Chabad Lubavitch of Portugal

Chabad-Lubavitch in Portugal: the mission opened by Eli and Raizel Rosenfeld in 2010, the Avner Cohen Casa Chabad in Cascais and the dispute over the municipal land it stands on, work in Porto and the Algarve, and the separate 2022 Porto citizenship case

Chabad Lubavitch of Portugal
Logo	The Avner Cohen Casa Chabad, Cascais, 2022
Type	Jewish religious organisation (Chabad-Lubavitch)
Founded	2010
Founder(s)	Eli and Raizel Rosenfeld
Headquarters	Avner Cohen Casa Chabad, Costa da Guia, Cascais
Location	Cascais
Area served	Portugal
Services	Synagogue, ritual bath (mikveh), library, kosher kitchen and restaurant, Torah classes, holiday programmes, services for tourists
Key people	Eli Rosenfeld (director)
Website	https://www.chabadportugal.com
Remarks	Operates as the Associação Chabad Portugal (Rohr Chabad Portugal)

Chabad Lubavitch of Portugal (Rohr Chabad Portugal; legally the Associação Chabad Portugal) is the Chabad-Lubavitch mission in Portugal. It was set up in 2010 by Rabbi Eli Rosenfeld and his wife, Raizel, and is based at the Avner Cohen Casa Chabad in Cascais, which opened in 2020 on land leased from Cascais municipal council. The land deal was contested in the courts by local residents.

History

In an interview with The Portuguese Jewish News, Rosenfeld said he first visited Portugal in 2006 as a yeshiva student on Chabad's Merkos summer programme, married Raizel in 2008 and was appointed Chabad's emissary to Portugal in 2010, arriving with his family at the end of that year. The couple first lived in Lisbon. He said Rohr Chabad Portugal was founded in 2010 "with the generous help of the Rohr family in NYC". A 2023 article in the same paper said Portugal had been "the only country in Europe still without its own Chabad representatives" when the Rosenfelds arrived, and that their work began in a rented flat.

Avner Cohen Casa Chabad

According to Público, Cascais council formally granted the Associação Chabad Portugal 5,000 square metres of land at Costa da Guia on 18 May 2017, for a monthly rent of €744 over 50 years. The centre was presented in February 2018 as a building covering a fifth of the plot, with about 2,000 square metres of green space and a sensory garden open to the public.

The centre, named the Centro de Estudos Judaicos Avner Cohen Casa Chabad, was ready in March 2020 and officially opened on 12 October 2020. The council described a sensory garden of more than 1,500 square metres and a library of rare books on Jewish history in Portugal. At the opening the mayor, Carlos Carreiras, referred to "the controversy that always surrounded this project" and to "attempts at disinformation", and said the land had been granted on exactly the same terms as more than a hundred other grants to religious, cultural, recreational and sports bodies. The adjoining street was named after Aristides de Sousa Mendes. Rosenfeld said the centre was named by the Cohen family and has a ritual bath (mikveh) and library, and that its atrium is dedicated to Rabbi Isaac Aboab, a 15th-century rabbi buried in Porto.

Land dispute in Cascais

Residents' court action

Público reported in February 2019 that a residents' group, SOS Costa da Guia, had opposed the centre since it was announced, saying it would take public green space. The group gathered more than 1,500 signatures on a petition, held a protest in September 2017 and another in February 2019, and filed an application for an interim injunction (providência cautelar) and a lawsuit, which were then before the court in Sintra. It also said it was preparing a complaint to prosecutors about the felling of nearly twenty trees on the site. Another residents' association, the Associação de Moradores da Verdeguia, proposed moving the building elsewhere on the plot; the council rejected this, saying it breached the municipal master plan and the building permit and reduced parking. Rosenfeld said the centre had been designed in harmony with its surroundings, and that the association planned to plant about twenty pine trees. No report of the outcome of the court action has been found.

Prosecutors' inquiry

In March 2019 Sábado reported that the Public Prosecutor's Office (Ministério Público) was investigating the Cascais council's deal for the centre's construction on the Costa da Guia site. No report of the outcome has been found.

Porto and the Algarve

According to The Portuguese Jewish News, Chabad Portugal runs the Kadoorie Mekor Simchah student synagogue in Porto in partnership with the local Jewish community, and since 2021 Rabbi Haim and Hannah Chettrit have worked with the Jewish community in Porto. Rosenfeld said he had spent an evening of Sukkot each year since 2012 with the community at Porto's Mekor Haim synagogue.

In January 2025 Menachem and Chana Wagner moved to the Algarve to set up Chabad of South Portugal, based in Alvor near Portimão, under Rosenfeld and with a grant from the Rohr Foundation. About 75 people attended its first Purim events.

Porto citizenship case

In March 2022 Rabbi Daniel Litvak of the Comunidade Israelita do Porto (Jewish Community of Porto) was arrested in an investigation into how Roman Abramovich obtained Portuguese citizenship under the 2013 law for descendants of Sephardic Jews; the case concerned the Porto community, one of the two Jewish bodies the government had empowered to vet such applications, and not Chabad (see Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Portugal).

Centres

Chabad headquarters lists centres in Cascais and Vilamoura. The Avner Cohen Casa Chabad is at Costa da Guia, Cascais, beside the street named after Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Chabad Lubavitch of Spain
• Roman Abramovich
• Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Portugal