History of the Jews in Madeira in the Madeira wine industry from the early 1860s onwards. The Jewish community on the island of Madeira expanded in 1940, due to the Evacuation of the Gibraltarian civilian population during World War II to Madeira, which included a number of Jews, who attended the Synagogue of Funchal. Some of these evacuees were buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Funchal. Tito Benady, a historian on Gibraltar Jewry, noted that when some 200 Jews of the 2000 evacuees from Gibraltar were evacuated as non combatants to Funchal, Madeira, at the start of World War II, they found a Jewish cemetery (Jewish
Madeira cake Madeira cake Madeira cake is a sponge cake in traditional English cookery. It is sometimes mistakenly thought to originate from the Madeira Islands; however, that is not the case as it was instead named after Madeira wine, a Portuguese wine from the islands, which was popular in England in the mid 1800s when it was invented, and was often served with the cake. The confusion arises because Madeirans produce their own traditional Madeira cake – bolo de mel, a dark, spicy, honey cake – which is very different from its English counterpart. Nowadays, the English Madeira cake is often served