Patrick Comerford
During my first visit to Sarawak at the end of 2024, I tried to learn about the history and the stories of Malaysian Jews, and heard about the lost community of the Jews of Penang from Zayn Al-Abideen Gregory, the Kuching-based writer and academic and author of The Last Jews of Penang.
Penang was home to a Jewish community until the late 1970s. But there were Jewish communities in other parts of Malaysia too, especially in Negeri Sembilan and Malacca.
Traces of these lost Jewish communities were found among Mizrahi Jews, the majority of whom are Baghdadi Jews, Malabar Jews and Ashkenazi Jews. But there are also people of Sephardic descent who continue to live among the Kristang people and who have tried to maintain or recover their traditions.
The Kristang – also known as ‘Portuguese-Eurasians’ or ‘Malacca Portuguese’ – are a creole ethnic group of people primarily of Portuguese and Malay descent, but also with substantial Chinese and Indian ancestry. They are found mostly in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.
The number of Kristang people is estimated at between 37,000 and 54,000 and in Malaysia they are found particularly in Malacca, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor. Kristang groups are also found in Singapore, and due to significant migration in the second half of the 20th century there is a diaspora that has spread to Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
The Jenti Kristang or Orang Serani people are predominantly Roman Catholics, but small numbers of them are Jews, and some are Sunni Muslims and secular people too. Their languages are Papia Kristang, English and Malay.
These people are mainly Malay and Portuguese in their ancestry, but they also have some Dutch ancestry due to intermarriage. This group emerged with their own particular identity in Malacca in the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was part of the Portuguese Empire. Today the Malaysian government classifies them as Portuguese-Eurasians.
The name Kristang comes from the Portuguese creole Kristang, meaning Christian, and in turn it is derived from the Portuguese Cristão. A derogatory term for the Malacca Portuguese community was Grago or Gragok, a slang term for Portuguese camarão (shrimp), referring to the fact that the Portuguese Malaccans were traditionally shrimp fishermen. They also call themselves Gente Kristang (Christian people).
Portugal was once one of the world’s largest and longest-lived maritime empires, with colonies that included Brazil in Latin America, many African countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and many port cities throughout Asia, including Goa and Macao. Places that were once part of the Portuguese Empire remain home to small ethnic groups of mixed heritage such as the Macanese in Macau, and the Kristang people in Singapore and Malaysia, with their own unique languages.
The Kristang community traces its origins back to Portuguese sailors, soldiers and traders who came to Malacca during the age of Portuguese explorations and colonialism. There they formed relationships with local women who were indigenous people, Malays and Chinese.
The arrival of Vasco da Gama in India in 1498 sparked Portuguese interest in Malacca as a key, wealthy spice trade hub, and Malacca became a major destination in the great wave of sea expeditions launched by Portugal, becoming part of the Portuguese Empire. The first Portuguese expedition to reach Malacca landed in 1507. The geographic and fiscal advantages of Malacca were obvious, as one Portuguese official noted: ‘Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice’, the Venetians being the great rivals of the Portuguese as importers of spices to Europe.
In the early years, the Malays called the Portuguese Serani, a Malay contraction of the Arabic Nasrani, meaning followers of Jesus of Nazareth. One story records a Portuguese landing party inadvertently insulted the Malaccan sultan by placing a garland of flowers on his head, and he had them detained. A Portuguese fleet was sent from India to free the group in 1511 and then conquered Malacca.
From 1511 on, Portuguese officials encouraged the explorers to marry local indigenous women, under a policy endorsed by Afonso de Albuquerque, then Viceroy of India. The King of Portugal granted freeman status and tax exemption to Portuguese men (casados) who ventured overseas and married local women. With Albuquerque’s encouragement, these mixed marriages flourished and 200 were recorded by 1604, leading to new families and settled communities.
The Dutch took Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641, and almost all political contact between Portugal and Malacca ended. A large number of people of Portuguese descent were sent to Batavia (now Jakarta), the Dutch East India Company headquarters, as war captives and there they settled in an area called Kampung Tugu.
Even after Portugal lost Malacca in 1641, the Kristang community largely preserved its traditions, practicing Catholicism and using the Portuguese language, and they also absorbed some Dutch crypto-Catholics.
Many Sephardic Jews from Portugal and around the Red Sea and Malabar settled in Malacca in the 16th and 17th centuries, and then assimilated into the local Portuguese-Malay community to escape persecution. They were anusim or conversos – Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism under the pressure of the Inquisition. It continued in the Portuguese colonies until 1821, enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, policing ‘blood purity’, suppressing heresy, and persecuting Jewish ‘New Christians’, often resorting to extreme severity, including public torture and execution.
