Crypto-Jews From Tras-os-montes, Portugal

A History Told By The Y Chromosome

Inês Nogueiro, Leonor Gusmão, António Amorim*

From HaLapid, Spring 2009

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Introduction

T he universal history of Jewish people is full of constant oppressions and persecutions. Portugal as no exception to this rule. It was in Tras-os-Montes, a rugged and isolated province of Portugal , on the North East border with Spain , that many Jews settled and were able to secretly maintain their ancestral culture and religious practises for more than four centuries. This Marrano culture of inestimable value has been the object of a few scattered studies by ethnologists and historians. However, there was yet to occur any modern genetic research that could shed the light of science on the historical knowledge that has already been gathered. To fill this gap was our main aim of research, carried out by IPATIMUP, Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto and the University of Coimbra .

A little history...  

The first archeological evidence of the presence of Jews in Portugal dates back to the fifth century, in a tombstone unearthed in Mertola, where a menorah is shown (Pignatelli, 2000; artins, 2006). From the beginning of the monarchy up to the XV century there were tolerant kingdoms in which the Jewish communities proliferated as well as others which were less forbearing, where numerous restrictive measures were taken, such as the prohibition of access to public positions, the use of distinguishing items of clothing or obligatory curfews (Paulo, 1985; Canelo, 1987; Pignatelli, 2000; Martins, 2006).

Jews probably established themselves in Tras-os-Montes after 1187, because of the benefits offered to them by the foral of king D. Sancho I. During the more tolerant reigns Jewish communities spread throughout Portugal . A highlight occurred during the reign of king D. Joao II, who put at his service Jewish doctors, mathematicians and cosmographers who played a fundamental role in the Portuguese Discoveries. (Pignatelli, 2000; Martins, 2006).

In 1492 the Decree of Expulsion was issued in Spain . It prompted a massive emigration to Portugal , estimated to be above a hundred thousand people (Carvalho, 1999). It is thought that at least three thousand Spanish Jews crossed the border into Tras-os-Montes (Alves, 1974). There followed a rapid expansion of local commercial activities such as tanning, shoe making, iron mongering and later the silk industry. At this time there is evidence of the existence of a synagogue within the walls of the castle of Braganca , capital of the district. This indicates the importance that the local Jewish community had during this period (Jacob, 1997).

In December 1496 the Portuguese King also signed a decree of expulsion. However this resolution was modified in May 1497 by means of a forced conversion in which about twenty thousand Jews from all of the country, who were preparing themselves to depart in exile, were baptized against their will. This attempt at a political solution through integration did not have the desired effect. Tensions and hostilities between conversos and old-Christians became more and more accentuated, and the phenomenon of crypto-Judaism emerged (Saraiva, 1985; Canelo, 1987; Mea, 1997; Pignatelli, 2000; Martins, 2006). In May 1536 a papal bull was issued, which established the Inquisition in Portugal . In 1582-83, the Inquisition arrived in Tras-os-Montes reaching a peak of activity in 1599. Accusations and imprisonments followed and the list of names of individuals charged with Judaism grew day by day (Azevedo, 1994; Mea, 1996; Mea, 1997). An example of these grim times is found in the village of Carcao, where among 150 families, 130 people were arrested for Judaism, many of whom perished in the fires of the Inquisition (Andrade & Guimaraes, 2008)

In the XVII and XVIII centuries, the inquisitorial process was intensified and as a consequence, there was a significant exodus to other countries, particularly from the manufacturing and mercantile elite, which then were flourishing in this region (Paulo, 1985; Garcia, 1993). At the end of the fifteenth century, there were approximately 134 Jewish communities throughout the country with a population estimated at 100 thousand, which reflect 10 percent of the total population. The exact number of those who emigrated is not known, however it is believed that in 1631 the Jewish population was reduced to 10 thousand (Carvalho, 1999). Initially, in the mid-sixteenth century, many of them set up in Amsterdam , London , Hamburg , and some French and Italian cities. After that, some of them went to the new Portuguese colonies in Africa, India and Brazil and then from the cities of north Europe to the New World, Curacao, Paramaribo , and the U.S (Carvalho, 1999; Pignatelli, 2000; Martins, 2006). The major Diaspora of crypto- Jews actually begins in the fifteenth century and continued up until the eighteenth century, at which point the Pombaline discrimination law came into effect and the official persecution of the Inquisition ended (Carvalho, 1999; Martins, 2006). It is not until the XIX century that the Jewish communities' resurgence was attested. In 1927 the Jewish community was founded in Braganca, and in June 1928, the Synagogue “Shaaré Pideon”, was inaugurated 431 years after the previous one. During the Dictatorship period, from the year 1934 on, the community of Braganca gradually disaggregated. The descendants of this extinct community have remained dispersed through the district area, still claiming Jewish identity although most of them have been assimilated into the local culture and even in some cases into the dominant religion.

