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Samuel Schwarz
Born	Samuel Szwarc (1880-02-12)February 12, 1880 Zgierz, Congress Poland
Died	June 10, 1953(1953-06-10) (aged 73) Lisbon, Portugal
Nationality	Polish and Portuguese
Occupations	Mining engineer historian archaeologist writer
Known for	Rediscovery of the Jews of Belmonte
Spouse	Agatha Barbasch (married 1914)
Relatives	Marek Szwarc (brother)

Samuel Schwarz (12 February 1880 – 10 June 1953), or Samuel Szwarc, was a Polish-Portuguese Jewish mining engineer, archaeologist, and historian of the Jewish diaspora, specifically of the Sephardic and crypto-Jewish communities of Portugal and Spain.

Early life

Samuel Szwarc was born in Zgierz, Poland, on 12 February 1880, the oldest of ten sons. One of his younger brothers was Polish-French painter and sculptor Marek Szwarc. Their father Isucher Moshe Szwarc (1859–1939) was an Orthodox Jew heavily involved in Zgierz's Jewish community and the late Haskalah movement. Isucher was a fervent Zionist, participating in the First Zionist Congress and subsequent congresses.

Samuel studied at a cheder and a Jewish high school in his youth. His father considered sending Samuel to the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, but ultimately sent him to study in Paris when he was 16 years old.

Szwarc studied mining engineering at the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris, graduating in 1904. Between 1904 and 1914 he worked as a mining engineer throughout Europe and Africa, including in the Baku oilfields in Azerbaijan; coal mines in Sosnowiec, Poland; tin mines of the Arnoya Mining Company in Ourense, Spain, from 1907 to 1910; and at a gold mine of the Monte Rosa Gold Mining Company in Alagna Valsesia, Italy, in 1911. Szwarc was a notable polyglot, speaking Russian, Polish, German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Yiddish, likely assisting him in his frequent work travels.

In 1913 Samuel attended the Eleventh World Zionist Congress in Vienna with his father. While there he met Agatha Barbasch, daughter of Russian banker and militant Zionist Samuel Barbasch. They married in April 1914 in Odessa and honeymooned throughout Europe. When World War I broke out, making work in Western Europe impossible, Samuel and his wife decided to move to Lisbon, Portugal, as he had heard positive things about the country during his stint in Ourense. They arrived in Portugal in November 1914. Samuel began working at the tungsten and tin mines of Vilar Formoso and Belmonte.

Szwarc served as president of the Polish Chamber of Commerce in Portugal (Câmara de Comércio Polaca em Portugal) from its founding until the start of the 1920 Polish–Soviet War. He was also a member of the Portuguese Order of Engineers and the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists (Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses).

Jewish diaspora studies

Schwarz became interested in Iberian crypto-Judaism and the Marranos during his time in Spain, where he learned about the crypto-Jewish Xuetes of Mallorca. He published some articles about Marranos in the Royal Galician Academy's journal and in the magazine España-Nueva. In 1908 and 1909 he published similar articles in French.

In 1917 Schwarz's professional work as a mining engineer and his interest in crypto-Judaism led him to Belmonte in Portugal's northern Trás-os-Montes region. At the time the First Portuguese Republic enjoyed relative intellectual freedom, especially when compared to its successor the corporatist, semi-fascist Estado Novo regime. In Belmonte he discovered steles bearing legible Hebrew inscriptions, which he deduced belonged to an old synagogue. While in Belmonte Schwarz also met Baltasar Pereira de Sousa, supposedly when a someone warned Schwarz not to do business with Sousa because, "It is enough for me to tell you, he is a Jew." His curiosity piqued, Schwarz visited Sousa, who admitted his family and neighbors had practiced Judaism in secret for generations.

Sousa introduced Schwarz to the larger Marrano community in Belmonte. Though the Jews of Belmonte were initially skeptical of Schwarz given their secrecy, he eventually gained their trust when he recited the Shema Yisrael prayer and uttered the name of God (Adonai), which they recognized. In the succeeding years Schwarz further befriended and studied Belmonte's Jewish community, documenting their unique social and religious customs and transcribing their prayers and family manuscripts.

