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Abraham Castel (Hebrew: אברהם קסטל; also rendered Abrahão Castel or Avraham Castel; born in Hebron, date unknown; died 1944) was a rabbi, hazzan and officiating minister associated with the Jewish Community of Lisbon and the Shaaré Tikva Synagogue during the first half of the twentieth century. Contemporary sources describe him as an officiating minister of the community, a hazzan of the synagogue and, in 1937, as the spiritual head of Shaaré Tikva.[1][2]
Origin and context
[edit]Castel was a native of Hebron, Palestine, according to reminiscences published in Tikvá, the bulletin of the Jewish Community of Lisbon.[3] His activity in Portugal took place during the public reorganization of Jewish life in Lisbon in the early twentieth century. The Lisbon Synagogue, located at 59 Rua Alexandre Herculano, was inaugurated on 18 May 1904 under the name Shaaré Tikva. The Jewish Community of Lisbon describes it as the first synagogue built from scratch in Portugal since the forced conversions and official extinction of Portuguese Judaism in 1497.[4] Historian Avraham Milgram describes the Portuguese Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century as a plural setting shaped by the older Sephardic community, crypto-Jews returning to Judaism, Ashkenazi immigrants and, later, Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.[5]
Work in Lisbon
[edit]Castel is documented in Lisbon Jewish ceremonies at least as early as 1910. A ketubah dated 19 September 1910, concerning the marriage of José Luiz de Queiroz and Emiliana Maria das Mercês, identifies Abraham Castel as the rabbi or officiant connected with the ceremony recorded in the document.[6]
Records discussed by Dov Cohen indicate that on 12 February 1911, the marriage of Judah Fresco and Esther Fresco at Shaaré Tikva was celebrated by Rabbis Abraham Castel and Jacob Rodolfo Levy.[7] Giulio Pacifici's study of Rabbi Jacob Rodolfo Levi also records Lisbon marriages between 1911 and 1913 in which Abrahão Castel appears alongside Jacob Rodolfo Levy.[8]
Castel also appears in sources connected with brit milah ceremonies. In 1922, he participated as officiant in the ceremony of Nuno Carlos Azancot de Barros Basto, son of Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, held in Lisbon; the episode was analyzed by Dov Cohen from Ha-Lapid material.[7] In July 1929, Ha-Lapid recorded another brit milah in Lisbon in which Rev. Abraham Castel took part alongside Habib Toledano and the physician Elias Baruel, and recited the kiddush.[9]
In the 1930s, Castel remained associated with the religious leadership of Shaaré Tikva. In 1937, a Ha-Lapid notice on the death of his wife, Miryam Castel, described him as the spiritual head of the Shaaré Tikva Synagogue.[1] In late 1930, according to Morashá, the board of the Jewish Community of Lisbon joined the process of hiring Menahem Mendel Diesendruck because of the advanced age of Abraham Castel, then rabbi of Lisbon's Sephardic community. Diesendruck first served in Lisbon as an officiant at Shaaré Tikva and later became rabbi of the community.[10]
Death and memory
[edit]Castel died in 1944. An obituary notice in Ha-Lapid described him as officiating minister of the Jewish Community of Lisbon, which he had served for thirty years, and stated that his funeral service was recited at the Shaaré Tikva Synagogue in Lisbon.[2] In the same year, Menahem Mendel Diesendruck published in Lisbon the booklet In memoriam do Excelentíssimo Senhor Reverendo Abraham Castel, a bibliographic record of which is held by the National Library of Portugal.[11]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b "Falecimento" (PDF). Ha-Lapid (in Portuguese). No. 79. April 1937. p. 3. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ a b "Rev. Abraham Castel". Ha-Lapid (in Portuguese). No. 125. November–December 1944. p. 7. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ Levy Sequerra, Simy (June–July 2007). "Recordações da C.I.L." Tikvá: Boletim Informativo da Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa (in Portuguese). No. 64. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ "Synagogue". Jewish Community of Lisbon. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ Milgram, Avraham (2020). "Crypto-Jews, Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and Refugees from Nazi Europe in Early Twentieth-Century Portugal: Together and Apart". Contemporary Jewry. 40: 607–626. doi:10.1007/s12397-020-09353-z. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ "Ketubah of Jose Luiz de Queiroz and Emiliana Maria das Merces, Lisbon, 1910". Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ a b Cohen, Dov (May 2018). "Uma aproximação à atividade literária do Capitão Barros Basto". Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas (in Portuguese). 18: 61–98. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ Pacifici, Giulio (2014). "Il rabbino Rodolfo Levi (1882-1944). Notizia biografica. Con in appendice il discorso "Pesah e la liberazione degli ebrei russi" (1917)". La Rassegna Mensile di Israel (in Italian). Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ "A Circuncisão de Isaac Carlos Levy". Ha-Lapid (in Portuguese). No. 21. July–August 1929. p. 4. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ "Rabbi Menahem Mendel Diesendruck". Morashá. July 2024. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
- ^ "In memoriam do Excelentíssimo Senhor Reverendo Abraham Castel" (in Portuguese). National Library of Portugal. Retrieved 5 July 2026.
Further reading
[edit]- Diesendruck, Menahem Mendel. In memoriam do Excelentíssimo Senhor Reverendo Abraham Castel. Lisbon, 1944.
Category:Portuguese rabbis Category:Rabbis from Lisbon Category:Portuguese Jews Category:People from Hebron Category:1944 deaths Category:Year of birth missing
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