A little genetics...  

Patterns of genetic diversity depend on one hand, on history, which includes demographic phenomena of migration, sub-structure and fluctuations in the population size, and on the other hand, of genetic factors such as mutation rates and selection (Agrafioli & Stumpf, 2007). The understanding of this complex evolutionary process has in recent years, deserved particular interest, given its practical application in fields such as evolutionary genetics, medicine, etiology of human diseases, forensic studies, and genealogical reconstructions (Hammer et al, 2001; Brion et al, 2005; Agrafioli & Stumpf, 2007). The Y chromosome is passed exclusively from father to son without recombination (with the small exception of its tips), thereby providing a model of excellence for the study and understanding of genetic diversity (Jobling & Tyler Smith, 2003).

The information contained in genetic diversity is obtained by using different molecular markers, or polymorphisms, in DNA sequences. Markers as STRs (for Short Tandem Repeats) mutate more quickly, causing a greater degree of variability and therefore are used in the reconstruction of recent events ( Butler , 2003; Payseur & Cutter, 2006; Agrafioli & Stumpf, 2007). Other polymorphisms, as SNPs (for Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms), due to their low rate of mutation, represent the most appropriate markers for defining stable paternal lineages over time periods of thousands of years (Agrafioti & Stumpf, 2007). Haplogroups are defined as a linear combination of states at SNPs. Within each of these haplogroups are sub - strains, determined by variations of STRs which are called haplotypes (Knijff, 2000; Y Chromosome Consortium, 2002).

Genetic studies concerning the origin of the Jewish people are not new. There are an extensive number of articles at the NCBI database (National Centre for Biotechnology Information). Initially, they started by using classical genetic markers such as blood groups. More recently, there have been a number of studies with markers of the Y chromosome (male lineages) and mtDNA (female lineages), which have not only helped to establish genetic relationships between different communities, but have also unveiled details of their origin and migr. ation patterns

Our research...

A combination of geographic, religious, ethno-historical and individual affiliation criteria were used to select the population samples. Buccal cells were collected on cytology brushes from sixty unrelated self-designated Jewish males from several villages such as Argoselo, Carcao, Vilarinho dos Galegos, Mogadouro and Braganca in Trás-os-Montes and also from Belmonte. All samples were taken under informed consent. Personal inquiries were made to each individual, in order to confirm their Jewish ancestry and to avoid close kinship. (As strange as it may seem, in some of the more hidden away villages of Trás-os-Montes, there was found even today some reluctance to admit to Jewish ancestry, which only reflects the power of four centuries of anti-Semitism and official persecutions.)

In order to characterize the genetic composition of these Portuguese Jews we preformed a high-resolution Y-chromosome STR and SNP typing strategy. Twenty-three Y-SNPs were typed in order to define the major haplogroup lineages, while sixteen STRs were analysed in order to characterise haplotypes.

A high genetic diversity was found at SNP level with eleven different identified haplogroups. Three of them occur with higher frequencies making up a total of 83 percent of the sample collected. Another six haplogroups appeared with much lower frequencies, representing in some cases only one individual, therefore most of them do not merit further discussion in this article.

The haplogroup found at the highest frequency is also observed in the non-Jewish Portuguese population, but at much lower proportions, 29 percent vs 58 percent (Beleza et al., 2006), and it has not been referred to in studies of other Jewish populations until recently (Adams et al., 2008). This haplogroup emerges as the most frequent haplogroup in the Iberian Peninsula and the Western European coastline, displaying a increasing distribution gradient moving from east to west (Semino et al., 2000; Bosch et al., 2001; Cruciani et al., 2002; Flores et al., 2004; Brion et al., 2005; Moore et al., 2006). These facts could indicate either some degree of miscegenation with the Portuguese/Iberian host population or miscegenation during the Diaspora, with other Western European populations. In contrast, one of the most frequent lineages found in Ashkenazim Jews, displays low frequency in our sample, in accordance with the fact that Ashkenazim Jews mainly came to Portugal during and after the Second World War and even then they settled almost exclusively in Lisbon and the Algarve .

