At Home and Abroad: Forging Sephardic Identities. Before and after the Diasporas of the Gente da Nação Portuguesa

In this paper I shall look at the multifaceted and at times hard to define identity of the Portuguese Jews before and after the Diasporas of the 15th and 16th centuries. Sephardic Jewry of Portuguese origin, also known as Gente da Nação Portuguesa (People of the Portuguese Nation) has oftentimes been neglected or, as often it was the case, overshadowed by and lumped together with its Sephardic brethrens.1 My study will thus concentrate on the Sephardim of Portuguese origin and analyze the different ways the Judeo-Portuguese communities forged their identities, at home and abroad in the Diaspora(s), from the rest of Europe, the Maghreb,2 the Balkans,3 and the Ottoman Empire to the New World and Asia