Nerissa's Ring

Nerissa’s Ring is the last two words of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

It is “upside down” because the merchants in the play were on a pilgrimage from Venice to Belmont, the home of the queenly princess, Portia, whose assistant was Nerissa. Shakespeare asserts that one can get from Venice to Belmont either by land or by sea. It turns out Belmonte is an inland town in northeastern Portugal which fits that geography.

Furthermore, today’s Belmonte is the home of some 300 Jews (among its population of 3,000) who have lived there since the 16^th century as “Christians,” but in the 1980s they “came out” publicly as Jews. Although no secret to the Gentiles, they literally had worshiped their Jewish God underground, while also dutifully attending church and silently telling God that place was nothing but a pile of stones. Such were the consequences of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions (Shakespeare probably anglicized Belmont, dropping the “e”).

Albert Sattin is a retired psychiatrist who, with his wife, Renee, visited the town of Belmonte, Portugal in the 1980s. They were able to attend a worship service in a private home where the Jewish citizens of Belmonte were praying in Hebrew. This was shortly after they had “come out” from their “Christian” identity, reclaiming their ancestry.The climax of the service was the very loud Hebrew declaration:“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, The Lord is One.” It felt as if the roof was blown off!Over the centuries, they had lost most of their knowledge of the Hebrew language.Ironically, though they are Sephardic Jews, they had been instructed by an Ashkenazic Rabbi.