Alheira Sausages: Protection For Portuguese Jews

How did sausages help protect Jews from persecution?

During my recent travels in Portugal, we visited several museums, including the fascinating Centre for the Interpretation of Sephardi Culture in the Northeastern Trás-os-Montes, which is located in the city of Bragança. This museum "...aims at revising the lives and experiences of Sephardic Jews from the Northeastern Trás-os-Montes,..." The ancestry of Sephardic Jews extends back to Jewish communities in Spain and Portugal during the Middle Ages, and who spread to various regions after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. Jews have lived in the Iberian region for over two thousand years.

This map shows 32 Jewish communes in Portugal during the 14th century. In 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, about 3000 traveled to Bragança, but near the end of the 15th century, even the Jewish communities in Portugal faced a dire threat.

In 1496, King Manuel I issued an edict that all the Jews in Portugal either had to convert to Christianity or leave the country without their children. Not much of a choice. Even those who attempted to leave the country were often coerced into staying and converting. All of the converted Jews and their descendants would become known as "New Christians." However, many of these Jews only pretended to convert and secretly practiced their religion, fully aware of the harsh penalties if they were caught. In Hebrew, they were known as anuism, the "forced ones.

In 1536, the situation worsened with the formation of the Portugal Inquisition, which especially targeted the New Christians, seeking to ensure whether their conversion was true or not. The Jews needed to be clever, to maintain their disguise as converted ones, and sausages played a role in this deception. Sausages???

In the region of Trás-os-Montes, many people prepared their own pork sausages, meat which could easily last through the winter, and they would commonly hang the sausages from the rafters of their homes. These sausages were easily visible and homes without such sausages might be suspect, as Jews didn't eat pork. Thus, in a clever stratagem, Jews decided to create their own type of sausage, something to hang in their own rafters, to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Possibly originating in the city of Mirandela, the alheira was born, a sausage made from chicken, garlic and bread crumbs. No pork was used in the creation of these sausages. When they were hanging out, they appeared to be a normal sausage and no one was the wiser. In the photo above, you can see slices of alheira, and it somewhat resembles an exploded sausage due to the fillers within it. Nowadays, alheira sausages come in many different variations, such as using different meats or even no meat at all.

During my trip, we enjoyed alheira during several different meals, generally sliced and placed on a plate with another type of sausage. The alheira has a more unique texture, cause of the fillers, which might seem odd to you at first if you've never tasted these sausages before. I liked the taste of the alheira, with it's nice blend of spices and garlicky taste, and it wasn't as salty as some other sausages I've tasted. If you travel to northern Portugal, seek out alheira and remember how they helped to save Jews from persecution.