In 1923 he began his second career as an archaeologist, ethnographer, and historian in earnest with the publication of his work "Inscrições hebraicas em Portugal" ("Hebrew inscriptions in Portugal") in the magazine Arqueologia e História ("Archaeology and History"), which he published under the name Samuel Schwarz.

On 5 May 1923, Schwarz purchased a small building in Tomar that Portuguese archaeologists had rediscovered in 1920 as the Synagogue of Tomar, a pre-expulsion synagogue. He undertook archaeological excavations and restoration work of the synagogue, proposing the building become the Portuguese Jewish Museum of Tomar (Museu Luso-Hebraico de Tomar). Schwarz donated the building on 27 July 1939 to the Portuguese government on the condition it be turned into a museum. In return Schwarz and his wife Agatha were granted Portuguese citizenship, protecting them during the Holocaust. Since 1939 the building has functioned as the Abraham Zacuto Portuguese Jewish Museum (Museu Luso-Hebraico Abraão Zacuto).

Schwarz's research in Belmonte and surrounding areas led to his 1925 book Os cristãos novos em Portugal no século XX (The New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century), likely the first written work about the Marrano community of northern Portugal and bringing that community to worldwide attention, and since 1925 posthumously republished in Portuguese, Hebrew, and French. Seeing his studies of the Marranos as important to the wider Jewish community, Schwarz also published various articles in British, Spanish, French, Polish, and Italian magazines and newspapers regarding the matter. The book was well-received by Jews worldwide and by crypto-Jews in northern Portugal, leading to a renaissance of Portuguese Jewishness.

Schwarz published various books and articles on Jewish themes in Portuguese throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Notable works include the books Cântico dos Cânticos (1942), Anti-semitismo with Leon Litwinski (1944), A Tomada de Lisboa segundo um documento coevo da Biblioteca Nacional (1953), A Sinagoga de Alfama (1953), and the posthumous História da Moderna Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa (1959), as well as a 1946 series of articles published in the magazine Ver e Crer (Seeing and Believing) which included the articles "O Sionismo no reinado de D. João III" ("Zionism during the reign of King João III"), "Origem do nome e da lenda do Preste João da Índia" ("Origin of the name and legend of Prester John of India"), and "Quem eram os emissários que D. João II mandou em busca do Preste João?" ("Who were the emissaries King João II sent in search of Prester John?"). He also remained involved in mining engineering, in 1936 writing a brochure for the Portuguese Directorate of Mines titled, Arqueologia mineira: extrato dum relatório acerca de pesquisas de ouro (Mining archaeology: an extract regarding searches for gold).

Death and legacy

Schwarz died in Lisbon on 10 June 1953.

After his death Schwarz's library of mainly Judaism-related books—including 32 incunabula and 10,000 other rare books—was sold to the Portuguese government. Though intended to stay in Tomar, the collection found its way to the Portuguese Ministry of Finance's Historic Archive, where it sat in storage for decades. Currently the collection is held at the Mário Sottomayor Cardia Library of Social Sciences at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa where it is being inventoried and cataloged.

Schwarz's 1925 book Os cristãos novos em Portugal no século XX (The New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century) has been republished posthumously four times: twice in Portuguese; once in Hebrew in 2005; and once in French in 2015. There are plans to translate it into English by 2021.

In January 2008 the Jewish Museum of Belmonte dedicated a gallery in Schwarz's honor. In 2019 the municipality of Belmonte named one of the town's squares after and erected a bust of Schwarz in honor of his contributions to the town and its Jewish community.

