Was Christopher Columbus Jewish?
It was an explosive theory presented to Spanish viewers on prime-time television on October 12, 2024, Spain’s National Day commemorating the arrival of Columbus in the Americas. José Antonio Lorente, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Granada, and Marcial Castro, a public school teacher and historian, published the results of a study that took more than 20 years. They were far from born into middle-class artisan families in Genoa. , In Italy, Columbus was most likely born into a Spanish Jewish family, as is commonly believed.
The search for Columbus’ origins began in the early 2000s, when Castro teamed up with another teacher to research the famous explorer. They approached Professor Lorente, who was leading a team of prominent forensic researchers who followed criminal cases and identified the bodies of people murdered by Latin American tyrants. What would happen if they exhumed Columbus’ body from his tomb in Seville, Spain, analyzed his DNA, and treated him as a missing person in today’s criminal investigations? Together, they embark on a quest to learn more about Spain’s most famous explorer.
Jose Antonio Lorente holds up a skull believed to be that of Christopher Columbus, excavated from Guadalajara. fermin rodriguez
Over the years, with permission from the Roman Catholic Church, they exhumed Columbus’ body from Seville’s cathedral and took samples from Columbus’ son Hernando, Columbus’ second cousin Diego, and other relatives. (The fact that Diego is a distant cousin of Columbus was one of the new discoveries from DNA analysis; Columbus had always claimed that Diego was his brother.)
According to DNA analysis, Columbus was of both Spanish and Jewish ethnicity. “Both Hernando’s ‘Y’ chromosome and his mitochondrial chromosome have traits consistent with a Jewish origin,” Lorente announced on Spanish television.
Jewish genetic markers
The Y-chromosome genes inherited from male ancestors have been shown to have markers unique to Jewish families. In a recent analysis of Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, Kurdish Jews, Muslim Kurds, Bedouins, and Arabs in the Palestinian Authority, scientists found that Jews are different from non-Jews. They discovered that they are genetically much more closely related to each other than they are to each other by blood. neighbors. Studies have also shown that the Y-chromosome genetic markers of Ashkenazi Jews are much more similar to those of Sephardic Jews than to non-Jewish Europeans.
Mitochondrial DNA, also called mDNA, is inherited only from female ancestors. Once again, researchers found clear differences between Jewish mRNA and that of other people. In fact, mRNA testing has revealed that approximately 40% of all Ashkenazi Jewish women are descended from just four women who likely immigrated to Europe from the Middle East within the past 2,000 years.
Christopher Columbus appears to have had typical Jewish genes on both his Y chromosome and mRNA, indicating that he inherited Jewish ancestry through both his mother’s and father’s families. Although this does not definitively prove that Columbus was Jewish, it does change our perspective on his life and the secrets he was forced to keep. Other discoveries indicate that Columbus probably had DNA related to Spaniards from the Valencia region.
The Golden Age of Spanish Jewry
The Jewish “golden age” of medieval Spain is sometimes held up as the ideal for modern coexistence, with Muslims, Catholics, and Jews all living in harmony in Spain. The reality was somewhat different. Jews in Spain faced severe persecution and pogroms by both Christian and Muslim leaders. Maimonides, the most famous Jew of the Spanish Golden Age of Judaism, fled Córdoba with his family in 1459 after Almohad forces occupied the city and forced all Jews to convert to Islam or leave.
Christopher Columbus Mausoleum in the Cathedral of Seville, Spain
In 1391, Christian priests in Seville stirred up anti-Jewish passions. A pogrom broke out on June 6 of the same year, spreading from Seville to southern Spain and into Portugal. Approximately 50,000 people were killed in the ensuing violence. Jews in Spain were under overwhelming pressure to convert to Christianity.
Rabbi Berel Wein, in his book Messengers of Destiny: Stories of Jews in the Middle Ages 750-1650, describes what happened to these interlocutors, Jews who converted to Christianity. I am. “At first, many, if not most, felt that their conversion was a sham and sought to preserve their Jewish identity, customs, and traditions. They considered themselves Jews in all but name. The Jews called them anusim, or “forced converts.” The Spanish called them Marranos, a derogatory word meaning “pig.” They were constantly monitored, lived in a fog of anxiety and self-doubt, and over time steadily became Christians. They ultimately suffered the worst brutality of the Inquisition. ”
The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to fight heresy. It lasted until 1834. Anyone suspected of being a secret Jew could be arrested and brutally tortured until they confessed. Those found to be secret Jews could spend the rest of their lives in horrific prisons or be publicly burned to death. The Inquisition arrested people for cleaning their homes on Fridays (perhaps in preparation for the Sabbath), fasting on Yom Kippur, cooking traditional Jewish food, and avoiding pork. .
In 1492, to celebrate the unification of Spain as a Catholic country, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella issued a decree forbidding non-Christians to remain in the kingdom. They designated August 2, 1492, to coincide with Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day of remembrance, after which no Jews could remain. Nearly 200,000 Jews desperately tried to book ships to sail from Spain. Jews fled primarily to Türkiye, North Africa, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. Approximately 10% of the Jews who escaped were either killed at sea by the captains who begged them to take them or sold into slavery. An estimated 50,000 Jews remained in Spain, maintaining their traditions as secret Jews.
Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Jews
In the late 1400s, Spain found its eastern trade routes largely cut off by the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic kingdoms. Columbus, admiral of Spain’s formidable navy, was tasked with sailing west to find alternative trade routes to the Indies.
He died on August 3, 1492, along with a crew that included at least some Jews, especially Luis de Torres (who reportedly spoke Hebrew), Juan de Cabrera, and Rodrigo de Triana. The ship set sail from Palos de la Frontera, a town in southern Spain. . As Columbus and the crews of the three ships he commanded across the Atlantic were preparing to sail, they saw one ship after another depart, taking with them terrified Spanish Jews. I was definitely watching it. Those hiding their Jewish heritage, as we now know Columbus and some of his crew did, knew better than to give away clues about their true identity. Sho.
However, despite his wealth and success, it was long suspected that Columbus himself was Jewish. The Spanish surname he chose, Colon, was thought to be a Jewish name, and a swirl of intrigue arose around him. But Columbus gave no hint of that, living openly as a proud Roman Catholic and filling his logbook with references to Jesus and Catholic holy days.
Doubting Columbus’ Jewish roots
Long before this week’s dramatic DNA analysis, scholars had wondered whether Columbus had Jewish roots. Professor Ram Ben Shalom, director of the Jewish Center of Hispania at the Hebrew University, points out that Columbus appears to have deliberately concealed his origins, noting that he was not only Spanish, but also Jewish. I’m guessing (or more accurately, I know). Although Columbus claimed to be a middle-class Italian, his Spanish was more fluent than his Italian. Professor Ben Shalom suggests that by claiming to be Italian, Columbus may have sought to avoid the scrutiny that a person from a certain Spanish province might be subject to.
Georgetown University linguistics professor Estelle Irizarry came to a similar conclusion in the early 2000s after analyzing Columbus’ writings. Dr. Irizarry believes that Columbus’ native language was Catalan, but Columbus hid that fact because he was likely Jewish and wanted to create for himself an entirely new foreign identity. She also believes that Ladino, a Spanish-Jewish language spoken by many Jews at the time, influenced Columbus’ writing style. In that sense, he followed the punctuation style of Ladino-speaking scribes. ”
Some historians point to the codes Columbus used while writing as evidence that he may have included Hebrew phrases and references in his letters and diaries. Columbus often used clearly encoded three-line signatures.
.S.
As .S.
XMY
Xpo Ference
Historian Cecil Ross speculated that the signature was somehow intended to evoke the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
Columbus also included codes in the upper left corner of some of his letters and diaries. Many Jews write the Hebrew letters “Bet Hay” or “Bet Samekh Dalet,” both of which mean that what we are writing is being written with God’s help. . Historian Jonathan Sarna writes, “This is, as (historian) Maurice David suggested, “nothing more and nothing less than an old Hebrew greeting,” an abbreviation for Baruch Hashem, blessed be the Lord. Isn’t there?” he asked. Many readers (of which I am one) cannot see it, but once again the mystery begs for explanation. (Quoted from Columbus and the Jews by Jonathan Serna, Commentary Magazine 94:5, November 1992.)
Finally, some historians point to Columbus’ will as evidence that he was not the middle-class Italian from Genoa that he claimed to be. Although several documents claim to be Christopher Columbus’ last will, there is no mention of Genoa in the will, which scholars believe is most likely authentic. Although Columbus left a huge fortune to his family, he never identified exactly who his relatives were, instead using names such as “the closest relative of my lineage” or “the woman closest to my lineage.” ” expressions were used. He asked his son Diego to distribute 10% of his wealth to his poorest relatives as a “pious donation,” without specifying who the donation should go to.
DNA analysis and Columbus’ Jewish background
It is worth noting that the body that Professor Lorente and Mr. Castro unearthed in Seville was actually that of Christopher Columbus. Columbus died in Spain in 1506, but left instructions to be buried on the island of Hispaniola, where he first landed in 1492. Columbus was instead buried in the Spanish city of Valladolid and then moved to Seville. In 1537, his daughter-in-law obtained royal permission to transport his body to the Dominican Republic. His remains were moved to Cuba in 1795 and then returned to Seville in 1898.
This week’s DNA discovery revealed, through analysis of his next of kin, that Columbus was indeed buried in Seville and that his murky history was somehow hidden. Having DNA markers that correspond to typical Jewish genes does not mean that Columbus was Jewish. Since Judaism is passed down through the mother, Columbus’ mother may have been Spanish rather than Jewish. But this surprising new discovery has changed our view of one of Spain’s greatest heroes. Christopher Columbus was a great naval admiral. His discovery of America changed history. Today, we can celebrate him as a complex man with strong Jewish ties, but tragically we were never able to tell the world who he really was.
