Following two years of renovation work, the Jewish museum in the 15th century former synagogue in Tomar, Portugal reopened earlier in October as the Interpretive Center of Tomar Synagogue and Abraão Zacuto Luso-Hebraic Museum.
The €280,000 revamp was financed by the city of Tomar and EEA Grants. (Zacuto was a mathematician who lived around the turn of the 15th-16th centuries.)
It includes a new exhibit using digital and other state of the art museological techniques, as well as new archaeological and historical research.
Watch a video of the opening ceremony — there are English captions a bit more than half way through .
The Museum is located in the medieval synagogue, built in 1438 and the oldest existing synagogue in the country. It functioned as a synagogue until 1496, with the expulsion of Jews from Iberia.
Later it was used as a prison and then as a church. In the late 19th century it became a hay loft and then a grocery warehouse. In 1921 the building was declared a national monument. Two years later it was purchased and restored by Samuel Schwartz, a Polish mining engineer trapped in Portugal (where he had been honeymooning) by the outbreak of World War I.
He remained in Portugal and became active in Jewish life. In 1939 he donated the synagogue to the state for use as a museum. A mikveh was discovered during excavation of an outbuilding in 1985.
The museum holds Judaica, fine art, several medieval Jewish gravestones, important architectural fragments from other buildings, including an inscribed stone from 1307 believed to have come from the Lisbon Great Synagogue (destroyed in the earthquake of 1755) and a 13th-century inscribed stone from the medieval synagogue in Belmonte.
Read a Bet Hatfutsot article about the synagogue
Article in Portuguese about the opening
1 comment on “Portugal: Tomar Jewish museum in medieval synagogue reopens after revamp as interpretive center — see video”
Wonderful to see the local community recognising, by their investment in this wonderful state of the art museum, the important contribution the Jewish People to Portugal and the town of Tomar! Congratulations to all involved in this wonderful project!