Another very frequent (39 percent) haplogroup, has its origin in the Middle East and its pattern of distribution follows a decreasing gradient from there to Western Europe. This fact can be linked either to the diffusion of the Neolithic farmers (Underhill et al., 2001; Semino et al., 2004) or later maritime migrations throughout the Mediterranean basin, such as the Phoenician (Hammer et al., 2000; Di Giacomo et al., 2003). It would appear therefore that the elevated frequencies encountered here can be explained by the historical migration of the ancestral Sephardic population to the Iberian Peninsula , which according to some historians, accompanied the Phoenician trade routes.

The last frequent haplogroup in the Jewish population studied here reached the remarkable frequency of 15 percent, contrasting to that found in the general Portuguese population, 1.6 percent (Beleza et al, 2006). It should be noted that this is a rather rare haplogroup with a global frequency of around 1 percent (King et al., 2006), however, it is has quite high frequencies in general Sephardic Jews, 23 percent, and Israelis, 13 percent. (Behar et al. 2004; Shen et al, 2004). These frequencies, since they appear with similar values in Israeli Sephardic Jews, could demonstrate a clear link to the original Sephardic population, and probably would have constituted part of the original genetic patrimony of this group. Supporting this idea is the relatively low frequencies with which this haplogroup emerges along the Mediterranean coast.

The haplogroup frequencies determined in this work were used to analyse genetic distances between this group and other Jewish populations as well as their respective host populations (Behar et al., 2004; Shen et al., 2004; Beleza et al., 2006; Adams et al., 2008). What emerged was the fact that Jews of Tras-os-Montes share more genetic affinities with Jewish populations of Europe and the Middle East , particularly other Sephardic Jews, than with the non-Jewish Portuguese population in general. This is consistent with other studies into diverse Jewish populations and their host communities around the world.

The analysis of the fast evolving markers (STRs) shows a little higher haplotype diversity than that found for the general Portuguese population. The conclusions that can be drawn are in the genetic Y-STR pool that we studied there are neither strong drift nor founder effects acting. This population probably resulted from a combination of a number of different lineages, which could reflect the historically constant flux of Jewish populations from other areas over the last five hundred years, associated with a stable size within this community.

The high diversity found, both at haplotype and haplogroup levels (98.77 percent and 0.822+/-0.025 respectively) is rather surprising in a demographically small and inbred community. A deeper and more detailed investigation is required in order to clarify how these communities avoided the genetic erosion caused by over four centuries of religious repression.

For the most frequent Near East/Jewish haplogroups found here, we used STR information to conduct a haplotype match analysis using YHRD, the Y Chromosome Haplotype Reference Database (www.yhrd.org). Curiously, coincidences were found in such diverse locations as Northern Europe, U.S.A. and Latin America . This probably reflects what is known in terms of the history of the Diaspora from the Iberian Peninsula .

All this new data makes up no more than the first steps on a long road of research, which will eventually bring to light, in much greater detail, the complex history of the Iberian Jewish Diaspora. In the full awareness of this, our research team is now setting out to analyze the second Diaspora of Jewish populations of Iberian origin in Northern Europe, U.S.A. and Latin America , using the Y chromosome genetic polymorphisms, briefly reported here, along with those that define the maternal lineages, the mtDNA. In addition, recombining autosomal and X chromosome markers will be typed as well, to trace the demographic history of these communities.

This endeavour will require the active involvement of such local communities and cooperation in sample collection is essential. To that end, specific diffusion actions targeted at the explanation of project aims and background will soon be undertaken, allowing for an effective informed consent on an individual and collective basis. Furthermore, it should be noted for those interested, that at this moment the team is finalizing an article, which will discuss the technical details of the research done so far.

* Inês Nogueiro, Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade de Coimbra , 3000 Coimbra , Portugal , Leonor Gusmão, IPATIMUP, Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia da Universidade do Porto , R. Dr .. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465 Porto , Portugal , António Amorim, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, 4050 Porto , Portugal

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