestine, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya – where marriages between Jews of Portuguese origin and Jews of Spanish origin were common for many generations.
There are about one million Jews from Sepharad (among the 3.5 million non-Ashkenazi Jews) and perhaps two-thirds will never ask for Portuguese nationality.
According to the statistics that the community compiled, between 2015 and 2020, the number of applications increased 100% every year, but from 2020 the number has remained stable. Applications will start to decline naturally.
5. The Nationality Law Committee at CIP/CJP assesses applicants’ processes based on every single element that may guarantee that they have a tradition of belonging to a Sephardic community of Portuguese origin – e.g. the family surnames (and not only the applicant’s last name), the lists of surnames of the traditional Sephardic families of the countries where their forebears settled in the last five centuries, the communities and synagogues they belonged to, cemetery records, the types of ketubot and other objects the families may have kept down to the present, the religious or food rites and customs, episodes narrated in history books about the Portuguese Jewish diaspora, the applicant’s connection to the Jewish world in the present and their status in the light of Halachah, the religious temples they still frequent today and the knowledge, however limited, of the history of such families by famous academics or Rabbis recognised by organisations with Halachic credibility – critically articulated with our knowledge and understanding of the reality, culture, religious law and Jewish communities as a whole and with other materials gathered throughout the assessment process, using the work tools at our disposal.
6. In 2018, the Jewish Community of Oporto promoted the distribution by libraries around the world of the bilingual book (English and Hebrew) entitled “The Portuguese Sephardic Diaspora in light of the archives of the Jewish Community of Oporto”, written by the historian Arthur Villares, which shows the results of the intensive work carried out by the CIP Committee: statistics, number of applications, countries of origin, age of the applicants, criteria, and means of proof, lists of Sephardic surnames, etc.
7. In Spain, while a similar law was in effect until 2019, there were four times as many applications as in Portugal. The Spanish law required knowledge of Spanish language and culture (which was absurd, because Jews were expelled from Spain five centuries ago), and the applicants were overwhelmingly non-Jewish people who never could be part of the Spanish Jewish community! There is no such thing as a non-Jewish Sephardi.
The end of the Spanish Law, on October 1, 2019, did not cause an increase in the numbers of applications to the Jewish Community of Oporto. There has even been a certain slowdown in applications from Latin America. As an example, in September 2019 (the month that the Spanish Law ended) the Jewish Community of Oporto issued 161 certificates to Argentina, while in July 2020 it issued only 71 certificates to the same country.
8. The Portuguese State has been fostering Jewish life since 2015, by granting Portuguese nationality to Jews of families from traditional Sephardic communities.
In contrast to the situation throughout Europe in general, we are witnessing exponential growth of the Portuguese Jewish community in cultural, religious, organizational, and social aspects.
9. On 5th October 2021, the European Commission presented the European Union’s strategy to Promote Jewish Life during the period up to 2030, underscoring the fact that the European Union formerly had 9.5 million Jews, while today it has only 1.5 million, who still continue to emigrate.
Member states are encouraged to Develop national strategies by end 2022 and Appoint special envoys/coordinators on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish Life.
10. The Concert of Sephardic Memory – “Tradition and Modernity – Tribute to our Jewish musical heritage” (LINK) – took place in Oporto and was attended by 1000 members and friends of the Jewish Community of Oporto and personalities of Portuguese public life. The event was performed in appreciation of the wise support of Portuguese citizens and members of the Parliament for legislating the return of descendants of exiled Jewish Portuguese citizens after more than five centuries.
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