Portugal’s Ancestral Jews: What It Means to Be a Marrano

Presentation by Naomi Leite, School of Oriental and African Studies

Dr Naomi Leite will discuss her two decades of research into the persistence and 21st-century resurgence of Jewish identity in an unexpected place: urban Portugal, where hundreds of individuals trace their ancestry to 15th century Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism. For the most part, these self-titled Marranos (“hidden Jews”) initially lacked any direct experience of Jews or Judaism, and Portugal’s tiny, tightly knit Jewish community has offered them no clear path of entry; yet they want very much to be accepted in the Jewish world at large. Through the life stories of several of these individuals, Dr Leite provides a vivid glimpse into a very complex, little-known identity and shares the compelling story of how some have found belonging beyond their country’s borders.

Naomi Leite teaches cultural anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A California native, she received her BA, MA, and PhD at UC Berkeley, and also worked for several years at Berkeley’s Lehrhaus Judaica, an independent center for Jewish Studies. Her first book, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging, was a 2017 National Jewish Book Award Finalist, and has since garnered two further awards: the 2018 Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology (Honourable Mention), awarded by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and the 2018 Graburn Book Prize, awarded by the American Anthropological Association of Tourism Interest Group.

Presented by Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs, Global Jewish Studies Program

$5 Members, $10 Non-Members, FIU Students Free