In the 16th century, Malacca was a significant hub for these communities, with reports of active, though often hidden, Jewish culture. Many of the Jews who remained in Malacca during Portuguese rule (1511-1641) integrated into the local Eurasian or Kristang community, which carries a mixture of Portuguese, Dutch, Jewish, and local Malay heritage.
Diego Hernández Vitoria ‘the elder’ (or Diogo Fernandes Victória) was a Portuguese merchant from Porto but also a Judaeo-converso and one of the most important Sephardic merchants in the late 16th century. He protected and financially helped the Judaeo-conversos who were poor or on the run and also tried to develop a closer relationship with the Jesuits.
Diego Hernández Vitoria lived in Spanish America, South-East Asia and Manila. His commercial network extended through Mozambique, Mombasa, Cambay, Gujarat, Sindh, Bijapur, Golconda, Malabar, Ceylon, Coromandel, Bengal, Orissa, Pegu, Siam, Malacca, Moluccas, China and Japan. In these places, 89 per cent of Vitoria’s investments were centred on trade with China and Japan. But because his Jewish origins were well-known In Malacca, he was ostracised by the resident Portuguese trading community.
Thanks to the protection that Vitoria granted to the Judaeo-conversos living between China, Japan and the Philippines, it is possible to list the main traders of Jewish ancestry who had settled in the region: Afonso Vaez, Diego Jorge, Francisco Rodrigues Pinto, Francisco Vaez, Góis, Luís Rodrigues (Manuel Fernandes), Manuel de Mora, Manuel Farias (Manuel Faria), Manuel Gil de la Guardia, Manuel Rodrigues (Manuel Rodrigues Navarro), Paulo Gonçalves, Pero Nabo, Pero Rodrigues, Rui Perez and Vilela Vaz.
The rules surrounding ‘the status of purify of blood’ (limpeza de sangue) blocked any convert or a descendant of converts from many spheres of public activity, and from many privileges, including honorific titles. This discriminatory legislation was based on racial criteria: it was no longer a question of religion but of ‘blood’. One had to provide a certificate, following thorough genealogical investigations, going back as far as possible in the lineage, that one had no Jewish ancestor in his genealogical tree.
The Inquisition continued its presence until the Dutch captured Malacca in 1641. Because of its persecution of Jews, many of the Jews of Malacca assimilated into the Kristang community. Most of the Sephardic-Asian creoles became genuine Christians, but in some cases, conversos managed to preserve their Jewishness in secret.
Nowadays, intermarriage occurs more frequently between Kristang and people of Chinese and Indian ethnicity rather than Malay because of religious laws that require non-Muslims who marry Malay Muslims first to convert to Islam.
The Kristang people in Malaysia do not have full bumiputera status, a status that applies to indigenous ethnic groups. Since Portuguese times, the Kristang have been living by the sea. It is still an important part of their culture. Even today, with only 10 percent of the community earning their living by fishing, many men go fishing to supplement their income.
Kristang traditional music and dance, such as the Branyo and the Farrapeira are derived from Portuguese folk dances, Kristang or Malacca Portuguese cuisine is similar to the Eurasian cuisine of Singapore and Malaysia, and the Kristang people traditionally used Portuguese and Christian first names, while their surnames were Portuguese.
In general the Kristang practice Roman Catholicism. Christmas (Natal) is the most festival and celebrate many saints’ days, including Saint John (San Juang) on 24 June and Saint Peter (San Pedro) on 29 June.
Kristang Jews are a small, often hidden, subgroup. They trace their ancestry to the Sephardic Jews who survived the Inquisition in Portuguese-controlled Malacca. They had assimilated into the Catholic Kristang community but retained some residual cultural practices. These ‘hidden’ Sephardic Jews are identified in a number of analyses of Asian communities with Jewish roots.
In recent decades, some Kristang people were interested in rediscovering their forgotten Jewish heritage. This led to the formation of the Kristang Community for Cultural Judaism (KCCJ) in 2010, although it is no longer active. Edgar Pinto Xavier also wrote a book about the Jewish history of Malaysia and how the Inquisition persecuted heretics and non-Christians in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Asia.
Today the Kristang community in Malaysia is primarily based in the Portuguese Settlement in Ujong Pasir, Malacca. They speak Papia Kristang (Malacca Portuguese Creole), a language that continues to mark them out from their Chinese and Malay neighbours.
The Kristang language is threatened with extinction and is classified as critically endangered by Unesco. The work of Kristang language activists has been compared by one writer to that of Yiddishists. But their work in Malaysia and Singapore is no guarantee that Kristang will survive as a living language for future generations.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
