History of the Jews in Madeira History of the Jews in Madeira History of the Jews in Madeira spans the entire length of the history of Madeira itself, from Crypto-Jews to World War II evacuees. Like the Jews of mainland Portugal, Madeira jews are mainly related to Sephardi history, a Jewish ethnic division that represents communities who have originated in the Iberian Peninsula. There was once a Synagogue of Funchal, which is now disused. Menasseh Ben Israel was born in Madeira in 1604. Jews from Morocco arrived in 1819 and set themselves up in the cloth and wine trades. The Abudarham family from Gibraltar were involved
Madeira firecrest of the Canaries, Azores, and Madeira have a volcanic origin and they have never been part of a continent. The formation of Madeira started in the Miocene and the island was substantially complete 700,000 years ago. In the distant past the major islands of these archipelagos were all colonised by "Regulus" species, which evolved on their respective islands isolated from mainland populations. The firecrest descendant evolved in Madeira and goldcrest subspecies evolved on the other islands. Cytochrome "b" gene divergence between common firecrests from Europe and Madeira firecrests suggests an evolutionary separation roughly 4 million years ago, considerably earlier than