About 8,800 persons have applied for Portuguese citizenship since the start of a program that enables Sephardim from other countries who can prove their Jewish-Portuguese heritage to obtain nationality, and 713 have been successful in their effort. Only 1 candidate has so far been turned down.
For Richard Zimler, art imitated life when a 400-year-old Torah scroll was discovered in Portugal — a surprising echo of his 1996 novel “The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon.”