Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Portugal To Offer Passports To Sephardic Jews

Following Spain’s lead, Portugal announced this weekend that it will grant citizenship to descendants of Portuguese Jews who were expelled during the Inquisition.

Image by Wikicommons

The drafted legislation is identical to Spain’s, according to Haaretz. While the principles of the bill are set, the specific wording and criteria still need to be finalized. Spain’s bill provides a large and inclusive definition of who is Jewish, allowing verified descendants who don’t identify as Jewish to apply.

So far more than 800 Israelis have expressed interest in applying for Spanish citizenship.

During the Inquisition, Portugal initially offered Jews refuge in 1492. But less than a year later started persecuting, killing, deporting and forcing conversion upon local Jews.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.