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Mozambique
". . . For Portugal the Inquisition
never really ended. It just settled into the
popular mind to shape attitudes and behavior for
hundreds of years. In Portugal and in the
colonies being Jewish was neither smiled on nor
abetted. While there may have been no outright
policy of discrimination against Jews, there was
probably little love for them either. In
Mozambique, as in Portugal, many European Jews
hid their faith. Many did it so well that their
children grew up as Catholics knowing very little
about their parents' faith."
-- Michael Metelits, former American
Embassy official in Maputo, Mozambique, writing
about the implicit hidden practices of Jews there
The history of the Jewish community of the
war-torn Southern African nation of Mozambique is
inextricably bound to the nation’s history.
Contact with the West had brought some Jewish
settlers to a place that had never been a center
of Jewish life. When Mozambique evicted the
European powers, the new government tried to
eradicate all that it associated with them,
including the religions they had initiated,
including Judaism. Now that the Mozambique
government is becoming more friendly to the West
it has returned the keys of the synagogue to the
very little that is left of the Jewish community.
Jews who venture to today’s Mozambique will
be allowed to pursue their faith.
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