Published works

• Inscrições hebraicas em Portugal (Hebrew inscriptions in Portugal). 1923.
• Os cristãos novos em Portugal no século XX (The New Christians in Portugal in the 20th Century). 1925.
• Arqueologia mineira: extrato dum relatório acerca de pesquisas de ouro (Mining archaeology: an extract regarding searches for gold). 1936.
• Projecto de organização de um Museu Luso-Hebraico na antiga sinagoga de Tomar (Project of the organization of a Portuguese-Jewish Museum at the old synagogue of Tomar). 1939.
• Cântico dos cânticos / Salomão (Canticle of canticles / Solomon). 1942.
• Anti-semitismo (Anti-semitism), with Leon Litwinski. 1944.
• A tomada de Lisboa: conforme documento coevo de um códice hebraico da Biblioteca Nacional (The Siege of Lisbon). 1953.
• A sinagoga de Alfama: in memoriam do eminente olisipógrafo engenheiro Augusto Vieira da Silva (The synagogue of Alfama: in memoriam of the eminent Lisbon-ographer engineer Augusto Vieira da Silva). 1953.
• Histórias da moderna Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa (Stories of the modern Jewish Community of Lisbon). 1959, posthumous.
• La Découverte des marranes (The Discovery of the Marranos). Paris: Editions Chandeigne. ISBN 978-2-367321-19-6. 2015, posthumous.

See also

• Crypto-Judaism
• History of the Jews in Belmonte
• Synagogue of Tomar

Upperline Restaurant, or simply Upperline, was a critically-acclaimed fine dining restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Opened in 1983 by restaurateur JoAnn Clevenger, the restaurant was housed in a yellow townhouse located at 1413 Upperline Street in Uptown New Orleans near the St. Charles Streetcar Line. The restaurant focused on and was celebrated for mixing Cajun, Louisiana Creole, and Southern cuisine. Though Clevenger was not a chef, she developed Upperline's signature dish of fried green tomatoes with shrimp rémoulade, and inspired many other menu items. Upperline temporarily closed in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2021, Clevenger announced the restaurant would not be reopening and that she and her family planned to sell the building and possibly the business.

History

As a child in the 1950s, JoAnn Clevenger moved to New Orleans from rural North Louisiana with her mother, who sought medical treatment in New Orleans. During the 1960s and 1970s Clevenger worked as a bartender on Bourbon Street and became involved in the bohemian scene in New Orleans, meeting playwright Tennessee Williams, photographer Lee Friedlander, artist Noel Rockmore, and other well-known figures.

Clevenger opened Upperline in 1983 and co-owned it with her son Jason Clevenger—the restaurant's first chef—and husband Alan Greenacre. Upperline temporarily closed in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2021, Clevenger announced the restaurant would not be reopening and that she and her family planned to sell the building and possibly the business.

Kunst

Upperline was also celebrated for its art collection focused on local artists. The collection contained at least 400 artworks, including portraits of Clevenger and Upperline staff members, a painting of artist Gertrude Morgan by Noel Rockmore, and another Rockmore painting of New Orleans musician Frank Moliere. Clevenger began the collection in 1960, when she briefly managed an art gallery in the French Quarter. The collection was offered for sale as part of Upperline's November 2021 closing.

Reception

Upperline was popular with local residents and the cultural elite alike. Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, and relatives of The New York Times executive editor and New Orleans native Dean Baquet—among many other well-known figures—dined at the restaurant.

JoAnn Clevenger was widely acclaimed for her skills as a hostess, known for building connections between her guests. According to Clevenger, Bezos and Scott dined at Upperline (they were married at the time) the same evening as Dean Baquet's relatives. Clevenger introduced them to each other, as Bezos owns The Washington Post, a rival newspaper of The New York Times: "I gave them each a little note, telling them who was at the other table. It's about connections." Clevenger also handed Scott a printed list of New Orleans bookstores, and said of the experience: "It felt really good that I could give them a list of these brick-and-mortar stores he's [Bezos] on the way to destroying." Author and New Orleans native Walter Isaacson said of Clevenger, "She knew how to tie together great ingredients, both in her dishes and her dining room." Gabriel Stafford—who had worked at Upperline for 11 years when the restaurant closed—said of Clevenger: "I found JoAnn to be an intoxicating character. I felt like I was ensconced in New Orleans-ness while working there [at Upperline]."

Popular culture

Upperline's roast duck was featured as one of chef Simon Majumdar's favorite dishes in Season 4, Episode 10 of The Best Thing I Ever Ate.